Now with database.com and heroku - how does salesforce.com stack up in the PaaS market?

While collaboration was a clear theme at Dreamforce with the launch of Chatter Free, Dreamforce ‘10 will be remembered for the serious saleforce.com play into PaaS. Over the course of just two Dreamforce keynotes, the PaaS market altered dramatically.  Salesforce.com launched database.com a database-as-a-service offering and announced the acquisition of Heroku a small but well-known Ruby on Rails cloud service. Along with some enhancements and re-organisation of offerings under the Force.com label, salesforce.com invested their brand fully into the PaaS market.

While SaaS serves the end user, PaaS serves the developer community enabling rapid solution delivery on an elastic infrastructure. However, the audience for PaaS is somewhat wider than the traditional development community. In addition to the usual Java and .NET code junkies, some PaaS offerings such Workxpress and Orangescape strive to make development more simple through “drag and drop” style configuration. Such configuration tools will appeal to the cottage industry of developers that work "on the business side". Just as MS Access and Excel enabled Andy in front-office to build that interim project app which ICT have spent the last years trying to kill off, the cloud gives more powerful and easier to use options (that ICT could spend many more years trying to bring under control!).

So having set the standard for software-as-a-service, how does salesforce.com now stack up against the competition in the PaaS market? It’s a perfect time to take stock of the present landscape and what it offers.

Cloud Adoption Roadmap: How do you make the choice between SaaS, PaaS and IaaS?

I've been extremely busy at the office the last couple of weeks fire-fighting infrastructure delivery issues. There were quite a number of times, I wished I could fast-forward to the future and switch on the whole production environment on Amazon Web Services instead of entering yet another painful procure and install saga. Anyhow, I'm back here to spend a few precious moments of my so-called spare-time to pick up on one of the five questions posed a couple posts ago.

3) How do you make the choice between SaaS, PaaS and Iaas?

My first response on receiving this question was that it (the question) was obviously "wrong". SaaS, PaaS and IaaS are technology categories that can be useful for discussing the solutions available. However, these are not binary (or should I say ternary) choices and our clients are often going to adopt solutions across all these categories.

On further thinking, I think the question behind this that we are all trying to grapple with is how to figure out the best roadmap to the cloud future. Let's spend just a few moments working this one. 

"Dawn of a New Day"- Microsoft's Chief Software Architect support for the Cloud

Just a couple weeks back, Steve Ballmer announced Ray Ozzie's departure from Microsoft. Ray was the creator of Lotus Notes and assumed the post of Chief Software Architect back in 2006 where he drove Microsof't's overall technical strategy. Back then, Ray was already a clear proponent of the cloud and published a now well-known memo, "The Internet Services Disruption". In it, he identified a number of changing trends in the industry and heralded the age of the online services and the challenge to Microsoft's grip on the market. In response, Ray initiated and led Microsoft's programme to develop the Windows Azure platform.

Today, Ray published a blog post entitled "Dawn of a New Day". It's a long post but if you have time, it's worth a read. He discusses the coming of the post-pc era where computing will be delivered through continuous services (scaleable and always available) to connected devices (which are simple appliances to use that just work).

How do you determine if your business is ready for the cloud?

Last week, I was asked by my team for input on five questions. In this post, I’ve written-up my answer to the second: 2) How do you determine if your business is ready for the cloud?                                                                    
A variety of factors will influence how much benefit there is for a company to adopt cloud solutions and also the best adoption roadmap for them to take (which also answers if you are ready for the cloud along the way). It is a new and confusing landscape for organisations with many options and factors that can be taken into account or (explicitly) ignored. Decision makers need a blend of business and technology understanding in order to make the right choices. While the decision making process can be complex and requires detailed analysis I’ll lay out what I believe are the main areas that need to be addressed:

Is cloud just hype or is it here to stay?

Just this week I was asked by my team for input on five questions. In this post, I’ve written-up my answer to the first.


1) Is cloud just hype or is it here to stay?

There’s no doubt that cloud is here to stay. Major enterprises have put down serious investments in this space including my own employer a major consulting firm who is making significant investment of time and skills in the cloud.

It is easy to see why people feel that Cloud might be all hype. Since the initial simple web-based CRM offering from SFDC announced at the start of the last decade, the promised dream of cloud computing has been well publicised while real offerings were pretty scarce. There’s no wonder that many people taking a look at the offerings back then, may have concluded that there was a lot of talk and not much “behind the curtains”. While a lot has been written about cloud computing over the past years, it is only now that the model is really providing enterprise-level alternatives to businesses. There have been some significant developments in 2010 that lead me to conclude that options are now real enough to prompt all enterprises to take a look. The Google Atmosphere event that took place in April this year is a case in point. Around 300 business executives (many of those CIOs) assembled at the Googleplex to hear leaders in the IT industry share real examples of enterprise adoption of cloud solutions. And recently at

Five simple questions

Just this week I was asked by my team for input on the following five questions:

1) Is cloud just hype or is it here to stay?

2) How do you determine if your company is ready for the cloud?

3) How do you make the choice between SaaS, PaaS and IaaS?

4) Does vendor lock-in become stronger with the cloud?

5) Security seems to be a barrier for users, how safe is the cloud?

I only got half an hour to pen my answers so just jotted down a few notes and passed them on. Over the next few posts I’ll write-up my notes and share with you my full answers on each of these questions.

Assessing the TCO case of the cloud

This week I was in "passionate discussion" with colleagues in a state of denial on the economics for the cloud. Their impression was that the TCO case for cloud adoption only stacked up in the real short-term and that long-term subscriptions with cloud vendors were more expensive than their on-premise equivalents. There certainly is a break-even point from owning your on-premise solution vs. subscribing to the cloud but where this occurs depends upon how you assess the running costs and this will differ from company to company.
  

A tale of two clouds: Oracle-on-Amazon vs. Salesforce.com

It's all been very exciting in The Cloud lately!
I had actually planned this post to cover my visit to Cloudforce London which took place on 8th Sept 2010 but I only just got round writing and the cloud discussion has already moved on to something far far more interesting. That is, the competing visions of cloud computing from Marc Benioff's Salesforce.com and Larry Ellison's Oracle.

"Beware of the false cloud!" was the cry of Marc Benioff in his engaging keynote at Cloudforce London. Benioff announced his "cloud computing test" where he said cloud computing:

• Requires no additional hardware or software
• Is democratic - that is being able to offer the same solution to large and small customers
• Is multi-tenant

It's got serious cloud appeal

Anyone who knows anything about delivering IT solutions will have heard of cloud computing by now. Since the initial rumblings from the salesforce.com office back in the early noughties, the promised dream of cloud computing has been well publicised even while real offerings were pretty scarce. You might be excused then, for thinking that cloud computing is going to follow the many over-hyped and charred trails of other "hot" ideas in terms of visible impact to businesses. You would be very wrong with that conclusion.

While a lot has been written about cloud computing it is only now that the model is really providing enterprise-level alternatives to businesses. The options are now mature enough to prompt even the largest slumbering enterprises to raise one eyelid and take a look. The Google Atmosphere event that took place in April this year is a case in point. Around 300 business executives (many of those CIOs) assembled at the Googleplex to hear leaders in the IT industry share real examples of enterprise adoption of cloud solutions. One such speaker was Walt Oswald, CIO of Motorola who said: