A blog post from Cloud Integration provider Boomi's co-founder Rick Nucci on this topic came across the tweet stream this morning and it really hit home.

Here's what Rick had to say about it:

It is surprising to still see articles like this where people question the fundamentals of SaaS, I mean even Lawson is now talking about a cloud edition, despite their CEO publicly proclaiming SaaS's death by August 2010 a few years back.  But what Lawson and others are doing, known as "cloud washing", helps me understand why people question the value of SaaS.

Here is the clue; whenever you see the phrase "cloud edition" tacked onto the end of a product name, you are most likely being cloud washed.  9 times out of 10, a "cloud edition" is the same old software (Good job Phil, 2005, and still relevant today), just running in a cloud, typically Amazon, with a new name and maybe a new price.  Instead of getting the software on a CD, you turn it on in the cloud, but everything else is the same, read on to see why this matters. Read the whole post here..

DreamSimplicity caught up with Rick at All About The Cloud 2010, where he touched on "Cloud Washing."