Posts Tagged ‘PaaS

18
May
10

ebizQ Forum: What Are the Biggest Downsides to Cloud Computing?

By edward 0 Comments
Categories: Cloud Computing, Force.com and Software as a Service
Tags: , , , , , ,

Delivered Innovation CTO Michael Topalovich recently provided his take on the ebizQ Forum question: What Are the Biggest Downsides to Cloud Computing?  From the Forum:

I’ll substitute “downsides” with “risks” because some of these may be viewed as half empty / half full arguments, but I see the biggest current risks as:

  1. Market confusion. As Peter mentioned, it is a mad dash to the cloud right now. And since nobody wants to feel left out, just about every company in the B2B tech space has re-branded itself as a cloud computing company. I’ve heard this referred to as “cloudwashing,” and the result is that companies will find it more difficult to find services specific to their needs, because of the tendency of providers to water down messaging into cloud buzzwords and ignore basic positioning and value statements.
  2. Cloud sprawl. With the rapid proliferation of cloud services, IT is struggling to adapt corporate service delivery strategies. The results that we have seen have included duplication and overlap of processes and functions due to services being provisioned directly by business units; loss of control of the billing for services because no single entity within the company is responsible for the procurement and management of them; and the equivalent of “shelfware,” a situation where cloud services are orphaned after the champion leaves the company or the business shifts focus.
  3. Lack of cohesive integration strategy. There is no doubt in my mind that the cloud model of service delivery is the one that we will adopt for at least the next 10-15 years of technology cycles, but until the integration of all of the pieces is thought through, the sum of the parts will never add up. My company has standardized our core service offerings around the Force.com platform from salesforce.com to provide the “glue” that holds all of the pieces together, and we “mash up” other cloud services into composite enterprise business systems through API integration, business process orchestration, and data integration using services such as Boomi. But if companies just provision cloud services for siloed requirements up and down the cloud stack (from infrastructure to SaaS), the disaggregation of these services will prove to be a value destroyer.
07
Aug
09

How Force.com Changes System & Software Testing Processes

By topalovich 0 Comments
Categories: Cloud Computing, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

It’s evident by this point that cloud computing technologies such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) have changed the way applications are developed.  The interesting thing that we are finding with our customer engagements is that the rapid and iterative nature of designing and developing apps on Force.com has created an entirely new set of challenges with how the apps are tested prior to deployment to production environments.  The ability to demonstrate application features and functionality to project stakeholders in near-real time is more of a double-edged sword than most people realize; on the one hand, being able to show progress and continuously incorporate feedback has fundamentally changed the concept of application development and delivery.  On the other hand, if expectations are not managed properly, the ability to visually represent system designs and demonstrate prototypes in such a rapid timeframe could potentially trivialize the importance of testing, code refactoring and optimization, and change management.

Continue reading ‘How Force.com Changes System & Software Testing Processes’

20
May
09

Excerpts from discussion with Jon Sapir on the impact Force.com has on IT service delivery

By topalovich 0 Comments
Categories: Cloud Computing, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service
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I tend to have very spirited philosophical discussions with Jon Sapir from Power in the Cloud / SilverTree Systems, and as much as he tries to get me to blog about some of this stuff, I tend to put it off indefinitely.  Just came across this thread and thought there were some important thoughts to build off of:

The old / traditional approach had a lot more players involved…I always envision enterprise IT as two funnels connected at the most narrow point, with one funnel being IT and the other being “the business.”  On the IT side, the fat part of the funnel is web programmers, platform programmers, DBA’s, etc.; the connection to the business side is the program manager, who takes specs from the business program manager and hands it off to a lead architect, who then disseminates pieces to platform / application / database architects, who then give specs to the relevant coders, who are then checked by a parallel QA organization that is segmented similarly by function.  On the business side, the program manager is connected with a business process architect who assembles requirements from lead business analysts representing the business functions involved with the system, who then fan out to all of the end users of the specific functions / departments to gather feature / function / interface requirements / feedback.  And scattered throughout is about a dozen project managers, each running their own project schedule for their piece of the world.

Force.com disconnects the business users from the stack, eliminating the direct involvement of IT and changing IT’s role to one of data / process governance + management.  In some organizations IT may still provide the programmer, but in many cases the business architect will directly design the system, and the analysts will configure the system to the specific needs of their constituents.

The future piece further abstracts the business from IT, pushing governance to the periphery of the business where it is managed by analysts and designed by the business architect to overlay horizontal, end-to-end processes rather than a vertical / function-driven organizational structure.  IT may provide technical services, but the internal IT organization, for all intents and purposes, is just one of many service providers that the business provisions IT services from.  In the most likely scenario, IT manages the connectivity to the cloud, data/information security policies and overall governance, and potentially manages the service delivery / financial relationships with cloud providers.

Does this sound like a reasonable description of most enterprise service delivery processes?  Is management and governance the role that IT will take on?  Will IT simply become a service provisioned directly by business process owners?  Does SaaS / PaaS / cloud computing really make such a significant impact on organizational and business process structure?  For every answer we come up with, there are about five new questions.

18
May
09

Interop Panel Discussion Preview: Honeymoon and Divorce: Changing SaaS Providers

By topalovich 0 Comments
Categories: Cloud Computing, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Interop is here, and based on the preparatory discussions that I’ve had with fellow panelists on the ‘Honeymoon and Divorce: Changing SaaS Providers‘ session, I am excited about the topics we will be covering and the insight that Jerry Smith (Symphony Services), Rick Nucci (Boomi), and R “Ray” Wang (Forrester) will be bringing to the table.  I will be approaching the topic of migrating both data and SaaS code / logic from PaaS providers with a service-oriented mindset, giving real world examples of migrating applications from the now-defunct Coghead platform to the Force.com platform by salesforce.com.  Delivered Innovation migrated both customer apps and our own strategic marketing suite of applications to Force.com over a period of several months with great success.  I am confident that the panel will provide a great deal of value to attendees, as the topic of SaaS / PaaS “lock-in” is becoming more relevant with the proliferation of cloud computing services.

Please stop by if you are attending Interop.  We’re scheduled to present at 4:00PM on Tuesday, May 19 in “Breakers L” at the Mandalay Bay conference center.  I will also be attending CloudCamp this evening, let’s talk about ‘The Cloud’ over beers.

Michael Topalovich / blog @ deliveredinnovation.com

16
Mar
09

Jonathan Sapir: Situational Application Platforms Threaten Smug Programmers

By topalovich 0 Comments
Categories: Cloud Computing, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service
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Jonathan Sapir: Situational Application Platforms Threaten Smug Programmers

Jonathan takes a somewhat provocative approach to pointing out that cloud computing and situational applications are rendering “traditional” programmers obsolete at an increasing rate.  Derrick Harris at GigaOm lays out a similar scenario for those on the IT infrastructure side of the house as cloud computing pervades mainstream Corporate America.  Both of these posts remind me of something that I had written early last year, “Platform as a Service and the Implications for IT,”  just prior to transforming our business to focus on SaaS design and strategy.

There are compelling arguments on both sides that innovative technologies either create jobs or eliminate them, but I don’t think the discussion is that cut and dried.  What’s inevitable is that cloud computing will certainly change jobs, and I think the bigger point here is that if you are an IT professional, if you have not learned by now that you have to continuously stay on top of new technology and business innovations to maintain your place in the pecking order, you will inevitably be left behind.  Sure you can sit back and hope that Black Swan events such as Y2K will come out of nowhere and suddenly make your 20-year-old programming skills a hot commodity, but the more prudent approach is to evolve with the times and stay relevant.  Cloud computing is here, so those hoping it would just go away are in for a rude awakening.

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