THINK IT Services

THINKstrategies announced yesterday that Caspio, Inc. has been named the first winner of the new Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s cloud computing solutions.

The CCBV Awards program was announced in January 2010 to recognize Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers delivering tangible business benefits to specific user organizations. These benefits include lower costs, faster deployment times, greater profitability, etc.

The Award program builds on the success of THINKstrategies’ Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program which was initiated in 2009.

Caspio provides an on-demand, do-it-yourself, web application creation PaaS which replaces coding with intuitive point-and-click wizards, enabling users to rapidly produce web database components for capturing, publishing, and managing data online. Caspio’s customers range from one-person entrepreneurs to Fortune-500 corporations, digital media giants, government agencies, and educational institutions.

Click here to read more about Caspio’s award-winning business benefits.

Click here to read more about the CCBV Awards program or to apply for an award.

This week’s announcement that Microsoft and Intuit are linking their respective Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities has attracted lots of attention and generated plenty of speculation. It is also the latest escalation of the PaaS wars I predicted would take center-stage this year.

Although Salesforce.com’s Force.com PaaS has gained the lion’s share of industry attention because of the company’s unparalleled marketing machine, I’ve felt that Intuit’s Partner Platform (IPP) represented a dark-horse in the PaaS race because of the vast installed base of small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) using Intuit’s QuickBooks and QuickBase, along with its powerful channel relationships.

I’ve also believed that Microsoft would make considerable progress in penetrating the cloud computing market this year, not because of the technical capabilities of its Azure PaaS, but because of its historical prowess in building a vast partner network of ISVs and developers.

With those thoughts in mind, here’s my take on the strategic business implications of this alliance,

1. Both companies are aggressively attempting to catch up to Salesforce.com’s Force.com PaaS initiatives both in terms of mindshare and marketshare. Both companies want to quickly expand their reach into the ISV/developer community to strengthen their competitive position in the PaaS market. (Disclosure: I’ve written a series of whitepapers on behalf of Salesforce.com regarding the Force.com capabilities.)
2. Both companies also want to demonstrate the ‘openness’ of their PaaS capabilities to offset the alliances which Salesforce.com has made with Amazon, Google and Facebook, and capitalize on accusations that Salesforce.com’s Force.com PaaS is limited because it is built on a ‘proprietary’ language.
3. Gaining greater market penetration via access to the other party’s installed base of customers and partners is a given, but capitalizing on their respective functional capabilities and channel relationships is important.
4. Intuit is primarily seeking to make its IPP more attractive to developers by expanding the functionality it can provide its PaaS users. Adding Microsoft’s development and collaboration tools, including the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) which consists of SharePoint Online, Communications Online, Exchange Online, and Office Live Meeting gives developers greater functional capabilities to satisfy their customers’ needs.
5. Microsoft is primarily interested in adding the service management capabilities embedded in Intuit’s Partner Platform (IPP) which include service provisioning and monitoring, along with pay-as-you-go billing and pricing. Adding these capabilities makes Azure more relevant to developers from a business perspective.

While this alliance is squarely focused on small businesses, it could also appeal to the regional offices or small divisions of larger enterprises. It could also attract crossover opportunities in the consumer market, especially when you consider the growing influence of consumerization in the corporate world.

But, most importantly it could open new opportunities within traditional channels and create new channel opportunities for cloud services and vendors. Salesforce.com, Google, Amazon and Facebook have not made much progress penetrating the channel and will face serious challenges gaining the trust and confidence of traditional channel organizations who feel threatened by the cloud computing phenomenon. Intuit and Microsoft can leverage their established relationships with key channel companies to overcome their concerns.

This alliance is the most recent in Microsoft’s escalating efforts to regain its dominant position in the software market which has been quickly slipping away with the accelerated growth of SaaS and broader cloud computing services. Microsoft also announced earlier this month that it is teaming with HP in a three-year, $250 million initiative to develop and deliver a new generation of cloud-based solutions.

Conspiracy theorists will also point out that Microsoft announced last June that it is discontinuing its Money software service, which leaves a convenient gap for Intuit to fill with its QuickBooks solutions.

While ‘coopetition’ is not a new idea or business practice in the tech industry, this week’s Microsoft-Intuit alliance is certainly an important new test of the concept. Whether this proves to be a win-win relationship or simply a Machiavellian maneuver by these companies remains to be seen.

It is also important to note that this isn’t a mutually exclusive alliance. Microsoft is already working with Amazon, for instance. In fact, it will probably spark additional discussions and agreements with the other players by both parties.

I had the privilege of attending a local forum at Bentley University hosted by Intuit this past week entitled “Startups and the Cloud: Entrepreneurship in the Age of Cloud Computing”. 

The size of the turnout for this event was another indication of the growing level of interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the broader cloud computing phenomenon. It may also be an early indicator of the potential power of Intuit as a key player in this rapidly evolving marketplace.

In a previous blog post, I suggested that two of the most important competitive advantages which leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) must display are,

• Sustainability in today’s tough economic climate to ensure they are viewed as solid, long-term suppliers of SaaS development and delivery capabilities.
• An attractive customer base which can make the PaaS vendor a viable channel to market for developers leveraging its toolkit.

Intuit easily qualifies as a potentially powerful PaaS candidate based on both of these criteria. It is a solid software vendor that has built an enormously strong base of small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs), as well as households who take advantage of its financial management applications.

More than two hundred current and aspiring software developers attended Intuit’s forum this week. They were interested in getting insight about the overall SaaS and cloud computing market from a combination venture capitalists and CEOs, including Scott Cook of Intuit who provided his perspectives about building a successful software business in today’s rapidly changing market. The attendees were also curious about Intuit’s PaaS capabilities.

The organizers took advantage of the opportunity to showcase Intuit’s rapidly evolving development platform which should appeal to many aspiring SaaS/cloud computing developers that wants to deliver B2B solutions aimed at SMBs, or even B2C solutions aimed at households using Intuit products.

Intuit’s recent acquisitions clearly demonstrate its determination to be a major player in the SaaS and cloud computing marketplace. And, the turnout at last week’s event illustrates that there are plenty of entrepreneurs and software developers who are interested in leveraging Intuit’s position in the market.

Of course, Intuit will have to provide these developers with the right tools at the right price to fulfill its potential as a major PaaS player.

Debating the meaning of ‘cloud computing’ has become a popular pastime among analysts, journalists, vendors and even customers.

The latest entrant into the discussion is the Wall Street Journal which published an article today entitled, “The Internet Industry Is on a Cloud — Whatever That May Mean.” (Registration may be required.)

In addition to raising the fundamental question about how to properly define cloud computing, the WSJ article also mentions Oracle CEO/Chairman’s Larry Ellison’s comments over the past few years downplaying the market opportunity for cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

Although I’ve offered my own views on this topic before in this space, here are some additional thoughts in response to the WSJ article:

1. What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is a set of web-based enabling tools and services which permit users to acquire computing capabilities to build or support applications, or perform specific functions on a pay-as-you-go basis.

2. What are the key characteristics of cloud computing?

Web-based, easily provisioned, highly economical, very flexible and reliably scalable.

3. How is cloud computing segmented, e.g. SaaS, PaaS, etc.?

Everyone uses SaaS and cloud computing interchangeably, starting with Salesforce.com and the press. THINKstrategies distinguishes them in the following way – Cloud computing has emerged a broad set of loosely coupled web-based enabling tools and services in response to the success of SaaS. SaaS solutions are ‘packaged’ applications acquired in a pay-as-you-go fashion and delivered via the Web. PaaS is an integrated set of development and delivery tools and services which permit a vendor or user organization to build their own SaaS solutions.

4. What makes this different than the old ASP model?

ASPs were outsourcers who were simply moving the same old crappy apps out of the customer’s data center and operating it in a centralized and remote data center. They didn’t have a better pricing model or offer any new functionality.

Today’s SaaS/PaaS/cloud computing solutions have been built to reside on the web, where it can better serve a more dispersed and mobile customer base with more user-friendly and flexible pricing and packaging.

5. Why has Larry Ellison resisted the SaaS/cloud computing movement?

It is a Machiavellian subterfuge aimed at downplaying the market opportunity to discourage potential competitors, such as SAP, from entering the market.

Ironically, Ellison originated the idea of the ‘thin client’ during the dot.com boom and Oracle was a pioneer in the ASP era. Today, Oracle is a major supplier of database systems for many of the largest SaaS companies, including Salesforce.com. 

Oracle is also the purveyor of a widening array of on-demand software services, starting with Siebel On-Demand and most recently adding Sourcing On-Demand. And of course, Ellison is also a personal investor in Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

6. Why is cloud computing a major transformation of the IT/software industry and not just another overhyped trend?

First, because SaaS/cloud computing solutions are delivering measurable business benefits, and generating high customer satisfaction and referral rates.

Second, corporate executives and end-users need and want a better way to acquire and utilize technology and business applications to meet their rapidly changing business and workplace requirements.

Third, a new generation of workers—Generation “F” for Facebook, as Gary Hamel described in the WSJ Tuesday—are entering the market who have grown up online and will demand web-based services to do their jobs.

Finally, because today’s tough economic climate demands that organizations of all sizes fundamentally change the way they do business, and few will resist the temptation to revamp the way they procure and use technology and applications so they can get a better ROI at a lower TCO.

Last July, I offered my views on the similarities and differences between Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing. This past week, I had an opportunity to elaborate on the relationship between these two worlds and terms, along with Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS), during a webcast hosted by Symplified entitled, “Beyond the Buzzwords”.

Then and now I believe cloud computing is an outgrowth of the success of the SaaS market and web-based, packaged applications. Cloud computing represents a rapidly growing array of web-based tools which enable users to build their own applications or utilities that can be deployed via the Internet (“cloud”) or ‘downloaded’ to an on-premise environment.

Much like the open source world, the cloud computing environment enables users to take advantage of a wide assortment of piece-parts from a variety of sources to create their own solutions for various project and production purposes. They both rely on incredibility economical development resources and generous community-minded contributors willing to share and swap ideas and outputs.

During last week’s webcast, the question was asked how Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS) relates to SaaS and cloud computing. In my view, PaaS is a vendor-centric set of tools and resources which permit users to build apps and utilities which not only take advantage of the vendor’s holistic portfolio of technological capabilities, ranging from development to delivery, but also leverage the company’s customer base and/or channels to market.

I dissected some of these ideas and leading platform players last month. I also will be moderating a panel session at Interop in Las Vegas on May 19 entitled “SaaS, Pass and More: A Taxonomy of On-Demand Applications”, that will include executives from Cisco Systems, LongJump and Salesforce.com.

These topics will also be discussed at other events I’m attending and participating in over the coming weeks.

You can also obtain useful insights about how SaaS vendors are leveraging platforms in SoftLetter’s new SaaS Benchmark Study. My colleagues at Triple-Tree also published a useful report on platforms last year.