This Week in SaaS #2

Events:

In keeping what I promised- only promoting events that directly benefit you, the members of this group (Linkedin SaaS group)- we’ve got a conference pass to give away to the World Cloud Computing Summit which takes place on December 2^nd and 3^rd in Israel. There are some really great people there- including Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, as well as Reuven Cohen, Bessemer and Dani Shomron (a member of this group). The agenda is here.

To get in the draw all you have to do is tweet: “@justinpirie I’d like to see xyz speak at #igt09 and I’d like to win a ticket. Thanks @igtcloud” – insert who you’d like to see speak instead of xyz!

Personally- I’d like to see Bessemer, although I do wonder how Reuven is CTO of a company and manages so many tweets and blog posts… Everyone who enters the draw will get a discount code in case you don’t win. If you don’t want to go- please thank @igtcloud for the pass and discount.

Back to TWIS:

It’s been a really busy week for SaaS, with Microsoft PDC and Salesforce Dreamforce competing for the headlines, or so I thought…. Virtually none of the news I’ve read has any real analysis on Azure, just that it’s going live Jan 1 in six countries and it’s going head to head with Google and Force. This should be massive news, but are we a little weary- especially as the SLA’s offered are so poor that we have little opportunity to go PaaS???

Yes Customer, we can give you 99.9% uptime… More on Azure next week I suspect.

Salesforce, is on the other hand going gangbusters on the PR- but a little background for you… Enterprise 2.0 (yes a catchy title) is starting to get interesting- Hutch Carpenter wrote a great piece over at cloudave earlier on the week which set’s the scene on E2.0:

“The integration of collaboration, increased findability, social networking and crowdsourcing into core enterprise activities requiring defined workflows, specific user sign-offs, results measurement and role-based access.”

E2.0 was the big news at Dreamforce- integrating social media into the Salesforce DNA, with twitter and facebook integration deep into the suite and a new social platform called chatter. Think tweet-to-case and you’ve got the idea.

Chatter is like an internal version of twitter and facebook for your company which also integrates with facebook and twitter. Appriro covers it in detail if you’re interested here. I’ve been stewing on it for a day or two and haven’t really had a chance to form an opinion. What are your thoughts? As I was writing this- Mark Fidelman posted this about their problems selling social/E2.0 to enterprise. Maybe Salesforce will actually drive adoption, even if it is a me-too product?

There seems to be more and more momentum to integrating SaaS into cloud- so please don’t shoot me if you think I’m interchanging the between the two, too liberally. Bessemer overlaid the various cloud layers (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) really beautifully in the laws last week but I thought that Appriro splits them really well as part of their “cloud ecosystem”, and how SaaS fits into it- as applications  (by @appirio_ryan and @troyangrignon)

I’ve used people’s twitter names where possible so you can get social (or just stalk them if you’re not down with the kids in the whole social networking thingy). Thinking about Social networking, my guest editor this week was Peter Cohen, and he was echoing Mark Fidelmans findings on social media in the enterprise- there’s a real lack of understanding (weariness?) out there. Peter’s got a great SaaS Marketing Blog BTW.

Peter also had some interesting observations from a panel discussion hosted by the Mass Tech Leadership Council on SaaS and Cloud. On the panel were CIO’s of very large corporates and what really struck me from his observations were these CIO’s were really pro SaaS. Yes- pro SaaS. Now, when a traditionally licensed app comes up for upgrade or renewal, their default choice is to move to SaaS, and only don’t move if it’s not worth the pain of migrating.

The second thing that struck me from his observations was how much importance the CIO’s place on the UI- yes the UI. They want a UI that is easy to use because it makes their users happier, more productive, plus training and support costs less. That to me reinforces how important Dave McClure’s AARRR metrics are for success- EVEN in the enterprise. More in last week’s TWIS.

Thinking about metrics from last week- I discovered this excellent post by Eric Rees on Vanity metrics:

“The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions. Unfortunately, the majority of data available in off-the-shelf analytics packages are what I call Vanity Metrics. They might make you feel good, but they don’t offer clear guidance for what to do.”

In other news:

@beaker wrote a thoughtful post on IaaS and PaaS- I think he’s totally right and the focus from IaaS providers need to be on systems and management. Silent Lucidity: IaaS — Already A Dinosaur? The Evolution of PaaSasaurus Rex… I guess if IBM are telling their customers to “Just do it” on IaaS then it’s time for the earlyvangelists to move on…

I’m sure Monday morning had many of the clouderati choking on the breakfast with the announcement that AT&T are getting into providing cloud services. (If you’ve never tried using AT&T then read this ) I guess that’s why one of their VP’s posted this article on use cases for cloud on Sunday.

Mike Dunham’s thoughts from last week’s discussion have stayed with me when looking at this post about Microsoft’s cloud offerings. Do you agree with this post that MS could be the GM of software?

Linkedin didn’t deliver all of last week’s TWIS- in case you missed it’s here. Because of that- our featured member of the week is Christina Pappas again- TWIS profile here. A new one next week

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s TWIS- it’s been hard this week to keep it to a sensible length- I’ve carried over a few things for next week and will sleep on a few other things- might even collect some thoughts for a blog post… If you want to catch me- I’ll be in London on Wednesday for the launch of Eurocloud – free ticket here. I’m looking forward to meeting Phil Waineright (@philww) in person after reading his blog for ages. Otherwise I’m @justinpirie on twitter or contact me via my blog.

Have a great weekend!

Update: Yes- Google Chrome OS has launched- video here.