One reason I believe on-demand services are starting to take off is that during the dot-bomb, everyone and their brother was involved in some way with IT. It was the thing to do, like real estate in the SF Bay Area.
With strapped budgets, a knowledge-gap in internal web services, and a need to focus on core competencies, there's a missing IT ingredient to supporting SMEs and SMBs. Couple that with the rise in Web 2.0 development technologies, open source, and mash-ups, the everyperson now has all the means to hang themselves properly.
BUT...
Few small companies have IT teams geared towards custom, business-driven applications. You might have one or two IT staff, but their main focus is on procuring equipment, securing the network, setting up email and mobile devices, and maintaining backups. They simply don't have the resources (and sometimes the knowledge) to build new business process automation for the company. Let's face it, a new business service, whether you buy it or build it, takes resources to understand the user/customer, the knowhow to create the application, testing, and fine-tuning.
One of the objectives for LongJump is that we remove the IT burden. You don't have to be a SQL expert. You don't have to know how to backup a server or write perl/cgi/java/etc. There are no security issues to deal with. It's all built in. All you need is your data, an idea, and to think through your work processes -- all stuff you'd need to do if you were to give the project to your IT department.