In 2007, when we created the Club Alliances to help ISVs develop their SaaS or SaaS Canada Dry [hosted software] business, SaaS and Cloud were barely nascent here in France:
- Salesforce.com was just really starting on the french market and SaaS itself was still a relatively new concept [ASP was still the word in use].
- None of the big or small MSPs [Managed Service Providers] and Vendors were articulating any Cloud strategy.
- IBM had just timidly launched a Cloud initiative called Blue Cloud, but had no real value proposition for ISVs regarding IaaS, let alone PaaS and the "cloud enablement" of their applications. What we provided to ISVs then was traditional "e-business hosting".
but, in reality:
- Very few french ISVs were really providing more than a hosted version of their legacy client-server application,
- The few SaaS Pure Players we worked with (TalentSoft, RunMyProcess...) ran their SaaS applications on dedicated or virtualized servers, hosted in a traditional datacenter, but not actually on Cloud platforms.
I remember facilitating a call between the first (and only one in 2008) Amazon EMEA BizDev Manager and RunMyProcess, whose founders were relentlessly asking me for a Cloud delivery instead of the existing IBM hosting solution.
At that time, IBM dit not yet have any IaaS/PaaS platform for ISVs. So RMP was "forced" to leave IBM to run its visionary SaaS application on AWS, which, I must say, suited their Startup freemium model better.
By 2009, SaaS had gained traction on the french market
The word Cloud started to pop up more often in business conversations with my IBM colleagues and partners.
But most of them still didn't really have a clue about what Cloud meant and many pronounced it "Clud". Nevertheless, IBM Cloud offerings and partner programs started ramping up and accelerating.
Fast forward to 2012
In less then 6 years since Club Alliances started with its Solutions as a Service mantra:
- Nobody among the ISV community - and the IT Ecosystem in general - has any more doubts that SaaS / Cloud are the new de-facto delivery models for almost any new application/usage/workload.
- IBM, our Business Partners and all other big Vendors are now more or less "all about Cloud".
- I personally launched the Club Cloud des Partenaires as an evolution of the Club Alliances to help new types of Partners surf the Cloud Tsunami [Cloud Builders, Cloud Providers, Cloud Resellers...]
- ISVs have currently a whole range of solutions to host their applications. As an example, here is a chart showing the options that are currently provided by IBM and its partners.
- its level of maturity regarding SaaS and Cloud: Saas pure players may leverage third party Cloud platform or decide to manage their own infrastructure (less and less, it seams...)
- the ability to "cloud enable" the ISV application(s): ISVs moving to Cloud may want to benefit from IaaS and/or PaaS, event if their software is not SaaS.
- the need or not to continue to deliver a Canada Dry SaaS solution with a client-server monotenant application hosted on a "traditional" infrastructure, which can be either managed by the ISV (less and less...) or by an MSP....
By forgetting about being their own hoster and relying on specialized Cloud [infrastructure] Providers to run efficient IaaS/PaaS platforms, ISVs can now really concentrate on:
- having their existing applications become "Cloud Enabled" and/or
- developing and running new "Cloud Native" or "Cloud Centric" applications
- reinventing their business instead of rethinking their IT.
Application ISVs should forget about Software to deliver Business Outcomes!With the Cloud, most ISVs have the opportunity to reinvent their business and become more like "Independant [Business] Services Vendors"
By providing BPaaS (Business Process as a Service), leveraging business content, analytics, human resources as a service, other vendors' solutions and services... beyond their sole SaaS applications, they can dramatically better help their customers reach Business Outcomes instead of only delivering them Software, be it "as a Service"!
Stay tuned for the next "Surfing the Cloud Tsunami" articles where we will address:
- Integrators and CSIs moving to Cloud Builders
- MSPs migrating to industrialized Cloud Delivery...
- VARs and Distributors becoming Cloud Resellers, Cloud Brokers, Cloud Aggregators...
- Providers of Business Services leveraging Cloud to displace the IT market.
Loic SimonCloud Channel Development Executive - IBM
clubcloud.blogspot.com
loic_simon@fr.ibm.com
+33 6 76 75 40 71
