What do the CTO of the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office have in common with the CEOs of Eucalyptus, GoGrid, ActiveState, Appcara, OpSource and Nortonworks, the CTOs of Rackspace, SoftLayer and AppZero, the Founder & General Manager of Dell Boomi, the VP of Big Data & Streams at IBM and the Chief Strategy Officer at Pacific Controls? Answer: all are shortly to present breakout sessions as members of the distinguished Speaker Faculty of Cloud Expo New York, ...| By Peter Laird | Article Rating: |
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| July 18, 2008 10:30 AM EDT | Reads: |
7,674 |
IBM
Strategy
Searching for interviews on SaaS with IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano or VP of Software Steve Mills does not bring up much of interest. This is a bit alarming, remembering the lessons from my previous DEC post. Of the 5 major software giants covered here, IBM appears to have the least amount of executive mindshare for SaaS.
I am not the only one who sees this: Larry Barrett wrote an entire article analyzing IBM's apparent sluggishness when it comes to SaaS. While I don't see a high level business strategy, IBM has embarked on some SaaS initiatives, covered in the next section.
- Donna Bogatin: SaaS: IBM helps drive $10 billion Software as a Service opportunity
- Krissi Danielsson: David Mitchell on IBM's SaaS Strategy
Current SaaS Initiatives:
IBM has these intiatives:
- SaaSpace.com/Partnerworld - a consulting offering
- Helps ISVs build SaaS solutions
- Helps clients integrate SaaS solutions
- Applications on Demand - hosted IBM and non-IBM applications
- Blue Business Cloud - perhaps the successor to the current AOD offering
- Blue Cloud - a compute on demand offering (still in development)
Weaknesses
As Larry Barrett noted, IBM doesn't appear to be aggressively pursuing the SaaS model. Sure, it has some initiatives going, but for the size of IBM those initiatives seem undersized.
Also, Jeff Nolan has pointed out that IBM lacks the business apps necessary to execute on an effective SaaS strategy.
Further reading:
- Erick Schonfeld: IBM’s Blue Cloud is Web Computing By Another Name
SAP
Strategy
SAP CEO Henning Kagermann helped launch the major SAP SaaS initiative: Business ByDesign which is a hosted version of several of SAP's traditional heavy weight business applications. The intent was to target SMB, but due to problems in execution that strategy may be changing. It also plans to be a SaaS hybrid, with some on-premise software in the mix.
- Nichloas Carr: SAP CEO calls SaaS "the better model"
- Tony Hallett: SAP CEO on SaaS - a dirty word?
The bright spot for SAP and SaaS comes from its acquisition of Business Objects (BOBJ). BOBJ was already offering Crystal Reports at the time of the acquisition, and appears to be a healthy business.
Current SaaS Initiatives
SAP has three major initiatives:
- Business by Design - a SaaS initiative to provide business applications to the SMB market
- Crystal Reports on Demand - a collaboration solution for Crystal Reports
- NSite Platform - a platform for building SaaS applications, acquired as a part of BOBJ
Weaknesses
By far the biggest perceived weakness with SAP is its failure to execute on its much publicized SaaS release (BBD). Critics point to the major delays (possibly 24 months) as a sign that SAP's applications are a poor fit for the SaaS model. Worse, SAP validated the concept to its customers but failed to deliver, providing key advantage to competitors like NetSuite.
Further reading:
- Steve Hamm: SAP Gets On-Demand Religion
Intuit
Strategy
CEO Brad Smith isn't the most vocal about SaaS, but his company is doing the talking for him. Intuit is clearly pushing the SaaS model, with major product offerings already available. The strategy appears to be simple: offer online equivalents of their product suite:
- Sramana Mitra: Intuit Is Not Getting SaaS Credit
- Eric Lai: QuickBase success speeding Intuit's move to SaaS
- Intuit on the SaaS March
Current SaaS Initiatives
Intuit offers the following products as SaaS offerings:
- QuickBooks Online Edition - SaaS version of its accounting software
- Quicken Online - hosted version of its personal finance application
- QuickBase - a hosted spreadsheet application
- It is an older product now finally gaining traction
- Currently in plans to provide a QuickBase SaaS application dev platform
Weaknesses
I haven't seen any weaknesses other than stiff competition. The space Intuit plays in will become crowded, with Netsuite and Intacct already delivering SaaS, and Sage likely to become a contender as well.
[This article appeared originally here and is reproduced in full by the kind permission of the author, who retains copyright.]
Published July 18, 2008 Reads 7,674
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
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Peter Laird is the managing architect for the Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Portal products at Oracle. He comes to Oracle via the BEA acquisition, where he served in various engineering roles on WebLogic Portal for 8 years.
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Brian 07/10/08 06:54:02 PM EDT | |||
This is a comprehensive post that pulls together a tremendous amount of information. It is interesting to note that the majority of the movement in SaaS continues to be by companies that are focused on either the front or back office. There is precious little being said/done by the major players in the infrastructure and operations management categories (e.g. HP, BMC, CA, and IBM as you point out). It appears that the greatest opportunity for massive market disruption will come from companies delivering SaaS offerings here. Businesses have been hurt by massive enterprise software implementation failures and are generally fatigued by the lack of innovation that is taking place by the traditional vendors. Brian de Haaff, |
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The cloud has many benefits, but when it comes to application development, how does the cloud help enterprises and development teams create custom software and applications that end users actually care about? Using real world examples from Adobe, Herff Jones and Navy Federal Credit Union, this session will highlight the advantages cloud computing provides for quickly developing custom software and applications with compelling user experiences.
In their general session at the 10th International ...
Nearly every enterprise is evaluating cloud computing solutions either today or in the near term. Many have already made the leap, and many more are getting close to putting that first toe in the water. But there are key considerations that should be made, questions to be asked, and designs to consider before you can feel secure with your provider.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, David Gulick, Product Manager, Hosting Product Management at Savvis, will help give you food f...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is t...
SYS-CON Events announced today that Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI), the leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology, is a premier provider of advanced server Building Block Solutions for Embedded Systems, E...
SYS-CON Events announced today that ScaleMP, a leading provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
ScaleMP is the leader in virtualization for high-end computing, providing maximum performance and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). The innovative Versatile SMP (vSMP) architecture aggregates multiple independent systems into a sin...
Come learn real-world examples where cloud and mobile are changing the way business works and the impact they're having on efficiency and productivity.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Rodrigo Coutinho Senior Product Marketing Manager at OutSystems, will look at how mobile and the cloud are interwoven and the wave of change these two 2012 megatrends will bring to your organization. He will also provide a roadmap to assure you can navigate this sea change for business succes...
Enterprise IT organizations want to deploy a virtualized data center fabric that will provide the foundation for agile private cloud computing. Getting there does not have to be difficult, but it does require a new approach to data center infrastructure design – an approach that is non-disruptive, vendor-agnostic, and very adaptable to changing business requirements.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Bruce Fingles, Chief Information Officer and VP of Product Quality at Xsigo...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
How can businesses harness the power of APIs to reach new customers and markets?
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A brief history of the API
How to use APIs to make money, save money, build brand
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