In the past week, i read couple of posts about platforms in SaaSblogs and also in Phil's blog. I just thought i would share my perception to the platform and ecosystem from a consumer angle (consumers of the platform, who are ISV's).I would classify the consumers as three types
1. Long tail of ISV's or Individual developers -- They need better support in building the application, hosting, service delivery, marketing. Its better for these companies to adopt a platform vendor who is either in an all-embracing ecosystem or Application ecosystem, for instance companies like Kieden (acquired by salesforce.com) can adopt this model where they ride on the popularity of the host's application and try to attract customer with some niche extensions.
2. ISV's with good funding and a larger application -- These ISV's would tend to create their own application offering and also try to participate in other marketplace ecosystems like Appstore or Jamcracker's JSDN or Strike Iron and in application ecosystem like Appexchange (CRM). Lot of partner application in Appexchange directory today fall under this category (companies like Xactly). Utility computing vendors would play a major role in supporting these companies. This is where most of the future native SaaS companies would fall under.The service platform ecosystem might play a major role here, i don't see the all-embracing ecosystem playing any role here as these companies have varied requirement and might have a customized or differentiated requirement, which might not be provided by the all-embracing ecosystem or common platforms like Appexchange.
3. There is a third type of companies who are existing enterprise ISV's (around 40 - 100M revenues) in the space of CRM, HRMS, Collaboration, Accounting and so on, who would migrate to SaaS to focus on new markets and increase their existing revenue. These companies need a different type of environment which would be offered by the Utility computing ecosystem vendors (i still don't think Amazon is still a player to be considered for the ISVs of this size, but a huge potential). There could be players like IBM, SUN, Microsoft and even opsource who provide this ability. We might also see an emergence of some strong India based offshore vendor playing significant role in this space in the future as most of the IT services companies have the capability required to provide this type of services today.
As more platforms / ecosystems emerge, all these ISV's will be forced to participate in multiple ecosystems / platforms and might increase complexity in maintaining the software in accordance to a large no of platforms, it will be as bad as certifying the software today (on-premise) in multiple stacks. ISV's would pray to have one or two dominant players offering the platform and others just play a role in creating a distribution ecosystem - like Jamcracker (JSDN) or StrikeIron.
Also, i think that existing SaaS companies who have their own applications and offer such ecosystems would be a huge threat to this model. The ecosystem vendor should be non-competitive to the participants. The ecosystem provider should play a neutral role and help the participating companies to grow, rather than becoming their own competitors, acquisition of Kieden by SFDC is a good example of what should not happen.
1. Long tail of ISV's or Individual developers -- They need better support in building the application, hosting, service delivery, marketing. Its better for these companies to adopt a platform vendor who is either in an all-embracing ecosystem or Application ecosystem, for instance companies like Kieden (acquired by salesforce.com) can adopt this model where they ride on the popularity of the host's application and try to attract customer with some niche extensions.
2. ISV's with good funding and a larger application -- These ISV's would tend to create their own application offering and also try to participate in other marketplace ecosystems like Appstore or Jamcracker's JSDN or Strike Iron and in application ecosystem like Appexchange (CRM). Lot of partner application in Appexchange directory today fall under this category (companies like Xactly). Utility computing vendors would play a major role in supporting these companies. This is where most of the future native SaaS companies would fall under.The service platform ecosystem might play a major role here, i don't see the all-embracing ecosystem playing any role here as these companies have varied requirement and might have a customized or differentiated requirement, which might not be provided by the all-embracing ecosystem or common platforms like Appexchange.
3. There is a third type of companies who are existing enterprise ISV's (around 40 - 100M revenues) in the space of CRM, HRMS, Collaboration, Accounting and so on, who would migrate to SaaS to focus on new markets and increase their existing revenue. These companies need a different type of environment which would be offered by the Utility computing ecosystem vendors (i still don't think Amazon is still a player to be considered for the ISVs of this size, but a huge potential). There could be players like IBM, SUN, Microsoft and even opsource who provide this ability. We might also see an emergence of some strong India based offshore vendor playing significant role in this space in the future as most of the IT services companies have the capability required to provide this type of services today.
As more platforms / ecosystems emerge, all these ISV's will be forced to participate in multiple ecosystems / platforms and might increase complexity in maintaining the software in accordance to a large no of platforms, it will be as bad as certifying the software today (on-premise) in multiple stacks. ISV's would pray to have one or two dominant players offering the platform and others just play a role in creating a distribution ecosystem - like Jamcracker (JSDN) or StrikeIron.
Also, i think that existing SaaS companies who have their own applications and offer such ecosystems would be a huge threat to this model. The ecosystem vendor should be non-competitive to the participants. The ecosystem provider should play a neutral role and help the participating companies to grow, rather than becoming their own competitors, acquisition of Kieden by SFDC is a good example of what should not happen.
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