It seems like everywhere we look nowadays we hear the term “Cloud Computing”.  You don’t have to be a techie anymore to be exposed to this new buzzword that is storming the Internet. IBM has a commercial on TV that tries to explain what cloud computing is and unless you already know what it is, I believe it will leave you more confused then ever. I want to dedicate this blog entry to explaining what cloud computing is and talk through some of it’s benefits and how it will affect the future.

The simplest definition of cloud computing is an application that runs on another machine in the Internet. The simplest example would be your webmail program such as Yahoo Mail.  If you think about it, webmail has become very complete in the last 10 years. You can now be working on multiple emails in the same browser and the same tab. You can even browse your inbox and other folders while composing or reading emails. Something that previously was only available on stand-alone applications. In a sense, it has become a complete application that runs through your browser. However, it is not running on your machine, it is being accessed by your machine through the internet from Yahoo’s datacenter where all your data is also stored.  The internet part is the cloud and the computing is done in the cloud (or Yahoo’s datacenter).  Other examples are Facebook, Google Docs, and CRM tools like Salesforce.com.  Under the umbrella of cloud computing we have two other technologies that make this possible: Virtualization and Software as a Service (SaaS). In VERY short – virtualization allows you to make better utilization of your hardware by allowing you to run multiple operating systems on a single machine and SaaS is the migration of traditional one time cost of software to a subscription model.

So why is this suddenly so awesome? Didn’t we have dummy terminals and applications running on mainframes 30 years ago? Yes, but because of the development of technology and the speed of the internet, we are there again. But this time around we’re delivering very rich applications. Today, you can sit down on any computer in the world that is connected to the internet and have complete access to almost everything you use on a daily basis; email, social life, etc. This is on-demand anytime, anywhere access. As web technology and HTML 5.0 advances, you will start to see more and more of your favorite applications accessible from the cloud via a web browser, regardless if it’s a computer or hand held smart phone that is accessing it.  The possibilities are endless.

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle,  says  cloud computing is nothing new. Nothing is going to change. You will still need an operating system, you will still need a database, you will still need servers to store all of this on. Yes Larry, this is true. Cloud computing may not change your business much because you’re primarily B2B and sell into enterprises. In my opinion, cloud computing isn’t so much what it is, it is what it will affect.

How cloud computing affects the…

• End User – Never have to worry about downloading, installing, configuring, upgrading, patching, and mucking with software on your personal machine.  Have access to all your applications, all your data, anywhere in the world. Bad news – no more pirating.
• Software companies – Moving to a SaaS model will affect their bottom line for the interim but revenue will increase further than before as adaption increases and piracy is eliminated.  Support costs will decrease significantly as ISVs no longer will have to troubleshoot their software running on different PC configurations.  Profits will increase as margins increase due to lower operational costs.
• IT Personnel – As with any new and improved technology, jobs are at risk. With less support issues to troubleshoot, less software to setup and manage, IT people are at risk.
• Datacenters – Will continue to increase in size. Cooling and power will continue to be the biggest challenges to keep up with the high demand of cloud computing. Perhaps the IT jobs will spill over to maintaining the datacenters.
• Enterprise/Corporations – Large corporations will take advantage of private clouds that will give them all the benefits of cloud computing but behind the security of their firewall and VPN.
• SMBs – Small and medium business benefit the most from cloud computing.  Cloud computing and SaaS offer multi-tenant solutions, lowering the cost of delivering enterprise type solutions for small business.   For example, to setup MS Exchange for a company of 40 employees will be far more costly to purchase the licenses and manage the server it is running on than to use a SaaS type solution such as Gmail.  Cloud computing will drive the cost of using enterprise type applications into the ground, making technology affordable for anybody to use.

Applications will finally be like an appliance, you just plug it in and it works, regardless of where and what it’s running on.

Last month Gartner released an article identifying the top 10 most destructive technologies for 2010. Big surprise, Cloud computing and virtualization were all over the list with Cloud Computing at #1.   Read the article here.

1. Cloud Comuting

2. Advanced Analytics

3. Client Computing – comprised of Cloud Computing and Virtualization

4. IT for Green – which includes use of cloud computing and virtualization

5. Reshaping the Data Center – Required for cloud computing

6. Social Computing

7. Security – Activity Monitoring

8. Flash Memory

9. Virtualization for Availability

10. Mobile Applications – will be running application from the Cloud soon enough. Palm’s Pre OS is a web based OS. We can expect Apple and Google to quickly adapt a similar OS / extension.

I’m very excited for 2010 and where technology is going. I’d like to thank my friend Paul Briët for the help on the graphic work. It is now very obvious what this blog is all about. Now that my Jury Duty Trial has wrapped up I will dedicate more of my time to get you the latest on Cloud Computing, Virtualization, SaaS, Application Streaming and some other random but very cool tech quarks. Stay Tuned!

 

So the race to the clouds is on! A lot of exciting things going on in the SaaS world this past week.  The City of Los Angeles has signed a $7.2 Million dollar contract to use Google Mail and Google Docs, doing away from Microsoft.  I heard Google had to issue a $20 Million dollar bond to insure security of the cloud. The local government adapting the cloud is a big step forward.

A lot of software companies are seeing their competitors moving from a traditional model (pay once) to a subscription model (recurring payment).  They are scratching their heads trying to figure out how they can transform their application to a subscription model.  Every software is different and there are different solutions to make this possible. For a lot of apps, this is something that is very straightforward – rewrite your application as a multi-tenant webapp.  This approach may work for a lot of applications but their are a lot of instances where this does not make sense.  Due to the nature of the functionality of some software, it may never become a fully web based application.  Let me explain.

I recently met a gentleman named Greg who had started his own software company.  The company’ product is an Enterprise Content Management application.  This application makes it very easy for small to medium sized companies to setup a digital repository of all their documents.  This way documents can easily be shared among employees with complete version control. This application utilizes a local SQL Express database and a small client that runs on every user’s machine.  This database is managing the content of both small and large files which are stored in a repository.  As you can see, for this application to work well, it is imperative that everything runs on a local network. Not to mention most their clients are small to medium sized law firms that are absolutely paranoid of putting any of their documentation outside their network and firewall.

So if they have to run their application on the User’s machine and in their environment, how do they go about moving towards a subscription model? One could say they can come up with a fancy licensing mechanism that expires every month or year.  While this is a possibility, it would be a nightmare for Greg to manage as his company grows.  Greg also has some other pains.  He wanted to ease the installation and setup process of his application. He wanted it to be as easy as possible for his users to get up and running with his ECM application.  He feels if he can get the setup process easier, he can boost adaption of the product.  Greg also wanted to control the version of his application his clients were using.

When I met Greg I told him I work for Endeavors Technologies and that we have a product that will allow you to take any windows application and make it a SaaS solution. He was so thrilled as this is something he has been looking for a long time.  In our first meeting he gave me a demo of his application and explained the infrastructure that it is deployed on.  He expressed how important speed is and that when a user clicks on a document it needs to be loaded within 2 seconds. I assured him that this would not be a problem as Application Jukebox does not alter the way an application runs. The application will still be running on the local machine but it is delivered and managed from the cloud.

I am currently working alongside Greg to move to a SaaS model using Application Jukebox.  He will be releasing a new version of his application in the next couple of months that will incorporate the necessary changes to take advantage of Application Jukebox.  I fill you in more as we move forward!

So this is my first blog. While I wanna just jump right in I feel I need to provide some background information of who I am and why I’m blogging about SaaS and cloud computing.

Fast Forward to today…

Just about any website you visit today is running like an application inside your web browser. Google mail, Yahoo mail, Facebook.com, Salesforce.com, and this website where I’m writing this blog are just a few examples of applications that are running in the cloud via our browsers. They say history repeats itself, well here we are again. Applications use to run on mainframes and show up on dummy terminals, well that’s where we are today!  With virtualization and streaming, application delivery has also changed.

I want to use this blog to discuss how applications are being delivered today. How things are changing in the enterprise, how things are changing for software vendors (ISV), managed service providers (MSP), internet service providers (ISP), and anybody else delivering software.

Blast from the Past

So here goes….The first computer I had was a Tandy 1000HX. It had a 3.5″ disk drive with minimal memory and a flash hard drive with an early version of DOS loaded.  If I wanted to run an application I would have to place a diskette into the drive and execute either the .exe, .bat, or .com file. Many years later I got a real computer, it was a 486 with a small hard drive and about 4 megs of memory. It also came with a 2400 baud modem. The modem opened me up to a whole new world out there, hello BBS.  Some of these BBS sites were for chatting and some were for warez.  The Internet was still developing and the WWW didn’t exist yet. These BBS sites were not connected to each other. They did not share any information with another site. We would obtain games and applications from these BBS sites.  By the time I got my 28.8 modem the BBS scene was starting to thin out as people were using random FTP sites to obtain software.  Things were changing quickly. Software was being distributed by CD and FTP via dialup.  Applications were getting larger (from a few 3.5″ diskettes to a few CD-ROMs). Downloading such large apps via dial-up was no longer feasible.  Soon came the internet, the world wide web, and broadband connections.  Suddenly we were downloading applications and installing them in a fraction of the time we were before.