Ready for Linuix on Desktop / Laptop?

Like most of the folks, I am a Windows Desktop user. At the same time I am a big fan and always tried to use Linux / Unix for server platforms.

After reading a lot about Ubuntu, I finally though I will give it a spin. I got hold of a old Dell laptop and thought I should try installing on it first for the test drive.

Install Experience: It looks like Ubuntu still has some glitches, when it comes to installing on my laptop. After spending a few hours and reading around on message forums, I finally got the install working. Overall, I would say Ubuntu folks did a great job!!! I am very impressed.

User Experience: I used it for almost a day, and overall , I am extremely happy with the user experience. First of all, it does not have all the million list of processes always running, like my windows laptop. It is lot faster to boot. Even though this is a old Latitude laptop, seems to be running faster than my state of the art work laptop. The user interface is very clean and it took me just a few minutes to get used to.

Native applications: Still there are quite a few windows applications I am used to, that are not available on Ubuntu by default. One example, I use google talk, and did not find gtalk support for Ubuntu. OpenOffice looks good and it is installed by default with Ubuntu, but need to get used to it to see if I like it.

Best: I like the synaptic package manager. I can search, deploy and manage almost all my applications from one single location.

Software Pricing

These three thought provoking and informative articles about Software pricing on Sandhill.com are a great read.

Think twice before you re-price

The gaint crunching sound

Its the PITs (Pricing information technologies

Understanding the Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS markets: a Map of the Players in the Industry

Peter Laird, Managing Architect at BEA and Kent Dickson, VP of Product Management at BEA did a great job of putting together a visual map of the cloud computing, SaaS Platforms and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) markets. Following is the link to the blog post:

Understanding the Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS markets: a Map of the Players in the Industry

Following is the visual representation that is on their blog post.

SaaS Economics 2008

I presented some of my thoughts on SaaS Monetization in the SaaSEconomics Summit / SLAM 2008 conference. You can order proceedings of the SaaS Economics Summit from their website, http://www.infowebcom.com/conf_cdorder2008.php

Following is a brief description of my talk.

The SaaS model of software delivery causes a host of operational and revenue generation challenges for businesses. This talk will illustrate the different scaling issues SaaS vendors face, and the monetary impacts of these issues. It will elaborate on the recurring revenue subscription model, and how it forces SaaS vendors to be mindful of ensuring client success for contract renewals. The talk will then explain the telecom industry approach to selling subscription services in large volumes, and the similarities of this in the SaaS industry. This will include an architectural overview of the various Telecom OSS/BSS (Operational Support Systems/Business Support Systems) components needed to efficiently deliver the services. The presentation will then elaborate how and why SaaS vendors should be thinking about a similar model for servicing their customers. It will describe the key components of the architecture that SaaS vendors must build, which will include the service catalog, order fulfillment, and billing like the telecom industry has done for several years.

McKinsey 2008 Enterprise Software Survey

McKinsey released a new Enterprise Software Survey. You can get this survey from : McKinsey Survey. This has great info about trends in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Webinar : Introducing Visualforce - Create Any User Interface as a Service

Today I attended the force.com, visual force webinar. The speaker was Adam Gross, VP of Platform Marketing @ Salesforce.com. To give a brief backgroud, Sales force is working on a new On Demand platform called Force.com. This On Demand platform is supposed to address all aspects of application creation and delivery like secure infrastructure, Database as a Service, Integration as a Service, Logic as a Service, User Interface as a Service and Application Exchange as a Service. The On Demand user interface aspect of this platform is called Visual force.

The presentation was pretty nifty. They went through a hello world scenario on how to use the new UI capabilities and create an application on the platform that could break away from the UI looks of traditional Salesforce.com. Overall the technology is pretty good.

Scalability and dependability of the platform needs to be seen when multiple types of applications get hosted on this platform. A few questions I had that Salesforce.com has not answered yet:

1. How are non-Salesforce.com users going to access these third party applications that providers would like to host on the Force.com platform?
2. How is this Force.com platform going to be priced? This will be an interesting challenge.

Force.com timelines :

• Now -> Available for Developers to start creating applications
• Q1 2008 -> First customer pilot with a select list
• Some time in 2008 -> General availability

IT Changes discussed in Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2007

Gartner believes that there are five major discontinuities that will force IT organizations to change dramatically. The five discontinuities include:

1. Software as a Service (SaaS)
2. Web 2.0
3. Global-class computing
4. Consumerization of IT
5. Open-source software.
   

"The five major discontinuities have the potential to completely disrupt vendor business models, user deployment models, whole market segments and key user and vendor brand assumptions," said Tom Austin, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "These emerging discontinuities reinforce each other, and their combined effect will prove far stronger than each individual trend. IT managers who oversee applications must incorporate these trends into their long-term planning."