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VCSY - A Laughing Place #2
Sunday, 15 July 2007
Once Upon a Coma...
Mood:  hug me
Now Playing: Who Pawned the Peon? - Lost art found in art-dealer's basement
Topic: SaaS

How popular would 'Emily' be right now if Emily had been allowed to operate out in public unmolested like the giant companies do? You know... what would Emily have been known as today? Would she be as popular and necessary to the next information revolution as, say, AJAX?

I think Emily can be shown to have had a much greater potential for a much more rapid adoption rate than AJAX has shown. AJAX has been developed in public since March 2005. Emily was selling products in 2001. The fact AJAX has taken so long and still has a long way to go to become a robust platform for critical real time distributed use decries the 'obvious' tag for VCSy technology.

http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/400297.htm

Delivering Web 2.0 User Interfaces Using AJAX
The user experience is absolutely central to the Web 2.0 model

By any reckoning, the Internet and the World Wide Web have remade the way we do business. The ascendance of the Web-based enterprise has come to be seen as inevitable. But anyone who takes a hard look at the serious limitations of first-generation Web applications is likely to have a renewed sense of wonder at the spread of their adoption thus far. Users experimented with e-mail, instant messaging, and search engines and turned them into real communication, collaboration, and information-gathering tools. Those same business users endured their fitful interactions with static HTML pages and moved applications to the Web anyway because of the substantial savings promised by the shift. 

Now their patience is about to be rewarded. Emerging from a decade of groundwork is Web 2.0, which offers dramatic gains in productivity for individual workers and whole enterprises. Web 2.0 applications are distributed collaborative tools available on-demand from any browser anywhere. And those tools are constructed to be at least as intuitive and easy-to-use as any application loaded on a desktop.

Web 2.0 is based on many technologies - most prominent among them being Web Services, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and Really Simple (Web) Syndication (RSS) - and the list will continue to grow. Of these, AJAX has attracted the most attention recently because it's the technology that most effectively fills the gap between the user experience of Web and desktop applications.

And the user experience is absolutely central to the Web 2.0 model. Web 2.0 applications must possess a set of user interface components that are as compelling and responsive as a desktop-based environment. Developers can no longer be satisfied to offer discontinuity in user experience, because widely distributed, frequently mobile users won't be able to tolerate it and do their jobs well. The improved user experience will include, but must extend beyond, the most common productivity tools, such as word processing applications and e-mail. Web 2.0 and AJAX-based applications represent an opportunity to fully realize the Web's potential to make users smarter and more productive, and that opportunity extends to the most sophisticated back-end and analytic applications.

How We Got Here: Evolutionary Steps to Web 2.0
As any significant technology evolves toward maturity, attention shifts from the technology itself to the work that the technology enables. That shift is clearly manifest in Web 2.0, the third major phase of the Web's evolution, which can be summarized like this:

  • Web 1.0 - Content delivery and communication. This early stage changed the dissemination of information via two innovations, HTML pages and e-mail.
  • Web 1.5 - Content personalization and multi-level communication. Search and personalization made the spread of information more efficient, while chat rooms and instant messaging expanded communication in real-time.
  • Web 2.0 - Authoring and collaboration. This current stage is not about the dissemination of information, it's about productivity - accomplishing work-related tasks in a virtual space with tools and applications that are available anywhere, at any time, and can be shared collaboratively.
In the past, Web applications' lack of responsiveness and dearth of controls offset most of their advantages as thin-client tools. In contrast, desktop developers have historically taken advantage of two capabilities of Windows that make applications more intuitive and user-friendly than their Web counterparts: richness and responsiveness. When a complex and robust set of UI components is combined as they have been on the desktop, they make the user interface natural, informative, and intuitive to use. And when the application and the user interface quickly adapt to user actions, they create an uninterrupted interaction. Windows applications don't stop to reload, forcing users to move through tasks in stops and starts - or causing them to lose the thread of the business process entirely.

The user experience gap between Windows and the Web has been due to the limitations of the early Web client/server model, with the Web server as the platform for all processing logic and the browser as the client handling nothing more than the data display. In this architecture, users interact with HTML and each of their actions triggers a request to the server, which in turn triggers the generation of a new page.

The incessant reloading of the page severely limits the user experience for a couple reasons. First, flipping from page to page can disorient the user as the allocation of tasks on different page views causes loss of context. On top of that, reloading the page causes a disjointed and rigid interactive flow. The user has to wait for the next page to initiate a new interaction or change the workflow, or be bounced back to the previous page to alter information in a field. Think of the online shopper on a retail site who can't order three shirts instead of two without returning to page one, and then extend the problem to business users struggling with enterprise applications throughout their workday.

The difficulties of the interaction are compounded as the complexity of applications and user options increases. For example, imagine the user experience of writing a document in an application created in Web client/server mode. For each paragraph, the user must open a dialog, enter the text in the input box, and wait for the changes to be applied to the document when the page is refreshed. And then all the steps must be repeated for every edit or format change. The frustrated user needs plenty of patience and training to work with the tool.

Enter AJAX
By contrast, AJAX combines technologies such as asynchronous JavaScript, the Document Object Model, XMLhttpRequest, XHTML, and CSS so the user can incrementally update any element of an application that resides in the browser. The user never leaves the application - never loses context or suffers interrupted workflow - because no action triggers the reloading of a full page.

This seemingly small change has a profound effect on the user's experience. Transferring more of the interaction to the client side not only improves the workflow, it also allows the addition of enriching UI components, which put AJAX-based Web applications on a par with desktop applications for usability. There are, it should be noted, alternatives to AJAX - Adobe's Flash technology also provides a means to develop rich clients and DHTML allows one to partially upload components on an HTML page without reloading the entire page. But AJAX's combination of cross-browser compatibility, zero footprint, and ability to provide interactive complexity to the user gives it a leg up on the competitive technologies.

The improved interactivity of Web 2.0 applications is driving even more applications off the desktop, since the lower total cost of ownership now comes without the offsetting negatives of cumbersome user experience. These transitional Web 2.0 applications enabled by AJAX have been productivity tools, such as word processing and e-mail applications, calendars and spreadsheets. Examples are Google's recently released Writely and Google Spreadsheets; competitive word processors like Zoho Writer, Abe Writeboard, and ajaxWrite; Num Sum spreadsheet functionality; and 30 boxes, a Web-based calendar. Web-based desktops are also emerging, like the one available at www.desktoptwo.com.

Their lower TCO comes from centralizing most of the software in a single location on the server, with only a browser installed on desktops throughout the organization. This lowers installation and maintenance costs, provides for incremental upgrades to existing applications, creates user administration savings, and offers enterprise-wide control over document backup and archiving, as well as compliance and security. The Web 2.0 model makes applications instantly available to users, eliminating desktop installations. And it's a model that can be extended to applications across the enterprise.

For example, as sophisticated analytics and business intelligence information are pushed further out into the enterprise, it is essential that applications deliver the information smoothly, clearly, and in an uninterrupted context. AJAX provides the foundation for user interfaces based on reusable components, each of which enables a set of UI functions that can be manipulated individually for or by the user. The flexibility inherent in AJAX-enabled applications translates into quick, easy rollouts of new functionality as user needs change, as well as the ability to customize the interface for users based on their roles and specific needs. Improving the user experience translates into a parallel improvement in the user's ability to apply high-level information to the decision-making process, which is, after all, the goal of business intelligence.

Organizations were moving applications to the Web even before the emergence of Web 2.0 and AJAX-based tools because cost savings were so attractive that they trumped the limitations of first-generation Web applications. Now, with Web 2.0 applications that provide a user experience equal to that of desktop applications, that trend is going to build momentum rapidly.

For several years, enthusiasts have predicted that the impact of the Internet and the Web will rival that of the Industrial Revolution. Driven by the same need to use resources more effectively and increase productivity as that earlier transformation, Web 2.0 could make those predictions come true. But instead of centralizing workers and machines in factories, Web 2.0 will liberate a distributed, mobile workforce by offering consistent access to applications and information anywhere in the complex world of the global enterprise.


Posted by Portuno Diamo at 3:07 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, 15 July 2007 3:37 PM EDT
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Wednesday, 2 May 2007
Bessy Mae is gonna recompany me on the autoharpy. Key o' G, lil' darlin'.
Mood:  suave
Now Playing: 'Fry Me Some Froghair Mary Jeane ' Plaintive ballad of unrequited love and passion for country victuals. (Folk, Americana)
Topic: SaaS

 

NOW Solutions Users Conference 2007

May 29 - June 1, 2007  

Loews Coronado Bay Resort, San Diego, CA

Learn about emPath and you will know where Microsoft should have been by now.

 


Posted by Portuno Diamo at 12:00 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 2 May 2007 12:06 AM EDT
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Monday, 23 April 2007
So I says to the guy in the elevator 'Wanna see me stand on my hands?' and that's why my socks are stretched out.
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: 'Nuglets for Norman' Organs from executed criminal are transplanted into spineless executive. (science fiction/fantasy)
Topic: SaaS
Interesting article. What keeps Salesforce out of the VCSY patent sights?

The Enterprise System Spectator


Monday, April 23, 2007

Salesforce.com unbundling its platform from its apps

Over the past few years, salesforce.com has been gradually morphing itself from an on-demand CRM vendor to a platform for software-as-a-service (SaaS) generally. It started by first allowing extensive customer-specific customization of its CRM applications and integration with legacy or third-party systems. Then it provided a complete development environment, including test capabilities separate from production. Then it opened up its SaaS platform to third-party developers to write complementary applications. This week it announced the next logical step: it is allowing customers to buy access to its platform without buying its CRM application.

Salesforce.com Platform Edition allows customers to take advantage of other applications in its AppExchange marketplace, or, it allows customers to start from scratch and write their own custom applications. Details on Platform Edition are on the salesforce.com website.

The evolution of salesforce.com further enhances software-as-a-service as a viable alternative to traditional on-premise software. The only drawback to this approach I see is that it ties the entire IT infrastructure of the customer to salesforce.com. If you think vendor lock-in is a problem today with traditional vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, imagine what it will be like when your entire technology stack--from hardware, OS, database, and application--is tied to a single provider.

I'm a big fan of SaaS, but I still haven't figured out how to get around the vendor lock-in problem.

Related posts
IT services in a SaaS world
Salesforce.com to allow customization of its hosted service
Salesforce.com's AppExchange proving its viability for developers
Computer Economics: The Business Case for Software as a Service
by Frank Scavo, 4/23/2007 07:36:00 AM

Posted by Portuno Diamo at 3:10 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, 23 April 2007 3:10 PM EDT
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Thursday, 19 April 2007
Coming off the tour I needed my woman to tell me I was fabulous...
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: 'When the hold reaches up and grabs you.' Theatrical makeup can do just so much and then you ride the light.
Topic: SaaS

I must be watching too much Oprah. I don't even know who the artist is and I find myself empathizing. 

I was going through all my old XML and miscellaneous programming books and I came across this discussion on web services. It's taken Microsoft four years to come to the point where they have finally broken down and said web services. Case in point is the ballsa wood Microsoft put out for market speak about web services recently (see Here and scroll down to circa April 18 7:30 PM EDT) and THEN (see Here and scroll down to circa April 17 2:00 PM EDT) and see if you would ride in an airplane made out of ballsa wood.

This is from The XML Handbook by Charles Goldfarb, the Father of XML. I copied it from my own copy so I think that's legal and all, ain't it? Not autographed but maybe one day. I will give Charles my autograph if he wants.

The XML Handbook

© 2002 by Charles F. Goldfarb / Paul Prescod


Web Services (p. 669)

The hype about Web Services has been voluminous and relentless.

One reader of this book even asked whether we would be changing the focus from XML to Web Services. Our reply was that you wouldn't notice the difference! And that's regardless of what you think Web services is. (Besides thinking that it's ungrammatical!)

Some think it is business integration on steroids: companies finding one another automatically and purchasing services without human intervention.

Some think it is universal content processing; user access to any data from any computing device at any location.

And programmers, who have to do the work, Think about the reality; some improved technologies for distributed computing.
But all of these thoughts involve XML. Web services is XML Web services, the culmination of everything you've been reading. In this part we'll look at both the vision and the reality.

 

Get it? It was that way back in 2002. Where the heck has Microsoft been since then. Forget Microsoft, where have all the big XML houses that were supposed to crowd the land by now. They're all just now finding out about this stuff? Not VCSY at least. Boy am I lucky.


Posted by Portuno Diamo at 7:43 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 20 April 2007 1:38 PM EDT
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Tuesday, 17 April 2007
That's right. It's a toilet. Wind was so strong me and the kids tied a rope to it and what the hell...?
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: 'Kite Kombat' Docudrama: Kite fighting teams in China strategize while embedding broken glass into string and tails.
Topic: SaaS

So I figured why not stay in this neighborhood. Every place else in the world is just as crazy and just as noisy and stupid and... 

Aunt Jaska? Daddy wants to know if you have a ladder.

Wait a minute honey. Let me talk to the nice people here and I'll be done in a minute. Where was... oh yeah. If you...

A ladder? What for?

We was flying the toilet like a kite and the wind dragged daddy up a pine tree and he's trying to get down.

Oh my God I don't have a ladder tall enough to get him out of those pine branches.

No ma'am. He can climb down from there. We're just trying to figger some way to get the toilet off  Mister Silverberg's house. I think part of it is in his living room. 

April 16th, 2007

Microsoft to help other software vendors go the SaaS route

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:16 am

While Microsoft is attempting to distance itself from other software-as-a-service (SaaS) players, the Redmond software company is trying to help other software makers move to the SaaS distribution model.

On April 16, Microsoft unveiled the Microsoft SaaS Incubation Center program — an initiative designed to match up independent software vendors (ISVs) interested in adopting the SaaS model with hosters who have the infrastructure and know-how to support SaaS-based applications.

Microsoft's move in this space comes at an interesting time. A number of industry watchers and players believe Microsoft is poised to field its own hosted Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and other similar offerings, which will make the Redmondians head-to-head competitors with its evolving set of hosted-software partners.

At the same time, Microsoft is actively encouraging its ISV and hosting partners to get out of its way and migrate their offerings upstream and move away from providing base-level hosted services, like simple disk-spaced storage.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is doing everything it can to differentiate itself from existing SaaS players, by emphasizing that it is pursuing a software plus services (S+S) strategy, of which SaaS is simply one delivery component.

The newly minted Microsoft SaaS incubation program supplements two existing Microsoft efforts. At the core of all hosted ISV solutions will be the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting for Applications, according to the Softies. The incubation initiative also builds atop the SaaS On-Ramp Program, which provides ISVs with tools and resources to get their hosted SaaS solutions more quickly to market.

"Microsoft touches about 20,000 ISVs traditionally and about 5,000 hosting companies," said Michael van Dijken, lead marketing manager for hosting solutions with Microsoft's Communications Sector. With the new SaaS incubation program, "we'll give these hosters a way to create a one-stop shop" aimed at ISVs, who need help with everything from building out a datacenter infrastructure, to technology consulting and licensing.

Microsoft will announce eight incubation-hub partners on April 16, four of which will be U.S.-based and the other four, European. (The initial set of incubation hub partners: 7Global, Affinity, Navisite, NTT Europe, OpSource, Siennax, VisionApps and WizMo.)

Over time, Microsoft incubation hubs will be able to provide assistance with multiple services, as well as a variety of partners, including VARs and telcos, in addition to ISVs, van Dijken said.

If you were an ISV or hoster, would you be interested in working with Microsoft to evolve your SaaS solution and strategy, given that Redmond might end up one of your biggest competitors in the not-too-distant future?

Van Dijken says Microsoft's ISVs have always had to walk the fine line between partnering and competing with Microsoft, and the current services world is no different. Do you agree? Is Microsoft safe to partner with on the SaaS front?

 


Posted by Portuno Diamo at 3:13 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 17 April 2007 3:35 PM EDT
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Saturday, 14 April 2007
Another sliver of pie
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: 'Huffin and Puffin' Pseudo-extinct birds fly south for the exhibition.
Topic: SaaS

http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181652

By: stillwtr19
14 Apr 2007, 07:18 PM EDT
Msg. 181652 of 181655

Sliver a technical summary of Siteflash

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Therefore a need exists for a method of generating complex software applications that reduces or eliminates production delays and the workload for programmers due to changes in content and/or form. This method should separate form, content and function so that each area can be independently changed.

The present invention provides a system and method for generating software applications that substantially eliminates or reduces disadvantages and problems associated with previously developed systems and methods used for generation of software applications. More specifically, the present invention provides a method for generating software applications in an arbitrary object framework. The method of the present invention separates content, form, and function of the computer application so that each may be accessed or modified independently. The method of this invention includes creating arbitrary objects, managing the arbitrary objects throughout their life cycle, and deploying the arbitrary objects in a design framework for use in complex computer applications.

The present invention provides an important technical advantage in that content, form, and function are separated from each other in the generation of the software application. Therefore, changes in design or content do not require the intervention of a programmer. This advantage decreases the time needed to change various aspects of the software application. Consequently, cost is reduced and versatility is increased.

The present invention provides another technical advantage in that users are not required to use a proprietary language to encode. These arbitrary objects may include encapsulated legacy data, legacy systems and custom programming logic from essentially any source in which they may reside. Any language supported by the host system, or any language that can be interfaced to by the host system, can be used to generate an object within the application.

The present invention provides yet another technical advantage in that it can provide a single point of administrative authority that can reduce security risks. For instance, a large team of programmers can work on developing a large group of arbitrary objects within the object library. If one object has a security hole, an administrator can enter the object library and disable that arbitrary object.

Still another technical advantage of the present invention is that it enables syndication of the software application. As noted above, functionality is separate from form and content. Consequently, a user can easily introduce a new look for the application or syndicate the content and functionality of the application to another group without having to recode all of the objects needed to access content.

Another technical advantage of the present invention is that it allows for personalization and profiling. With personalization, the web presentation is tailored to the specific needs of the web user based on the user's past history. Profiling also enables tailoring a web site or presentation. Profiling is dependent on environmental variables such as browser type or IP address.



(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)


Posted by Portuno Diamo at 7:56 PM EDT
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THe Babbling Brooks and the Waters of March
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: 'Hopper Car' Whacky Hobo Antics on the West Bound Train from Chicargo
Topic: SaaS

Some posts from RagingBull on SaaS.  

http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181632

By: Sliver_Fox
14 Apr 2007, 12:27 PM EDT
Msg. 181632 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181631 by POSCASHFLOW.)

POS, good news . . . bad news . . .

The good news with Saas is that your software remains up to date. The bad news is that your software remains up to date. Thus, businesses will not be able to control the software they use. While an "older" version of the software may work for a particular application; there is no guarantee that the new version will.

IMHO, this will not be a major problem, but the law of unintended consequences come into play. Thus, when updating a program, great care will have to be taken so that a particular usage in the past will still remain a usage now.

While the IT VP may not feel this a problem, it could. I do not know any top management people who like to have a division or group screaming at them "What have you done to us". Whether anything was done . . . or not. A convenient excuse. A "reason" for failure to execute.

Interesting future we have here.

(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Buy; LT Rating- Buy)

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http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181636

By: mm-buster
14 Apr 2007, 02:19 PM EDT
Msg. 181636 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181632 by Sliver_Fox.)

'The good news with Saas is that your software remains up to date. The bad news is that your software remains up to date. Thus, businesses will not be able to control the software they use. While an "older" version of the software may work for a particular application; there is no guarantee that the new version will.' - Sliver-Fox 181632 14 Apr 2007, 12:27 PM EDT

(Sliver demonstrates either a profound lack of understanding as to the capabilities inherent in web-based applications and 'hosting' web services or he demonstrates a deftly deceptive hand in that he is talking to the general population of potential buyers in VCSY who have no technical knowledge whatsoever. Fortunately for them, one does not need much technical knowledge in assessing SaaS concepts. It simply needs common sense and a view that software can be provided to users as a tool; not as an object to be cared for and pampered but to be used and altered as the work requirements advance or digress. Try THAT with CD-Based general purpose applications.

Sliver is speaking in terms of hosted on-demand software offerings where a company [such as Microsoft and CDC] would be offering things like MSWord as a stand alone application provided over the internet from an on-demand hosting center. First get this straight. SaaS requires on-demand architecture as a prerequisite to even attempting SaaS. Microsoft's delay in implementing SaaS and CDC's apparent failure to successfully pull of SaaS demonstrates the falicy of a software producer constructing an SaaS system

A true SaaS system is going to be an integrated business structure offered over the internet [VPN and ultra-highspeed] with all applications like Microsoft's and even CDC's home-grown versions of CRM and HR and whatever other vertical they might want to 'represent' buried under layers of abstraction. The SaaS user never sees the 'application'. The on-demand user is stuck with as SliverFux rightfully testifies.

I would agree with what the poster says if you buy or rent or help yourself to SaaS services provided by some of the software houses because they are not going to know your business and they will only be able to give you a resonable facsimile of your kind of business. You will have to doubtless hire developers to tailor and finish the job of customizing it for you. True SaaS allows the user to cusomize the way the 'application' works. Microsoft is forced to folow that track of 'general purpose' construction even though the SaaS model as envisioned by SiteFlash allows for every user to have exactly what that user needs or wants within the boundaries of the entire SaaS library content for that particular set of methods along with the standards and governance related.

See the difference between somebody like VCSY who can field a technology that virtualizes everything: even virtualizes the back-office [BO] third-party [3P] commercial-off-the-shelf [COTS]. In other words, a shrink wrapped application or a 'use-our-product' on-demand distribution channel is not where you want to lay your precious darling web 2.0 business baby down to sleep. Yuck. As Frank would protest 'You had me sleeping in urine?'.

So remember, Microsoft nor any general purpose application builder or provider doesn't know what you use your software for and you may need an entirely different userset of capabilities than 99% of the rest of the 'CD package' software use. In the case of buyng a one-size-fits-all application, you are stuck with doing it the way everybody else does it. That's good in keeping a standardized business or society. But as the old Soviet principles and 5 year plans demonstrate, it all gets to look the same and pretty damn drab at that.

And don't be a standout! If you are among the 1% working with that part of a 'general purpose' designed application, you will be a part of a very exclusive testing base. Then you would have to contact technical support for every item to be 'fixed' [patched more like it if you're using a general purpose] and hooboy what's that going to take?

With SaaS the baby knows how to walk and play football when you press the go button. Not so with the kind of applications and services Sliver is representing.)



(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)

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http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181637

By: mm-buster
14 Apr 2007, 02:20 PM EDT
Msg. 181637 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181636 by mm-buster.)

And another quote from that post:

'While the IT VP may not feel this a problem, it could. I do not know any top management people who like to have a division or group screaming at them "What have you done to us". Whether anything was done . . . or not. A convenient excuse. A "reason" for failure to execute. '

(Another excellent reason for going SaaS because you don't interface with ANY technical people That's what's so funny about the other side's argument against something like SaaS. They're being forced out of the IT closet. Forced out of the IT office. Forced out of the IT Department by an army of integrators, maintenance technicians and specialist nobody will ever have to see much less talk to or interact with.

Again, this lack of understanding apparently derives from the poster having no understanding of what SaaS means. He is from an on-demand [very old school like selecting tv programs with the remote]. With SaaS you have convergent capabilities tied in already with the third party applications [which are now in a mad scramble to include convergent technology] trying hard to remain relevant in a world where users are going to dictate what gets provided and used.

In Sliver's world each company is responsible for their own IT highs and lows. They eat the filet they gotta eat the crow and scabs as well. In the SaaS world a much larger and much more user-oriented technology base is at the user's fingertips where a single complaint brings a single remedy that propagates throughout the SaaS base immediately rather than being developed and maintained in one place having to be bombarded with the same question a million individual times.

No offense to Sliver - we all have limits on our knowledge and experience - but I would discount any advice Sliver is giving on this subject).


(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)

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http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181638 

By: mm-buster
14 Apr 2007, 02:21 PM EDT
Msg. 181638 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181637 by mm-buster.)

In other words...
something like Microsoft Word would best be broken up into different sets of tools and offered across the web at varying rates for various capabilities. Least for more basic word-processing duties like formatting and templating. More for more advanced duties like Graphics and presentations.

Microsoft won't be able to even attempt that until Viridian and apparently Viridian is coing out around the same time as Apple's Leopard operating system - around October I think. I say this has to do with a fiscal year policy changeover in both businesses just given the month selected to release the software to the public.

The question I would like to have Sliver answer is why he thinks CDC and Microsoft are so far behind in this technology. And what do they do now?

(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)


Posted by Portuno Diamo at 5:24 PM EDT
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Writing in the Rain
Mood:  suave
Now Playing: Momma the Ham's Done But the Dog Done Et It First
Topic: SaaS

It is raining on peninsula today and I like rain; having been water creature in an imagined past life. What that means I don't know. For today muses are taking me into paths of other arts. Today I shall begin painting partially assembled replica of German Me163B Komet. I didn't fabricate parts, but I am connecting them together into whole 1:48 MASTER SERIES assembly. What I like is picture on box. It's a flaming orange Komet streaking past high-altitude bomber. Beautiful picture worth thousand words.

ps - No I know it's not a German accent. Guess again. 

 http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181631

By: POSCASHFLOW
14 Apr 2007, 11:39 AM EDT
Msg. 181631 of 181631

Businesses Get Serious About Software As A Service

InformationWeek Research finds companies using the delivery model for a wider variety of applications.

By Mary Hayes Weier Lisa Smith
InformationWeek
Apr 14, 2007 12:01 AM (From the April 16, 2007 issue)

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000824 


(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)

 

I will post the first page of the article here for a synopsis:

 

If you still consider software as a service a delivery model that makes sense only for sales force automation or small businesses, you're behind the times. Two out of three businesses are either buying or considering buying software via a subscription model, according to a recent InformationWeek Research survey.

That's put pressure on the big software vendors, prompting them to offer SaaS models or at least give lip service to the idea. Microsoft and SAP are among the companies developing more subscription offerings for customers, and Oracle president Charles Phillips is giving a presentation in New York this week on how its subscription software can lower customers' costs.

Phillips is preaching to the choir. InformationWeek found that 29% of the 250 business technology pros surveyed are using at least one licensed application that's hosted by a vendor and accessed over the Internet, typically for a monthly subscription fee. Thirty-five percent are planning to buy software that way or are considering it. And interest isn't just among small companies with minuscule IT budgets: 55% of respondents have annual revenue of more than $100 million, and a third have more than $1 billion in revenue.

Still, smaller businesses are big drivers of this approach. "SaaS is one of those technology delivery trends that will come from the bottom up; small and midsize companies will adopt it faster," says Ken Harris, CIO at Shaklee, a $500 million-a-year supplier of nutritional supplements, makeup, and other products. "Large companies will use integration and security as valid explanations not to do it," but those are solvable problems, he adds. The bigger issues are choosing the right vendors and having good service-level agreements in place, Harris says.

He should know. Before coming to Shaklee two years ago, Harris held CIO positions at Gap, Nike, and PepsiCo. "I have a much smaller budget and fewer people, but interestingly enough, I have the same breadth of application needs as I did at Gap or Pepsi," he says. "I still have to support financials and CRM, but as a midmarket CIO I have to find a lot of ways to cover the ground more cheaply, more efficiently, and quicker."

Shaklee began moving its IT infrastructure to a service-oriented architecture two years ago, and subscription software fits perfectly into that plan, Harris says. Shaklee had RightNow Technologies marketing and CRM software running within 120 days, spending in the six-figure range, he says. Similar projects at other companies where Harris was CIO cost millions of dollars and took 12 to 18 months using traditional CRM vendors. Shaklee has about 200 employees using the RightNow apps and plans to replace aging financial applications with those delivered in an SaaS model, he says.

Adoption Time Frame

view all the charts

 

 

  In whole world nothingk more beautiful.

- Rasta Portunes Pumply Highly Worthing-Grammure.


Posted by Portuno Diamo at 12:39 PM EDT
Updated: Saturday, 14 April 2007 1:57 PM EDT
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