Business Two Zero

Now that Ray Ozzie is Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, his views on Software as a Service are important. Over at Wharton Business School’s Knowledge@Wharton, there is a long interview that will give you a little more insight. When asked about SaaS he was quick to talk in terms of first generation and second generation deployments, and highlighted that although Salesforce talk exclusively about their service through the browser, even they have an off-line edition. He went on:

“People need to work in a mobile manner. It might be sales force automation or some other aspect of CRM [customer relationship management]. [People] might use Outlook when they’re driving around; they might want to open up their laptop and type something in. They might use a mobile device and have spotty coverage and want to be able to use [the application] offline.

What we as an industry need to deliver are seamless experiences — however those things are accomplished — to do the appropriate thing in the browser and the appropriate thing on a laptop or on a device to solve that problem.

So the way I view it is, first generation “software as a service” really just meant browser. Second generation means weave together hardware, software and services to accomplish a specific solution.”

Over on PodTech, there is an interesting approach to explaining Web 2.0 and SaaS to the uninitiated - forget the definitions, show it in practice. Jonathan Sposato, the CEO of Picknik.com, demonstrates photo-editing software that is available as Software as a Service.

Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places, but I was a little disappointed in the blogging and news output from SaaScon. For example all of the coverage I’ve seen of RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte’s keynote address seems to simply regurgitate the press release. I’ll be talking to Phil Wainewright on his return back to the UK to get a proper feel for how the conference went.

Phil was impressed by the way Dave Duffield, CEO of Workday, “wowed” the audience with his endorsement of the SaaS model. Dave was one of the founders of PeopleSoft. Having seen Salesforce and RightNow make the model work for CRM, why not make it work for ERP? He is targeting companies with 1000-5000 employees in service industries, but has already signed up customers bigger than that. In answer to a question from the floor, Duffield said:

“Within eighteen months we’ll be easily on [feature] parity with SAP in our target industries.”

I’m slightly confused by that, having read Workday’s co-founder and president Aneel Bhusri over on InfoWorld. There he was asked whether they would be offering more functionality that the likes of Oracle and SAP, and he said:

“No, less. Those companies built more functionality that customers don’t use.”

Either way, even though manufacturing and supply chain isn’t in their current roadmap, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

And finally, this week’s Click programme on BBC News24 had a pretty good piece on web 2.0, and the move away from desktop software towards services in “the cloud”. Their focus was on consumer and office products, mentioning the likes of Flickr, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Tumblr, Clickmarks, Remember The Milk and SiteKreator. They covered the issues for the likes of Microsoft and Adobe, with Nick Thompson, senior associate editor of Wired Magazine, saying:

“Microsoft and Adobe are in a bind. They make tons of money from the software they sell in shrink-wrapped boxes. But they also know that the future is online software. So what do they do?

I think they’re doing two things. I think they are genuinely trying to figure out how to make this work, because they know it’s going to be a big part of their companies in 10 years.

But they’re also trying to keep their current customers happy, and they’re trying not to make it look like you should switch immediately because maybe you should buy that one last Office upgrade.”

Another choice quote was from Mark Chackerian of Picturedots:

“I’m an internet professional, for me my browser is like a Swiss Army Knife; I use it for a lot of things and in a much greater capacity than most people. “

It was a good piece, although the managed the whole thing avoiding mention of the terms SaaS, On-Demand or Webware. Quoting Phil again:

“SaaS, webtop, webware, Web 2.0, web-what-ever — they’re all talking about the same thing: a new way of looking at software, and what the software industry is going to do about it.”