Suresh Sambandam

This is the first part of the multi-part series on "What is PaaS all about?" Let’s start by looking at the “Platform” story prior to Cloud. Enterprise IT did a lot of heavy lifting. They handcrafted the platform by combining various products such as App Servers, Web Servers, Databases, Middleware, Integration Servers, Portal Servers, and Workflow Engines. Not only did Enterprises IT create a unique combination for them, they also ended up redundantly deploying it for various projects within the enterprise. There was no common or central runtime platform, although they always intended to create one. In most cases, it was an approach or a blueprint. A runtime platform was constructed every time. as per the blueprint. for every project. Looking back it sounds draconian but that’s what everyone did happily and some of them continue to it  today – not realizing that’s exa... (more)

Clearing the Confusion Around "Private Cloud"

I was on a LinkedIn thread titled ‘How cloud computing is different from SaaS‘ where Rick Chapman who runs SoftLetter and SaaS University went on beating on this question ‘What is a private cloud’? It is definitely worth it given the tremendous amount of confusion in the term ‘Cloud’ in general and ‘Private Cloud’ in particular. The motivation for this post is Rick and supported by a tweet I read around the same time from ‘Carl Brooks‘ who is a technology writer on Cloud at TechTarget. Let me give it a shot. First, Cloud is about leveraging economies of scale whether it is public o... (more)

Why Most Visual Development / 4GL Tools Fail? – Part 1

There are quite a few visual development tools that have failed in the past. When I say past, I meant the pre-cloud era. The commercially successful ones are Visual Basic, PowerBuilder (just googled and found out that PowerBuilder still exists (and has its own Journal) and Oracle Forms 4.5. Although, popularity and merits of the language need not co-relate.  :-) ! And, there are quite few that have come up in the current cloud paradigm. Few Examples : Coghead (already in dead pool), VisualForce of Force.com, WaveMaker, Zoho Creator. My POV is on the approach taken to  solve the ... (more)

India Cloud and SaaS Opportunity

Cloud the way forward in India - the 4th wave of the IT Industry 1. First, this is a fantastic effort from Zinnov for bringing an India perspective for ‘Cloud'. Full Credits to Pari Natarajan, Chandramouli, Anand Tatambhotla and the team behind this effort. 2. Second, we weren't even aware that OrangeScape was part of this report. I remember talking to these folks 9 months ago or something, and I do run into them in panel discussions in cloud conferences but never knew that we are going to be featured. Looks like they have been tracking OrangeScape and thanks a ton for the refere... (more)

Why Old ERP Wine Can't Be Bottled in SaaS

There is a fundamental shift that is happening to ‘enterprise apps' in the SaaS world when compared to the On-premise ERP world. I tried to google for ERP vs SaaS and found articles like these: SaaS vs Traditional ERP : 5 Key Differentiators(http://it.toolbox.com) A Tale of Two Software Worlds: Old ERP vs. SaaS(http://www.zdnet.com) Impact of SaaS on the enterprise ERP market(http://www.infoworld.com) While, there is nothing wrong with these articles - I wasn't able to find one that addressed what I feel is a much more fundamental shift in the way the SaaS applications are / will ... (more)