Amazonの新しい、EC2 High-CPU サービス

Amazon社が自社の推進しているEC2と呼ばれるPaaSサービスにHigh−CPU Serviceと呼ばれるCPU処理の能力の高いサービスを提供する事を発表した。

Amazon Web Services provides resizable compute capacity

AWS blog posts an entry they have added the capability to two new "high-cpu" instance types.

Amazon EC2 users now have access to a pair of new "High-CPU" instance types. The new instance types have proportionally more CPU power than memory, and are suitable for CPU-intensive applications. Here's what's now available:

The High-CPU Medium Instance is billed at $0.20 (20 cents) per hour. It features 1.7 GB of memory, 5 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units Each), and 350 GB of instance storage, all on a 32-bit platform.

The High-CPU Extra Large Instance is billed at $0.80 (80 cents) per hour. It features 7 GB of memory, 20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each), and 1,690 GB of instance storage, all on a 64-bit platform.

Behind the scenes amazon uses Citrix Xen for virtualization.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2", is a commercial web service which allows paying customers to rent computers to run computer applications on. EC2 allows scalable deployment of applications by providing a web services interface through which customers can request an arbitrary number of Virtual Machines, i.e. server instances, on which they can load any software of their choice. Current users are able to create, launch, and terminate server instances on demand, hence the term "elastic". The Amazon implementation allows server instances to be created in zones that are insulated from correlated failures.^[1]. EC2 is one of several Web Services provided by Amazon.com under the blanket term Amazon Web Services (AWS).

EC2 uses Xen Virtualization. Each virtual machine, called an instance, is a virtual private server and can be one of three sizes; small, large or extra large. Instances are sized based on EC2 Compute Units which is the equivalent CPU capacity of physical hardware.

1 EC2 Compute Unit equals 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor. The three available Instance sizes are sized as follows:

Small Instance

The small instance (default) is the "equivalent of a system with 1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform " [1]

Large Instance

The large instance is the "equivalent of a system with 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform"

Extra Large Instance

The extra large instance is the "equivalent of a system with 15 GB of memory, 8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform."

Wouldn't it be great if enterprise IT was run this way. Amazon is figuring out how to sell compute better than anyone else, and that is their business as a retailer.

Googleの開発投資の行き先

Googleが今後開発リソースの投資を傾ける分野として次の３つを挙げている。  いづれもWebを唯一の基盤としたソフトウェアソリューションベンダーとしてのスタンスが明確に伺える。

 

１）  クラウド環境をよるアクセスしやすいものとする
Google App Engineを利用してより広いユーザ層に開発を促し、さらに自社のデータセンターを開放してスケーラビリティの高いアプリケーション開発を可能にするとの事。

２） モバイル環境の充実化
自社の推進しているAndroidプラットホームの浸透によって、オープンで自由度の高いアプリケーションをモバイルの世界で展開する。

３）  クライアントの強化

Gears、HTML5やJavascriptの強化によってクライアントがより高度なアプリケーションをブラウザーをベースに使えるようにする。

Google outlines Web development investments in three areas

Web 'is the only platform we've known,' says Google's chief of engineering

 

May 29, 2008 (CIO) To encourage the creation of more Web-based applications during the next several years, Google Inc. will invest in three key areas for developers, including opening up its servers to host their applications, encouraging pervasive connectivity to the Web, and making the browser more powerful, said Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering, who gave the opening keynote speech at this year's Google Developer Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

"Google was born in the era of the Web," Gundotra said. "It's the only platform we've known. It was a platform that was formed by consensus. It was all of us collectively that agreed to a few standards. We feel a debt of gratitude toward that community."

Gundotra conceded that Web developers working atop Google-provided development tools and servers would lead to remunerative opportunities for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. "As the Web gets bigger and enables better Web apps, it attracts more users. For us, more users means more Google searches, which leads to more revenue. But the money we make will get dumped back into the platform," he said.

Here's a summary of Google's investment plans (though they never specified dollar amounts):

1. Making the Cloud More Accessible

Google will open up the Google data centers so that developers can more easily scale their applications. This means that developers will still create their app locally on their machines and test it, but once it's ready, they can deploy it to millions of users, according to Gundotra.

This will be done using the Google App Engine. Kevin Gibbs, tech lead for the Google App Engine, told the audience that the product would be free for up to 5 million page views a month. After that, a price plan will be worked out involving metrics such as page views, storage and CPUs.

2. Keeping Connectivity Pervasive

Google believes the mobile revolution will improve connectivity, and it's betting on its Android platform to be the central place for development on top of the mobile Web. Gundotra said the various mobile platforms (such as Windows Mobile, Apple's SDK and Research In Motion's BlackBerry platform) are "too fragmented." In his view, an open source, mobile stack can centralize mobile development, which Google believes will be embodied by Android.

During the presentation, Steve Horowitz, Android's engineering director, displayed the Android platform's capabilities on a touch-screen phone. These included some of Google's basic apps, such as Gmail and calendaring, and a more complex Google Maps feature called street view, which allows users to see pictures of streets in major cities.

3. Make the Client (Browser) More Powerful

Google believes its Gears plug-in (which allows people to take Web apps offline and utilize the power of their desktop) and HTML 5 represent the future of the Web browser. By using these tools to extend the capabilities of JavaScript, Gundotra said, Web apps can become more powerful and more rich.

eBayのデータセンターのアーキテクチャ

eBayのRandy Shoup氏がeBayのサーバアーキテクチャについて説明したプレゼンテーションが公開されている。  ２．１２億人のユーザ、２ペタバイトのデータ、１億以上の商品を扱うために一日に50億個のAPIコールを受けるシステムにとって、Scalabilityは深刻な用件となる。  また、新規機能を従来のシステムを止める事無くエンハンスを継続的に行う事も重要な課題となる。 

 

リンクはここ

http://www.addsimplicity.com/downloads/eBaySDForum2006-11-29.pdf

Amazon Web Servicesの急成長

Amazonのブログによると、AmazonのWeb Servicesが急成長をとげており、従来のAmazonのリテールのサイトのトラフィックを超えている事が発表された。 

Web Servicesはクラウドコンピューティングの走りで、最近ではPersistent Data（停電などの障害時にメモリが消えないようにする施策）など、他のクラウドコンピューティングサービスでは提供されていない新規機能等も備えており、業界でのインパクトも強い。 

データセンターの新しい事業として注目されると思われる。

 

Amazon Data Centers, A New Web Service Force?

On Amazon.com web services blog, there is a graph of bandwidth consumed by AWS vs. Amazon's web sites.

Lots of Bits

In January of 2008 we announced that the Amazon Web Services now consume more bandwidth than do the entire global network of Amazon.com retail sites.

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has been showing a chart of the relative bandwidth usage and I just received permission to post it here:

 

Amazon's Web Services growth has created a new force in online services. And Amazon's secret to its success may be its customer service focus.  Amazon is like a Nordstrom style retailer in that the customer is right.  How else can you explain amazon's rapid growth vs. the competition.

世界でもっとも成長している企業はSaaSをフルに採用

２００６年から２００７年に売り上げの増加率がもっとも大きい企業のリストを作成したCIOZone.com誌によると、多くの企業がSaaSの技術を採用している事が判明。  従来のライセンス販売型のビジネスモデルからSaaS型の月額支払い型のモデルに移行している事が有効な事業判断に結びついている事が証明されている形となり、より広いユーザ層にアピールする事と、導入労力を提言できた事が大きく鍵になっている、と想像する。

 

SaaS is driving the world's 60 fastest-growing software companies, study finds

Posted by Matt Asay

Here is the first third of CIOZone.com's list of the top 60 fastest-growing, public software companies with revenue of at least $150 million.

(Credit: CIOZone.com)

CIOZone.com has ranked the top-60 fastest-growing (public) software companies of at least $150 million in revenue, with VMware leading the pack and Red Hat claiming 12th place with a 33.6 percent growth rate. Not bad for a company that gives away its software for free.

But then, perhaps it's not surprising since Google, ranked second on the list, largely does the same.

What's most impressive in the list, however, is the growth rate being sustained by Oracle and Microsoft, because they're growing from a much larger base. It's fantastic that Red Hat is growing at 33 percent on a ~$500 million base. But Microsoft is growing by 25.7 percent on a $57 billion base, and Oracle is rising 24.9 percent on a $20 billion base.

That's amazing.

For smaller companies (more than $50 million in sales and less than $150 million), Omniture (Utah-based - hurray!) leads the pack with a 79.5 percent growth rate on a $143 million base. Not too shabby.

While the list is predominately comprised of proprietary-software companies, CIOZone points out that these vendors are succeeding precisely because they, too, are changing the game from a proprietary license model to a subscription model:

Software that increases the efficiency of corporate data centers, or that runs as an Internet-delivered service, is on a roll. Most of the fastest-growing software companies are doing one or the other....

While it was a good year for many software vendors, it was particularly good for companies that have discarded the older paradigm of install-and-maintain and are making their products available as online subscriptions.

This bodes well for open-source companies, for two reasons. One, many SaaS companies depend on open source (and will pay for it) to run their businesses.especially as an increasing number operate with a dual-mode model wherein they make their software available as an open-source download, with a pay-for-SaaS model to complement that. Kaltura, Loopfuse, and others are adopting this model, and I think it promises to be a highly profitable model for those that can pull it off.

MicKinseyのSaaS関連レポート （Open Sourceの重要性）

McKinsey & CompanyがSaaS市場に関するレポートを発行し、その内容を簡潔にまとめたブログ記事を紹介。  市場は今後５年間で ＄３７B の規模に達すると予測しており、ISVとしてはSaaSに移行することがどれだけ死活問題であるか、を説いている。  

また、PaaS市場についても言及しており、オープンプラットホームがこれから重要になっていくる、と予測しています。 

 

Why Open Source Will Win The SaaS Fight

McKinsey & Company published a report predicting the market size for Software as a Service (SaaS) will exceed $37B market over the next 5 years. In particular, the report described the need for Independent Software Vendors to SaaS-enable their products using special-purpose SaaS development tools. Matt Asay also wrote recently that the growth of the top 60 software companies is driven by SaaS.

McKinsey claims that traditional J2EE and .NET platforms are poorly suited to building SaaS applications. According to McKinsey, this opens up a $3B market for Platform as a Service (PaaS) products from new entrants like WaveMaker, Coghead and SalesForce. From the article:

Although SaaS development platforms like SalesForce and Coghead have gotten a lot of attention, this marekt has so far been remarkably closed and proprietary. The Platform as a Service leader, SalesForce, has both a draconian hosting policy (host your apps and data anywhere, as long as it's with us!) but also a proprietary language (who needs Java when you've got Apex!?).

Moving forward, the same trends driving open source adoption everywhere else in the industry will ultimately drive SaaS adoption of open source, particularly by ISVs whose business plan does not include a low multiple sale to their proprietary hosting provider. Future SaaS platforms will converge with traditional tools, offering on-demand development based on traditional programming languages with built-in tools for mash-up based development for basic users.

Development Problems for SaaS

SaaS is highly disruptive for existing hardware and software providers. SaaS platforms are different from traditional computing platforms like J2EE and .NET in three ways:

• SaaS platforms contain new core components, such as web services APIs to integrate to other applications and usage-based billing capabilities. This disrupts existing platform providers like BEA and Microsoft.


• SaaS platforms are designed for multi-tenancy, including global and tenant-specific data schemas, multi-layer administration and virtualization for scalability. This disrupts traditional ISVs like Oracle and SAP.


• SaaS platform are delivered on-demand, not on premises. This threatens the business of traditional hardware providers like IBM and HP.


• SaaS products need on-demand customization tools. As SalesForce has demonstrated, a complete SaaS application needs its own customization tools if it is to compete with enterprise solutions like Siebel and SAP.


• SaaS products need on-demand integration capabilities. This includes ability to integrate with on-premises data (a notorious weakness of pure-cloud solutions like Force.com) as well as with on-premise and on-demand web services.

SaaS Architecture Requirements

McKinsey identified three elements of a SaaS architectures:

1. Development environment: an on-demand development platform for creating SaaS applications. This platform should be able to ship along with the application itself to allow customers to customize their application.


2. Run-time environment: an on-demand infrastructufre to deliver applications. This can be a proprietary hosting environment like SalesForce, or an open hosting environment like Amazon EC2. Ideally, the customer should be able to deploy applications on-demand or on premises depending on their security, data integration and other requirements.


3. Ecosystem for adding new capabilities to applications (e.g., SalesForce AppExchange). This ecosystem should also be able to access enterprise data and services located inside the enterprise firewall.

SaaS Is Make or Break for ISVs

According to McKinsey, SaaS has greatest impact on ISVs, delivering a 50-70% improvement in the level of features that can be delivered for a given investment in development and infrastructure.

For ISVs, SaaS platforms offer low upfront cost, rapid time to market (productive tools + pre-built components like billing) and high quality service delivery. In short, existing ISVs have a limited window to migrate their offerings to the SaaS platform or risk being obliterated by newcomers who get there first.

The lesson of SalesForce versus Siebel Systems is clear: existing ISVs should migrate their presentation layer to SaaS quickly while preserving their existing back end servers. Preserving existing back end logic requires a SaaS platform that supports traditional languages like Java.

Which Platform Will Win the ISV Business?

A battlefield is emerging between established mega-vendors and pure play SaaS vendors. The following factors will separate the winners from the losers in this market:

• Build a robust offering: cutting edge technology, reliable, high quality.
• Enable extensive customization: provide additional components that address SaaS-specific needs (e.g., authorization, billing, monitoring & management).
• Monetize effectively: McKinsey identifies this as the most important success factor. The winning platform vendor will be the one which most effectively creates economic value for its ecosystems!
• Drive ecosystem growth: enable partners to make money within the platform vendor's community through collaboration, sharing of tools and best practices.

Although many of the early SaaS platforms are based on proprietary languages and tools, Gartner predicts that 90% of SaaS software will be based on open source within 2 years.

Evaluating SaaS Platforms For ISVs

Here are important criteria for ISVs to consider in evaluating SaaS platforms (sometimes called Platform as a Service, or PaaS):

• Open hosting: can I move applications I build to another SaaS hosting providers? Many SaaS platforms lock the ISV into a proprietary hosting provider (e.g., SalesForce). ZDNet says that ISVs need to offer their SaaS software both on demand and on premises.
  
• Full platform: does the SaaS platform offer a complete development solution with presentation layer, business logic, security, database and web services? Some SaaS platforms only offer part of the development stack (e.g., DabbleDB, Tibco GI)
  
• Standard language: does the SaaS platform support development using a standard language such as Java? Many SaaS platforms are based on proprietary languages (e.g., Apex, the proprietary language for SalesForce).

Table: A Comparison of PaaS Vendors

* Proprietary language

Peter Laird also has a good SaaS platform review and Phil Wainwright's has a good comparison of PaaS providers.

SaaS Platform Product Review - WaveMaker

WaveMaker is an open source, visual development platform for building Web 2.0 applications. The WaveMaker studio can be installed on a developer workstsation or delivered on-demand. WaveMaker creates standard Java applications based on Spring, Hibernate and Dojo that can be deployed in a SaaS or on premise architecture.

For ISVs, WaveMaker offers several compelling benefits:

1. WaveMaker's visual studio provides a faster and more natural way to build rich internet applications than traditional hand-coding using Java and struts
   
2. WaveMaker is completely open, making it portable across hosting providers and even enabling applications to be deployed on premise
3. WaveMaker includes a complete development platform based on open source standards such as Spring, Hibernate and Dojo
4. WaveMaker is based on the Java language, making it an ideal choice for ISVs who already develop in Java and don't want to migrate their existing server code.
   

WaveMaker can be downloaded here.

Summary - What ISVs Need From SaaS

Every ten years there is a dramatic shift in the development tools world: in the 80's to client/server, in the '90s to three tier and now in the 00's to SaaS. In each of these shifts, the dominant development tools providers have been supplanted by a new generation. This time around, the seismic shift is being driven by the on-demand architecture and the ISVs have the most urgent need to rebuild their solutions to remain competitive.

Over the next five years, we will see the 500 pound gorillas of the development world like Microsoft's ASP.NET and Sun's J2EE unseated. In their place will be new software platforms based on traditional languages that are specially designed to enable development of SaaS applications.

Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS ベンダーの関係図

Peter Laird氏のブログで市場の分析を行い、非常にわかりやすいキーワードの分類と、それぞれのキーワードに属するベンダーのリストアップを行った記事。 

Understanding the Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS markets: a Map of the Players in the Industry

The Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS space is loaded with interesting vendors, and the space is booming. If you are trying to navigate this world and need a guide, this blog entry will help. We have assembled a visual map of the industry, showing how the major players fit into the overall space. It will give you an overview of who's who, and what types of solutions are being offered.

I was greatly assisted by Kent Dickson, VP of Product Management for SaaS at BEA, in building this map. Steve Bobrowski, Director of SaaS Evangelism, also contributed comments. Thanks to both!

Defining the Markets

Before we look at the map, we need to define the major areas that we are covering. Note that in many ways these markets overlap so trying to differentiate which solution is in which is not a meaningful exercise. Needless to say, drawing out the map is a subjective effort, and not all solutions fit neatly into their assigned bucket. The purpose of the visual map is not to address subtleties, but to draw the industry in general terms.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing refers to the virtualization of the data center, such that server machines are not thought of individually but as just a commodity in a greater collection of server machines. Cloud computing solutions in general strive to eliminate the need for an application deployer to be aware of the actual physical machines that are used to host the application. Some have called this idea "hardware as a service".

Solutions that are most closely associated with the Cloud Computing market are indicated with the icon on the map.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

An application that is delivered through the SaaS model typically is done so:

• Over the internet,
• Remotely by a third party, with little/no opportunity to bring that application in-house
• With a usage-based pricing model

Solutions that are most closely associated with the SaaS market are indicated with the icon on the map.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

When a vendor offers a Platform as a Service, they are offering an integrated platform to build, test, and deploy custom applications. The PaaS is offered to you in a SaaS model (remote, usage-based). Dion Hinchliffe recently published a comprehensive whitepaper on this topic.

The PaaS market is indicated with the icon in the map view.

Core Cloud Services

After defining the 3 markets, there remains a set of solutions that contribute to all as fundamental building blocks. In other words, these solutions address cross cutting concerns.

In the map they are marked with a distinct icon to set them apart.

 

The Visual Map

Below is the visual map as promised. You will find a larger version hosted here. An explanation of each category and a full clickable URL list of the solutions is offered below the map.

If you wish to make changes, the original mind map drawing file assets are located here. Please post comments with your thoughts, or use this map as a basis for your own vision of the industry. Please give credit back to the original source (see Creative Commons) if you do.

 

 

Defining the Solution Groupings

In the map, we grouped solutions according to the problems they aim to solve. This section details the intent of each category.

Please note that for every category, there are more vendors that could be included. We are not attempting to provide a comprehensive list of every player in the industry. THINKStrategies created the SaaS Showplace if that is what you are looking for.

This map only shows solutions that are both 1) available in some form today, and 2) have significant mindshare in the industry. Feedback is appreciated if you disagree with any solution that was included or excluded.

Left Side

Cloud Providers - vendors who provide server hardware in commodity form, as a virtualized cloud

Cloud Deployment - solutions surrounding the deployment of applications to a virtualized cloud

Virtual Appliances - packaging and virtualization format solutions for provisioning applications into a cloud

Topology Management - solutions focused on the coordination of many virtual appliances (app, DB, network) in the cloud to form a full deployment

Billing, Contract Management - solutions that provide metering, billing, pricing, and contract management to help charge for use of a system

Security - solutions focused on solving security requirements in these markets

Data - services that deliver/retain data for applications

Hosters 2.0 - Hosting Service Providers with SaaS focus. Perhaps a controversial grouping and impossible to define, these hosters tend to appear over and over in these markets

Nerd Stuff - geeky topics fall into this category. MapReduce is mechanism for solving large computing tasks, like Google Search indexing

Right Side

On Demand Apps - the heart of the SaaS market, only a few depicted here but we could add "...and a cast of thousands". These are the end application products offered for consumption in a SaaS model

Integration as a Service - service solutions that help in integrating multiple systems, possibly multiple SaaS systems

Content as a Service - hosted content repositories

BPM and Workflow - service based offerings for managing workflow and process

Platform as a Service - incarnations of the PaaS concept

 

Reference Solutions List (with clickable links)

 

Cloud Computing,
   SaaS, and PaaS
       Industries
             2008

• Cloud Providers
  • ~ Amazon EC2
  • ~ IBM Blue Cloud
  • ~ Joyent
  • ~ GoGrid
  • ~ SunGrid
• On Demand Apps
  • ~ Oracle On Demand Apps
  • ~ Salesforce SFA
  • ~ Netsuite ERP
  • Google Apps
• Integration as a Service
  • ~ Boomi
  • ~ Mule OnDemand
  • ~ OpSource Connect (OSB)
  • ~ Amazon SQS
  • ~ Microsoft BizTalk Services
• Content as a Service
  • ~ SpringCM
  • ~ Clickability
  • ~ Xythos OnDemand
  • ~ GoogleBase
• BPM and Workflow
  • ~ ProcessMaker
  • BPM as a Service
    • ~ Appian Anywhere
    • ~ Skemma
    • ~ Intensil
• Platform as a Service
  (PaaS)
  • ~ Bungee Labs Connect
  • ~ Etelos
  • ~ Coghead
  • ~ Google App Engine
  • ~ Intuit QuickBase
  • ~ Salesforce force.com
  • ~ LongJump
  • ~ Apprenda SaaSGrid
  • ~ Oracle SaaS Platform
• Cloud Deployment
  • Virtual Appliances
    • Packaging
      • ~ rPath
      • ~ CohesiveFT
    • Formats
      • ~ VMWare
      • ~ Xen
      • ~ Parallels
    • ~ BEA Weblogic Server VE
  • Topology Management
    • ~ 3Tera AppLogic
    • ~ Elastra Cloud Server
• Billing, Contract Mgmt
  • ~ OpSource/LeCayla
  • ~ Aria
  • ~ eVapt
  • ~ Amazon DevPay
  • ~ Zuora
• Security
  • ~ OpenID
  • ~ OAuth
  • Security as a Service
    • ~ Ping Identity
• Data
  • Storage as a Service
    • ~ Amazon S3
    • ~ Box.net
    • ~ Google Base
  • Database as a Service
    • ~ Amazon SimpleDB
    • ~ Trackvia
    • ~ Microsoft SSDS
• Hosters 2.0
  • ~ OpSource
  • ~ Jamcracker
  • ~ Rackspace
• Nerd Stuff
  • ~ MapReduce
    • ~ Apache Hadoop
    • ~ Google MapReduce

Platform As A Serviceの種類

PaaSはForce.comに代表されるようにISVに対して、SaaSへの移行パスを提供するプラットホームである一方、最近は各社からPaaSソリューションが発表され、それぞれに特徴がある。  本記事はさまざまなPaaSソリューションをいくつかのキーワードで分類し、整理したもの。

A plethora of PaaS options

About that show of hands. I didn't expect my straw poll at last week's SaaS Summit would produce only two hesitant supporters for Salesforce.com's Force.com platform-as-a-service model out of a room full of two or three hundred ISVs. But this was a conference organized by specialist SaaS hoster OpSource, and even though the OpSource team does a great job of making this an event of interest to the entire industry, you'd still have to expect the attendees would skew towards favoring OpSource's managed hosting model. A similar straw poll at a Force.com event would probably skew in the exact opposite direction in favor of Salesforce.com's more packaged platform. To arrive at any other conclusion is mischievous at best. [Disclosure: Salesforce.com and OpSource are both clients, OpSource funded my travel costs to be at the event.]

What's more, I'd argue that the cloud computing and hosting choices available to people — whether they're ISVs, enterprise developers or business users — are still poorly understood. There's been a veritable explosion of platform-as-a-service choices coming onto the market in the past month or two, and the pace of introductions is accelerating rather than slowing. It'll all settle down eventually, because at the end of the day people tend to coalesce around just one or two dominant providers, or a handful at most. But ISVs perhaps want different choices than enterprises and indeed solution providers. So I think there may be several different categories of platform where we'll see those clusters of long-term dominant players getting established. I'd divide the options into five layers, as set out below. There's also a poll at the end where you can express your preference, and perhaps arrive at a better-sampled (though just as statistically invalid) result than that show of hands …

Do-it-yourself. The first option is the one that's always been there: you buy your own servers and software (or download open-source code), build your application along with all the infrastructure needed to support it, and run it yourself. This is what Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Sun, IBM, Progress Software and a number of other established platform software vendors continue to encourage you to do, and it's still what most of the market chooses. But the tide is turning, such that more and more developers are looking at other options.

Managed hosting. This is a bit like the first option, except that someone else runs the infrastructure for you to a greater or lesser extent. You still choose which infrastructure to use, but you get to share the operational burden. At the high end you get offerings like OpSource, which provides a lot of SaaS-specific services around the core hosting, including an integration bus, which the company announced at last week's conference. But you're still in charge in the sense that it's entirely up to you what components you choose to deploy.

Cloud computing. This is a utility computing variation on the previous option. The canonical example of this is Amazon EC2 but other examples are emerging, such as Mosso, the Rackspace venture I recently wrote about, and Joyent. In cloud computing, the provider builds a virtualized infrastructure and you get to install and run your applications on it for a pay-as-you-go price that is directly proportional to the resources your applications use. The provider automatically scales your implementation up and down according to the resources you need at any given time. The main distinction from managed hosting is that some of the choices are made by the provider rather than the customer. They choose how to do the scaling and load balancing, for example, rather than allowing you to specify how it's done. But you still take responsibility for higher-level application infrastructure such as performance tuning, user provisioning and access rights, framing APIs, and so on. I'm giving this option a lot of focus at the moment, and the interplay between virtualization and SaaS forms the topic of a presentation I'll be delivering at ComputerWorld's SaaScon conference in Santa Clara at the end this month.

Cloud IDEs. This layer provides a much more comprehensive application development and deployment environment, with the provider making most of the choices that determine how the application infrastructure operates. The canonical example is Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, but another strong contender that just entered public beta is Bungee Labs, who I'll be writing more about separately. At this layer, you build your application using the platform provider's own on-demand tools and collaborative development environment. The type of application you build isn't constrained, but the infrastructure choices have already been made, so you don't have to worry about them. The trade-off you make is that you're tied to their platform, with no easy way of transferring your application elsewhere if things don't work out.

Cloud application builders. This layer is similar to the previous layer but it's targeted at business-level power users and designers rather than developers. A lot more of the application infrastructure is already provided, the trade-off for which is that it constrains your choices into certain application types. There are dozens of such platforms emerging. Some are web-facing application builders such as Coghead, which this week introduced utility-style pay-as-you-go pricing, and newcomer Rollbase, which debuted last week at the SaaS Summit. Others are online database platforms such as Intuit QuickBase (which I wrote about recently), DabbleDB and DataWeb. Some platforms focus on specific categories of business functionality, such as NetSuite's Business Operating System, which was announced last week, or Daptiv's flexible project management platform.

Each of these layers has its own pluses and minuses. For rapid results, especially when automating business processes and workflow rather than simple data processing, the cloud IDEs and application builders win through. For highly tuned performance that depends on diving deep into the technology stack, you're better off working with one of the lower levels. But don't just take my word for it — express your own opinion and see what other ZDNet readers feel by taking the poll.

 

SaaSの成長に伴う新しい機能のニーズ

SaaSが従来企業の部門単位で導入されてきたものが、次第に企業全体がSaaSインフラに移行する状況はSaaSの市場が成長していることを意味するが、SaaSシステムどうしの連携が必要になって生きている、という指摘記事。  それぞれのSaaSシステムで管理されているID情報などを共通的に管理するID管理インフラ等がその一例となる。 

SaaS Grows Up (and busts out of the Silo)

It's time to grow up….and learn to play nice with others.

SaaS adoption in the enterprise has definitely increased.  But with that organizations are increasingly asking SaaS applications to start working with both other SaaS applications and the company's legacy applications as well.  According to recent studies by both Saugatuck and Forrester suggest that integration has surpassed security and compliance as Enterprise IT's chief concern with implementing (or growing) SaaS applications.

This is an extremely encouraging sign.  It shows the acceptance of SaaS as a legitimate enterprise software solution by the majority of Enterprise IT shops.  Up to now, SaaS has been primarily a departmental sale.  HR departments buy Taleo for human capital management, Marketing buys Marketo for marketing analysis, and call centers buy SupportSoft to manage their ticketing.   As you know from past posts, selling immediately recognizable value at the departmental level is key to a strong success story in SaaS andwe can see how that has happened.

But now these apps are growing up and reaching across the organization (growing your app is another key SaaS sales strategy.)  When that happens, IT is willing to accept the app's growth, but needs it to do more now.  Enterprise IT doesn't want a separate employee record in Taleo from their payroll system.  The want to be able to correlate all this marketing data back to their sales productivity, and they want to use the same master customer record for their ERP system as for their ticketing system.  And they don't want to have different log-ins for each employee, they want a single sign-on solution for all of their SaaS as well as on-premise apps (ala TriCipher.)

So SaaS applications have to stop being Silo's that work just inside themselves.  They need to start using web services to integrate with other SaaS apps and with legacy applications.  By doing so, they'll open up three great new areas for growth

1. Increased Functionality by working with other Apps
2. Enterprise Growth by integrating with existing Apps
3. The Opening of New Sales Channels

Their is so much to talk about in each of those three areas, they will get their own posts in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, think about adding web services, playing nice with others and growing up.  It's a great time to be an adult.

SaaSシステム向けの課金請求、回収システムのベンダー

Zuora社とAria Systems社、という2社の紹介。

 

Billing Enters the SaaS Era

May 21, 2008 9:09 am latoga New Tech, Tech Industry

One of the things that I have been working on recently is research for billing systems for SaaS companies. One project I have been working on recently has the eventual need for billing for the SaaS offerings they will be releasing soon. The challenge has been the multi-tiered nature of the billing solution that is needed. Becuase of that, we came up with a naming system to minimize the confusion:

• Patrons are the customers of the SaaS provider.
• Customers are the customers of the Patrons

Not only must the solution handle billing for the SaaS provider's patrons, but also handle billing pass through for the patron to charge their customers. And that pass through billing could be services or product based with each patron having a slightly different product offering.

The initial thought was that this would have to built internally, maybe using a combination of Sugar CRM and osCommerce. The problem was that we realized we would need to do too much meatball surgery on these systems to really get what we wanted. Also, we don't need a full fledged CRM system, just a light customer database (at least initially, boiling the ocean was something we were fighting even though we could see the need for it down the road). Then on top of all this, we still needed to work with a payment system to run the transactions for us. We really didn't want to store credit card numbers on the system as we wanted to avoid all PCI headaches.

What was needed was a service that would take care of all this for us!

Enter two SaaS based billing solutions Zuora and Aria Systems. Both companies generally do the same thing: provide a SaaS based billing solution that can be used by SaaS, subscription based companies.

Aria Systems has been around for a bit longer but been growing more organically and, I think due to their being based out of Philadelphia and not having expanded their sales force until just recently, not as well known. They have a much more mature billing service which can be co-branded or embedded via APIs into an existing SaaS service. The main downside that I see to their current business model is that they are only interested in doing business with companies that have an existing revenue stream. Primarily because of the high cost of configuring a client to use their system. They don't appear to have embraced the SaaS model internally from the fact of allowing a small early grown company to sign up on a small pay as you go model and then enable that company to learn from self help documentation on implementing the system. Thus, I feel they are likely to miss the rising tide of young companies being successfully and riding that success.

Zuora recently came out of stealth mode to announce their offering. I know a number of talented people who have gone over to Zuora and from what I have learned pre-launch and since from their website, it looks like at the core they offer the same thing as Aria Systems. However, the company was founded by poeple who came from the SaaS space, they claim to understand the new and expanding needs that these companies have and will have. It appears that their system is designed to provide flexibility for the SaaS provider to adapt their service offerings as well as run analytics across it. Something that Aria Systems, doesn't talk up very much. Since they are still fresh out of the gate, I don't know if they suffer from the same problem as Aria: not focused on seeding the market with self service, pay as you consume offering that can be used by startups. Their "web 2.0″ feel definitely gives them an advantage from initial impression alone.

I'm anxious to learn more about Zuora's capabilities and hope that it will be the silver bullet for the SaaS project I am working on. As I get more exposure to their offering, I will share my experience.

HPがMSPのメジャープレイヤーになる可能性

という事を予測した記事。  特にOpswareの買収に引き続き、大手のデータセンターを買収していることがその方向を示唆している、という分析。 

Data Centers: HP now the big dog?

 
On May 13, 2008 HP acquired EDS. This put the revenue brought in by IT services in 2007 to a whopping $38B, becoming a challenging #2 to IBM, at $54B. Great, but so what? Recall back in November 2007 when HP quietly acquired EYP Mission Critical Facilities, a data center design firm.

Today HP is the lone vendor capable of planning, designing, building, equipping, and supporting large scale data centers from cradle to grave. The current data center market is in refresh mode as many were built in the late 1990s when the first bubble bulged. These centers are nearing end of life. Granted, HP would have to be able to sell the one throat to choke model. I'm convinced the only way HP will make this happen is if there is a change in their sales force which could take years.

However, the direction they are probably heading is vastly different. With Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft in the battle of who can build the largest cloud the fastest (and probably most efficiently), HP is losing customers and will have to get in the game. With a recent acquisition of Marc Andreesen's Opsware, a data center automation firm, and plans to buy 24 data centers from British Telecom, HP could very well be constructing its own cloud.

One thing is for sure, HP can now build the most optimal data centers in the world if they chose too.

Conclusion: HP is now the big dog in the data center market.

 

Microsoft Exchange Onlineの今後の見通し

Mary Jo Foleyという著名なMicrosoftアナリストの記事で先日発表されたMicrosoftのExchangeに関する記事についてコメント。  MicrosoftによるとExchangeは５年後には半分以上のユーザがExchange Onlineと呼ばれるSaaSモデルに移行するだろう、という記事に対して、疑心暗鬼の意見も多い。 

 

MSPとしてはMicrosoftのクローズ環境もさることながら、Linux,などのオープンの環境についても考慮する必要がある、両面から市場を評価、MSPのビジネスモデルを見極める必要がある、と思われる。

 

Half of All Exchange Server Deployments Will Involve SaaS Within Five Years

Posted May 20th, 2008 by Joe Panettieri

If you're a Microsoft partner that's skeptical about software as a service (SaaS), consider this: Half of all Exchange email inboxes will involve hosted systems within five years, notes Mary Jo Foley's All About Microsoft blog. I've been alerting readers in recent weeks about Microsoft's SaaS strategy for Exchange, Dynamics CRM and SharePoint. Ultimately, Microsoft will need to compete and cooperate with managed service providers (MSPs) that host those applications. Here's how some Microsoft partners intend to cope with the software giant's SaaS moves.

Many Microsoft-centric MSPs have started to acquire one another, in a bid to gain a larger regional footprint or technical know-how. Other MSPs are differentiating themselves by introducing security services for hosted Exchange systems. (Check out Azaleos as one prime example.)

Ultimately, however, I think basic, hosted Exchange Server solutions will become a commodity. MSPs will need to push into complementary areas — perhaps by melding hosted unified communications or CRM — or both — with Exchange.

Microsoft partners certainly seem to be heading for a new era — a time when they will need to increasingly compete with the software giant, especially as more mid-size businesses outsource their applications to MSPs and SaaS specialists.

Will Microsoft become the biggest MSP of all? In the Windows world, the answer is a firm "maybe." But don't forget: A hefty piece of the SaaS industry involves open source alternatives — Linux running MySQL, SugarCRM and so forth. There's plenty of room for MSPs to compete and add value. But some VARs will surely get trampled by Microsoft along the way.

 

 

Salesforce.com社がシンガポールに大型データセンタを建設予定

急増しているアジアでのユーザに対して対応すべく、初めてアメリカ本土外にデータセンターを建設するとの事。  アジアでの顧客ベースが過去一年で倍増しており、SaaS事業の好調振りがうかがえる。 

Salesforce.com Plans Singapore Data Center

Salesforce.com (CRM) is building its first international data center in Singapore, the company said today. The data center, which is expected to go live before the end of year, will service the rapidly growing international customer base for Salesforce.com, a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and hosting.

Salesforce.com also announced plans to establish a Network Operations Center (NOC) in Singapore to implement 24x7, follow-the-sun monitoring of the company's data centers in North America and Singapore. To support this, it is investing in additional facilities and headcount at its Asia Pacific headquarters.

"The decision to build our first data center outside of the U.S. is clear evidence that companies globally are abandoning the failed client-server software model and are looking for a new model that allows them to focus on innovation as opposed to infrastructure," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com said its Asia Pacific customer base doubled over the last 12 months. Strategic customers include AAPT, Acer, Amcor, CGU Insurance, Challenger Financial Services, Datacraft, Flight Centre, Hang Seng Bank, Mizuho Private Wealth Management, Ottagi, Ramco, SPH Search, VSNL and Telecom New Zealand.

"The explosive growth that we are experiencing in Asia Pacific, combined with a highly technically literate and multi-lingual talent pool, make Singapore the perfect location for our first data center outside of the U.S.," said Benioff.

"IDA welcomes the setting up of the new international data center by salesforce.com in Singapore," said Ronnie Tay, CEO of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. "The choice of Singapore as the location is a testimony to our capabilities to support data center activities. As an established trusted hub, with excellent global connectivity and skilled infocomm manpower, Singapore is in an excellent position to support and Salesforce.com in delivering its innovative services globally."

Salesforce.com Inc., the biggest seller of Internet-based customer-management software, reported a large gain in first-quarter profit today and raised its forecast after the company added 2,600 customers. Net income climbed to $9.56 million, or 8 cents a share, from $730,000, or 1 cent, a year earlier, the San Francisco-based company said.

Salesforce.com is a market and technology leader in Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company's Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build a on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise.

Yahooが世界最大のデータベースを構築

データセンターの規模が大きくなるにつれ、ペタバイト級のデータを管理するデータウェアハウスが増加している。   

Yahooの運営しているデータウェアハウスは 2 ペタバイトのサイズを誇り、5億人のユーザのBehavior分析に適用されている。  スペックは次の通り；

- PostgreSQLをデータベースに採用

- 一日に２４０兆界のイベントを処理

- 近い将来に数十ペタバイトの大きさに成長する予定

 

他に大規模データベースとしては次のようなものがある。

- IRSデータベース （１５０TB)

- eBay （全体で 6ペタバイト、単一システムで1.4ペタバイト）

- National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center （3.5ペタバイト）

- World Data Center for Climate (ドイツ） （220TB、テープアーカイブ含めて6ペタバイト）

 

 

Size matters: Yahoo claims 2-petabyte database is world's biggest, busiest

Year-old database processes 24 billion events a day

 

May 22, 2008 (Computerworld) The petabyte is the new petaflop.

Interest in raw computational speed waned — sorry, IBM — after data center managers began turning away from super-expensive supercomputers and toward massive grids comprised of cheap PC servers.

Meanwhile, the rise of business intelligence and its even more technical cousin, business analytics, has spurred interest in super-large data warehouses that boost profits by crunching the behavior patterns of millions of consumers at a time.

Take Yahoo Inc.'s 2-petabyte, specially built data warehouse, which it uses to analyze the behavior of its half-billion Web visitors per month. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company makes a strong claim that it is not only the world's single-largest database, but also the busiest.

Based on a heavily modified PostgreSQL engine, the year-old database processes 24 billion events a day, according to Waqar Hasan, vice president of engineering in Yahoo's data group.

And the data, all of it constantly accessed and all of it stored in a structured, ready-to-crunch form, is expected to grow into the multiple tens of petabytes by next year.

By comparison, large enterprise databases typically grow no larger than the tens of terabytes. Large databases about which much is publicly known include the Internal Revenue Service's data warehouse, which weighs in at a svelte 150TB.

EBay Inc. reportedly operates databases that process 10 billion records per day and are also able to do deep business analysis. They collectively store more than 6 petabytes of data, though the single largest system is estimated at about 1.4 petabytes or larger.

Even larger than the databases of Yahoo and eBay are the databases of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Oakland, Calif., whose archives include 3.5 petabytes of atomic energy research data, and the World Data Centre for Climate in Hamburg, Germany, which has 220TB of data (download PDF) in its Linux database but more than 6 petabytes of data archived on magnetic tape.

But Hasan noted that archived data is far different from live, constantly accessed data.

"It's one thing to have data entombed; it's another to have it readily accessible for your queries," he said. He also pointed out that other large databases store unstructured data such as video and sound files. Those can bulk up a database's size without providing easily analyzable data.

Hasan joined Yahoo more than three years ago. At the time, Yahoo already had huge non-SQL databases storing hundreds of terabytes of data. Problem was, the data was in the form of large collections of compressed files that could be accessed only by writing programs in a language such as C++, rather than more easily and quickly via SQL commands, he said.

One of Hasan's first moves was to buy a Seattle database start-up called Mahat Technologies, which had tweaked the open-source PostgreSQL to run as a column-based database rather than a conventional row-based one. Rotating tables 90 degrees, while slowing down the process of writing data to disk, greatly accelerates the reading of it.

Yahoo brought the database in-house and continued to enhance it, including tighter data compression, more parallel data processing and more optimized queries. The top layer remains PostgreSQL, however, so that Yahoo can use the many off-the-shelf tools available for it.

The largest tables in the database already comprise "multiple trillions of rows," said Hasan, who helped develop database technology at Informix, Hewlett-Packard and IBM before coming to the user side.

The huge table sizes enable Yahoo to do broader, more complicated analyses, so it can better understand how to make its banner and search ads more effective, enabling it to reap more money from advertisers. They also help the company make its Web sites better for users by, for instance, making its search results more relevant, Hasan said. But loading the data takes several hours, so Yahoo does its real-time analysis with a different data warehouse.

The database requires fewer than 1,000 PC servers hosted at several data centers, said Hasan, who declined to reveal the exact number. He did claim that the number of servers used is one-tenth to one-twentieth fewer than the number that would be needed if the database were a conventional one such as Oracle, IBM's DB2 or NCR's Teradata.

Despite the success of Amazon.com Inc.'s EC2 cloud-based application hosting service, Yahoo has no plans right now to rent access to its database as a Web-based utility, nor to sell licenses of the technology to enterprises that want to install it on their own premises, Hasan said.

Panda Security社がSaaS型のセキュリティサービスを開始

SMB向けでWindowsのみのサポートであるが、サーバ型のソリューションであるため、インターネットからの攻撃を最小限に留めることができる、とアピールしている。  具体的にどういう点で従来型のセキュリティソリューションより優れているのか、もう少し評価が必要と考える。 

Panda Security delivers cloud-based security management service for SMBs

Posted by Dana Gardner @ 5:54 am

IT security provider Panda Security has unveiled its Managed Office Protection solution, a security-as-a-service offering aimed at small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well as large companies with a significant number of geographically dispersed offices.

The service from the Panda keeps the total cost of ownership (TCO) to a minimum by hosting all information in the cloud and providing a Web-based console through which administrators can configure security resources.

The lower cost also comes from the small footprint of the Panda agent on each PC, at about 5 MBs it's much smaller than other malware download agents. More details at Panda's blog.

Administrators can also assign profiles across the organization to adapt security measures to individual and department requirements. The service-based protection is also geared toward SOHO workers, who may just use outsourced IT support and repair shops or consultants.

The managed protection product provides "collective intelligence" that automatically detects, correlates, and responds to malware across a network of PCs. The remote management tools, allow IT managers — or support shops — to use any computer on the Internet to change user specifications, track IP addresses, and enable and disable security features.

Using a centralized Web console, administrators can configure updated information to protect against zero-day attacks. Updates are completed via peer-to-peer networks from the nearest desktop, minimizing bandwidth consumptions.

Real-time information about detection activity can be accessed by administrators on the Web console. Administrators can be sent suspected threats to PandaLabs for analysis. Periodic security audits can ensure compliance with such regulations as SOX, PCI, HIPAA, among others. Panda provides an ongoing list of current threats.

Because it's a cloud-based service, it can react in near real-time to Internet hazards as they arise, then jettison the updates as small deltas out to the admins or directly to supported PCs. Naturally, the service only supports Windows, but it goes back as Windows 95 and up to Vista. Panda is looking at Mac OS X and Linux support, but demand has not been there, given Windows propensity as a malware target.

Managed Office Protection is available to value added resellers looking to offer security services to clients. Pricing is in the $40 per user per year range. In a related announcement, Panda said that Tech Data Corp., Clearwater, Fla., has signed an exclusive distribution agreement for the product.

I'd like to see the remote access and remore PC support crowd coordinate better with suppliers like Panda. Any and all PC support shold just include services like this. Already many do, but the SOHO market still needs more convenient approaches at the price point Panda is providing.

Panda Managed Office Protection is available immediate and can be downloaded from the Panda Web site.

Sun MicrosystemsのSaaS戦略

まだ詳細は明らかになっていないが、Sunが中小企業向けにSaaS事業を展開する事が明らかに。  Project Carolineという名前で当面呼ばれる。 

 

Sun Shares Details on Project Caroline

Sun Microsystems (JAVA) used the recent SunLabs Open house to provide lots of details about Project Caroline, its new platform for small and medium sized software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. Sun's Rich Zippel has blogged about the event and posted links to the documentation Sun has published about Project Caroline, including two hours of video of technical presentations and live demos of the service.

Project Caroline is designed to helps software providers develop services rapidly, update in-production services frequently, and automatically adjust their use of platform resources to match changing runtime demands.

Desktone社、HPと組み、DaaS(Desktop as a Service)事業を開始

デスクトップ仮想化技術を持つ同社が月額料金でソリューションをHP経由で提供する戦略を発表した。  XaaSキーワードの悪用の一つであるが、こういう新規の技術を買取ではなく、サーバ管理の元、リースする形で提供する事でVirtualization技術にあまり詳しくない潜在ユーザの開拓に寄与する、という期待がある。 

 

Desktop Virtualization Vender Desktone Partners with HP to Deliver Virtual Desktops as a Service

Desktone, Inc., provider of the first solution that enables virtual desktops as a service, today announced that it has created the Desktone Service Provider Partner Program to enable service providers in the IT hosting, IT outsourcing and datacom businesses to offer desktops as a service (DaaS) based on the Desktone Virtual-D Platform.  The company also unveiled that Hewlett-Packard's Flexible Computing Services (HP FCS) signed on as the first member of Desktone's Partner Program.

 

"The trend towards desktop virtualization presents service providers with a tremendous opportunity.  Enterprises want to leverage virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) but are not deploying it because it is too costly and complex to do internally.  Service providers can help these customers quickly and cost-effectively benefit from VDI," said Les Yetton, Senior Vice President, Sales Marketing and Business Development, Desktone.  "By partnering with Desktone, service providers can offer customers a new, value-added service through a high-margin, repeatable and easily managed solution. We're extremely pleased that, by signing on to our program, HP is demonstrating that it recognizes the value DaaS can provide to their business, and to their customers." 

 

"HP FCS believes desktops as a service represents a significant opportunity for our customers to take full advantage of the benefits VDI offers while eliminating the challenges and costs of deploying VDI internally at scale," said Christopher Smith, Americas Business Development Manager of HP FCS.  "We are excited to be the first to join the Desktone Service Provider Partner Program and take a lead role in delivering on the promise of virtual desktops as a service.  Through HP FCS, HP customers can now deploy desktops completely as a service, and pay on a monthly basis for only the desktops they have deployed, as a pure operating expense. HP takes care of everything, right up to the thin-client:  the datacenter, infrastructure, software, connectivity and operations."

 

Desktone Service Provider Program

Desktone's program is targeted at service providers who are already in the hosting or outsourcing businesses and who want to leverage their existing data center assets to tap into significant revenue from the next wave of hosting solutions.  Partners who sign up in 2008 will have direct input into the Virtual-D Platform product direction, as it continues to evolve into the platform-of-choice for hosting DaaS.  Partners will be able to develop end-to-end monthly subscription offerings, based on Virtual-D, that leverage their unique value add.

 

Benefits to Service Providers

Desktone helps service providers accelerate time-to-revenue by providing the only end-to-end virtual desktop platform designed specifically for hosted, subscription-based DaaS.  With this solution, service providers can:

• Provide an offering that enterprises want but aren't equipped to implement:  Corporations recognize the value that virtual desktops can provide, however, adoption is hindered by the complexities inherent in internally-developed VDI.  Service providers can remove the barriers to enterprise implementation by offering virtual desktops as a service—providing desktop virtualization and related data center management expertise that are difficult for enterprises to handle in-house.   
• Leverage existing assets:  Service providers offering Desktone-powered DaaS can maximize utilization of their data center space, connectivity and power assets, potentially yielding a much higher ROI. 
• Capture new service revenue:  Using Desktone technology to deliver hosted virtual desktops as a subscription service enables Desktone partners to provide highly scalable, carrier-class DaaS while efficiently managing their infrastructure and maintaining service level agreements with customers.

The Virtual-D Platform enables service providers to offer hosted, subscription-based virtual desktops. The only solution that integrates all desktop virtualization layers through a single, automated self-service platform, it helps enterprises quickly realize the full benefits of centralized virtual desktops without having to build and deploy the infrastructure internally.  And because the Virtual-D Platform is uniquely designed along two tiers (enterprise and service provider), it lets enterprises maintain ownership and control over their desktops while outsourcing the physical data center infrastructure powering those virtual desktops.  

 

For more information, attend the Desktone webinar on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 from 12-1pm EST:  "Capitalize on Virtual Desktop Opportunity to Deliver Next Generation Services."  To explore service provider partnership opportunities with Desktone, please contact Desktone at partners@desktone.com or 1-978-710-0583.

 

For information on Hewlett-Packard's Flexible Computing Service and Virtual Desktop Service, go to http://www.hp.com/go/EngageFlexibleComputing and click on "Engage HP Flexible Computing Services Now."

 

About Desktone

Desktone, Inc. provides the only virtual desktop infrastructure platform that enables desktops to be delivered as a hosted subscription service.  The Desktone Virtual-D Platform integrates all desktop virtualization layers in a single, automated, self-service platform.  By offering desktops as a service, Desktone simplifies large-scale desktop provisioning and management, provides greater protection of corporate assets, and delivers much more consistent and reliable desktop service levels—all of which reduces desktop total cost of ownership. For more information, visit www.desktone.com.

 

Press Contact:

Janice Bedsole, Bedsole & Company

781.789.6108, janice@bedsoleandcompany.com

最近のSaaSベンダーに対する投資金額

Rearden Commerceに対する＄１００Mの巨額投資を始め、SCMソフトのXactly社に対して＄３０M、ERPソフトのIntacct社に対して＄１５Mの投資が続いている。  市場への興味レベルがいまだ高く、CRMの周辺アプリケーションにSaaS事業が浸透している状況もうかがえる。 

 

VCs put big sums into SaaS

Several SaaS vendors have announced some big funding rounds the past couple of weeks, which suggests that SaaS is still able to command strong VC support where vendors can show good traction for their offerings. The three rounds that caught my eye were:

• Rearden Commerce, $100 million. Announced Tuesday, this substantial investment (PDF release) appears to have been led by credit card powerhouse Chase, part of the JP Morgan Chase empire (the guys who bought Bear Stearns). Rearden [a past client, see disclosure] automates booking of a wide range of travel and entertainment in a way that integrates with employee workflow at the same time as complying with corporate purchasing policies. It already snagged a £22.5 million investment from American Express eighteen months ago, and Amex has put money into this round too, along with Rearden's previous VC backers. However it seems likely that the bulk of the money comes from Chase (PDF release), and if the Amex precedent is any guide, it's a prelude to Chase rolling out the Rearden service to its corporate cardholders (and perhaps ultimately consumers too). Rearden has built a broad customer base of more than 1,700 — mostly since it signed the Amex deal — and according to Techcrunch it has close to $1 billion worth of transactions going through its system.
• Xactly, $30 million. Last week, sales compensation management and analytics vendor Xactly announced a new round of $30 million in revolving credit and equity to finance further global expansion and product development. Earlier in the week, Xactly had announced an analytics product that builds on the data collected in the course of enabling its core sales compensation functionality, and it has ambitious plans for further product announcements based on this core information store. Meanwhile, customer growth continues strongly, with the average customer having around 250 subscribers.
• Intacct, $15 million (on top of $14 million secured last June). Recovering strongly from a period a couple of years ago when it lacked direction, venerable on-demand midmarket ERP vendor Intacct has seen something of a resurgence since Mike Braun took over as CEO. This is the second injection of finance negotiated by Braun and provides the fuel for some long-overdue expansion. Intacct is developing some interesting channel strategies, which I hope to discuss in a separate posting in the near future.

Of course, there is a school of thought that says that once a trend reaches the point where mainstream media (let alone bloggers) start to cite it, then you can probably bet that it's over. So I'm interested in feedback from readers here. Is it still possible to secure VC funding for SaaS ventures or has the funding climate tightened significantly in the past few months? Please post your views to Talkback.

大企業のSaaS導入の促進が早まっている、というレポート

大企業にとってSaaSは未だに既存の社内システムとの連携やセキュリティ上の懸念が残るが、容易なメンテナンスと低価格が導入を促進する材料になってきている、というレポートがKelton Researchの調査で発表された。 

 

Report: Enterprises Adopt SaaS Aggressively

Despite security concerns and reservations about how Software as a Service (SaaS) will integrate with existing on premise systems, enterprises surveyed cited easier maintenance and cheaper cost as a key factor for buying SaaS.

 

May 07, 2008 — CIO — Software as a service (SaaS) — which allows organizations to access software over the Web instead of locally on a desktop — is rapidly pervading the enterprise space, with nearly 73 percent of large companies saying they have adopted it or plan to adopt it in the next 18 months, according to a recent survey by Kelton Research .

 a business and technology consulting firm, polled around 100 executives representing enterprises in the Fortune 500. The majority of respondents hailed from IT backgrounds, while some came from general business departments, says Nathan Richter, Executive Director, at Kelton Research.

The participation by general business people in the survey, rather than only technology executives, shows just how disruptive an innovation SaaS has been for IT: if a line-of-business department doesn't want to wait for IT to provide them with a piece of technology, as the saying now goes, a SaaS offering is only "a credit card purchase away."

"Two years ago, that was exactly what was happening," says Donita Prakash, chief marketing officer of Acumen Solutions. "Now we see IT embracing SaaS and doing replacements of on-premise software."

Prakash says most implementations of SaaS software have centered around CRM software, as evinced by the success of Salesforce.com . She says producitivity software, such as Google Apps, has been slow to catch on and that, anecdotally, Acumen didn't see much adoption yet. Salesforce.com recently announced it would add Google Apps for free for any customers who wanted it.

"That area of software is still heavily in the desktop environment," she says.

Traditionally, as the report notes, IT departments purchased software with a "one-time cost that depreciated over time." SaaS, conversely, works on a subscription basis, where businesses typically pay a monthly or yearly fee for the software. Respondents didn't seem concerned about the new model SaaS has presented: only 21 percent said they were hung up on buying software via a subscription.

The primary reasons for heavy SaaS adoption, the report noted, center around speed-to-market and easier maintenance. With SaaS, the vendor providing the software makes updates to it seamlessly. This differs from installed software, where IT departments or users have to generally make upgrades more manually.

A third factor is price. According to the report, most SaaS offerings, with their subscription model, are cheaper than on premise software. By paying for each individual employee who uses it, companies never buy software and have it collect virtual dust if an employee leaves or stops using it. With SaaS, if an employee stops using the software, the administrator can eliminate (and stop paying) for that subscription.

Enterprise customers still hold some reservations about SaaS, however. More than half (56 percent) said they worry about how SaaS offerings can integrate with existing installed (on-premise) data. In addition, since SaaS vendors typically host the data for their customers, many enterprises (62 percent) worry about the security of data not behind their firewall.