Gianpaolo's blog

The Nov. 15 issue of CIO magazine features Steve Ballmer, Kevin Turner and Andy Lees (Microsoft CEO, COO and Corp. VP respectively) discussing SaaS in the enterprise. This article reinforced three things in my mind: Regardless of what people think, Microsoft...

A few weeks ago, John deVadoss (my manager) and I recorded a short podcast introducing the key aspects of SaaS architecture. In this 11min. discussion, we briefly touch upon the ISV perspective, the Enterprise perspective and Hoster perspective. A slide...

I have always been impressed by the scientific rigor of the taxonomy that biologists have put in places for classifying living entities: kingdom, order, family, species etc... Just for fun, as I was stuck in a delayed flight back to Seattle, I tried to...

Today Microsoft announced the SaaS On Ramp program; this program provides discounted software for "evaluating" SaaS. Participants to this program can get Windows Sever (up to 8 CPUs) and SQL Server (up to 2 CPU) under SPLA at a heavy discount. Full press...

It took a bit longer than expected... but we have finally released our 3rd SaaS whitepaper . The first two articles, which can be found by clicking here , focused on developing SaaS applications. This time, we turned the question around and look at SaaS...

A few days ago I blogged about the analogy between SaaS providers and babysitters. Sinclair left a comment pushing the analogy further. … what about bad parents … any babysitter more capable at child-raising than the parents may suffice… he wrote. ...

Yesterday I was talking to a couple of enterprise customers, one of them happen to be from Jamaica. He was telling me that one of the big barrier of SaaS adoption there is trust or more precisely lack thereof. Many enterprises are not ready to trust a...

I just found out that my TechEd US (June 2006) presentation is available online here . (not sure how long it will be up there) Note that it was one of the very first times I presented our SaaS work, so things have changed a little bit since. This said...

For those interested, here is the link to our SaaSCon Understanding SaaS Archtiecture presentation. As usual feedback welcome.

[not a SaaS post, so if you read this blog exclusively for the SaaS guidance, you can safely skip it :)] Today I was discussing with Andreas about evangelism, prescriptive guidance and presentations at events in general and the conversation ended up...

A few months ago (wow... time flies) I blogged ( here ) about the SaaS ecosystem, briefly describing the different actors (ISVs, Enterprises, Hosters...), their main interests and challenges with regards to SaaS. Based on that ecosystem, last week...

On Tuesday, I sat between Steve Lucas and Jeff Nolan on a panel moderated by Phil Wainewright . The topic was SaaS in the enterprise . The discussion was good and I don’t think we disagreed too much. The key takeaways for me were: (a) It is about...

A few days ago, at SaaSCon, I was discussing the importance of Integration in the SaaS consumption architecture. I learned today that, Jesus , a BizTalk MVP, will be presenting at the Microsoft BPI&SOA conference some demos showing BizTalk Server...

Several discussions I had at SaaSCon reinforced my opinion that the value proposition of SaaS for small and medium businesses (SMBs) is quite different than the one for large enterprises. SaaS or nothing For SMBs the proposition is often “SaaS or...

Sometime watching a show that has nothing to do with software architecture could help you understand architectural concepts. It recently happened to me. I usually come home early enough to have dinner with my kids, read them a story and put them to...

Dan shares his impressions of SaaSCon ( here ) and ( here ) has some kind words about our SaaScon session. Dan is a serial entrepreneur I met a few months ago in Boston. These days, he's Director of Products at Digipede Technologies , if you are...

SaaSCon was a lot of fun! I love industry conferences; the divergence of opinion is always very interesting. From total Microsoft believer to absolute Microsoft basher, from SaaS skeptic to SaaS super fan. Large enterprise perspective, SMB perspective...

A couple of weeks ago, I spent some time on the phone with Mike, the principal architect of a small company driving a new SaaS initiative. Based on the discussion we had and the data paper we published, he came up with his own idea for the data layer...

Our efforts on SaaS architecture guidance are growing and we are hiring. There are more aspects we want to provide architecture guidance on, more customers and partners we want to engage with, more discussions with the Microsoft product teams we want...

A couple of weeks ago, Fred and I did an interview discussing our whitepapers and previewing our session at SaaSCon . Below a copy-paste from the web site where the podcast is published. Technology questions to ask your SaaS provider http://www...

In the last few weeks I have read quite a few articles (and blog entries) glorifying multi-tenancy, how it will solve world hunger and bring peace to the world. Don’t get me wrong, I am a BIG FAN of multi-tenancy and fully comprehend the value of architecting...

As part of the enterprise paper we are working on, I have been thinking about (and discussing) the impact of SaaS on IT Governance. Clearly, the way software gets evaluated has to change, Phil has a good list on what to look for when selecting a SaaS...

After a couple of whitepapers and a few blog entries on how to successfully deliver SaaS (or as Fred would put it , taming the three-headed monster (scalability, configurability and multi-tenant efficiency) that haunts every SaaS ISVs.) We are in the...

I just got back from vacation and I am told that the SaaS architecture guidance site on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/saas just went live. This confirm my long standing theory that things tend to happen faster when I am away and the...

As a "dotcom refugee" I can related to many of these points... very nice. From onstartups.com (orginal post here ) 17 Pithy Insights For Startup Founders Seek transparency and understanding with your partners early. Issues get harder as time...