I am sitting in Workday’s 2010 Technology Summit hearing the pitch about the supremacy of multi-tenancy, and despite their best efforts, Workday’s rationales about this key piece of SaaS orthodoxy are coming down solidly on the vendor side of the equation, not the user side. While the benefits that multi-tenancy can provide are manifold for the vendor, these rationales don’t hold water on the user side.

That is not to say that customers can’t benefit from multi-tenancy. They can, but the effects of multi-tenancy for users are side-benefits, subordinate to the vendors’ benefits. This means, IMO, that a customer that looks at multi-tenancy as a key criteria for acquiring a new piece of functionality is basing their decision on factors that are not directly relevant to their TCO, all other factors being equal.

Dell Buys Money-Losing 3PAR to Fluff Cloud Portfolio

written by:  Taylor Buley

Dell announced its pending $1.15 billion acquisition of 3PAR on Monday, sending the latter’s stock up 85% in mid-day trading.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is researching how software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions and cloud computing are being used and deployed today and how these technologies will evolve in the future. Because SaaS is so prevalent in the transportation management systems (TMS) and mobile resource management (MRM) markets, I thought it would be worthwhile to dive into NIST’s research and writings on this topic.

My first reaction is that the term “cloud computing” makes a lot of people nervous (“What is it? Is this hype or is it real?”). But NIST has developed a detailed definition of cloud computing, which I’m not I’m not going to get into today, but I recommend that you read “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing” if you’re interested in the details.

NIST has also defined what it calls “Three Features of a Mature SaaS Application.” Because many supply chain professionals will eventually buy a SaaS supply chain application, NIST’s thoughts are worth sharing. Mature SaaS applications are:

The increased use of virtualization on all common server platforms provides greater server utilization and efficiency. Efficiency gains in utilization are also attributable to the sharing of computing capacity when multiple tenants are hosted on a single software instance. It stands to reason that multi-tenant software contributes to the efficiency of provisioning and administration, which enables applications to be provided at much lower cost.

Multi-tenant software allows new customer organizations to be easily implemented without an elaborate and separate installation of the application for each customer or the subsequent administration and maintenance. Yet the separation of the customer data, even the perception of the application by the customer, is as if they have a separate application running on their own servers.

For the original article - click here

WaveMaker today announced general availability of the first open source cloud development platform. WaveMaker 6.0 is available under the Apache open source license, providing organizations with the features and benefits found in proprietary cloud development platforms - such as Force.com and Azure - at a fraction of the cost.

With an open source community of 15,000 active developers, WaveMaker has established itself as a leading rapid application development platform for cloud computing. WaveMaker's browser-based, drag and drop platform makes it easy for anyone to prototype, develop and customize great looking web applications.

Because WaveMaker 6.0 was built using open source standards, it is the only cloud development platform to support deployment to any cloud, running on any Java server and connecting to any database. WaveMaker's studio was even built using WaveMaker, demonstrating the power of WaveMaker technology.

Christopher Keene, CEO of WaveMaker Software gave us a quick overview of WaveMaker's Visual Ajax Studio. WaveMaker is available as an open source product that includes a development studio and a full deployment server. Customers wanting commercial support and add-on features such as role-based access controls must purchase annual subscription licenses.

Here are some highlights from the presentation:

• WaveMaker has a community of 15,000 plus developers
• WaveMaker's customers come from three key sectors:
  • Government
  • ISVs
  • The Enterprise
• WaveMaker's easy-to-use visual builder enables drag & drop assembly of scalable, web-applications using Ajax widgets, web services and databases.
• Once the application is built it can easily be launched to Amazon's EC2.

Learn more at WaveMaker.com

To better manage its environmental impact, the Army is expanding a pilot program of software as a service called Enviance which tracks emissions and regulatory compliance.

The Army's choice of multi-tenant SaaS for its pilot is notable, as the military has been reluctant to use Web-based systems in other cases, especially with operational data such as on-installation emissions. "The reaction of some of our customers is, 'Oh my gosh, on the Internet?' " John Garing, director of strategic planning at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said in an interview earlier this year. "With the cyber threat that we face, that's a challenge." 

Enviance has been deployed in the utility, oil and gas, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, by companies such as Chevron, DuPont, and Koch.