Welcome to CloudAve - and Thank You, Harry

We must be a crazy bunch on a suicide mission. Why else would we launch a new blog focused on Cloud Computing and Business, when it's just a fad that will collapse in two years?

Harry Debes, CEO of Lawson Software is a respected Enterprise Software industry veteran, but I'm afraid for all his achievements he'll go down in history as the man who grabbed headlines with a fatally wrong call. Of course not all wrong calls hurt one's reputation: IBM's Thomas Watson is still an industry legend despite the famous quote incorrectly attributed to him:

” I think there is a world market for maybe five computers“

The small difference is that what Thomas Watson could not fathom in 1943 ended up putting IBM on an amazing growth trajectory, while Harry Debes's view may just turn out to be fatal for Lawson - or to quote my Enterprise Irregular friend, Vinnie Mirchandani:

"That's what American and Delta said about SW. And GM and Ford said about Japanese cars. And Sears and Wards said about WalMart."

Another quote by Vinnie, closer to our industry:

"Dun & Bradstreet, which GEAC acquired for a song, was one of the most spectacular slides in the software market. In less than 5 years it went from dominant position to a distress sale as it missed the client/server wave in early 90s."

I've seen that one close, fortunately for me from SAP's side - the winner in that round. We're witnessing another tidal wave now, the shift to Cloud Computing. It won't happen overnight, but those who completely ignore it will vanish. Some of my fellow Enterprise Irregulars elaborate more:

Vinnie Mirchandani points out that SaaS is what more and more customers want, and those who stop listening to customers inevitably hit the wall sooner or later. Need proof? How about this 100% SaaS customer, showcased at the recent Office 2.0 conference?
Jim Berkowitz of CRM Mastery fame agrees, adding that calling people, potential customers “stupid” never leads to any good.
Bob Warfield makes the case that even if we ignore what customers want and only consider profitabilty, Debes is wrong, Salesforce.com is almost as profitable as Lawson, but grows much faster, while Conquer, another SaaS success story is actually more profitable than Lawson is.
Jason Corsello adds that Lawson actually launched a SaaS offering last year, but experienced lackluster customer response largely to pricing and deployment issues ... so now that they couldn't pull it off, the declare the entire market doomed.
Josh Greenbaum concludes: "SaaS isn’t collapsing, it’s only just getting started".

I can live with that... it's only starting... so we're not a suicidal bunch, after all. smile_wink But thank you, Harry Debes, for sparking a great discussion.

If you read just the few articles I've quoted above, you get a fairly good picture of the many benefits the Software as a Service model offers. Let me add a few of my personal favorites:

Extended reach - small businesses can now have business functionality previously only available and affordable for large enterprises.
Commoditization of the software market - commoditization hurts most companies, except the few who drive it, but guess what - it's great for customers.
End of Bloatware - for the first time SaaS vendors can run stats and observe what features are actually used by customers, so they can cut out the fat and enhance the in-demand features.
New Business Models, like benchmarking - based on anonym aggregate data provide your customers with performance metrics. Even newer business models we have not even imagined yet.
Dramatically changed Sales and Marketing model: pull vs. push. Instead of the traditional sales model it's all about transparency, information, letting informed customers find you. The Product sells itself and your Customers are your Marketing team.

We'll be writing about these and more. I'm a "business application guy", so I mostly talk about SaaS - but our name is Cloud Avenue, not SaaS Avenue, for good reason: fellow blogger Krish will talk about it soon. By the way, Krish and I got to know each other through our blogs - just like my fellow Editor, Ben Kepes, and just about all other contributors. We also have our CloudLab - for product / service reviews. Yes, we will report on products, but do not strive to be a mini-TechCrunch: we have no intention to report about everything new. We're not a news-blog. We'd rather sit back, analyze a market, find key players, then produce a series of reviews / comparative analysis. Quality before quantity or urgency.

We're believers in Cloud Computing, but not over-zealous cheerleaders. Just as I'm finishing this post, another SaaS debate erupted, which prompted Anshu Sharma to note: "there must be a Sky is Falling Support Group". The really notable part of the Cloud-Filled Debate @Forbes is Nick Carr's responses: not because of the Big Switch author's unquestionable "cloud-bias", but because of how realistic he is:

"Forbes.com: Is cloud computing over-hyped?
Nicholas Carr: At the moment, yes, and that's typical for technological advances.
What's your imagined time line of the adoption of cloud computing? Will it take years? Decades?
If you're talking about big companies, I would say it will be a slow, steady process lasting maybe 15 to 20 years.
On what Gartner Research analysts call "the cycle of hype and gloom," where do you think cloud computing is currently positioned?
It's definitely near the peak of its hype. The doom period, when the media and IT managers realize the challenges ahead, is likely coming soon. But regardless of hype or gloom, the technology will only keep progressing."

Overhyped, slow process, doom is coming... has Nick Carr switched sides? No, he is just being realistic - and that's what we need to do here @CloudAve, too. We will talk about integration problems, security issues, privacy concerns, even legal ramifications - many of these I don't claim to know much about, which is why it's great to have a diverse team of authors with complementary areas of expertise. And our door is never closed: we welcome guest posts, and who knows, you may feel inclined to join us as as a regular writer...

Finally, we could not afford to bring you CloudAve without sponsorship. My regular readers know I've been an advisor to Zoho for years now - I've found them to be a showcase for a lot of my ideals. Zoho stepped up as exclusive sponsor of CloudAve. This does not make us a Zoho PR outlet, in fact they can expect less coverage here than they got on my personal blog. We enjoy complete editorial independence.

What we do not have, and will not have is any form of advertising. None of those flashy banners, boxes, making the site close to unreadable. Just pure content. And since we are not dependent on page views, we can afford to offer our content under a Creative Commons licence. Yes, it's all yours, take it - just don't forget attribution.

So here we are - welcome to CloudAve. We hope you will follow us. And once again, thank you, Harry, for all the attention to Cloud Computing. smile_wink

P.S. Our house is not exactly in nice order yet. Apologies for the shabby appearance, while the ~~house~~ platform is getting fixed. smile_sad

That Zoho (AdventNet) is sponsoring this blog is akin to Microsoft sponsoring a blog on SaaS'ed up Enterprise Email (read MS Exchange whoring). Will, whether you intent it to be or not sound like a plug for Zoho. And running on the Zoho blogging platform gives another hit to credibility. You will end up being perceived as the Zoho shill at the SaaS roundtable. And as far as customization goes the Zoho blogging platform is about as wieldy as a chinese scow! Better would be to move to Wordpress and stick a Zoho advertising chicklet somewhere. Live or die by pageviews! Don't get me wrong I love Zoho but this interaction model stinks. :) That apart, this blog is a great idea. An honest to goodness rip into enterprise SaaS is something that is badly needed. Will be following...

Zoli, Ben, congratulations on getting this new blog launched. I don't have any problem with the Zoho sponsorship as I trust them and you guys to keep this content truly independent - neither of you would benefit from slanted CloudLab reviews. I just have to comment on the interview with Harry Debes. He must live in a different world than I do. Small and mid-size companies I work with love the idea of SaaS, and more generally the whole promise of cloud computing. Also, basing his thesis on one company ("The hype is based on one company...") and today's volatile stock market seems very short-sighted.

We all know that cloud computing has a strong computing power, because he provide adequate storage, bandwidth, cpu, load balancing, and other powerful advantages. And how to have more of these applications running on computing platforms, there should be one of the most easy to developers to use development tools. ZC-born should be calculated application development tools, because ZC have been based on a browser can do all the development, but also through the cloud computing services and access to the browser. Can be said to be an excellent match. ZC can be complex logic, by ZC very simple way to achieve rapid. At present a lot of cloud computing platform resources for the development of the emerging, but not a unified development tool to use these basic resources, because each has its own platform for development tools, such as google app engine with Python. This resulted in the development of personnel constraints, higher threshold, leading to cloud computing resources can not be fully utilized. So how to use simple and functional and powerful tool to develop more applications it is very important. I proposed, ZOHO and the popular GOOGLE APP, AWS and the upcoming development platform to provide cloud computing companies such as Microsoft to strengthen cooperation is a win-win results, because this will cloud the development of computing platforms provide a simple and a strong development Tools, so there will be more professional and non-professional developers to use ZC (because it was so easy to use), which are calculated cloud development platform providers will have more in their applications to run on the platform, will So that more of the public to enjoy more extensive cloud computing services. These clouds will also be calculated on the basis of adequate facilities have to play. ZC use of the development team will be more substantial. Is strong cooperation. The author recommends that: 1, ZC will be converted into app development of the Python (calculated according to different cloud development platform, design a different translation), then run in those powerful server farms. 2, with these proposals ZOHO cloud computing development platform providers, the platform will help them directly with ZC development and application procedures. I like clouds, the more love ZC and I hope that the ZC become the future development of computing platforms-the first choice of development tools.

With much the focus on "web tooo" services and techmeme rock stars you'd think that consumer based services were the only credible net plays. As an "IT Guy" it feels a bit like I've been hanging around a bunch of drunks at a carnival. Consumer services are influencing businesses and push/pulling IT, Zoho’s suite and Google Apps being obvious examples, but providing business services is a different beast – fashion does not win, value does and expectations are high. There are many interesting stories to be told in the confluence of all of this.

@sunfever, I can't expect anyone to simply believe our editorial independence. All I can ask is keep on reading, and make a judgement call after a while. Instead of making promises, we'll let our content do the talking:-) As to the platform, I don't see it as a credibility issue, but I don't like it any better than you do either. It's a pretty shabby platform at this point, and as a blogger I would prefer WP. But that - showcasing Zoho's technology - is the only "deal" we made with Zoho, in return for the sponsorship, which allows us to create good content, and invest in research, testing. I found it a good deal ... I also trust the platform will improve (it has to!) as I've seen other Zoho products come it in so-so stage, then become leaders in a few months. So we will get there - and this will not just be a blog, but a more interactive site. Thanks for the comment, and I hope to hear from you more.

I don't know about the large companies, but I'm working with a number of micro startups who are really jazzed about cloud computing. It's a great way to control early costs and to ensure that current software is available throughout the company. And for the tech challenged entrepreneurs, it solves a bunch of IT problems.

Welcome to CloudAve - and Thank You, Harry

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