On-demand software

The Wall Street Journal talked to many people to find out where companies would be spending their precious dollars in 2009. Here is a quick look at what may sell in 2009: Software as a service: Today 10% of total software sales come from on-demand software. Expect that number to rise as penny pinching CEOs finally realize that SAAS is good for the bottom line. Even Larry Ellison, Orcale CEO has changed his tune about SaaS. Mobile Productivity Apps: Thanks to the success of Apple’s iTunes Apps store, many companies are toying with mobile apps that will help increase productivity. The upcoming Blackberry Apps store is going to give this mobile-productivity trend a push. Security: Email spam was the worst offender, hitting an all time high in 2008. ***

Ctrl S, a tier IV data center services provider has entered a strategic partnership with Oracle. Under the agreement, Ctrl S will provide on-demand software and hosting services for Oracle products. Ctrl S will provide SaaS business model on Oracle standard products. This will enable Ctrl S to offer a single window of managed services for all Oracle products to existing and prospective customers, the company stated in its press release.

A heated discussion is raging in the comments to a Clint Boulton eWeek article about Serena Software’s decision to switch from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. What is at issue is the true cost of running Exchange. Serena says that junking Exchange in favor of Google Apps will slash its costs from $1 million a year down to $250,000. Many of the commenters are wondering how an 800-employee company manages to blow an eight-figure sum on running its email servers, and the debate throws an intriguing light on how people evaluate the relative costs of on-premise software against in-the-cloud alternatives. Here’s one of the commenter’s calculations:

The ability to easily mix-and-match best-of-breed components from different vendors is often claimed as an advantage for SaaS over all-in-one suites from conventional on-premise software vendors. But it may not be such a boon for applications where a consistent user interface is important. That was the takeaway insight when I caught up with leading HR SaaS vendor Authoria back in April — a conversation I’ve only now had a chance to write up. In another challenge to SaaS convention, Authoria also questioned the practice of upgrading customers all at the same time. More on that below, since it picks up a point raised in my post earlier this week on Many degrees of multi-tenancy.

Enterprise software giant SAP on Wednesday unveiled a midmarket on-demand service, Business ByDesign, putting it in competition with the on-demand offerings of Salesforce.com, NetSuite and archrival Oracle. The service aims to not only expand SAP's reach into the midmarket, but also to mark its entry into the hosted-applications arena, where it has been slower than its competitors. Business ByDesign will offer a range of on-demand applications, from financials to procurement to customer relationship management (CRM) software via a dashboard. ***

IBM has announced an upgrade to Lotus Notes that will include access to office productivity applications and support for the OpenDocument format. The new version of Lotus Notes, codenamed "Hannover," will feature IBM Workplace applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and numeric data analysis. These "office productivity editors," as IBM refers to them, all support OpenDocument Format (ODF) files. ***

IBM is launching a new program intended to help independent software developers lease their applications to companies, as part of its push for on-demand computing. Under the on-demand concept, powerful computer networks and other technological advancements will let companies buy computing power the way they now buy electricity. The tech giant last month set up an in-house On-Demand group and pledged to spend $10 billion on research and development, company initiatives and acquisitions to promote the idea. ***