July 16, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
Workday Signing Large SaaS Clients
Evidence is starting to mount that SaaS is becoming more accepted within large Fortune 2000 companies. Workday; in particular, is a good case study as Dave Duffield’s company was architected from Day One as a SaaS provider ; like Salesforce.com and Netsuite, and is not attempting to switch gears like traditional application providers.
Why Firms Should Wait Before Entering The Cloud
Jim Connoly outlines a few valid reasons why firms should wait a bit before moving their mission critical data to the first phase of Cloud Providers. The recent bankruptcy of Saas provider Marqui lends additional credence to this warning.
Will SOX & Auditors become a threat to SaaS Vendors?
Vinnie Mirchandani recently posted an article that indicates that another threat to full adoption of SaaS and Cloud Computing in the Enterprise could very well be Sarbanes Oxley (SOX). Many OnDemand Beat Blog readers may not be aware of the implications of SOX but it will more than likely impact SaaS vendors sales cycles in the future and as such SaaS vendors should become more familiar with SOX.
Phil Wainewright On Why Multi-Tenancy Matters
Although Multi-tenancy could very well become an issue with many firms in terms of SOX compliance; Phil Wainewright discusses why Multi-Tenancy is the choice of most SaaS providers from an architecture and business model standpoint.
July 11, 2008
Written by Sam Charrington
Sam Charrington is VP of Product Management & Marketing at Appistry. Sam is responsible for Appistry’s overall marketing efforts, including marketing & brand strategy, product marketing and product management. Appistry is the pioneer and leading provider of application fabric software. Sam blog’s about Cloud and Grid Computing at In The Loop
Nestled between the the high-gloss conferences that were Structure 08 and Velocity 2008 In San Francisco last month; was the “little unconference that could,” CloudCamp!
When I say that CloudCamp was my favorite event of the three, it’s not just because I helped organize it. What made CloudCamp so cool was that it was totally participant driven, and boy did the 300+ participants “bring the funk.” CloudCamp was pure grassroots energy — the enthusiasm about the topic was palpable.
Unlike the other events with their set agendas, at CloudCamp the participants both created and facilitated the sessions. After some opening remarks, attendees were invited to volunteer to present or facilitate a discussion on a topic. We had 27 volunteers step up to run a session (without any prodding!) and easily filled the 30 available slots (10 rooms, compliments Microsoft x 3 one-hour-long sessions).
The list of presentation/discussion topics ran the gamut. A few were:
- What is Cloud Computing?
- 1 Billion Page Views: Hacks to Scale Big on the Cloud
- Cloud Storage; Unifying Cloud Storage APIs
- SQL Database Clusters in the Cloud
- Simple DB or SQL: Which Will Dominate the Cloud?
- Connect the Clouds: Integration Between Clouds and Local Applications
- No Cure for Cancer: Managing the Expectations of Cloud Computing Today and Tomorrow
Here’s the entire session board:
I held a session entitled “How Cloud Impacts Enterprise Computing.” I was joined by about 20 other CloudCampers to explore a range of topics including the emergence of Private Clouds, standardization of Cloud Computing environments, Cloud security issues, and more. One of the most interesting quotes of the evening came from Geoffrey Routledge in my session when he asked “After all, what is the difference between a really well run virtualized environment and a Cloud?”
CloudCamp managed to attract its share of Cloud heavy hitters; many of the folks that attended also presented at both Velocity 2008 and Structure 08. After the sessions, folks hung around networking, chatting and catching up for quite some time.
What the Future Holds
The energy level was extremely high at each of these events, and I was left with the distinct impression that we as attendees were witnessing a decisive turning point for Cloud Computing as a market — a coming-out party of sorts.
I expect each of these first-time events will continue long into the future., and I’ve already learned about three new Cloud-focused events just since June! For our part, we certainly hope to make CloudCamp an ongoing tradition. The next CloudCamp, CloudCamp London, will take place on July 16th, and additional dates/locations are in the works. If you’re interested in bringing CloudCamp to your area, please do get in touch.
June 26, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
Back in Arizona after attending Om Malik’s inaugural Structure 08 conference.
The conference had extremely high attendance (The attendance I am sure was boosted even further due to the Velocity conference and the inaugural CloudCamp San Francisco taking place in the Bay area the same week) and I ran into Dan Farber and Steve Gillmor in the press area so it also had a bit of star power.
This conference had good marketing free content for the most part and the only session that seemed out of context to me was the panel on Harnessing Explosive Growth. Structure 08 was focused on Cloud Computing for the Enterprise so it was a bit much to have to sit and listen to yet more consumer orientated stories from the likes of Facebook and Meebo. It was also a bit jarring to hear that companies like Ebay and Facebook have no plans to put SLA’s in place to guarantee uptime for their users. When I worked for an ASP 10 years ago, SLA’s were standard and were required of us from all of our Enterprise customers…thus again proving that Enterprises and consumer facing companies like Facebook are in a different world.
The best keynotes in my opinion were from Greg Papadopoulos; Sun’s CTO and Zach Nelson; Netsuites CEO. Greg’s mention that Sun supports Open Services amongst On Demand vendors lead to a few groans in the audience but I think he is right on in saying that the On Demand market wont grow substantially until customers are sure their data wont be held hostage by vendors. And Zach Nelson laid out a great overview of the elusive Middle Market…a huge potential customer base for On Demand vendors that SAP learned recently with Business ByDesign; is hard to design solution for and sell into.
Gigaom Omni Media has become a true new media company along the likes of Tech Crunch and Read Write Web and Om has a full time staff of writers and editors. Thus instead of me giving an overview of the remaining sessions please read Liz Gannes live coverage of the conference here and check out photos here.
June 13, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
Om Malik’s Structure08 conference is being held on June 25th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Structure08 was created to inform businesses so they can plan their future computing infrastructure needs. Attendees will have opportunities to review new technologies and determine the right choices based on industry best practices, case studies, ideas and startups.
In addition, the conference organizers just announced this past week that Google will hold the first public workshop on Google AppEngine at the Structure08 conference.
Om has great pull in the tech industry and he has gathered one of the deepest speaker lists I have seen for a conference in quite a while. As a matter of fact I am curious as to how the packed agenda will be squeezed into a one day conference.
The OnDemand Beat Blog has a special discount code for Structure08 for its readers. OnDemand Beat readers can sign up for Structure08 and receive a 10% discount on registration at http://structure08.eventbrite.com/?discount=ONDEMAND
If signing up via the Structure08 registration page use Discount Code ONDEMAND.
Finally don’t forget that CloudCamp will be held the evening prior to Structure08 at Microsoft’s San Francisco Office.
May 27, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
FriendFeed recently launched a new feature called rooms. Users can join and share links, news and comments around a topic, event or idea. The rooms can either be public or private, and should be a good way to share information.
I have set up a number of rooms within FriendFeed with topics of interest to OnDemand Beat readers. Sign up on FriendFeed and contribute to the topics you are interested in:
SAAS - Room to share information and news about Software as a Service Technology and Companies
IAAS - Room to share information and news about Integration as a Service Technology and Companies
PAAS - Room to share information and news about Platform as a Service Technology and Companies
Cloud Computing - Room to share information and news about Cloud Computing Technology and Companies
Conferences - This room is to share information and links about upcoming technology and non technology conferences.
