“Platform as a Service” by SalesForce
A not-so-interesting, but worth watching once, buzz marketing video for SalesForce’s AppExchange platform & Force framework. You could basically leave content as it is and replace SalesForce - AppExchange - Force by: Microsoft + CRM 4.0 ‘Titan’ + .NET; Facebook + Facebook API; Twitter + Twitter API; Google + GWT; Adobe + Flash + Flex; etc. I like the overall approach but I think the video lacks specific content.
What I found rather innovative here is SalesForce’s notion of “Platform as a Service”, that is getting close to the concept of “Software + Service” (thorough post to come sooner or later) introduced by Microsoft. It seems market players converge on the idea of interaction of ’solid’ platforms developed and marketed by software market leaders + a number of customized services run by an ecosystem of independent software vendors & software developer communities. In other words, Platform as a Service = Software + Service.
Nice infomercial, Jeremy.
I look forward to reading your post on s+s, because I think I see where Microsoft is going with it, but I don’t necessarily see it as an improvement over SaaS, at least not for MSFT.
It seems to me that S+S is designed to give control back to (MS-based) software, while SaaS could easily create software that runs their services on whatever platform they chose. Where S+S clearly has an advantage though is for offline use (I wonder how long that will last) and on closed platforms, like the iPhone (whose current strategy I also have doubts about).
In any case, if I’m reading this right, an interesting battle ahead.
Comment by Vincent van Wylick — October 11, 2007 @ 9:26 am
Hi Jeremy,
Yeah I would really like to see what S+S actually means at M$. Having a post from an insider will be very interesting
I really doubt Salesforce has the same approach as M$. Salesforce is more providing a whole IT architecture + some basic UI to get it configured… but I really doubt a true end-user will get used to their poor & light application.
I guess M$ will continue to provide high quality apps (it is definitely their know-how) but making extensive use of online services hosted on M$ servers.
I was at Adobe MAX last week and Salesforce presented their “Flex toolkit”, kind of framework to consume their services in a Flex application. That’s their approach to richer UIs.
Maybe someday they will provide rich software around their platform, but now they rely on their customers to make their own.
Mathieu
comment se passe ton stage ? tu restes à M$ ?
- remember me ?
Moi je reste à BO euh SAP (merci pour ton article btw)
Comment by Maz — October 11, 2007 @ 10:56 am
Hey Vince,
I understand your point but S+S is no architecture designed by Microsoft but a mere concept aimed at describing what is currently happening in the software industry. True though that the concept was born @ Microsoft.
Hey Mathieu,
Agree with you completely. Interesting that BO & Adobe cooperate a lot on Flex & Apollo. User experience is key to software adoption, especially in SaaS where exit barriers are low. Why don’t you guys meet our people from the Silverlight team? Let me know, I’m sure we could do great things together.
Are you Mathieu Lemaire? Bien sûr que je me souviens de toi. Yes, embauché il y a 2 mois, j’y suis j’y reste. Ton opinion sur mon précédent article sur le rachat de BO par SAP m’intéresserait au plus haut point
@+, on se raconte ce qu’on fait très vite j’espère.
Comment by Jeremy Fain — October 11, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
[...] (Trouvé chez Jérémy) [...]
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