Who will be the most exciting SaaS and data-oriented start-ups to watch in 2017? Image: PanicAttack/Shutterstock As part of our Europe Start-up 100 listing of companies to watch in 2017, here are 25 of the most superb SaaS and data-oriented start-ups. But, fundamentally, the hottest areas of enterprise software right now are in software-as-a-service (SaaS), data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. All, of course, driven and powered by the cloud, which is enabling new economies of scale for companies to very quickly become software giants.