IT Strategy

PaaS: Platform in the Cloud?

February 28, 2008 by Raj Sheelvant

Mark Banioff CEO of Salesforce.com, the company that created whole new market segment share for On-Demand delivery model, in an interview with eWeek titled “Platform in the Clouds” talks about the future of Saleforce.com’s On–Demand delivery model. The company is now moving on to logical next step: enabling firms to move their entire IT infrastructure management to the ‘multi-tenant system’. Aptly termed as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Salesforce.com is planning on providing infrastructure and tools so that individual firms can build their customizable application in the ‘cloud’.

Salesforce.com is widening its revenue base and according to Banioff their vision is to “become multi-application, multi-category company”. But the real interesting point is that with the introduction PaaS tools Salesforce.com has made a subtle shift in its strategy. Instead of doing it alone as with its AppExchage (on-demand application) and its ‘proprietary’ language -Apex, the company is now taking a collaborative strategy. Instead of providing PaaS infrastructure software directly to the firms, this time around Salesforce.com is teaming up with ISV by providing them the tools. Thus, they intend to leverage existing network affect created by the ISVs. It’s easier for ISVs to sell to the existing client the PaaS concept and encourage them to move their infrastructure to the grid/cloud in small steps.

It’s another example of how Nicholas Carr’s prediction on moving IT infrastructure to the cloud in his book ‘Big Switch’ is coming fruition. Still a long way off where everyone will make the ‘big switch’ (no pun intended) to the cloud, but PaaS is the first step that will enable firms to migrate commoditized IT infrastructure and focus only on that aspect of IT that can enable their Business Strategy.It’s also a bold move away from

Enterprise application vendor’s claim that “our generalized black box solution provides one way for EVERYONE to streamline their business”, and thus suggesting that IT does not play a valuable role in providing competitive advantage. With PaaS, at least Salesforce.com is conceding that each firm can ‘customize’ their Enterprise application to maximize their Business Strategy.

Check out the advertisement for Salesforce.com’s PaaS called force.com below.

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