After more than 350 conservations with customers about the maintenance and support issue in the past 4 months, it’s becoming quite clear users expect from their software vendors.   While those issues can be broken into tens of categories, three themes have emerged that include:

Continued interest in software as a service (SaaS) stems from the
pay as you go pricing, constant stream of innovation, rapid deployment
options, and the ability to do an end run around IT.  As the number of
options proliferate, enterprises will increasingly lean on SaaS as the
mission critical system.  Thus, end users need an enterprise apps
strategy for SaaS that addresses the “I” word - Integration.   The
requirements and leadership for integration will lead to the pragmatic
realization that SaaS can no longer be ignored by the IT department.
As organizations brace for the proliferation of SaaS procurements
integration should focus on:

Inforum’s  attendees were treated to a wonderful pre-keynote string
quartet and a booming opening inspirational from both the Las Vegas
Philharmonic Orchestra and the rock band Innovation.  As the orchestra
took a bow, Infor’s CEO Jim Schaper, emerged from the conductor’s stand
to the surprise of over 5000 attendees.  The ever personable and
charismatic CEO discussed how Infor would help customers compete in an
emerging world of business networks that required innovation to be able
to respond to change.  He also spoke of the $325M being invested back
into the product in the next 4 years.

Key innovation announcements from the event include:

The War for Mind Share In the Skies

The recent announcement of IBM’s Cloud Computing initiatives
represents the latest front in the marketing and delivery battle for
customers, partners, and ISV’s.  IBM has pulled together a mix of
existing technologies and new developments into a four pronged attack
that focuses on:

• Cloud service delivery to end customers -
  leveraging existing Lotus Collaboration technologies (e.g. Sametime
  Unyte) and the newly announced Bluehouse, a web-delivered social
  networking and collaboration cloud service.
• Customer integration of cloud services -
  delivering system integrator led practices around salesforce.com and
  Success Factors through IBM’s Global Business Services (GBS).
• ISV enablement of cloud services - providing ISV’s with tools to design, build, deliver, and market cloud services.
• Customer enablement of cloud services - helping customers deploy their own clouds through a suite of enabling technologies known as “Blue Cloud”.

Pricing Model Favorable to Broader ISV Adoption

by Ray Wang.

Walking out of the Salesforce.com event on Tuesday the 10th had me thinking about the promise of Web 2.0 for the enterprise via middleware, SaaS platforms, and this notion of applistructure. The thing that really struck home was not the utility computing model that Marc Benioff rants and raves about, nor the great drag-and-drop content management capability of Koral that was being demo'd. What struck home more than anything was how applistructure was taking shape via SaaS and how quickly SaaS could deliver Web2.0 capabilities to the enterprise.