Helpdesk software specialist e-Warehouse has today become the latest vendor to develop a software as a service (SaaS) offering, with the launch of a new hosted IT incident management service.

The company said Oxygen SaaS Express would suit small and midmarket firms that experience low volumes of helpdesk traffic but could still benefit from an automated service desk management system. The hosted suite will be available for organisations that record up to 50 IT incidents a month on a pay-as-you-go basis, with each use of the incident management application costing £1 per incident.

Firms with higher levels of IT incidents that wish to use the hosted application can access a similar hosted offering called Oxygen SaaS Team, available at a rate of £50 per month, per engineer, the company said.

Richard Althorp, managing director of e-Warehouse, said the new hosted offering offered midmarket firms the opportunity to use a "feature-rich" service desk suite that is Itil compliant and provides detailed auditing and reporting functionality, without having to fork out enterprise software rates. "It really is a step up from the ticketing systems that many SMBs use, but you only pay when you use it and don’t have the hassle of back up, security and maintenance," he said.

He added that as the original Oxygen suite was web-based the new hosted offering had not had to go through any technical changes. "The only changes are in the billing where firms pay a £250 set-up fee for us to customise the software, and then they are simply billed each month based on what they use," he said. "For SMBs it also means they don’t have to commit to a 12-month contract."