Software as a Service (SaaS), open source and SOA (service-oriented architecture) continue to be hot topics, with everyone clamoring for a slice of the pie, according to Chris Perrine, vice president for business development at Springboard Research.
''Pure-play SaaS such as Salesforce.com and NetSuite are joined by SAP and Oracle who are now dipping their toes into the water now that they have woken up to the phenomenal growth of Salesforce. The big guys, the IBMs and HPs, are coming in from an enablement point of view to help the local ISVs deliver SaaS,'' he said.
The magic of SaaS is that it breaks down the traditional IT culture. Providers no longer have to have people in every country to service clients and the clients do not need to have an IT department.
Perrine said that Springboard itself was running Salesforce.com long before it had a presence in Singapore.
SaaS is also shaking up the channel as today even an SMB (small and midsize business) can go direct to a U.S.-based SaaS vendor for a service, bypassing the channel and local systems integrators.
Another interesting trend is that telcos are moving in on the SaaS area too. One healthcare client is currently looking at partnering with a telco to provide healthcare SaaS. However, the big challenge for telcos that are looking at moving beyond data centers and into the SaaS is that typically they are large and slow companies and slow to react.
In Australia, data center WebCentral has evolved into a one-stop shop for SMBs offering CRM, accounting and Web site analytics.
Perrine said that many companies have concerns around security, but he said that most professional SaaS providers have proved that their data center is secure.
The other big trend is open source. ''Linux has done great, but it will take much longer for open source to get into other places. Learning Management Systems is a good example. Moodle. It's free, it's open source, it's not bad. But the problem is that it doesn't have the momentum behind it as Linux does. It works well, but to put it in place, you need IT men,'' he said.
The problem is that unlike the United States, the Asian market is simply not big enough for the support infrastructure to come up around it, he suggested.
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I'm not sure how informed Chris Perrine is about "to put it in place, you need IT men" to run Moodle as an LMS. Google "the top 10 Moodle Myths" and you'll find that what he's stated is one of them... and does having the world's largest distance learning University adopt this particular LMS not count as having enough momentum? If not, what would it take then...?
Posted by Ian Usher on Thursday, May 03 2007 12:29 AM