When Mike Mankowski sent me this blog post today, I figured “Yeah! My running buddy David Greenfield from Altera is writing a post about me. I didn’t even know he blogged.

Alas, it was a case of mistaken identity but the post was real. This David Greenfield disagrees with my hogwash, but that’s O.K., I just like getting quoted. That said, I think Mr. Greenfield’s issue that function (cloud applications) and form (cloud computing) are mutually exclusive is misguided.

I was stating that the next generation of users will demand on-demand, collaborative group applications they can access anywhere and connect to in any way. This is what everything we see on the web from SaaS to Social Networking is driving to. David’s argument that these applications will run like exisiting applications behind the firewall and on servers bought and managed by IT is short sighted.

Instead, I think Cloud Infrastructures will evolve with the applications that they serve. And with that evolution, IT will find a way to exert the kind of data control and security necessary to run Enterprise critical applications. So instead of buying servers, IT will find ways to use cloud resources that give them the same type of control they had with the old models. We are already seeing that today. While an Amazon ec2 cluster is fine for a blog site, when a Web Applications (or SaaS) company wants to sell they know their cloud environement needs to be secure and robust. Hence the proliferation of certifications (SaS 70, PCI, European SafeHarbor, etc.) that have become the ingrained into the DNA of SaaS applications. These are the beginnings of IT reasserting it’s control over cloud apps.

I see the evolution of enterprise class Cloud computing similar to what we saw with Client/Server. When the PC was seen as a toy IT talked about getting apps back under central control. This was accomplished not by moving back to mainframes and mini’s but by evolving PC apps to Client/Server apps. Many people forget that “Servers” are just souped up PC’s with more processors, memory and disk and sturdier versions of desktop OS’s.

Now the interesting thing is how watching these “Cloud Environments” evolve to meet the enterprise needs. 10-20 years from now, I’m sure we’re going to see environments that are as different from today’s clouds as a 30 system HP blade farm is from the PC XT I first used in business.

Posted: February 4th, 2008 under Cloud, SaaS - Software As A Service, Web applications.
Comments: 2

As many who know me, know that I have not been a big fan of Google. I love the desktop search (or I did until I got a Mac with Spotlight) but am not a big fan of their corporate culture. Just because they got search right (emphasis on the past tense, but that’s a later post) doesn’t give them the license to walk around the valley looking down their noses. (Prius anyone?)  They are a notoriously difficult company to partner with and to sell to (probably the real genesis of my distaste.)

I especially dislike the “Do No Evil” motto. As if other companies have the motto ”Do Evil.” It’s like an ad campaign that asserts “Trebelicious BubbleGum has no Spider Eggs in it.” (Although we know that certain telco’s bubblegum does have spider eggs.)

But lately, I’m beginning to like Google. They really do seem committed to an open web, and that is good for everyone. First was their support of Net Neutrality. Actively fighting the telcos in their effort to control what traffic they deliver is critical to the success of the Internet. To see what would happen if AT&T and Verizon got their way on Net Neutrality, one would just have to look at how horrible the mobile web browsing experience is (another area Google is trying to address with it’s gPhone initiative.)

Now one could argue that Google supports Net Neutrality because they don’t want to pay telcos for carrying terabits worth of YouTube videos. Except that Google has more than enough cash to pay the telcos and serve their cafeteria meals in disposable gold happy meal boxes.  If Google didn’t believe in an open web, it would do just that. The truth is while Google can afford to pay the telcos off, start-ups would not. They could effectively bar a good portion of their next generation of competitors from the market by allowing the telcos to set up a content tax that would be a market killer.

Google’s latest salvo of course is their OpenSocial initiative. Again, Google has come down on the side of an open platform over using its muscle to promote a Google-only platform. The cynics of my readers (also known as my family minus my wife) would point out that’s because Google is getting its seat handed to them on a platter in social networking by Facebook and this is their way of fighting back.

And the cynics would be right. They also would completely miss these two points:

1. It doesn’t matter if Google’s self interest helps everyone else. What matters is that we keep moving to an open web platform that fosters innovation and interconnectivity.
2. Google seems to be the only big company that realizes that an open internet is the best way to expand it’s market presence. By making the web more open (and by extension better) they believe they will have more opportunity, not less.

Not surpisingly the old line telco’s and software companies doen’t understand this, which is why we have so many proprietary platforms (from Verizon’s vCast to SAP’s NetWeaver.) Suprisingly, some of the coolest and smartest new companies don’t seem to realize it either. I love Facebook, SalesForce.com and Apple and I use their products every day, but all of them are closed proprietary systems. That makes it difficult for me to interconnect them and other apps in a way I find as useful.

So hats off to Google today. From Net Neutrality, to OpenSocial, to the gPhone - they are making the internet a more interesting place. I’m sure they will benefit from that openness mightily, but so will OpSource, and our customers and thousands of other companies who have yet to be formed.

And to thank them, I have now changed my default search engine from Yahoo to Google. Think that will get me a ride on Google Jet?

Posted: November 5th, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service, Uncategorized, Web applications.
Comments: 4

Just a quick update on the last post. I’ve seen a variety of articles on the decline of Educational Software, but I like this one the best. I like it because the time frame represents the delta between my oldest child, who we bought software for, and my youngest, who we have never bought software for. I also like it, because I could find it. (When is the new and better search coming?) I like it mostly because it shows that kids have stopped using installed software and instead use the web for everything.

When these kids who never used installed educational software grow up to adults, do you think they are going to suddenly adapt to installed business apps? No, they are going to use Web Applications for work because that’s what they are used to. And don’t think the old guard will stop it. The old guard couldn’t force people to use main-frames when they were used to PCs.

Just one more reminder, All Apps will be Web Apps.

Posted: October 18th, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service, Web applications.
Comments: 1

Reading M.R. Rangaswami’s recent post Where are Software’s Children, I am struck by the continued belief that enterprises will continue to use installed applications through the next generation of software. That is simply not going to happen.

Mr. Rangaswami’s observation of the age of the ruling class of software companies is aging and that most good young programmers and executives are going to Web 2.0, open source, and SaaS companies. He makes a number of suggestions on what the TBA “traditional business application” companies can do to combat that trend. While Mr. Rangaswami is correct in observation, his suggestions in the end will be spitting in the wind.

That is because the young talent is attracted to these companies because of what they are doing, creating the next generation of applications. They have no interest in working on client server technologies. They grew up on the web and they want to be building Web Applications on next generation platforms. The idea that better mentoring will get these people to work on a fading technology is absurd. So the real interesting question is what is the world going to be like when these “Children” grow up.

I remember a similar shift when I first got in to the business world back in the late 80’s. The company I worked for did all their computing on a VAX, and made very minimal use of PCs (just for word processing and some spreadsheets). I was charged with putting together a corporate training database and employee scheduling tools. I never once considered doing it on the VAX. The idea of using that technology was as a complete anathema.

The same thing is happening in todays technology world. These new generation of technologists grew up on-line. They look at client server computing and installed software the way I looked at the VAX. They probably realize the power of it, but would never consider using it or working on it. It’s as separated from their existence as an ATM network would be to todays network engineers.

Which of course leads back to one of my favorite assertions. In the next twenty years all applications will be Web Applications. Not because they are cheaper or easier to use or better platforms for group work (though they are all three), but because they are how the next generation of users and programmers are used to working. This young guard will be the old guard by then and they won’t be installing software any more than I am using a VAX to run my business today.

The hardest part of all of this is realizing I’m the old guard now (I guess turning 40 had something to do with that as well). I love this next generation of applications and I almost wish I could create a training database today so that I could use a Rollbase, or Dataweb, or Coghead to do it. Unfortunately, that will be the job of the Jason Cumberlands of the world. I’ll just have to be content with coming up with ways to help these guys grow in to the “Adults of the Web.”

Posted: October 18th, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service, Uncategorized, Web applications.
Comments: 1

Let me be the last to post about “Open Source vs. SaaS”. Two excellent posts have been put up recently (O.K. not so recently.) Anshu Sharma’s and Dave Rosenberg’s. Both are very well written, and I agree with Anshu’s arguments. That said, they both are essentially missing one essential point: all applications will be Web Applications (I think I’m going to say this in every post from here on out.) It doesn’t matter how they are developed, people won’t use them unless they can access them on the Web (my three kids don’t even know what a disk drive is.) The question is why aren’t more Web Applications being developed specifically as Open Source projects.

Let me say first, that the entire argument “Open Source vs. SaaS” is facetious. Open Source is a development model, SaaS is a delivery and usage model. Open Source applications can be delivered as SaaS and SaaS applications can be developed using Open Source methods. The argument arises because so few true Open Source apps are actually delivered as Web Applications (I use SaaS and Web Applications interchangeably.) Instead they are developed as single instance applications that a user installs.

Some companies then take this Open Source base and add Web Application functionality such as multi-tenancy and scalability as well as business functionality and flow to it. (We did as much with Dave’s tremendous MuleSource product when we created the OpSource Services Bus.) But to say these apps are Open Source is the equivalent of saying SalesForce.com is Oracle since they built an app on top of an Oracle Database.

So why aren’t there more native Open Source applications that are run as true Web Applications. Most are single-instance enterprise software that someone installs to use. The most compelling apps of the last 15 years, from eBay’s bidding app, to Yahoo’s Portal, to Google’s Search and SFDC’s CRM are all proprietary apps. Some say that SugarCRM is a Web App, but I think of them as a hybrid company selling both installed and SaaS versions of a single app (and we know what I think of hybrids.) Ruminating with John Rowell, the only one we could come up with was Wikipedia.

Why is Wikipedia the only Open Source/Web Application? Because running a Web Application costs money. You have to pay for servers and power and network and security and backup and so many different items, and that takes the Benjamins. Usually only commercial enterprises have the Benjamins to make that work, and Open Source communities don’t want to develop for commercial enterprises. They’ll do it for Wikimedia (the organization behind Wikipedia), because it’s a charitable organization, but who wants to develop an app for Google or SFDC?

So back to my earlier thoughts. If the Open Source development model is a good one, but all apps will be Web Apps (memorize this people) we need a platform where all of the expensive stuff is taken care of for the high-minded developers to start making apps. Then we can find a whole new non-topic to blog about

Posted: October 3rd, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service, Web applications, open source.
Comments: 3

When we first started getting in to SaaS back in 2004, there were a lot of companies still looking for shortcuts in to the space. Virtualization and terminal services were seen as a way to take your current app and “voila”, turn it in to a SaaS offering. Three years later, I cannot think of one company that has been successful in the market using these types of services instead of trying to create true multi-tenant native web applications, yet we see many companies looking to repeat those mistakes with Web Services.

(That said, I have seen some companies successfully navigate a transition strategy. By artfully employing multi-instance versions of their code with Web Front ends, a number of companies bought themselves some time to make the move in to a true SaaS offering.)

Today the big rush is to offering your App as a Web Service. A couple of our customers such as Visual Mining and Fliqz were built from the ground up to be integrated into other apps as their primary vehicle. Many other people want to add that capability.

This is more than just using Web Services to integrate with apps behind the firewall (such as Boomi helps companies do.) It’s actually designing your app to be a part of other apps. Amazon is doing it, so is Facebook with F8, now everyone wants on board.

And they are looking for quicks ways to get there. Mention Web Services to a SaaS company and they immediately want to know how they can use that to make their app available for Mash-Ups. So much so, many companies (including OpSource) are rushing to develop and deploy those tools.

Will those tools be valuable assets in offering applications as Web Services, or will they be the second coming of Terminal Server, a non-functional solution designed to hold analysts, customers and press at bay? My guess is that it will depend. If it’s just a quick and dirty way to get in to Yahoo Pipes, then we’ve read that book. But if the tools add value above and beyond the app (such as providing pre-built marketplaces or new functionality) we might see them become an integral part of tomorrow’s applications.

Posted: September 4th, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service.
Comments: none

So I use Good Mail to get mobile e-mail on my BlackJack. I find it much more usable than the mail client in Windows Mobile 5 to get my exchange mail, and the good people at Cingular have yet to offer Windows Mobile 6 (can you imagine if I couldn’t upgrade my Mac to Leopard because my ISP wouldn’t allow it?)

While I generally find Good to be a very workable system, sometime the system does get jammed. No new e-mails come in, even though I know I’m receiving them. Whenever this happens, I use the “Send/Receive Now” command. In the three years I’ve been using Good (back to my old Treos,) that has never worked. Sending an e-mail to myself usually does the trick.

I was trying to figure out why I do it every time when it doesn’t work. It reminds me of the door close button on an elevator. Never once have I hit that button and actually had the door close. Some people claim that it works for them, but I think it’s mostly they happened to hit the button when the door was going to close anyway.

This led me to thinking about all types of buttons that we have in the computer world that don’t do anything. I’ve got a print screen button on my keyboard now. Hitting it doesn’t print the screen. Maybe it did back in the old MS-Dos days (though I don’t remember that ever working back then either) but it definitely doesn’t now. I don’t even know what the Scroll Lock and Break buttons were ever supposed to do. Yet they sit their mockingly on my keyboard asking to be pushed.

I think a lot of software and hardware has these types of “Vestigial Buttons.” Features or devices that once meant something but never really got used or are currently meaningless. They seem to be more of a problem with traditional installed applications than web apps, but I don’t know for sure if that is a function of the constant updating of the web allowing for more pruning or that the apps are just newer and haven’t evolved enough yet to have “Vestigial Buttons.”

Often these types of features clutter up the interface and actually make the application less usable. The creators of the apps often convince themselves they are important when they are at best a distraction in using the app and at worst a deterrent to adoption all together. How many people get frustrated like I do with hitting the “Send/Receive Now” button and have nothing happen. Even though the app works fine, I think of it as being permanently broken. Not where Good wants to be.

Posted: August 3rd, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service.
Comments: 1

Bit of a buzz last week about how NetSuite was IPOing even though it didn’t have a back-up datacenter. This came as a surprise to many in the press, analyst and investor world, but it shouldn’t have. As the guys over at Saugatuck Technology pointed out, this is the most likely case. Most SaaS vendors have no multi-site capabilities. Even SalesForce.com didn’t have a second center until well after it IPO’ed.

Even their NetSuite’s customers were surprised by this. (Though one customer, namely OpSource, was not.) Seemed they couldn’t figure out why for their $500 per month they wouldn’t be receiving multiple datacenter support.

The reality is that traditionally running multiple datacenters is very hard and very expensive. Not many companies really get diversity before $100m in revenue. The reason being that running two centers is more than twice as expensive as running one center. Not only do you have the costs of both centers (with much lower discounts than you would get by massing your buying power) you have the costs of running all the HA software, hardware, and network connectivity to keep the two datacenters in sync. And how much extra functionality can you sell your customers with both of those centers? None.

You might say that customers are willing to pay more for increased availability. They won’t. The fact is a well run single instance of your application should have at least 99.95% uptime. Getting a couple extra 9’s won’t get the customer pulling out their wallet.

And in a cruel twist of fate, multiple datacenters can actually cause more downtime. The hardest thing in IT is to sync multiple instances of an app. Ask SalesForce, who had the most trouble with their availability right after implementing a second site. Anyone who has tried it knows how tough it can be.

When you factor the costs and the difficulty and the lack of true customer demand, it’s no surprise that most SaaS companies don’t have a second center until they have over $100m in revenues.

What’s the answer then? I think it’s going to be a big part of switching from traditional enterprise application development and deployment, in to true web development. By abstracting their app from the physical layer and truly living on the web, companies can much more easily take advantage of multiple points of presence. The tools are just beginning to arrive (of course we’ve got some) but we’ll see even more be done on this over the next couple of years. Companies who take advantage of these tools and offerings will get HA built in without having to break the bank.

Posted: July 27th, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service.
Comments: none

Recently at the Progress Software Partner Summit, it was stated that certain type of users wouldn’t buy SaaS. Interesting enough the type of person who was used as an example was the Foreman of a Machine Shop (Progress Partners include some of the most interesting vertical players.) I found this argument false for two reasons.

First of all was the assumption that less technical users wouldn’t be comfortable using a web based app instead of installing traditional software. (Not that shop foreman are necessarily less technical, but that was the assumption for this example.) I think the reason the web has become so widely adopted is it is a much easier form of technology consumption than traditional software, hence new users are far more comfortable with it. How many times have you seen someone who couldn’t do the basics on a computer except web surfing and e-mail. My father spends 4 hours a day on his computer playing fantasy sports, but didn’t know how to save a file in a traditional app. If anything, less intensive computer users will favor using the web over trying to install anything.

Secondly, even if today there are certain users who favor traditional installed software, that is not going to be the case for the next generation. The youth of today, who will be the business users of tomorrow, are going to look for everything on-line. Look at what has happened to Educational Software sales. Between 2000 and 2003 educational software sales fell in half. I’m sure those numbers have dropped even more in recent years. While my nine year old daughter had a drawer full of games, and my seven year old son had one or two, my 4 year old has never done anything but go on-line (I’ll do another post some day about the genius of Club Penguin.)

Regardless of the jobs this next generation goes in to, they are going to expect to consume technology the way they have their entire lives, through on-line applications. And considering that the first of the Net Generation of kids is just beginning to hit the job market, software companies that don’t deliver on-line will be in serious trouble.

Posted: June 25th, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service.
Comments: none

I’ve been saying a lot lately that you can tell things are getting good because the jerks are back. 24 year old entrepreneurs who think the world did not exist before ValleyWag and have a shiny new Series A term sheet to prove it. We’re just short of having meaningless demo conferences in the desert with thousands of booths populated by incredibly good looking “marketing coordinators” right out of school who can with a straight face swear their PokeApp really is more than five lines of PHP script creating a weather widget, it’s the next coming of Google. Once that happens, we’ll know we’ve really made it.

That said I had two very good meetings last week with some companies that are really on the cutting edge of the burgeoning field of utilizing web services to build applications. Dave Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource, and Oren Michels, of Mashery. Both companies are on the cutting edge of how we take we extend the mashing up of applications beyond the class projects of layering Google Maps onto a smell database of the New York City Subway System and in to real offerings that support business level availability, billing and support. Anybody interested in how to make this work in the real world could definitely do worse than start by talking to these companies.

What struck me about meeting these guys was how we are beginning to see a new breed of entreprenuer and CEO; one who understands the technology and community power of Web 2.0 but who also are grown ups who can discuss business and how to make this all work for real companies. Up to now it seems that many people working on SaaS and Web Applications fell in to two catagories. The first are software guys who don’t understand that this is all about the Web for business, not coming up with a new pricing scheme for their old products. The second were guys who have no real world experience and think the whole world revolves their latest Web 2.0 applet, or more simply put jerks.

It’s guys like Dave and Oren that I think really differentiate this new wave of technology from the last one. They both really understand the technology and what it’s going to take to make real business’s work with it. This new breed of entreprenuer is far more visionary than the traditional software guy, but knows that you can’t be a jerk if you want to create the long term relationships necessary to build these businesses. Oren is so balanced, he even called me for being a little over enthusiastic about what we do and how great it was (not that I’ve ever been called a jerk myself.)

It’s exciting, because I think that means companies who realize the potential of these technologies will have a much better chance of succeeding this time around. Plus, they’ll be a lot more fun to work with.

Posted: May 7th, 2007 under SaaS - Software As A Service.
Comments: none