How is SaaS different?

I can't explain better than this image, from an article at Sun site...

The title explains all about the rate of innovation & change requirements directly from users to product development team. NOTE: SaaS is selling directly to users instead of buyers.

Then look at the simplicity of the SaaS model! Doesn't simple things scale better also? What about the new feature requests & bug fixes? It used to be months & years...Now it's about days,weeks & even hrs to get things done.

Another SOA startup Exit = Infravio

First congratulations to Infravio team to make it an exit. I think this company is in business for a while and survived the dot-com burst. Good job, guys.

I don't want to put this exit in either one of the categories like before(successful exit or not) for 2 reasons:

1. I was involved in the world's first repository based registry open source product development and Infravio was one of the commercial vendors that endorsed this concept. So, I like them.
2. My friend is involved in Infravio...

[NOTE:I don't have any personal interest what so ever with this company.]
So, I leave it to the readers to come to a conclusion!

As I said previously, here and here, one more gone. IMO, this basically leaves few(3?) 1st generation (successful) SOA startups in the market...I don't want to name them here as any one in the industry, will know it. These exits most probably may wrap the SOA startup show(for now). I don't know any "copy cats" & "me too's" popping up but who cares about them.

If you notice these 1st generation SOA startups, (in general)they are ALL very successful companies(don't just look for the exit numbers alone-timing may be one of the reasons). They have defined a space/technology, build "deployable" products, deployed to many customers, generated revenue and educated the space. Great Job!

Then, this leaves the question:
Is SOA space is over startups?
I don't think so!

As everyone know, SOA is an evolution, this thing may go on for next 10 years easily(if US economy NOT slows down, it it does, then more)& it will create many more opportunities...IMO, SOA may break down in to many concrete sub-categories going fwd,like SON(which is my passionate sub-category), SOCS(Service Oriented Communication System),etc...

Tech is always fun.

Vision/Mission Statements

Here in this presentation, Guy Kawasaki makes a very valid point about how to write mission statements. He gives some examples of how it should be...It should be 3 words instead of a paragraph to describe the mission statements.

In a different perspective, I found some mission statements with few words but it's totally vague...So, as Guy says here, it's very important that you write it clearly.... Otherwise the outside world may even think that you don't know what you are doing! It's a good tip for the startups.

An Executive @ Pep Boys says...SaaS is good.

Here is an interesting quote, I found today about IT & SaaS. It says:
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One quote from an executive at Pep Boys should send chills down an IT manager’s spine: “The less IT involvement there is, the less grief there is. The less grief there is, the faster I get to my ROI…[With on-demand] I don't have to go through the internal bureaucracy in the IT department to figure out what size hardware they need and how to fit this in.”
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This is a typical problem today in the business community. Why would an executive at Pep Boys has to worry about hardware,software or networking issues? This is very similar to back in early days when steel companies used to run electricity departments to generate power.

The SaaS here makes total sense and for him, IT should be like electricity, just pay as you use...Don't outsource your IT infrastructure, instead rent it. Outsourcing is not a permanent solution, you are just bringing another layer of people between your business & IT. Infact, some cases it may even complicate things for your employees.

Uday.

"Sun picks up a gem in JRuby"

It's a news today.
Here is an introduction to JRuby.

What is Enterprise 2.0?

Yet another 2.0! If you want to read more about it, click here

SaaS & Data Security

We all hearing lot about SaaS & SaaS2.0, one thing I learned something new which may be of news to you is about what CIO of a Singapore Bank told to Dr. Timothy Chou...Check out the podcast here

It's about "Pl take my HR & Payroll applications. My DBA can check his salary, his boss salary and his boss salary...".

We heard about "data security" is a problem with SaaS providers. Look at this case, this is quite opposite, data can be much safer with SaaS providers than with the customer itself. Dr.Timothy Chou talks about why it so...

SaaS is not a buzzword, it's not a evolution and it's a REVOLUTION. It's going to change the enterprise sw in a big way.