The following is the introduction to a new 16-page report created by Phil Wainewright, “Redefining Software Platforms - How PaaS changes the game for ISVs”. The Table of Contents, information about the report and the author and a link to the report as .PDF can be found at the bottom of this blog post. Preparation of this report for publication was funded by Intuit, Inc.
Introduction: A New Kind of Platform
The rise of software as a service over the past decade has opened up new opportunities for independent software vendors to develop new applications hosted and delivered via the Web. But until recently, any ISV creating a SaaS offering has had to build its own hosting and service delivery infrastructure. That has all changed in the past two years with the rise of platform-as-a-service. PaaS is the online equivalent of conventional computing platforms, providing a ready-made infrastructure on which an ISV can rapidly build and deliver a SaaS application.
While many ISVs are understandably wary of binding their fate to that of an emerging platform provider, those who have stepped forward to become early adopters of PaaS have experienced dramatic reductions in development costs and timescales. By lowering barriers to entry and foreshortening time-to-market, PaaS supercharges SaaS, accelerating the pace of innovation and intensifying competition.
The advent of PaaS will change the game for ISVs – not only those who choose to introduce SaaS offerings, but also those who remain wedded to conventionally licensed, customer-operated software products. PaaS changes the competitive landscape across a swathe of parameters:
- Dramatically faster innovation cycles. PaaS implements
the iterative, continuous improvement upgrade model of
SaaS, allowing developers to monitor and respond to
customer usage and feedback, and rapidly incorporate the
latest functionality into their own applications. - Hugely lowered price points. The shared, pay-as-you-go,
elastic infrastructure of PaaS slashes developers’ costs
across multiple dimensions, resulting in massively reduced
development and operations costs. - Multiplicity of players from lowered barriers to entry.
The low costs to get started on a PaaS provider’s
infrastructure attract huge numbers of market entrants who
would not be able to fund their own infrastructure,
significantly increasing innovation and competition. - New business models, propositions, partner channels
and routes to market. The ‘as-a-service’ business model
opens up new ways of offering products and bringing them
to market, many of them highly disruptive to established
models.
To remain in control of their own destiny, it is imperative that ISVs understand and evaluate what PaaS can offer them. Key to that understanding is to recognize that PaaS is more than just another platform. It’s a new kind of platform. The dynamics of PaaS are different than conventional software platforms. Developers should beware of assessing PaaS alternatives on criteria that are no longer valid when applied to PaaS.
This report maps the landscape and introduces a new framework for evaluating PaaS providers.
Preparation of this report for publication was funded by Intuit, Inc.
Table of Contents:
A new kind of platform........................................................… 3
Changing ISV business models.............................................…. 4
New economics.................................................................… 4
New go-to-market ..........................................................….. 5
New customer relationships ..............................................….. 6
Dynamics of PaaS................................................................ 8
Distinctive features of PaaS as a platform................................ 8
Multi-tenancy..................................................................... 9
Web community and APIs...................................................... 9
Continuous innovation.......................................................... 9
Meta-customization............................................................. 9
Service delivery infrastructure ...............................................10
PaaS portability ..................................................................10
Interplay with other assets ...................................................11
‘Metaplatform’ assets ...........................................................11
Legacy assets ....................................................................11
Ecosystem partner strategies ................................................11
Platform plays in the PaaS era .............................................…12
Ingredients of classic ISV platforms ........................................12
How PaaS redefines software platforms ...................................13
Considerations for ISVs selecting PaaS ....................................15
Seizing the opportunity ....................................................... 16
Download the report (.PDF):
About the Report
Published by Procullux Media Limited for general information, this
document presents independent research and analysis compiled by
Procullux Ventures in good faith from best available sources.
Preparation of this report for publication was funded by Intuit, Inc.
About the Author
Phil Wainewright is one of the world's foremost authorities on emerging trends in business automation. He is a prolific writer with a ZDNet blog on Software as a Service, an eBizQ blog on The Connected Web, and a series of influential analyst reports to his name. He serves as CEO of Procullux Ventures, a London-based strategic consultancy working with leading business automation vendors and their customers.
While I am a big believer in PaaS the author is mistaken if he believes that today's SaaS applications improve the relationship between customers and their vendors by making the vendor more responsive to the customers individual needs. Multi-tenancy SaaS, where Multi-tenancy is done at the application level, not the PaaS level, leads vendors to push for as generic a solution as possible. As any business strategists will tell you that if the business process you are automating has strategic significance, simply doing it the same way as all of your competitors will never allow strategic differentiation between companies. This is the reason that companies with high differentiated business models do not use generic software except for processes that they could simply outsource anyway because they have no strategic significance. SaaS 2.0 will put a change to this by moving Multi-tenancy to the PaaS level and allow companies to run highly customized packaged software or even fully custom applications with the same cost advantages of today's SaaS 1.0 apps.
Posted by: Jeff Tognoni | April 25, 2010 at 07:52 AM