Platform as a Service Magic from Coda with Google Apps and Force.com

The value of platform as a service (PaaS) is not that you can take your on-premise applications and run them in the cloud - that's so ASP! In my opinion (and what would a blog be without one), the real value is in enabling functionality that was simply impossible or too hard in an on-premise world.

For a great example,check out what Coda is doing with Force.com and Google Docs.

Coda is a Platform as a Service partner of salesforce.com building their next generation SaaS application on the Force.com platform.

In Andy's own words:

Following the recent launch of the Salesforce and Google Apps offerings, we have prototyped our own CODA 2go-specific Google Apps integration! This has been built using a Google Gadget, Apex code and Visualforce and the result has got us and everyone we demonstrated it to at Dreamforce very excited about the possibilities this proof of concept opens up.

Our experience of producing finance software over decades is that accountants love manipulating transactions in spreadsheets! The success of our on-premise CODA-XL product (which extends Microsoft Excel) has been outstanding, with virtually all customer organisations adopting it enthusiastically. Now in the on-demand world we have produced an equivalent solution that uses Google Spreadsheets and Force.com.

The initial prototype can be used to perform a Cost Allocation over extracted transaction details from the CODA 2go product. The user can then apportion new values by editing the cells used by formulas in the spreadsheet; we then post back the results in the form of a journal back into CODA 2go from within the Google Spreadsheet user interface via a Visualforce-powered Google Gadget!

More at Coda2Go Blog...

Note that this functionality was conceived, designed and built in weeks. Let me know if you have seen this pace of innovation in the on-premise world.

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: SaaS and SAP

From the Department of Irony and Confusion:

• Businesses Reject SaaS as Core Platform
• SAP's Business ByDemand: The Perfection Conundrum
• ByDesign, the younger person’s ERP
• SAP Business ByDesign customers quietly confident
• Decelerating ByDesign
  

See if you can find a common theme. The only one I could find: She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not,...

I really like the "rejection" of SaaS by customers that are in the middle of SAP implementations or run large SAP implementations.

As Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Update: Dan Druker has a great, thoughtful post on challenges faced by traditional ISVs entitled Different is Hard: SAP - (Not Too Much) Business By Design

In India, with Force(.com) !

The Tour de Force events across the globe continue to draw great attendance and interest from developers looking to build new SaaS applications. The event is yet to make its way to India but I have been traveling across India (Pune & Bangalore) meeting with partners, educating them about Force.com and Platform as a Service generally – and the response has been tremendously positive. At one of our partners in Pune, I delivered an hour long session on PaaS and Force.com – and the result was a lot of very interesting questions and interest in this paradigm shift. A similar event in Bangalore with over 100 attendees drew a similar response.

India is Ready

There was genuine appreciation about how difficult and wasteful it is to currently build, deploy and manage software applications. This is especially true for IT outsourcing firms that month after month see ISVs and IT departments of large enterprise burn time and money on infrastructure and platform, delaying and risking delivering business value to the end users.

Across Generations

India is a country of young people – over 50% of India’s population is under 25. And presenting to various audiences – I couldn’t help but wonder how many in the audience can even remember what computing without connectivity was like. The shift from client-server to SaaS comes naturally to this generation.

More interestingly, the senior executives and technology gurus – some that wrote compilers in 1980s by hand – were even more excited about this shift. The questions and discussions revolved around how to navigate this shift and understanding the new evolving SaaS ecosystems and not whether the shift is underway.

Here is a sampling of questions:

Is There a Whitepaper on SaaS?

Yes, we do have whitepapers on SaaS and PaaS. However, whitepapers are so 90s – I encouraged our audience to learn through building and engagement with the community – blogs, online forums, how-to wiki’s, informational videos.

What Kind of Applications Can I Build on PaaS?

Even as salesforce.com started out as a CRM company, the Force.com platform is being used by our customers and partners to build out applications that cover wide variety of solutions be it Finance and Accounting (Coda), Risk Management (Riskonnect), Life Sciences (Verticals OnDemand) and many others. Business Applications that are data and process driven is where Force.com provides the most value today

What about Security?

No one asked this question – so I thought I will mention it. This question that resulted from both genuine apprehensions and FUD created by certain vendors that did not have SaaS capabilities is increasingly becoming a non-issue. I think there are two reasons for this: First, as customers use more and more SaaS applications their experience invalidates the concerns. Second, initiatives such as trust.salesforce.com that educate and inform have re-assured the community of users, developers and investors.

Really?

Yes, this question was asked a few times. For example, when I explained that Force.com is multi-tenant not just for our direct customers but also for all applications written by end users and partners – and that everyone is on the latest version of the software. The response is: Really?

Salesforce.com’s success with the platform in releasing as many as 25 major releases in last 8 years – and comparing that to once in 3 to 7 years cycle for legacy software vendors also draws a: Really?

So yes, really!

The proof is in the pudding – you are welcome to get a free developer login and build an app.