Some useful conservatism on the cloud threat to M$.
I think the cited report both overplays the real problems of switching from M$ Office, and is slightly disingenuous - I mean even if you think the cloud is going to be huge, you still think there's going to be a mix of cloud and locally hosted services for the foreseeable future. But that dodges the question of the combined effects of SaaS AND free-software AND Apple AND Adobe AND local caching for web-apps. Yes, hosted office apps are not going to replace the requirement for local apps. But if Google Apps. play well with Open Office and can be run locally on Gears on occasions when your connection drops, you can have an excellent company-wide standard which provides everything you need.
Nevertheless, the report might be right about the real human reluctance to shift.
Showing posts with label SaaS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SaaS. Show all posts
December 18, 2008
July 07, 2008
Interesting comment on Microsft's Equipt.
Bundling Office suite + tethered security-as-a-service == new business model? And if so, is it one which allows Free Software substitutes to take advantage of? (With proprietary anti-virus vendors as the reseller channel.)
Bundling Office suite + tethered security-as-a-service == new business model? And if so, is it one which allows Free Software substitutes to take advantage of? (With proprietary anti-virus vendors as the reseller channel.)
June 02, 2008
Why Open Source Java will Win SaaS Platform Wars
Slightly odd report of a McKinsey article. It says J2EE and .NET are unsuited to providing Platform-as-a-service which are a growth area. And suggests that open-source is likely to win out.
Where the java comes from, I'm not entirely sure.
Slightly odd report of a McKinsey article. It says J2EE and .NET are unsuited to providing Platform-as-a-service which are a growth area. And suggests that open-source is likely to win out.
Where the java comes from, I'm not entirely sure.
April 28, 2008
April 19, 2008
April 14, 2008
Google + Salesforce
Currently tighter integration of Google's online office-style apps. with Salesforce's platform.
Notes how viral Google apps are spreading :
Meanwhile ZDnet bloggers are tracking the fast evolving cloud / platform-as-service war.
Currently tighter integration of Google's online office-style apps. with Salesforce's platform.
Notes how viral Google apps are spreading :
Much of this will happen under-the-radar. David Armstrong, product and marketing manager for Google Enterprise in EMEA, told me yesterday that Google Apps already has half a million organizations — not individuals, organizations — signed up worldwide, with 2000 more signing up every day. But that astounding adoption rate is visible only to Google. There are no shrinkwrap packages passing through distributors’ warehouses or flying off retailers’ shelves. There’s not even any money changing hands for sign-ups to the free version. It’s just an invisible stream of bits in the ether. Adoption will be mostly unseen, until one day it will suddenly have become too big to ignore.
Meanwhile ZDnet bloggers are tracking the fast evolving cloud / platform-as-service war.
April 08, 2008
Simon Wardley comments on Google Application Engine ...
good points : warns of lock-in, notes connection with Gears and Android ... means that the Google Platform includes tethered devices.
good points : warns of lock-in, notes connection with Gears and Android ... means that the Google Platform includes tethered devices.
December 18, 2007
October 05, 2007
October 02, 2007
Joshua Allen responds to Marc Andreesen's types of platform.
He says the new platforms are about "data". That's rather like Tim OReilly's "Data Inside" aspect of his web 2.0 definition.
But a) it's not the whole story. And b) it leads to demands for "opening" the platform by making the data migratable.
It's not the whole story because, in addition to data the's user, her social connections and social conventions are the platform. When you think about it, this is true even with Windows, which is why UI consistency is such an important part of a platform.
On social platforms, the lock-in comes not from just having the data walled up in your silo. It also comes from your network being the place where people tend to do X. And if, on somebody else's platform, people don't tend to do X, then they won't shift the X-related applications over.
Because of his "open-data" perspective, Allen, I think, under-estimates the importance of the hosting issue, although he understands it perfectly well.
This is the same debate that's had around Software-as-a-service. It's that "additional intelligence" which is the killer thing that social platforms can offer : doing stuff with social data that cuts across users and across applications. That's why Amazon's database is so much more valuable than everyone hosting their own "I bought and like this book". It can figure out the most popular or "readers who bought X also bought Y".
Yes, theoretically, "scutter" applications can run around a widely distributed microformats, but my bet is that the difference in efficiency and difference in privacy control is actually so great, quantitatively, that it can lead to qualitative differences of application.
He says the new platforms are about "data". That's rather like Tim OReilly's "Data Inside" aspect of his web 2.0 definition.
But a) it's not the whole story. And b) it leads to demands for "opening" the platform by making the data migratable.
It's not the whole story because, in addition to data the's user, her social connections and social conventions are the platform. When you think about it, this is true even with Windows, which is why UI consistency is such an important part of a platform.
On social platforms, the lock-in comes not from just having the data walled up in your silo. It also comes from your network being the place where people tend to do X. And if, on somebody else's platform, people don't tend to do X, then they won't shift the X-related applications over.
Because of his "open-data" perspective, Allen, I think, under-estimates the importance of the hosting issue, although he understands it perfectly well.
It's obvious what benefit a Ning or Salesforce.com would get from keeping your data and code on their servers; it's less obvious what the benefit to you is. There are only two real reasons such an arrangement would be a benefit for you :
If your data, aggregated with data from lots of other customers of the provider, can provide some additional intelligence.
If the provider gets dramatic economies of scale beyond what you could get on your own. In the case of a Ning or a Salesforce.com, this one is dubious. There are only a handful of companies who buy electricity and bandwidth in enough volume to offer hosting cheaper than Amazon. Companies like Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft.
This is the same debate that's had around Software-as-a-service. It's that "additional intelligence" which is the killer thing that social platforms can offer : doing stuff with social data that cuts across users and across applications. That's why Amazon's database is so much more valuable than everyone hosting their own "I bought and like this book". It can figure out the most popular or "readers who bought X also bought Y".
Yes, theoretically, "scutter" applications can run around a widely distributed microformats, but my bet is that the difference in efficiency and difference in privacy control is actually so great, quantitatively, that it can lead to qualitative differences of application.
October 01, 2007
Me commenting on Umair's criticism of Facebook.
This is an important step in my thinking about widgets, SaaS and YASNs-as-platforms that I'm trying to write something more comprehensive and coherent about. Meanwhile, there's a lot of the ideas in that comment.
This is an important step in my thinking about widgets, SaaS and YASNs-as-platforms that I'm trying to write something more comprehensive and coherent about. Meanwhile, there's a lot of the ideas in that comment.
September 17, 2007
September 14, 2007
Salesforce's new open / social / online application platform..
This is massive. As the culmination and synthesis of several of the most important trends going on at the moment. This is going to blow up the enterprise software market the way the microcomputer blew up the mainframe market.
- any company can "rent" - as a service - an enterprise-class database-backed infrastructure from Salesforce.
- any programmer, or small company, can write applications for it.
- the applications will talk to each other via Salesforce's protocols.
- developers don't have to *sell* their application through the usual "sell big expensive software for humungous amounts of money, with lots of free lunches, kick-backs, professional sales-teams and special companies owned by the son of the procurador" channels; instead you just make your app available for companies to rent at ... erm "a flat $25/month/user".
(In fact, if Salesforce go the viral method - currently raging in Facebook - where you can encourage your friends (or in the case of business, your suppliers and customers) to install the application, then your app. can spread like wildfire *without* having to market it at all.)
Effectively, large suites break up into a swarm of widgets and mini-apps sitting on top of open, and standard, protocols and storage.
This is massive. As the culmination and synthesis of several of the most important trends going on at the moment. This is going to blow up the enterprise software market the way the microcomputer blew up the mainframe market.
- any company can "rent" - as a service - an enterprise-class database-backed infrastructure from Salesforce.
- any programmer, or small company, can write applications for it.
- the applications will talk to each other via Salesforce's protocols.
- developers don't have to *sell* their application through the usual "sell big expensive software for humungous amounts of money, with lots of free lunches, kick-backs, professional sales-teams and special companies owned by the son of the procurador" channels; instead you just make your app available for companies to rent at ... erm "a flat $25/month/user".
(In fact, if Salesforce go the viral method - currently raging in Facebook - where you can encourage your friends (or in the case of business, your suppliers and customers) to install the application, then your app. can spread like wildfire *without* having to market it at all.)
Effectively, large suites break up into a swarm of widgets and mini-apps sitting on top of open, and standard, protocols and storage.
April 18, 2007
April 10, 2007
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