Archive for the 'SaaS' Category
May 5, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
One of the factors that has so far hindered wider adoption of Cloud Computing and Software as a Service in the US is a lack of consistent and inexpensive broadband service throughout the entire US.
A new report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation ranks the US 15th (Yes that’s right 15th) globally for broadband adoption. The US ranked number 4 in 2001 so this drop off in adoption is very alarming considering that we are in the midst of a major fundamental change in enterprise computing with Cloud Computing and Software as a Service becoming more prevalent.
The ITIF broadband policy report measures 3 major factors; price, speed, and availability to come up with its rankings.
The report has numerous recommendations to improve US broadband adoption and also has case studies from countries that rank both above and below the US in terms of adoption.
Three recommendations that I think may have an impact in the short term if adopted include:
- Enact more favorable tax policies to encourage investment in broadband networks, such as accelerated depreciation and exempting broadband services from federal, state, and local taxation. (This will help immensely with making broadband less expensive for SMB customers and start-ups and give the incumbent Telco and Cable providers incentive to modernize their aging infrastructure)
- Continue to make more spectrum, including “white spaces,” available for next-generation wireless data networks. (This is critical as has been proven in Korea…more and more Enterprise 2.0 and Saas applications will be available via mobile devices)
- Expand the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service Broadband Program and target the program to places that currently do not have non-satellite broadband available. (For the US to be more competitive in the future, Broadband access has to be universal throughout the US. Satellite broadband is relatively expensive and Satellite service is a still a bit spotty)
Unfortunately many of the recommendations in the report are based on government policy and that policy is always up to change depending on who occupies state and federal government positions.
But alas, a government broadband policy is crucial as the higher broadband adoption rates in countries like Sweden (pdf) South Korea (pdf) and Japan (pdf) were achieved via strong and focused government broadband policies.
April 9, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
 Google on April 7 launched its highly anticipated development infrastructure called Google App Engine. App Engine is Google’s fully integrated hosted application environment that allows developers to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure.
Announced at Campfire One, App Engine is currently in preview release and is limited to an initial pool of 10,000 developers. (The first 10,000 developer accounts were fully allocated on April 7th) Google App Engine initially only supports Python but will roll out other popular development languages over the next few months.
Google App Engine will provide 500MB of storage, 10GB bandwidth per day and 200M megacycles of CPU per day during the preview period.
The preview development environment includes the following features:
Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
Automatic scaling and load balancing
Fully featured local development environment
While not direct competition to Amazon Web Services or Salesforce’s Force.com, Google App Engine will allow developers to create an entire web application stack on the Google App Engine infrastructure. This will work great for developers for example who are new to ondemand cloud computing and will help them scale as the use of their applications grow.
Google has a number of applications in its appspot.com application gallery that were created with the first iteration of Google App Engine. Although their are only a couple of enterprise applications (versus the normal glut of Web 2.0 applications) listed in the gallery so far, I would expect the number of enterprise applications to grow quickly.
March 21, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
 One of my favorite financial magazines; the Economist, published an article that convincingly argues that social networks are not a business.
This is probably not news to the management and investors of most social networks but should serve as additional fodder for those who see an end to the Social Networking/Web 2.0 valuation & funding gravy train.
The Economist article equates social networks to free email such as Hotmail or Google mail and predicts that social networks have quickly come to be an expected and free part of any internet portal. In this context social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook should not be a destination in themselves, but the components of the social networking sites should be part of a users everyday internet experience.
I agree in that in these trying economic times the advertising model that most if not all of these social networks are built upon is not a sustaining business model. Advertising revenue for established media companies is and has always been cyclical in nature and even with the lower cash burn rates that today’s Web 2.0 companies have compared to their Web 1.0 predecessors, wont provide enough recurring revenue to stay in business after the venture funds runs out.
Venture funding in itself is a bit faddish and indications are that Social Networks/Web 2.0 are no longer the VC flavor of the month as VC’s move to investing in Green/Clean Energy and Renewable Technologies.
Will be interesting to see if some of the venture funding that was wildly invested in Consumer Social Networks/Web 2.0 will now invest in Enterprise and Enterprise 2.0 Software firms. Most of these firms actually have a real revenue producing business model and are; in the case of Enterprise 2.0 software firms, in the process of rearchitecting packaged solutions to Software as A Service.
March 19, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
More Companies Ban Social Networks and Web 2.0 sites
CIO magazine reports that a UK based security vendor has found that over 20% of companies are now blocking Web 2.0 and Social Network content citing security concerns.
Public Sector Use of Social Networking is Growing
Meanwhile the benefits of Social Networking in the Public Sector is beginning to become evident to government CIO’s. Citing messages from vendors and younger staff who are replacing retiring government workers; many Public Sector IT officials are drafting plans to introduce wiki’s, mash-ups and other Web 2.0 tools into their traditionally staid environments.
Not Your Fathers User Conference
Dan Fost’s take on how Social Networking has changed the dynamics of oftentimes dull user conferences. He also opines on why Sarah Lacy was set upon by hostile South by Southwest Interactive Conference attendees last week during her catastrophic interview with Mark Zuckerberg.
Registration Site Up for Google I/O Event
Google has launched the registration site for its upcoming May 2008 Developer gathering at Moscone. Conference attendees can learn how to create Web/Enterprise 2.0 apps by attending session topics ranging from AJAX & JavaScript, Maps & Geo, Social applications, APIs & Tools and Mobile. As a bonus many of the sessions will be taught by Google engineers via the popular Fireside Chats and Tech Talk formats.
How To Become a Web/Enterprise 2.0 Technology Guru
PC World has a great article on the technical and soft skills necessary for one to live long and prosper as a Web and Enterprise 2.0 technologist.
February 27, 2008
Written by Ameed Taylor
 SAP last September announced the early adopter roll-out of SAP Business ByDesign. Business ByDesign is SAP’s entry in the On Demand Business Applications space and is being marketed to SMB customers with 25 to 500 users.
Business ByDesign will allow SAP to cover the entire gamut of customers sizes and will complement SAP Business Suite, SAP Business All-in-One and SAP Business One.
Business ByDesign will be priced at $149 per month per user with a minimum of 25 licensed users. The monthly subscription pricing is all inclusive and includes infrastructure, product support service and upgrades.
Business process functionality includes financials, CRM, executive management support, financials, human capital management, project management, supplier relationship management, supply chain management, compliance management and integration with Microsoft Office.
Business ByDesign runs Netweaver; a smart move in that SAP partners and customers can access all the SAP Enterprise Repository. Netweaver will also allow SAP partners to extend Business ByDesign by developing vertical industry applications utilizing SOA and technologies such as IBM WebSphere, Java EE and Microsoft.Net.
Just like SAP Business All In One and SAP Business One; Business ByDesign utilizes T-Rex and Max DB, thus eliminating dependence on SQL server, Oracle or DB2 databases.
Business ByDesign is a pure On Demand solution; but is not multi-tenant, unlike Netsuite, Salesforce or the smaller On Demand ERP competitors. Also the early versions on Business ByDesign are a bit short on Enterprise 2.0 features such as Mash-Up support and Web 2.0 User Interface features.
Business ByDesign is expected to have general availability in the first half of 2008 and SAP estimates 1000 customers will be live by mid 2009.
Update 8 May 2008 - Since I posted this review of Business ByDesign there have been a number of announcements relating to the availability date of the product…..
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SAP appears to be on the"...
