Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Cloud Appliance Comes to the Enterprise

Software Appliances were initially created for high performance network and security infrastructure with lower administration costs. Over time the Appliance model moved up the stack from email appliances to a diverse set of business applications. This trend has continued in parallel to the rise of SaaS and Cloud Computing. SaaS Appliances provide pre-configured, self-contained applications with on-premises deployment that can be automatically updated and upgraded. While the Cloud is the center of attention these days, SaaS Appliances have been quietly evolving up the stack while adapting the best of web-oriented architecture for clouds inside companies.

Whenever there are security or regulatory constraints that demand on-premises deployment, SaaS Appliances can deliver where the Cloud cannot. While several years from now these constraints may change, this is the reality for many enterprises and government agencies. Any SaaS vendor who does deliver both Cloud and SaaS Appliance deployment models from a single image of their software is simply reducing their total addressable market.

Compared to traditional on-premises software, SaaS Appliances provide rapid deployment that shortens technical pilots, fast upgrade cycles without degrading service level and a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Combined with subscription business models that let the enterprise right-size the deployment, the ability to deliver or turn on additional applications (e.g. upgrading a Microblogging Appliance to a full Social Software Appliance) provide the flexibility and fit for adoption concurrent with business value.

Traditional enterprise applications such as CRM or ERP will move to the Cloud, but not just because a customer chooses the Cloud over traditional deployment. The Cloud will come to them. For example, I can't wait for a customer to migrate apps and users to the Cloud so we can enable the integrated value proposition of Social Software working across organization and application silos.

Web 2.0 in the Clouds

On June 17th at the Stanford Business School I'm moderating the MIT-Stanford Venture Lab event Cloud Computing: Creating Value for Web 2.0 Apps.

Moderator
Ross Mayfield, Chairman, President and Co-founder, Socialtext

Speaker
Jonathan Bryce, Co-founder, Mosso, a Rackspace's company

Panelists
Paul McNamara, CEO, Coghead
Ping Li, Partner, Accel Partners
Michael Crandell, CEO & Founder, RightScale
Lydia Leong, Research Director, Gartner

Cloud computing increases capacity and expands computing capabilities without heavy investment in infrastructure, training or software licensing. Most importantly though, it democratizes Web 2.0 application development. With the removal of two significant barriers to entry - cost and capacity access - suddenly, even small, lesser-funded entrepreneurs can dream big and bring their grand Web 2.0 applications to market.

What are the ramifications of democratization? How are entrepreneurs exploiting cloud computing and leveraging Web 2.0? What challenges do these entrepreneurs face? Are they making money? What are the hot areas of development today and what will the next areas be? Will offerings from these new, small, nimble, creative thinking entrepreneurs change the Web 2.0 user experience? Will cloud computing live up to expectations?

And I always thought these infrastructure guys were below me, stack wise, apparently with this cloud thing we should all look up.  For background, I suggest Nick Carr's blog and book.  Sign up here, and the Facebook event is here.

Oh, and here's how I blogged about some of this when it was called the grid.