SaaS
Google App Marketplace Could Revolutionize Cloud Computing
Mar 10th
You must have noticed that Google has been slowly inching towards a culture of Online cloud computing, and most companies, individuals and businesses have adapted to the culture of cloud computing because of its obvious advantages. Cloud computing allows users to manage data, applications and information in a way that traditional software or hardware don’t allow and the most important advantage is that you could access your data, application and software from any computer in the world, provided you have the ID and password.
However, cloud computing itself is not without disadvantages, and the most unpleasant one is the lack of applications directly integrated into Google. Hence, users copy and paste data, use different applications time and again in order to get everything into the cloud. Google itself has admitted that it does not have the expertise to integrate the hundreds of business applications out there into the cloud.
Thus Google has now announced that Google Apps Marketplace is now open for business. Developers and software providers can now join the new Online store for integrated business applications. These cloud applications will allow Google Apps customers to discover newer applications without having to manage each one of them separately.
At the moment, there are already more than 50 companies who are selling their applications. Some of the apps already available are
Intuit Online Payroll: It allows users to run payroll, pay taxes and check paystubs within an integrated online office environment.
Manymoon: It helps in organizing and sharing information with co-workers and partners, including tasks, projects, documents, status updates and links.
Professional Services Connect (PS Connect): This provides contextually relevant information about people, projects, customers and transactions so that one could make better decisions.
JIRA Studio: This app helps to track and manage project issues and workflow, especially in design and development of tools.
What the Google Apps Marketplace Is
It works similar to the Apple App Store, but is only cheaper. Google is asking the developers and businesses a onetime fee of $100 and 20% of the revenue in exchange to the access to 25 million Google users. Apps would be authenticated using OpenID and would be secured through oAuth. The applications would be accessible through a universal Google Apps navigation system.
How It Could Help Businesses
Businesses and companies could stop using multiple applications and get rid of the burden of having to remember multiple passwords for each applications. Whether you are an employee or a proprietor, you could use your Google account to access all these applications, and edit/use based on the permissions you have.
How It Could Help Individuals
Google Apps are used by not just companies and businesses but also students, freelance workers, and independent professionals. There are several account management apps, data related apps and other applications that could help the end user to make use of Google cloud computing and the Google App Marketplace makes it easy for everyone.
How Cool Is It Anyway?
Like I mentioned earlier, cloud computing has already become popular and most of us have been using Google Docs, and other apps successfully. The marketplace would allow us to access more applications which are not developed by Google but have been authenticated nevertheless. This allows for a streamlined system of working and managing data, software, accounts and information.
Companies and individuals could make use of payroll, data entry, management, and an office suite for instance and integrate them to the Google account. It would also help in terms of social media, data management and communication. Google App Marketplace could thus be a great beginning and a step in the direction!
Read more: Google App Marketplace Could Revolutionize Cloud Computing | Walyou
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Google Apps Marketplace Launches as New Cloud Computing Store
Mar 10th
Google March 9 opened its Google Apps Marketplace, an online store selling enterprises business applications that integrate with and extend Google Apps.
The Google Apps Marketplace will let Google Apps users access business apps for project management, billing and accounting, travel management, and other services. This will provide third-party software
developers a larger cloud computing channel into which to sell their applications.
Click here for a tour of Google Apps Marketplace.
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The move, announced during a Campfire One event at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, is Google’s most aggressive play to drive growth for Google Apps, a suite of SAAS (software as a service) collaboration applications. The play also threatens existing cloud application stores such as Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.
Google Apps, which Google offers in free and paid versions, includes Gmail; Google Docs word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications; and Google Sites publishing software.
Google Apps has picked up more than 2 million business customers who opt to let Google host their business data so they don’t have to maintain on-premises solutions such as Microsoft SharePoint or IBM Lotus Notes on their own servers.
However, collaboration applications are only a part of the SAAS software ecosystem. As the success of Salesforce.com shows, there is a burgeoning market for enterprise applications based on the cloud.
To wit, the Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps administrators to purchase integrated third-party cloud applications and deploy them to their domains.
Google Engineering David Glazer, who shepherded Google’s OpenSocial movement, said that while many businesses
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Hybrid Clouds Hit Data Centers
Mar 9th
Merging public and private cloud computing infrastructures.
Charlotte Dunlap 
There was much buzz about merging public and private cloud infrastructures at last week’s RSA Security Conference in San Francisco. As enterprises use virtualization to step up the creation of private clouds around their data centers, security vendors are working to steer customers toward merging private and public clouds for a hybrid cloud approach.
Some security and infrastructure providers realize that private clouds are an important first step toward increasingly moving customer workloads to public clouds as the technology and security catches up.
Private cloud infrastructures are necessary for companies that are regulated under compliance mandates, but CIOs see the value of being able to tap public cloud services for obvious reasons: lower total cost of ownership (TCO), simplified management and access to dynamic global threat intelligence, i.e., malware alerts. Of course, enterprises are still very concerned about the security, reliability and governance issues associated with public clouds, but CIOs are going to be hearing a lot more about hybrid or internal/external cloud options in coming months as a way to appease concerns.
An example of a hybrid cloud solution is the merging of an internally built or private cloud infrastructure with a security vendor’s public network of threat intelligence. Examples of global threat intelligence delivered through public cloud services include Trend Micro’s Smart Protection Network and Cisco ( CSCO – news – people ) Ironport SenderBase Security Network.
Over the past year security vendors have focused their cloud messaging primarily around Software-as-a-Service offerings targeting specific pain points, such as secure messaging, namely anti-spam. CIOs should anticipate more vendor messaging focused around hybrid cloud computing, targeting those large enterprises–not to mention European customers–that are required under governance to keep company data within the folds of the private cloud infrastructure. Security service providers are acknowledging customers’ need to keep data in-house, but they’re also providing options to couple private with public infrastructures and allow customers to off-load more of the security burden.
Later this year Trend Micro has plans to expand its private cloud services to include new protocols, such as Web reputation. Trend Micro says it will create a private cloud within the public cloud to let customers store confidential data, a prospect which will likely be most attractive to Internet service providers. Keep Reading at Forbes
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Cloud Computing Developer Workshops
Mar 9th
Monday, March 15
Cloud Computing IT Workshops | Developer Workshops | Developing for Microsoft Windows Azure Platform
Attend developer workshops with experts from the leading cloud computing platforms. It’s the only place where you can, in theory, build three cloud apps on three different clouds, guided by the folks behind that cloud, in a single day. BEST VALUE–Register for a Flex Pass to attend the conference (including developer track) plus pre-conference developer workshops.
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 Building on Google App Engine
Google’s App Engine cloud platform differs from many infrastructure-centric cloud technologies in that it is an Application Platform as a Service (APaaS) and thus, requires only code to build and deploy apps onto the cloud. Google App Engine provides a free usage entry path which can accommodate most modest web site/service deployments. Sites requiring more industrial strength scalability and bandwidth can enable billing and pay as needed to handle increased growth. Google App Engine distinguishes itself by offering development in either Python or Java. This workshop will be run in two tracks in both Python and Java with the same programming goals. You Will Learn:
Instructor – Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google
Speaker – Ikai Lan, Developer Advocate, Google
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Cloud Performance Optimization
Cloud environments are shared environments, which means that despite your best efforts, someone else can impact your performance and uptime. What if a cloud neighbor doesn’t play well with others? How can you be sure that your users are getting the availability you’ve promised, and the application performance to keep them happy and productive? You Will Learn:
Instructor – Hooman Beheshti, Vice President of Products, Strangeloop
Instructor – Hon Wong, EVP of Business Development and Marketing, Coradiant
Instructor – Imad Mouline, CTO, Gomez
Speaker – Robert Rounsavall, Director, Product Development, Terremark Worldwide, Inc.
Speaker – Don Green, Senior Vice President of Product Management, OpSource, Inc.
Speaker – Joe Hsy, Vice President of Technology and Advanced Development, Coradiant
Speaker – Bernd Harzog, Analyst – Virtualization Performance Management, The Virtualization Practice
Speaker – Seth Redmore, VP of Products, Lexalytics
Speaker – Steve Shah, Principal, RisingEdge Consulting
Speaker – John Allspaw, VP of Technical Operations, Etsy
Speaker – Hal Kalish, Industry Marketing Director – High Tech, Akamai
Speaker – Ron Warshawsky, Founder and CTO, Enteros
Speaker – JL Valente, CEO and President, Rivermuse
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2010: The Year of the Cloud Platform
Mar 9th
For the 3rd installment of our webinar recap series, we dive into what the future holds for cloud computing. In particular, will look at the role of platform-as-a-service in the broader cloud ecosystem. In particular, will 2010 be “the year of PaaS?” Read on for more about why platform-level services will be hot in 2010, and who we felt would be the big winners this year as the focus shifts from the infrastructure to the platform
2010: The Year of Platform as a Service
Michael: 2010 is going to be the year of the platform layer. If we look back at the predictions in 2008 going into 2009, people were getting excited about cloud. People were talking very much about virtualization. People were talking very much about renting resources and tying them all together.
That was great, and we saw that come together in 2009, a lot of excitement out of Amazon and VMware with their various solutions for public and private clouds. A lot of users are coming. When we talk to our customers and various users around the country, I hear a lot of application developers come and say, “But wait how do I tie all of this together? What tools are there for me to take advantage of this new paradigm?” That’s really the core of this prediction.
The platform tools are there. We have our platform tools that assist developers to put together these large applications so they can focus on their value add. There are frameworks such as Hadoop where with just writing a couple of functions of code, you get this massive platform for churning through terabytes or petabytes of data across your infrastructure.
These are the tools. This is the next tier up on the cloud technology stack. This is what people are going to be looking for. I think it’s interesting that if you look back in 2009, you see this come. I see two big points that really drive this.
First of all, there was the VMware acquisition of SpringSource. VMware is still all about the private clouds for tying together your resources and being able to control them dynamically, but you could tell they saw that, to them, the VM is still just a black box that they manage.
They really don’t have the insight into what the application is doing, and they needed those tools to go one tier up. So, here they look at SpringSource. They have more control on runtimes. They have the Hyperic monitoring system to see what’s going on inside the VM, and they can control it at a tighter level.
We talked about standards for 2009. Here at the end of 2009, I’ve seen the first talk about not standards at the infrastructure layer, but standards at the platform layer, about how to try to keep these tools together. So it’s time. People need to move up that stack.
The masses of developers don’t want to be distributed computing experts. They want a tool set to assist them on top of this tremendous infrastructure we’ve built, and I really see it all coming together with another round of great tools for application developers to build upon.
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SaaS a big winner in health stimulus
Mar 8th
One conclusion I was able to draw from last week’s HIMSS show is that Software as a Service (SaaS) is the only way clinics and small medical practices are going to get health IT in time to collect that sweet, sweet stimulus cash.
From big SaaS companies like AllScripts to smaller ones like Practice Fusion, the buzz was electric and the lesson obvious.
(Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard is shown at his HIMSS reception last week. He’s expecting a better year than the Phillies slugger of the same name. Which is saying something. (Then again, I’m a Braves fan.))
Most large hospitals have their solutions in place, or are in the process of implementation. This vendor relationship may be the most important thing on a hospital CEO’s plate right now.
From what I gathered on the HIMSS show floor, most of these vendors are lining their customers up to collect cash on investments made long ago.
Collecting on the 2011 meaningful use guidelines, watered down as they’re expected to be, will be fairly simple, and lobbying by both hospitals and vendors could water down the 2013 and 2015 guidelines so they don’t have to spend anything above current plans to collect on them.
Many small practices have been assuming that the hospitals will bring them their health IT. Admitting privileges are a powerful weapon. If the hospital mandates you go with McKesson, you may have no choice.
But small practices may well ask, what’s in it for me? Going with the hospital’s IT solution only ties you closer to the hospital. You have your clinic because you want to stay independent. And many hospital systems were not really designed to scale down.
Thus, SaaS. There is little up-front expense, no server in the closet. You can back up records overnight with Carbonite or a USB-linked hard drive — you can backup 2 terabytes at Costco now for under $300, including software.
SaaS vendors can scale quickly thanks to cloud computing. The biggest problem may be assuring clinics that their broadband connection won’t go down mid-day. But a lightweight version of the software, again on a nurse’s station, can handle that eventuality.
Services like SharEHR claim to require no training while others like Practice Fusion cost nothing thanks to ads. If the hospital demands your records, you can talk to them about that later.
Contrast that with the cost of putting in servers, wiring your office, training your staff, and learning it yourself, which is what many EHR vendors were offering clinics just a few years ago. The horror stories from that are many.
Personally I am still waiting for the glorious tech revolution to strike the doctors I use most often. My pediatrician has a PC on his desk to help with billing, but the kids’ records are still on paper. My internist is also paper driven. My dentist is a computer hobbyist but still brings out a file folder each time I visit. Last time I got new prescriptions I still drove them to the pharmacist.
This tells me there is still an enormous opportunity to automate small practices, but 2011 will be here before you know it and the only way I can see them going is to buy it as a service, stimulus cash or no stimulus cash.
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RightNow Tries to Change SaaS Contract, Pricing Game
Mar 5th
CRM vendor RightNow announced a new SaaS (software as a service) pricing and licensing model on Thursday that it says provides customers with fairer, clearer deals. The company also issued a “Cloud Challenge” to competitors, urging them to adopt similar principles.
RightNow contends that while SaaS has changed the way companies use IT, providing benefits like faster implementations and quicker innovation, contractual engagements are wracked by the same problems as on-premises software, such as underutilized or excess user seats, hidden fees and restrictive contractual terms.
Under RightNow’s Cloud Services Agreement (CSA), which is now standard for all new business conducted by the vendor, customers receive fixed pricing for three years. They also have the ability to renew for another three years at a cost determined at the time the initial contract is signed.
Users who sign multiyear agreements can cancel on an annual basis for any reason, said CEO Greg Gianforte .
Another key aspect of the CSA sees customers buy a pool of “seat months” that are consumed on an as-needed basis, Gianforte said.
Customers can adjust the number of seat months each year. This will help put an end to shelfware, and particularly benefit customers with seasonal spikes in business, such as an online retailer, Gianforte said.
RightNow is also pledging to give back part of customer’s subscription fees if it fails to meet service-level agreements. The company is also offering 90-day pilot programs with unlimited capacity.
“It’s time for a change. The best thing that could happen is that the industry responds and everyone adopts the Cloud Challenge,” he said. “These are reasonable expectations and if you’re not getting them, you’re being taken advantage of.”
The announcement is “absolutely the right step and right direction from the point of view of SaaS and SaaS vendors,” said Ken Harris , CIO of natural nutrition products company Shaklee, a RightNow customer for more than five years.
Shaklee has a current contract with RightNow and therefore can’t immediately take advantage of the CSA, but the new terms reflect a number of provisions the company negotiated for in past years, he said.
The CSA’s use of “seat months” will be a big help, as Shaklee’s business is somewhat seasonal and underutilized seats do present “a real problem,” he said. “With any software that’s seat-based, you have to build the church for Easter Sunday but the rest of the days it doesn’t fill up, as the old saying goes.”
RightNow is just one of nine SaaS applications Shaklee currently uses, Harris said. The CSA “is going to give us a lot of leverage. A number of things that are in here, we’ve been trying to negotiate in all of our deals, not always successfully.”
Analysts also praised RightNow’s announcement.
“RightNow does go some way to address likely user pain points around adopting cloud apps, particularly in relation to guaranteed pricing over a multi-year period,” said 451 Group analyst China Martens via e-mail. “Having to pay over the odds for both compute power and storage for some versions of vendors’ CRM software have given some customers some nasty surprises.”
“There’s a lot to like in this announcement,” said Frank Scavo , managing partner of the IT consulting firm Strativa, in an e-mail. “For example, the cash level credits. With many providers, SLAs are weakly written or only offer token concessions. RightNow’s terms and conditions look like they put real teeth into RightNow’s SLAs.”
The announcement speaks to a new front in the software industry’s pricing wars, he added.
“Vendors have been discounting for years to win specific deals. The price competition is now moving to long-term maintenance and support, where the real money is,” Scavo said .”We’ve already started to see it with on-premise vendors such as Infor and Microsoft Dynamics, who seem to be emphasizing their maintenance and support programs these days as a way of differentiating themselves from SAP and Oracle. Now we’re starting to see it in the cloud.”
