Fred Chong's WebBlog

I’m blogging again, seriously this time. Since I wanted to do some customization to my site, I decided to set up my own WordPress blog domain. You can find my latest blog entries at: http://fredchong.net/ or update your RSS feed to point to: http://fredchong...

It has been almost two years since I blogged my last entry, and lots of changes have taken place: I’ve taken on a different role in the Microsoft consulting services organization and had the opportunities to do some really interesting work in emerging...

This paper describes the forces behind long tail software economics and the architecture of application marketplaces. In addition, the paper also explains the different roles and benefits of application marketplaces to ISVs, hosters, VARs and enterprises...

Recently I've been thinking about the increasing attention being paid to application marketplaces. My current conclusion is that there is a strong linkage between application marketplaces and the 4 forces of long tail software I described in my previous...

Chris Anderson's book on "the business of selling more of less" has enlightened people's thinking about current market economics where modern day technology and the Internet has enabled long tail ecommerce to flourish. For this blog post, I thought it...

Our latest paper is an attempt to match-make software vendors and hosters. The paper explains why their futures are dependent on each other, what they can expect from one another, and how they can have a congenial marriage together. Happy reading!

Charles Fitzgerald recently posted an article on the elusive long tail market. The article mentioned some interesting stats on Salesforce's top-heaviness - a small number of enterprise customers account for more than 40% of their user base. Which begs...

I spoke with Carl and Richard at .NET Rocks earlier this year. Click on the .NET Rocks image below to hear the recording:

The last couple of month I've been talking to many software vendors in China and Singapore and the topic of SaaS hosting is a recurring pain point highlighted by those I met. More often than not, my attempt to reassure them that my architecture team in...

It's been almost 4 weeks since I landed in Beijing and began working with my colleagues in China. 2 weeks ago, I had the unanticipated opportunity to be involved in the organization of Imagination Festival - an event held at Beijing University celebrating...

I just finished conducting a 3-day SaaS architecture workshop for our internal employees and ISV partners last week. The workshop content includes presentations on a bunch of SaaS architecture topics, such as: SaaS architecture tenets: Gianpaolo introduced...

We recently released an updated version of Litware HR sample application that runs on Windows XP. This updated release answers the feedback that we are getting from the codeplex community to have a version that most developers can run and test on their...

Besides my technical role in developing SaaS architecture guidance, I've had the privilege to be deeply involved in molding the SaaS industry in China. Over the course of the last year, I've travelled to different cities in China, working with my colleagues...

It sure feels like a long time ago since I first started working on this project. I'm very happy to announce that the sample SaaS application has finally arrived! Litware HR is a sample SaaS application that is implemented with current generation of...

GP and I wrote an article on "The Architecture Dimensions of the SaaS Ecosystem" for the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) Special SaaS Issue newsletter a few months ago. In this article, we provided an overview on the market...

The last few months, my team has been working on a sample SaaS application to demonstrate the multi-tenancy concepts I’ve been describing in my papers and blog. One of the areas we spent some cycles thinking about are the aspects of configurability that...

Here's more video episodes of the Remend architecture case study I wrote about in my previous post: ARCast.TV - SaaS @ Work - Remend Overview ARCast.TV - SaaS @ Work - Remend Architecture Overview ARCast.TV - SaaS @ Work - Remend Architecture Drilldown...

Back in July this year, Armando Hernandez, a solutions architect from Remend contacted us after reading our SaaS blogs. We chatted over a conference call about what they were doing and the architecture challenges that they were going through while implementing...

I learned a few interesting things about SaaS hosters and aggregators during a recent trip to Europe. One discovery is that the way current SaaS hosting business operates is joint at the hip with the SaaS aggregator business. In fact, it is hard to...

We have published a new paper . This is the paper some of us have been waiting to see for some time. (It is certainly one that I have been toiling over the last few months). In this paper, we explained what SaaS means to an enterprise from both the business...

Multi-tenancy is hard work. Very often SaaS application will scale better if it is designed from the ground up to take care of multi-tenancy issues such as application customization and data security isolation, and adhering to the principle of minimizing...

I was co-presenting with Gianpaolo at SaaSCon last week. The event marked a highlight in my presentation career: we ran out of time and the organizer was running down the aisle trying to stop my presentation. I turned and saw the audience still frantically...

Every now and then, I find myself having “passionate” discussions with colleagues and customers about the definition of software as a service. In such discussions, the deep geeks like to bring up implementation details like Web services vs. REST vs...

Computerworld interviewed Gianpaolo and I on our SaaS architecture work. You can check out the preview to our SaasCon session here . Technorati Profile

I have been pondering about the technical implications of SaaS for the enterprise. So far, I think the high order bit boils down to two things: integration and application composition of on-premise and in-the-cloud services. The integration and composite...