Thursday, December 10, 2009

Notes from Cloud Futures Software Vendors SaaS Migration Conference

On my way back home to NZ now, time to collate some thoughts on the last couple of days here at the Cloud Futures SaaS migration conference.

There were some really great speakers here - including the first time in a long while when Amazon and Salesforce have spoken together in the same room. In particular, my main takeaways from the speakers were:

Keynote from Bill McNee, Saugatuck Technology: Valuable fact-based market research:

- Despite current economic crisis, purchasing for Cloud IaaS and SaaS remain strong through 2011
- However, financial benefits around cloud IaaS potentially illusory? (=> position around other business benefits than price).
- A new ecosystem is forming around Cloud Computing, will transform IT sector
- Sweet-spot: 100-499 employee count, then 500-1000. But there is significant demand from Enterprise.
- Highly interwoven: hybrid app architectures emerge
- Cloud dev via PaaS providers has begun to open up
- A new SaaS based business services delivery model is emerging
- While roughly 35% of ISVs have begun transition to SaaS, will be long and rocky road for most (expect around 70% eventually.) Totally new model for traditional ISVs - many not prepared financially or operationally for the changes needed.

Mark Trang from Salesforce:
- 7 secrets of SaaS success, a small set of moves from Benioff's playbook

Allan Leinwand from Panorama Capital giving the VC perspective:
- Enablers of Cloud Computing such as networking are continually getting cheaper: run CC on the "Taiwan Inc" model - eg Vyatta, a firm that Allan is invested in can provide networking equipment equivalent to an $6000 router for $10! The landscape changes. Expect costs to keep coming down.
- Cloud Services Market: Gartner : Cloud Services market triples from $56.87 -> $150.5 2009 -> 2013 (mainly SaaS)
- Obstacles: Security, Management,Performance,Economics
- VCs are looking for Cloud startups who understand how to measure performance / SLAs
- Q: What will drive exits for Cloud startups? A: Monetization of customer growth.
- Being "cloud" is sexy and doubles your valuation multiple. (Eg Rackspace cheap acquisition of Slicehost (<$10m?) made them a "Cloud" company overnight, their multiple went up to 4x compared to 1.2-2.7 for their competition.

Rick Nucci from Boomi

- "API is not optional" - all SaaS must come with API AS STANDARD. (There is NO DATABASE!)
- All SaaS-to-SaaS integration can now be done in the Cloud
- SaaS API Blueprint recommends Object.Operation naming convention

Sumatrar Sarkar from TechStrategyLabs: The Economics of Cloud Migration
- Demand side economics: NO MORE CAPEX
- Supply side economics split between Supplier and VAR
- Very impressive (if slightly incomprehensible!) TCO model which models optimum allocation of costs between Customer, Supplier and VAR.

Doug Harr, CIO of Ingres:
- Ingres decided to run with totally SaaS-based IT (except desktop productivity and directory services from Microsoft)
- Successful implementations, rapid agile delivery
- Have implemented SSO across their SaaS apps using MyOneLogin
- Leading frontrunner in "IT Free Business" model
- Enables the role of CIO to be more involved in enabling business strategy, not day to day operations.
- CIO is more involved in understanding risk model: auditors still learning how to audit control objectives for security and management when it's consumed via SaaS.

Erik Novikoff, Enki (previously director of software dev, Netsuite)

- Enki provide "people on demand" ;-)
- Enki have done 50-60 customer deployments from on-premise to the Cloud.
- Enki customers enjoy increased revenue, new opportunities,delight their customers. (He says).
- With SaaS, can calculate costs as fraction of total revenue
- Retrain some traditional sys admins to be cloud admins
- Charging for service:
Model - Enki charges based on "cost plus"
Pricing
- Start with equal 2-year NPV (ie equal to boxed software) and upsell

- Gotchas / one time costs/tasks:
-Moving to Cloud
- Web presentation platform
- Single to multitenant conversion
- Redesign for scaling
- Adding API / mashup
- Monitoring (SLA) - internal and external
- Billing system
- Upgrading support offering (24x7)
- Financing your move: Covering delayed time-to-value
- Marketing: whole new world with different competitors/comms channels

Ramon Chen, Rainstor
Rainstor is a vendor of Cloud-based archiving solution. Useful for the following use cases:
- Storage of archived data for compliance purposes
- Escrow of data held in 3rd party SaaS services
- Log and security event data retention

Interesting product (service!), launched in US today.

Richard Reiner @ Enomaly
Richard woke up the room with more specialized detail on the security question than I've seen to date. Cloud IaaS is potentially compromisable because software is the *only* security control - a compromised virtualization layer therefore means that your data and applications are not secure. He characterizes all current cloud IaaS vendors as saying "Trust me" based on their quality people and processes. (The "Trust Me" cloud). Enomaly is (about to?) launch a product which provides the "Verified" cloud, and provides a direct channel from a browser plugin to the underlying hardware layer to verify that the software installed (eg virtualization / hypervisor layer) has not been tampered with. Good communication of the issues, but does the cost outweigh the risk?

Nolan M. Goldberg, Proskauer: Legal Issues of Cloud Computing- Case law is behind the technology
- Make sure legal issues are covered off in service agreement (which is a contract!). In particular, make sure that responsibility for paying costs to comply with legal requests is assigned.
- Went through the standard legal risks of privacy, data security, geographical location / jurisdiction

Gowri Subranium, Aspire Systems:
- Aspire are a Chennai-based SI / development partner specialising in building SaaS. (Bit like us!)
- Gowri introduced three main strategies to build SaaS:
1. Ground up build
2. Build on top of PaaS
3. "Solution Accelerator" - effectively a set of code libraries which enable delivery of the platform out of the box.


You can see the Twitter stream for the conference at http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cfsj09 (mostly me, natch...)

From my side, the conference was worth it in that it:
- Validated my thinking that the industry is at the same early stages of development across the globe, and ISVs / IT Services Vendors are still unclear as to which business models will work and which ones won't. "How do you make money out of SaaS / Cloud?" - there's only one data point so far and that's Salesforce. The costs and risks for traditional ISVs to make the move are substantial, and maybe better strategy is to "enhance" an existing on-premise offering with SaaS rather than "migrate". (Begs the question what do you do when a SaaS competitor for your core offering takes your customers a couple of years down the road....)
- Enabled networking with a (surprisingly small) number of key players in the industry in the US (particularly enjoyed catching up with @MichaelDunham of Scio - who are an agile outsourced SaaS vendor much as ourselves - and trading war stories, and the other guys from outside the border Luc and Stephan from C3Wave from Belgium).
- Overall, the trip has provided some solid new insights into the risks, opportunities, strategies and challenges with moving from on-premise to SaaS and Cloud. Useful, all in all.

Monday, December 7, 2009

In San Jose for Cloud Futures SaaS Migration conference

Arrived in San Jose after 11 hour flight to SFO from Auckland and then what seemed like almost as long to get from the airport in a shared minibus. Good to go all around the Valley though - drove a really roundabout route past the silicon valley headquarters of Oracle, Ebay, Microsoft, Adobe and hundreds more. Great to be back in an economy where software truly "belongs" rather than one dominated by agriculture... ;-/

Anyway, I'm here for the Cloud Futures Software Vendors SaaS Migration Conference '09 which starts tomorrow - see http://www.cloudfutures.com/usa/index.shtml. This is one of Memia's "sweet spots" and we really enjoy working with software businesses to make the move (both technology and operations) from the on-premise model to SaaS (see http://www.memia.com/isvservices.html) for more details. I'm looking forward to meeting others who are doing the same thing in this particular part of the industry, and learning about what's going on this side of the Pacific and how our skills and experience stack up back in APJ.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Memia is hiring: XHTML, CSS, ASP.NET Developers

Are you an experienced web developer with strong Web 2.0 and Enterprise Application development knowledge, an understanding of how the best SaaS applications should work, and (even better) experience of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) processes?

If so, we would like to hear from you.

You will need the following experience and skills:

* Over 3 years of professional experience as a Software Developer
* XHTML - with knowledge of upcoming v.5 features
* CSS (2.x min - ideally 3.x) - for typography, positioning/layout, image manipulation/sprites and experience in cross-browser compatibility issues
* JavaScript with a working knowledge of the JQuery library.

In addition any additional knowledge and experience in the following would be a strong advantage:

* ASP.NET 2.0 and/or ASP.NET MVC
* IIS (6.0 minimum, 7.0 preferred)
* A deep understanding of web-based applications and SaaS delivery models
* Ideally experience with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and processes
* Ability to work closely with customers, software testers and business analysts in an Agile software development environment
* Strong written documentation skills
* Rigorous attention to detail
* Ability to bring creativity and new ideas to the job, and to be willing to put in the extra effort to help the team meet deadlines
* Above all, we are looking for you to be a self-starter who delivers results from day one.

What we can offer:

* Market-competitive remuneration
* Work from our great City Centre offices on Cashel Mall
* Relaxed flexible working environment
* Get to be part of a world class team using the latest Cloud-based technology
* Be part of the next great global SaaS success story born right here in Canterbury

If this role describes you and fits in with *your* career ambitions, please send your CV in confidence to Smina Vanlerberghe, Director: smina@memia.com

Note: You have to be able to work in New Zealand to apply for this job.
There's visa information at New Zealand Immigration Service.

Monday, October 12, 2009

CloudCamp Christchurch - Fri October 30th

Cloud Camp Christchurch Unconference

October 12, 2009 - "CanterburyCloud", an emerging idea for a network amongst SaaS/Cloud Computing businesses in Christchurch, today announces the first Cloud Camp Christchurchunconference (agenda free event where attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative and supportive environment) to discuss what such a network could achieve for its participants, the region and the world.

In Christchurch and Canterbury we have a surprising number of players in this field - all doing interesting things with internet technologies but, at least to a certain extent, isolated from the good advice, talent, resources and plain support of their peers.

We believe we can change this, thus the idea of developing CanterburyCloud. So what is CanterburyCloud? It is a network where start-ups can access and leverage the communal wisdom of their peers. It is potentially a co-working space where growing companies can work and bounce ideas off like-minded businesses. It is potentially a marketing platform - a network of businesses that can, to an extent, share key messages about our value proposition, resources and evangelise each other's services within New Zealand and internationally. It will become what we want it to be but ultimately, it has to be unique - shine for its excellence from a healthy dose of agility, smart business and web savvy people.

We would like to explore this opportunity with you and we are therefore inviting you to join an unconference - but beware! It is not going to be a tech event, rather it is going to look at developing this idea of CanterburyCloud further- vision, goals, forming, participants, sponsorship, venues, business models, strengths and weaknesses and the general appetite for working together.

We will be holding this event at 1pm-5pm on Friday 30 October at CDC, 193 Cashel Street, Training Room T1, Level 2, followed by free drinks and nibbles at Memia, 107-109 Cashel Street, Level 1. Please RSVP by 28 October to smina@memia.com

We would like to thank CDC and Telecom for their generous contribution in supporting us with organizing this event.

See also Ben Kepes' blog post at diversity.net.nz for a bit more background.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

NSFW: The Cloud Computing Consultant

This is bang on the nail, laugh out loud funny. (Warning it's NSFW so not for sensitive types).

Presenting Course at CDC 24th Nov: Productivity and Internet Technology

For anyone based here in Canterbury, Smina and myself will be presenting a course on "Productivity and Internet Technology" at CDC next month 24th November. Course synopsis:

"A workshop designed for owners and managers of service based businesses looking to improve productivity and reduce costs through better use of IT.
Participants will be introduced to Enterprise Architecture techniques for small to medium sized businesses, productivity improvement by using better IT, whilst exploring the benefits that Cloud-based IT can provide your business and especially your workforce. You will take part in discussions on the basic approaches to improving productivity: change technology, change processes or change how people work. We will show you how businesses use technology make it a worthwhile investment to their business.

Follow-up coaching with the presenter provides a valuable opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities specific to your business."

For more details and to register, go to the CDC website at:

http://www.cdc.org.nz/main/fast-track-detail/?course=34#

Did you know?

Thanks @Smina who emailed this over, worth taking 5 minutes of your time. Video presentation on the progression of information technology, researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman.

"By 2049 a $1000 computer will have more computational capacity than the whole human race". Get your head around the consequences of *that*!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Amazon Web Services provisioning 50,000 EC2 server instances PER DAY

Picked this up from Reuven Cohen @ Enomaly's blog: The Business of Cloud Computing is booming:

"An analysis by Guy Rosen also sheds some light on the cloud opportunity in which he estimates that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is provisioning 50,000 EC2 server instances per day. A 50K/day run rate would imply a yearly total of over 18 million provisioned instances. "

Read the rest of @ruv's post: this confirms something that we've noticed is that cloud provisioning provides up to 90% cost savings relative to traditional outsourced data centre hosting, PLUS with no vendor lock-in or minimum contract terms. Bring it on.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Memia is hiring: Senior SaaS Test Analyst

We're hiring a number of roles at Memia - first up, Senior SaaS Test Analyst:

Play a key role in the next global SaaS success story from New Zealand


Memia Cloud Consulting is focussed on building and deploying Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and solutions - we are currently developing the next global SaaS success stories from our base in central Christchurch, Canterbury.

We are looking for key people to fill a number of roles on our team, either on a Contract or Permanent basis:

Senior SaaS / Web 2.0 Test Analyst

Are you an experienced software QA analyst with formal Enterprise Application testing knowledge, an understanding of how the best SaaS applications should work, and experience of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) processes?

If so, we would like to hear from you.

You will need:

* Over 3 years of professional experience as a Software Test (QA) Analyst
* A deep understanding of web-based applications and SaaS delivery models
* Ideally experience with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and processes
* Ability to work closely with customers, software developers and business analysts in an Agile software development environment
* Strong written documentation skills
* Rigorous attention to detail
* Ability to bring creativity and new ideas to the job, and to be willing to put in the extra effort to help the team meet deadlines
* Above all, we are looking for you to be a self-starter who delivers results from day one.

What we can offer:

* Market-competitive remuneration
* Work from our great City Centre offices on Cashel Mall
* Relaxed flexible working environment
* Get to be part of a world class team using the latest Cloud-based technology
* Be part of the next great global SaaS success story born right here in Canterbury

If this role describes you and fits in with *your* career ambitions, please send your CV in confidence to Smina Vanlerberghe, Director: smina@memia.com

Note: You have to be able to work in New Zealand to apply for this job.
There's visa information at New Zealand Immigration Service.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Upcoming Cloud Conferences: Auckland, San Jose

End of a long blogging hiatus - Memia has been in vertical lift off over the last couple of months and things only just settling down again. Lots of stuff going on! ;-)

Just a quick shout out for a couple of upcoming conferences I'm going to be attending in the next few months, would be good to catch up with anyone else who's going to be there:

New Zealand Cloud Computing Summit: 5th October, Rendezvous Hotel Auckland NZ.

See: http://www.brightstar.co.nz/nz/cloud-computing-summit.html#


Software Vendors SaaS Migration Conference 2009: 7-8 December, San Jose

See: http://www.cloudfutures.com/usa/

Friday, July 10, 2009

Microsoft Office 2010: The Movie

I like this from Microsoft.



"Watch your margins!" ;-)

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The software business: your risk model, should you need one.

I was just going back over Microsoft's announcement from January when they announced their "cost cutting initiatives" (it was referenced in a friend's "my last day at Microsoft" email), when I noticed at the bottom the bit about "forward looking statements".

These sections are usually pretty bland and generic - however, what is fascinating is that Microsoft have actually broken out all of their downside risks into a list for everyone to see: check out the list below. If you're running a software business and don't have a risk model, here you go. ;-)

challenges to Microsoft’s business model;

intense competition in all of Microsoft’s markets;

Microsoft’s continued ability to protect its intellectual property rights;

claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;

the possibility of unauthorized disclosure of significant portions of Microsoft’s source code;

actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products that could reduce revenue or lead to liability;

government litigation and regulation affecting how Microsoft designs and markets its products;

Microsoft’s ability to attract and retain talented employees;

delays in product development and related product release schedules;

significant business investments that may not gain customer acceptance and produce offsetting increases in revenue;

changes in general economic conditions or the availability of credit that affect the value of our investment portfolio or demand for Microsoft’s products and services;

adverse results in legal disputes;

unanticipated tax liabilities;

quality or supply problems in Microsoft’s consumer hardware or other vertically integrated hardware and software products;

impairment of goodwill or amortizable intangible assets causing a charge to earnings;

exposure to increased economic and regulatory uncertainties from operating a global business;

geopolitical conditions, natural disaster, cyberattack or other catastrophic events disrupting Microsoft’s business;

acquisitions and joint ventures that adversely affect the business;

improper disclosure of personal data could result in liability and harm to Microsoft’s reputation;

outages and disruptions of online services if Microsoft fails to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure;

sales channel disruption, such as the bankruptcy of a major distributor; and

Microsoft’s ability to implement operating cost structures that align with revenue growth.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Ray Ozzie: Cloud lowers margins shocker

Ray Ozzie at Microsoft has gone and said the unsayable: the economics of Cloud Services will yield lower margins than packaged software for Microsoft. Uh, yeah. The company’s gross margin for the quarter ended March 31 was 79% - is that sustainable in a new industry paradigm which is relentlessly driving out efficiencies and economies of scale?

On the other hand, as Google and others have shown, when your technology scales to 1.4 billion users and counting, and supports a significant percentage of global commerce, then margins aren't everything.

Perhaps of most relevance is Microsoft’s key incumbent strength in this space: an estimated 5 million to 7 million developers who write software based on Microsoft technology (mainly .NET these days). MS isn't going away any time soon - however they will need to work out how to monetize Azure differently to the open source / EC2 crowd.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Google Wave - the future of email, collaboration?

Just seen this preview of Google Wave:



Letting the implications sink in but if Google migrate all of their (commercial and consumer) GMail users onto this platform when it launches next year this could become the new paradigm for enterprise(to-enterprise) collaboration pretty quickly: email, IM, documents and media sharing. As Rod Drury comments: the classic Exchange email model is just broken.

Google are going to open-source the APIs - how many new apps could be built upon the top of this and what new business models could that lead to? (Google exec quote: "...this again is a very early release and at Google we have quite a luxury that in the beginning of the life of a product we focus exclusively on technology and making a product successful....the question of monetising we deal with later"). Yeah right.

(Incidentally one of the jumpouts of the demo was the multilingual collaboration on a document - 4 users editing in English Chinese, Hindi(?) and another asian character set all at the same time! - not sure if this is in Google Docs already, but mindblowing compared to just a few years ago)

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Cloud Services in the Enterprise - slides from Canterbury Software Cluster meeting 5 May 2009

I enjoyed giving a talk on "Cloud Services in the Enterprise - Making Sense of XaaS" to Canterbury Software Cluster on Tuesday. Lots of great questions at the end and conversations afterwards - please feel free to carry on the conversation by email or here on the blog.

The slides are here for reference:

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Google App Engine supports Java!

In case you missed it Google App Engine now supports Java. See:

http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2009/04/seriously-this-time-new-language-on-app.html

That's likely to drive adoption considerably deeper than support for Python, then.

PS Also in case you missed it see the earlier Google App Engine blog article from April Fools' Day: Google App Engine Supports Fortran. Funny.

Ruby over ABAP - is this SAP's cloud PaaS play?

Something caught my eye the other day which might be nothing, but might be the first inkling of another global PaaS play. This great interview on InfoQ with Juergen Shmerder on Blue Ruby, SAP's implementation of a Ruby VM over their proprietary ABAP stack.

So this is SAP's strategy to drive much broader developer adoption of the ABAP technology in which much of SAP's ERP products are written. (Let's face it they're never going to do it with ABAP by itself! ;-) ) To quote Vishal Sikka, SAP CTO:

"The language Ruby, for example, is thought to have reached a million programmers faster than any other language ever."

Now Blue Ruby itself is still very much still in SAP's laboratory, but when you combine this with SAP's recent acquisition of cloud application platform Coghead's IP assets, and (maybe I'm reading too much into this) you start to see another PaaS play emerging. In the same way that SalesForce have leveraged their leadership position in the CRM space to drive adoption of Force.com and the Apex language, so SAP might play in the ERP space with Ruby:





























GoogleSalesForceMicrosoftBungee ConnectHerokuSAP?
PlatformGoogle App EngineForce.comAzureBungee ConnectHeroku (Rails over Amazon EC2)SAP Cloud Platform?
LanguageJava and PythonApexC#, VB, Python, RubyBungee Logic (proprietary)RubyABAP and Ruby

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Cloud Services Stack - "Above the line"

Well it's been a while since my last post: so happy new year, then. ;-)

(I've been very busy! Among other things adding lots of features to the Memia Cloud Services portfolio management toolset which is currently in development *and* doing a load of business planning around the forthcoming SaaS offering - watch this space...)

Meanwhile, I've recently joined the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) and while browsing through the forum posts I came across one from Kent Langley of nScaled : "Cloud Computing Stack Update". In this post Kent updates his ontology of the Cloud Stack - copied below. This picture gives a nice "ground up" taxonomy view of the Cloud Stack, from "public utilities" (=power companies) upwards.
However, I'm often struck by the subconsious manifestations of the two primary mindsets at work within the "Cloud" space. Generally people seem to either come from an infrastructure background or a software background, but not both. So while this diagram gives plenty of detail describing everything up to and including "operating system" (ie what I would call "Cloud Computing" but not "Cloud Services"), it doesn't place the same emphasis on the variety within the SaaS space. That is, it's an infrastructure-centric view.

Nothing wrong with that, but as someone working in the Cloud space with a primarily *software* hat on, here's an (equally skewed!) ontology which elaborates a more software-centric view of the Cloud - effectively "above the line". Obviously its horses for courses, but in my opinion if we're trying to define the whole Cloud stack from top to bottom then we need to be more granular when describing the common services living within and across the PaaS/SaaS level. (Feedback invited on the contents of the light blue boxes - this is a first cut and I intend to iterate.)