Tag: Platform-as-a-Service
Salesforce Reshuffles SaaS, PaaS and APIs in the Internet of Things and AI
14th October
It can be a full-time job trying to keep up with Salesforce’s latest cloud offerings and messaging. However, it is always worth the effort, because the company’s pronouncements are often early bellwethers of the future direction of the software industry.
This has become particularly true with respect to the company’s evolving efforts to penetrate and gain a prominent position in the artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) markets. Salesforce’s most recent moves, in anticipation of its annual Dreamforce conference, also could be a key indicator of the rapidly changing competitive landscape.
Salesforce has been in the vanguard of promoting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and, more broadly, the value of the cloud. As it has gained success with its widening array of SaaS/cloud offerings, it also has borrowed a strategy from the traditional software industry playbook: adding a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) development layer … Read More »
Reinventing Online Marketplaces in the Cloud – A Guest Commentary in E-Commerce Times
5th May
One of the cornerstones of a successful software business has been to build as big a partner ecosystem as possible. In the world of the cloud, showcasing the partner ecosystem in an online marketplace also has become an imperative.
Salesforce.com has been in the vanguard of this trend. Since its inception in 2005, the AppExchange has grown to include more than 3,000 partner solutions that augment Salesforce’s growing portfolio of cloud services. AppExchange has strengthened significantly Salesforce’s position in the marketplace by cataloging the company’s rapidly expanding ecosystem of independent software vendor and consulting partners.
However, the tremendous success of the AppExchange has made it a bit overwhelming for customers to find and easily implement the right third-party solutions to best meet their needs.
Click here to read THINKstrategies’ latest commentary in E-Commerce Times about how Salesforce’s new AppExchange Partner Program is seeking … Read More »
SAP Hybris CRM Gets a Jolt From SAP HANA Cloud – Guest Commentary on SearchCRM
17th November
As the Cloud continues to gather steam as the go-to model for many companies, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings are also gaining credence.
PaaS allows companies greater flexibility once they are in the cloud. PaaS enables customers to develop new applications and services on their existing portfolios of technology to enable new capabilities. With PaaS, companies can develop new mobile applications quickly, automate processes or streamline operations.
For software companies like SAP, PaaS can also unlock new doorways of modernization as well. At the SAP TechEd conference in Barcelona, the company repositioned some core products to reflect its PaaS-oriented strategy. Click here to read THINKstrategies’ perspectives about SAP’s latest PaaS offerings and strategies in SearchCRM.
Third Annual Cloud Channel Summit to Focus on New SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, Big Data & SMB Partner Opportunities
14th August
The agenda for this year’s Cloud Channel Summit on Monday, November 4 has been designed to focus on the rapidly evolving Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Big Data and Small-/Mid-Size Business (SMB) partner opportunities in the Cloud. Register now and save $100 on the conference registration fee!
The third annual Summit will once again take place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, and this year will include a special “Speed Networking” session to give attendees additional time to meet others interested in establishing new partnerships to expand their Cloud ecosystems.
Click here to see the full Summit agenda, and here to see the speakers who have already committed to participate in this year’s event.
CallidusCloud, Corent Technologies, CorSource Technology Group, Oracle, Salesforce.com and SoftServe are returning as sponsors supporting this year’s peer-to-peer, executive networking forum. Click here to learn more about the sponsors, and here to see the Summit partners.
Click here if you haven’t attended a … Read More »
IT’s Time for PaaS is Here
18th June
It was about ten years ago when a new generation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) alternatives started to gain acceptance and adoption among organizations of all sizes. And, it has only been about five years since Amazon Web Services captured the attention of the marketplace with its Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 offerings which opened the door to a vast array of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings. Now, the third piece of the Cloud Computing puzzle is beginning to win over organizations seeking to build their own apps – Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
While SaaS and IaaS solutions have experienced exponential growth and are forecast to continue to displace traditional, on-premise software and systems, PaaS has remained a relatively dormant segment of the Cloud marketplace. The lack of adoption of the various PaaS alternatives which have emerged over the past few years has been understandable. Organizations could … Read More »
Intuit Takes Different Data Integration Tact in the Cloud
8th June
One of the most vexing challenges facing today’s IT and business decision-makers is how to integrate critical corporate data across a widening array of on-premise and on-demand systems and applications.
Many believe that the age-old data integration issues of the past have only been compounded by today’s rapidly expanding assortment of Cloud-based solutions which raise the expectation of easy end-user access from anywhere at any time.
While there are a growing number of application program interfaces (APIs), Web-based connectors and Cloud-oriented systems integrators that are reducing the difficulty of overcoming this integration issue, it still represents an important impediment that many organizations are reluctant to face.
Intuit announced a new program yesterday aimed at addressing the data integration issue. The Intuit Anywhere program promises to give software developers a new method of extracting QuickBooks data directly into their third-party applications, including web and mobile.
This new data export and integration capability … Read More »
Accept Corporation Wins Best of SaaS Showplace Award
18th October
THINKstrategies announced today that Accept Corporation has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.
The BoSS Awards is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.
Accept Corporation’s SaaS-based Accept 360 Innovation Management solution empowers product teams to more quickly develop compelling products that generate greater revenues, because they’re better aligned with the market and company strategy.
Click here to read more about the measurable business benefits which earned Accept Corporation the latest BoSS Award.
Click here to learn more about the BoSS Award program or to apply for an Award.
Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies … Read More »
Passing Clouds
2nd May
My past fews weeks have been consumed with weekly visits to the Bay Area to speak at SaaScon, moderate tracks at Under the Radar and co-host the AlwaysOn OnDemand conference, as well as numerous on-site client meetings. In between, I also had the privilege of presenting a kickoff keynote presentation at a VIP dinner for the State of the Cloud conference in Boston.
My hectic travel schedule has given me little time to comment on a variety of industry announcements which have occurred during this period. So, here’s my ‘lightening round’ assessment of some of the more significant events worth noting,
Cloud Conference Observations
SaaScon: When was the last time you heard CIOs talk about being heroes in their organizations? Well, the CIOs who spoke at SaaScon repeatedly described how the SaaS solutions which they’re implementing in their organizations are generating an overwhelmingly positive response from their end-users and corporate executives. … Read More »
New Force.com Visual Process Manager Illustrates Evolution of SaaS and the Cloud
3rd February
One of the knocks against Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the broader cloud computing movement is that these web-based, on-demand services can’t be customized to cater to the complex requirements of specific enterprises.
While SaaS solutions have increasingly included a growing array of user configuration capabilities to respond to the individual needs of various organizations, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions have emerged over the past couple of years to permit end-users and third-party developers to build their own apps to meet their unique requirements.
The latest indication of the escalating power of these PaaS tools is today’s announcement unveiling Salesforce.com’s new Force.com Visual Process Manager. This new feature will allow users to design and build business process-oriented applications quickly so they can automate them across corporate departments.
Although the new Force.com Visual Process Manager won’t be generally available until later this year, it is the latest sign that cloud computing alternatives … Read More »
Marketing Multi-Tenancy
11th April
Phil Wainwright has posted a terrific blog entry regarding the ‘green crystals’ that power Salesforce.com’s multi-tenant platform.
The concept of multi-tenancy has been a cornerstone of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement and a key element of the rapidly evolving cloud computing environment as well.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term ‘multi-tenancy’, it is borrowed from the housing market and aims to compare today’s leading SaaS/cloud computing vendors to condominium owners who can obtain more luxurious living quarters without the hassles of owning a single-family home by sharing a common infrastructure and operational services.
While this arrangement offers plenty of conveniences, it also requires some sacrifices when it comes to how far you can customize your particular unit, or version of software in the case of SaaS.
While the value proposition of multi-tenancy is easy to understand, it is hard to get a lot of details … Read More »
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