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I am a strong advocate of interoperability between various Cloud players. In my opinion, it is very important for the very success of Cloud Computing, in general, and SaaS, in particular. Cloud vendors are slowly opening up their services through APIs so that other vendors and third party applications can integrate with their services seamlessly. There are some SaaS vendors, like Zoho (disclaimer: Zoho is the sole sponsor of this blog but this is my independent opinion), who also allow access to the entire data on their service using their APIs. Such actions on the part of the vendors has created an ecosystem where users can access their data and apps from many different services easily without any kind of vendor lock-in.

I am pretty happy with the way the concept of technological interoperability is progressing within the SaaS ecosystem. Vendors have realized that being open (data portability and interoperability) is the way forward for their business success. But, they have to coordinate not just on the technological level but on a more fundamental level. They have to make sure that the interoperability philosophy extends to other areas like legal issues. Only then SaaS users can have a complete experience in tune with the nature of the platform beneath it, the web.

In my last week’s post on the Living in the Clouds Series, I talked about a service called Animoto. It is a pretty interesting service that takes our photos, adds music and remixes them in such a way that we end up getting a pretty cool music video. We can either upload our own music, in which case there could be copyright issues if there is any misuse on the part of the users, or use music from the collection Animoto offers, in which case it will be a perfectly legal use. The music offered by Animoto is legitimate and, in fact, they also encourage artists and bands to submit their music so that it is featured on Animoto videos.

In tune with the philosophy of technological interoperability, Animoto offers an option to the users to upload the music video they created from their photographs into Youtube. It is a good option for users because

their videos have a better chances of getting popular on YouTube
backing up on a third party site will make sure that the videos created by users doesn’t vanish if Animoto vanishes

Last week, I created a paid full length film on Animoto using my family photographs and the music offered by them. It turned out to be a pretty good music video. I, then, uploaded it to YouTube for backup purposes as a private video (not shared with anyone). Next day, I received the following communication from YouTube (username and video title changed to protect privacy)

Dear username,

Your video "your video title" has been identified by YouTube's Content Identification program as containing copyrighted content which rumblefish claims is theirs.

Your video "your video title" is still available because rumblefish does not object to this content appearing on YouTube at this time. As long as rumblefish has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video's page.

Claim Details:

Copyright owner:
rumblefish

Content claimed:
Some or all of the audio content

Policy:
Allow this content to remain on YouTube.

Place advertisements on this video's watch page.

Applies to these locations:
Everywhere
rumblefish claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video / audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review videos.

If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with rumblefish and view other options in the Video ID Matches section of your YouTube account. Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes between content owners. Learn more about video identification disputes.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

This is a result of either a messed up copyright identification system on YouTube’s side or the agreement Animoto had with the copyright owners limited them to be used inside of Animoto. If it is former, YouTube should fix their copyright identification engine and, if it is the latter, either Animoto shouldn’t have allowed the video to be uploaded into YouTube’s site or they should have worked out with the copyright holder about the issues associated with the idea of interoperability. As an user, I shouldn’t be worrying about such issues and I wouldn’t want my personal video (which I have kept private in the YouTube to protect the privacy of my family members) to be viewed by someone from the side of the copyright holder or any enforcement agency. My actions are pretty legitimate and my privacy should be protected as long as it is legitimate.

This incident brings into focus the complex nature of interoperability in this SaaS era. It is important for different SaaS vendors to sit together and work out such legal issues while opening up their services to be interoperable. Interoperability doesn’t start and end with technological interoperability. It is much more complex and extends to many areas. It is important for SaaS vendors to work through all of them by collaborating much more closely with other vendors. Only then, a truly interoperable SaaS ecosystem can be developed.

On 31st December, 2008, I looked back at the year and offered my take on two of the most important events in the year that just ended. In this post, I will offer my predictions for this year. I have already offered my predictions to Jeremy Geelan of Sys-Con Media. In this post, I will expand further on what I expect to happen in the field of Cloud Computing this year.

On the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) side, I expect a strong push towards enterprises. As I mentioned to the Sys-Con Media, this will be due to two reasons. One is the proliferation of the so called private clouds, cloud like architectures inside the firewall. The second, and most important, reason will be the confidence gained by the enterprises on the security of the clouds. The support services offered by companies like IBM and the role played by companies like Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, will help enterprises trust cloud computing more than ever. Also, the release and evolution of products like VPN-Cubed from CohesiveFT and others will help enterprises get better control over their data, making them more and more comfortable with Cloud Computing. I, somehow, have a feeling that Amazon is going to absorb Rightscale and add value to their offerings so that enterprises will consider their services seriously.

PaaS will see a surge with Google offering support to more scripting languages. We will also see an increasing push for .NET platform on the clouds by Microsoft. Developers are going to benefit the most from such a surge and it will also have a stronger impact on the SaaS side.

On the SaaS side, I expect a renewed push towards Health 2.0 as the new administration tries to revamp the health care system. Google and Microsoft are going to play a major role in empowering the patients with control over their health records. We are also going to see a maturation of productivity applications with much closer integration and collaboration options. I expect Microsoft's initiative to take on Google Docs and Zoho Suite (Disclaimer: Zoho is the sponsor of this blog but this is my independent opinion) to get a cold reception because of Microsoft's inability/reluctance to end their strong love affair with their desktop based Office Suite. Data Portability is going to be the most vocal demand from the consumers as they realize the risks associated with the data being locked into third party servers.

In short, this year is going to be the beginning of a big time adaption of Cloud Computing by the enterprises. On the consumer side, users are going to trust Cloud vendors more than ever and start putting their data on the Clouds without worrying much about the security and privacy concerns. Overall, a very interesting year in the field of Cloud Computing.

When I offered my predictions for 2009 on Cloud Computing to Sys-Con Media, I mentioned about how Health 2.0 will pick up steam in 2009.

We will see a stronger support towards Health 2.0 with Microsoft and Google leading the way. Any attempt by Obama administration to revamp healthcare will include a Health 2.0 strategy.

Couple of people I know in the industry were apprehensive about putting their health records online and they asked me how I felt about it. I have no problems about it. In fact, I wrote a post on the topic when Google launched Google Health this year. There is not much buzz on the Google Health front after it was launched. It will eventually come back to focus whenever Health 2.0 lifts off big. I thought I will share the post here as some of my observations are still relevant.

Google launched Google Health this year, as a way to store your health records in the computing cloud. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I have no problems in putting my health records in the cloud. My insurance company has access to my health records already. If they can have it, I will have no problem with Google storing it on their clouds. However, I will expect the provider to offer strict privacy policy and a fine grained control to me so that I can control who gets to see my health records. Having made my beliefs with respect to storing my health care records on the computing cloud clear, I would like to add my initial observations of Google health. I may write a detailed review at a later stage but these are just some of my initial observations.

The interface is simple, like other Google products. I like it better than any flashy designs. It is your health records and I am pretty sure many people won’t have anything flashy in it. Simple interface is always good. (Thumbs Up)
It is not HIPAA compliant. However, Google explains why it is not necessary to be HIPAA compliant. Since Google Health is not a health care provider, they do not come under the terms of HIPAA. Google also offers a page explaining the similarities and differences between HIPAA and Google Health Policies. (Neutral)
Google Health uses SSL encryption but I would like to see added security. First, unlike what Microsoft did when it launched Health Vault, Google health is not forcing the users to set up a strong password on their account. Second, Google Health is connected to Google accounts and hence to other Google services. Any “mishap” in one of the other services will compromise your health records. I would like to see an additional layer of protection with respect to Google Health. Well, Google suggests you to create an account just for the sake of Google Health but it is rather naive. They should add additional layer of protection for Google Health. Third, there should be an explicit warning to users every time they log into Google Health about possible security issues when accessing Google Health from public computers. Users are not all that educated about the trace of their online activities left on the computers they use. A warning should be shown before they could log into their account every time even if it is inconvenient for users. (Thumbs Down)
Google Health is, atleast right now, US based. For a person like me who was born in another country, I need more options to make my health records complete. (Neutral)
More importantly, there is no option to export my data from Google Health. It is a downer. I should be able to take my health records to any service I want. (Thumbs Down)

These are my initial observations on Google Health. I understand that the service is still in beta and I hope they add more features in the future. Online health records are important. The complete control of the records should be given to the users. The security and privacy of the records should be given the utmost attention. Google has taken the necessary first step, along with Microsoft and many other startups. We will have to wait and see how it is going to benefit the customers.

Image representing Animoto as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

In this edition of Living in the Clouds Series, I am going to talk about a startup, created on a nerd out session by a bunch of techies and film/tv producers, that is creating quite a bit of buzz recently. This service can be considered as music video on the clouds or slideshow on the clouds or, during holiday times, greeting cards on the clouds. This service lets users to select photos and music and churns out amazing music videos.

I love this service for two reasons. First, it falls into the SaaS category in terms of their service offerings. Second, they are a zero infrastructure company using Amazon Web Services and Rightscale for their entire operations. They use S3 to store photos and music, EC2 for video processing and SQS to take care of their queuing needs. In short, this is a 100% unadulterated Cloud Computing company.

As it is customary in this series, I am adding a video that will help you get started with this service.

As I usually do in this series, I will list out the pros and cons from my point of view.

Pros:

Extremely simple and easy to use. I mean it because if this company becomes a big hit (well, it is already a big hit after their facebook integration), one of the biggest reason is that it is simple and easy to use.
Good collection of music for those who want it out of the box without worrying about any legal issues.
Reasonably fast. I tried it just before Christmas (with their holiday greetings option live) and the wait time is not bad (thanks to the utility based scaling offered by cloud computing.
Reasonable cost and I like the option to buy just one full length movie instead of forcing you to buy in bulk.
Youtube integration.

Cons:

Sometimes the free short video uses only 2 photographs with lots of unused black space. Since you don’t get the same video if you do it again, I couldn’t reproduce it. It could be one odd thing.
Some fine grain customizations for advanced users will be good.

Most CloudAve readers probably know that Zoho is our exclusive sponsor. When we launched in September, the speculation that this will turn us into nothing but a PR outlet for Zoho was inevitable. I think in these few months we have proven otherwise, by being very conservative with Zoho coverage (if anything, we have a negative bias) while generously talking about potentially competing solutions.

But when ReadWriteWeb declares Zoho the Best LittleCo of 2008, it deserves a mention here, too. Besides, it’s holiday time and I wanted to show off their updated logo. smile_wink

We felt that Web Office vendor Zoho best represented the 'LittleCo' ethos this year, due to its David vs Goliath effort in competing head on with products from several very large companies: Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Salesforce.com's core CRM platform.

Zoho not only competed with these bigcos, they were innovative and scrappy about it. And in a year that will be remembered for the economic downturn, Zoho is a reminder to us all that we can work ourselves out of a down economy.

Talk about working ourselves out of a down economy: Zoho itself was born as a result of a turnaround, when parent company AdventNet had to reinvent itself after the collapse of their then primary market, the telecommunications industry.

Whether they are LittleCo or BigCo today is all relative: with 800 employees, of which 300 focus on Zoho, they are certainly now a scrawny little Web 2.0 startup – but when you compare them to the real Goliath they are competing with, they certainly are still little. Something tells me that even at 2,000 employees in many ways they will continue to act as LittleCo.

Part of the secret sauce of survival and growing has been self-efficiently: they are entirely funded by revenues. I’ve stopped counting the number of products Zoho offers somewhere above 20, for fear I would be wrong, but looking at some of the recent funding news to one-product companies, can you imagine what level of investment would it take to build a business that offers all the combination of Office and Business applications, tools and even the infrastructure to provide it as SaaS?

Not that I am against Venture Funding, in fact via my participation at SVASE I help bring entrepreneurs and VC together, but there is something to be said about bootstrapping, frugality and efficiency as means to prosper, rather than just surviving a recession.

‘Nuff said: congratulations to Zoho, thanks for continuing to sponsor CloudAve as an unbiased Cloud Computing forum, and we now continue our regular programming… smile_regular

Update: also Congrat's to fellow Editor Ben Kepes, having been marrried for 12 years today.

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

If you are a security professional or someone who has done a course on computer security, you will know that the security of your computing environment is as strong as the weakest link in the network and/or users. A single user in your network who is careless about the passwords can cause havoc to the network.

Google is trying to be a leader in the SaaS and PaaS world by offering wide ranging apps including Google Search, Google Apps, Google App Engine, etc.. To lock in the users to its services make the cloud computing experience seamless for the users, Google released a browser, called Google Chrome, which is really lightweight and lightning fast. Google recently took off the beta label from the browser. Knowing Google's love for the beta term, this was a big surprise.

Unless you are paranoid in your computing world, like Dick Cheney wants you to be in the real world, you will save your passwords in your browser's password manager. In fact, many users don't even think about the impact of storing the passwords in the browser. If we are going to keep all our data in the clouds, including sensitive emails, banking information, etc., it is very important for us to rethink the way we store passwords.

As a cloud user, storing the passwords in the browser is akin to locking the door and keeping the key in the lock itself. If you think that is insane, it appears that the locks are not even locking the doors after you lock it with your keys. A recent study released by Chapin Information Services reports that all the browsers are doing a bad job in protecting the stored passwords. In particular, Google Chrome comes out to be the worst in the league.

Currently, the password manager that is closest to solving the first three problems is built into Opera 9.62. With invisble form elements deactivated, options to limit saved passwords to a single page, and partial destination checking, this is certainly one of the more worry-free products.

Also new to this round of testing is Safari 3.2 for Windows. Safari and Chrome are essentially tied for the worst password manager built into a major web browser.

It is ridiculously insane for Google to do such a bad job on the security front when they aspire to be the Microsoft of Cloud Computing. If Google's browser is so lousy on the security front, what kind of message it will send to users who are already reluctant to put their data on the clouds and give up certain level of control to achieve a nearly ubiquitous availability of their data to them. This study should be a rude awakening for Google and other browser vendors and it should also serve as a warning for those users who save their passwords in their browsers.

Recently, I got a chance to read the Bernstein research report titled “The Long View: Netbooks, Wireless and Cloud Computing - Client Software's Imperfect Storm?”. Larry Dignan of ZDNet has already written about it along with his take. I was somewhat skeptical about the report and its conclusion when I read Larry’s post and it was confirmed further when I actually read the report. The authors of the report have done extensive research compiling quite a bit of data. But, I have my own reservations on their assumptions and analysis. Let me take the relevant portions of their report and offer my own opinions on them.

Before I pick on the report findings, let me offer some perspective on Cloud Computing. Unlike some of the other technological evolutions, Cloud Computing is actually a paradigm shift from the way we used software in the traditional desktop and on-premise world. It needs an entirely new thinking and mindset. Whenever such paradigm shift occurs in the technology world, we could see fear, skepticism, reluctance, etc. towards its adaption. The shift from status quo to new technology also happens suddenly because once the critical mass is reached, the adaption becomes more widespread and it doesn’t follow any linear trend. Many times, the growth in the market becomes almost exponential leaving the pundits wondering how they went wrong.

This report is trying to make predictions about a paradigm shift based on the current market trends and, as Ed Cone correctly pointed out, the future doesn’t end with 2012. Since the enterprises are always slow to adapt a paradigm shift, expecting a complete embrace in such a short time (compared to the eon-scale timeline of enterprise technological adoptions) is too much to ask. Let me now pick from their report and offer my take on them.

The report says they still see the future of data processing as heterogeneous both in the clouds and in the device. Well, they are not alone in such predictions about hybrid nature of enterprise computing in the future. People assume that the hybrid computing is the end of the evolution in enterprise computing. Rather, it is an intermediate step in the evolution of the enterprise from the traditional world to a Clouds based world. An intermediate point in the evolutionary process cannot be construed as the end point of the process. Given enough time and with maturation of cloud based technologies, the dinosaur-like enterprises will eventually move to Cloud. I would prefer the analysts to see a long term picture than making predictions based on short term possibilities.
They quote the lack of complete internet coverage (whether wired or wireless) in many geographies and, also, talk about users need to have offline apps and data for travel in the airplanes, etc.. This, again, fits my argument against short term view while making predictions. It is just a matter of time before we get the ubiquitous internet. It may or may not happen in the time period they are considering but it is definitely going to happen. While making a case against the netbooks and its emergence along with Cloud Computing, they also point out that most of the applications benefit greatly from local caching, processing and rendering, especially if the host side has less than total availability. Then they quote that a Blackberry device is still valuable when disconnected from a wireless network because a user can still read cached emails and generate responses offline that will be sent and synchronized when the device reconnects with an implication that Cloud Computing lacks any such features and hence of lesser utility value. They are wrong again. Google has released Gears technology as open source. It is now used in many SaaS apps including Google Apps, Zoho Suite and, also, by smaller players like Mindmeister. In fact, they do mention the presence of Gears technology at the later part of their report but they never connected it with the above argument. If they had actually made the connection, they wouldn’t have made this argument in the first place.
They are using the results of Pew Internet and American Life project. They argue that consumer usage of online apps is technically greater than enterprise usage and is an important mechanism by which users become familiar with online applications in their workplace. There is no problem with this argument but the Pew research they quote includes people with the age of 65+ in the calculation of the national average in SaaS usage. If this average was taken as a data point in their analysis, I would say that their analysis has some flawed assumptions. People over 65 rarely play a major role in shaping the enterprise IT usage. Under such circumstances, including them while calculating the average and then using it to extrapolate the trends is not a correct approach.
Their report terms the impact of Cloud Computing on Software and OS development as moderately disruptive in the next 5 years. They quote the annual revenues of Amazon in 2012, through their Cloud services, to be 50 Million and the annual revenue of Google, through its PaaS and SaaS offerings, to be a very moderate 1.5 Billion, as one of their arguments to minimize the disruptive potential of Cloud Computing. Such smaller revenues aren’t surprising at all because it is the main selling point of SaaS, in particular, and Cloud Computing, in general. Instead of paying bloated amounts for software like Microsoft Office, users can save tons of cash by using SaaS based productivity apps. Also, unlike the case of Microsoft Office, the consumer side of SaaS productivity apps like Google Docs or Zoho Apps are free. They only charge for the premier edition, usually used by medium sized companies and enterprises. This, along with the fact the SaaS applications are designed to be cheaper, will contribute to the heavily reduced revenues. This reduction is an unavoidable aspect of the software market in the future and it is, in fact, an advantage for SaaS. While making any comparison between Cloud based companies with the traditional software companies having comparable products, it is not right to make an argument just by comparing their respective revenues. The competitive advantage of the cloud over the traditional software is, actually, the huge cost savings it offers. It is just not possible any cloud vendor to earn comparable earnings while offering such heavy cost savings.

There are some glaring mistakes too.

Though I wouldn’t keep this against them, I want to point out a trivial mistake in their report. While discussing about Netbooks, they talk about the cost of Linux license being $5. This is plain wrong. Linux licenses doesn’t cost a dime but support services might cost money. Even though this doesn’t go against their analysis, it will be better to avoid such glaring mistakes.
They also claim that Google locks up users into their platform by using Python. First, Python is an open source language. Second, Google App Engine SDK is also open source. Finally, Google App Engine is already ported to Amazon EC2. Their argument about vendor lock-in is plain wrong.

But I am neutral about their quote on the lack of flexibility and customization and being locked into an ongoing cost with a single cloud provider, as a disadvantage against cloud proliferation. This is true right now. But it is changing fast with more and more vendors opening up and adapting data portability and interoperability. Such moves will ensure that clients are not struck with a single vendor.

However, the report also correctly points out the trends we see in the market.

They do not deny the increased use of clouds in the consumer segment, small and medium business segments and, even, enterprise segments.
They are right about their prediction that there will be increase in the SaaS revenues and enterprises moving to clouds, even if it is on a hybrid level. They also mention that SaaS will have substantial savings on the software costs.
They also correctly identify that SaaS is the fastest growing sector in the software market.
They are right on target when they identify Microsoft as the biggest loser due to the current cloud push by various vendors.

I am disappointed with the short sightedness of this report. I wish the authors had spoken more with the Cloud vendors and analysts before coming to these conclusions. As I pointed out in the beginning of this post, paradigm shifts cannot be predicted by the current market trends alone.

Image via Wikipedia

Last week, my favorite mind mapping tool, Mindmeister, announced the release of its API with all the functions of the app exposed through it. If you are wondering how this is significant and why I am writing about last week’s news today, I request patience. I want to use this announcement to continue on the theme I discussed in my yesterday’s post on Zoho Creator – Google App Engine integration.

The new API makes it easy to integrate third party services with Mindmeister without going through the hassles of REST related programming. The release of API led to Box.net integrating Mindmeister into its storage service. Now one can store their mindmaps, in Mindmeister’s .mind format or in the formats of Mindmanager or Freemind, on Box.net cloud. Then, it is possible to easily edit the files from within the browser and save any modifications on the Box.net service itself. This is similar to what we do with our files on the local hard disks. We open the files with the apps installed on our computer, edit them and store them back to our hard disks. The Mindmeister-Box.net integration is seamless and offers the same flexibility of desktop through the browser. For Box.net, this is not something new. They have already integrated Picnik (another favorite tool of mine and I will talk about it in my Living in the Clouds series in the future), Zoho (Disclaimer: Zoho sponsors this blog) and Scribd.

In my post yesterday, I talked about the importance of data portability and interoperability. This news, again, goes on to emphasize my point about interoperability. The future of SaaS is going to be a collection of interoperable services. As I told in my post yesterday, it is one of the necessary conditions for the very success of SaaS. The reason is simple. Web is nothing but an open interconnected network. When we take desktop applications and port it to SaaS, the users will expect the applications to mimic the nature of the platform on which they reside. They will expect the same inter-connectivity in the form of interoperability between applications from different vendors. Any failure to do so will minimize the users’ need to migrate to the SaaS world. I am glad to see more and more vendors understanding the importance of interoperability and opening up their services.

Disclaimer: Zoho is the sponsor of this blog but this is my independent personal opinion. I had access to the same documents that were provided to other bloggers.

Today, Zoho made a major announcement about the integration between Zoho Creator and Google App Engine. Now, one can create an app on Zoho Creator and deploy it on Google App Engine. In short, Zoho Creator acts as an IDE for Google App Engine. With this announcement, the barrier to entry for Google App Engine has been brought down considerably. Anyone, who knows how to drag and drop, can deploy an app on Google App Engine.

Sometime back Sridhar, CEO of Zoho, talked about the theoretical possibility of taking apps from Zoho Creator and deploying it on Amazon Web Services with Google App Engine as a middleware. He visualized a continuum between these three services. Already, Chris Anderson ported Google App Engine to Amazon EC2 and released it as Open Source. With the release of this feature, Zoho has ensured that Sridhar’s vision of continuum has turned into a reality.

Anyone can create their own app on Zoho creator and deploy it at Google App Engine or they can just pick up an app (for free or for a small price) from Zoho Marketplace and, then, deploy it on Google App Engine. Usually it doesn’t make any sense to take an app from Zoho Marketplace and to deploy it on App Engine as it is totally redundant. However, businesses can use this option and implement the domain based authentication offered by Google App Engine for the apps. This way, businesses can have exclusive access to the app and data from inside their own domain, a feature that was not available in the Zoho Creator Application (someone please correct me if I am wrong on this assertion).

For me, this is interesting from another angle. I am an unabashed Open Source evangelist in the desktop world. Even though the source code is important in the SaaS world, one can’t do much with the code if they don’t have the necessary computing and storage resources to run the application. People, who believed strongly in Open Source, had to look beyond the source code in the SaaS world. We need to worry about open protocols, open formats, open architecture, etc.. Data Portability and Interoperability, then, becomes very important in the SaaS world. In fact, I will say that Data Portability and Interoperability are two of the necessary factors for the very success of the SaaS itself. With this realization, vendors are moving towards creating an interoperability between their SaaS applications. In some cases, SaaS vendors are working directly with others to offer interoperability. Salesforce’s recent integration with Google App Engine is an example of this kind of approach. There are also third party integration tools available to help establish interoperability between platforms of different vendors.

With the CloudSQL release last month, Zoho took the necessary step towards Data Portability. With this move, Zoho is taking the step towards establishing Interoperability with other vendors. Well, they are already working with Google and Yahoo on authentication side but this is a very significant move by itself. It is pretty clear that Zoho is taking the necessary steps to establish themselves as a major player in the years to come.

Check out this video by Raju Vegesna, Evangelist at Zoho, where he explains the deployment process from Zoho Creator to Google App Engine.

Right now, once the app is created on Zoho Creator, users can download the Python code and then deploy it on Google App Engine. According to Raju, Zoho has a working code where one can easily deploy the apps on App Engine directly from Zoho Creator. They are now working with Google to make this possible within the terms and conditions of Google App Engine. He also assured me that Zoho Creator will allow users to download the app code in other scripting languages as and when Google starts supporting them in their platform. He explained that it is possible because apps created on Zoho Creator are saved as Deluge code at the backend and Deluge is designed in such a way that the entire code is modeled in a database.

Interoperability Doesn’t Stop With Technology

Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Putting Health Records Online

Living in the Clouds - Animoto

Zoho: Best LittleCo of 2008 that Could … and Will

Google Keeps the Gates to the Clouds Open to Hackers

Paradigm Shifts and Market Trends

Mindmeister teams up with Box.net

Create Your App On Zoho Creator And Deploy It On Google App Engine

From 24SevenOffice to 24SevenTravel and On to ...

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