Rick Nucci of Boomi sat down with us today at SIIA's OnDemand '09 and gave us his thoughts on integration.  Keep in mind, this is just a sneak peek so be sure to check back with us for the full length interview!

http://www.boomi.com 

Guy Shani, Vice President Sales for Clarizen presented their collaborative online project management software.

About Clarizen:

ANNOUNCEMENT!  

Ken Wasch, President of SIIA, announced this morning with Richard Dym, Chief Marketing Officer at OpSource, at his side that starting next year SIIA and OpSource will be partnering to host what they hope to be THE biggest Cloud Computing event in the world.  OpSource's CEO was not present physically, but made an appearance via video to express his excitement for the new partnership.  This event will be titled "All About the Cloud", which combines SIIA's OnDemand events and OpSources Cloud Summit.  "All About the Cloud" will be held February 17th, 2009 - February 19th, 2009, location still TBD. 

There is no doubt that OnDemand 2009 is one of the biggest SaaS events of the year! We saw Lars Dalgaard, CEO of SuccessFactors kick things off with a powerful keynote speech, followed by preview presentations from companies Zetta, LongJump, and Widen Software.  Watch as the DS team reviews the day!

Lars Dalgaard! 

Amidst the screaming groupies and the hushed wispers of "OMG! It's really him!" Lars Dalgaard took the stage with the confidence befitting of the nickname given to him by so many: "The Reigning Rockstar of SaaS".

Haven't heard of Lars referred to by that nickname, yet?  Maybe, that's because I just made it up.  But, I think it fits...  Lars is passionate about SaaS but not in an overly techie kind of way. What I mean by that is he's great at talking about SaaS in terms of real world benefits and not necessarily in terms of software architecture and database relationships.  You could say that he brings SaaS out of the clouds and down to earth.  That and he swears on camera... 

Social media has become one of the most-hyped aspects of marketing. Everyone and their mother seem to be talking about running ads on Facebook or sending out product offers via Twitter.  Others are convinced this is all a huge waste of time and that we should stick to buying lists and email campaigns. Over the past year, Appirio and Marketo have found that social media is an extremely valuable tool for augmenting their revenue-focused marketing automation efforts.

Presented by Jon Miller (VP of Marketing - Marketo) and Kirk Crenshaw (Director, Online Marketing - Appirio) -- this session discussed what no social media marketer wants to talk about: results.

At Appirio, more than 20% of web traffic comes from Twitter, and a strategic blend of blog posts and Twitter yielded 1000+ webinar registrations and even a few well-qualified leads. More than 3500 followers read Marketo's B2B marketing blog, and social media helped drive thousands of people to register and 300-plus people to participate live in the The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing webinar.

Ken Wasch, President of SIIA, started today's events by kicking off things with a few short words.  Most notably, he highlighted the progress that Cloud Computing has made since the SIIA OnDemand conferences started just 4 years ago, but Ken then quickly remarked how there was still progress to made in the industry.  He also mentioned that in terms of attendance, this years event was the biggest OnDemand conference that SIIA's put on to date - surely a trend that will continue.  This success is due in part to some of the social media pieces SIIA has put in place - namely live streaming of speaches and some live blogging and twittering brought to you all, by none other than DreamSimplicity.  Thanks Ken for putting together yet another great event!  We are for one, excited to see what else is to come...

SIIA OnDemand homepage:  http://www.siia.net/OnDemand/2009/default.asp

Watch live speeches here: https://www.siia.net/events/prereg.asp?eventid=1259

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

Given the well rounded list of speakers and attendees and the obvious amount of effort that is going into these three days, this is shaping up to be one of the top SaaS events of the year.  

We're currently at the Pre Conference event titled: Converging in the Cloud. Starting just after lunch, this particular session is highlighting the latest in what IBM is bringing to the table in terems of SaaS offerings.  Ranging from talks on IBM's overall SaaS strategy down to actual SaaS solutions such as ILOG, Cognos, and LotusLive among others, attendees are being presented with insight into how IBM views SaaS as a part of their brand and overall strategy.

So how does SaaS figure into things for IBM?  Well, while they're not diving head long into the Cloud, they're certainly spending a fair amount of resources developing and supporting SaaS solutions.  Let's just say they're hedging their bets...  and rightly so.

What's in a name?  

Recently, we been getting a lot of questions regarding our name...  What does it mean?  Where does it come from?  How much are your sandal wood incense sticks? Well, we're not a holistic health center, first of all.  What we are, though, is a way for businesses to learn about how SaaS and web based software can help take their business to the next level.  How you ask?  Well, to put it in a nutshell, SaaS takes the complicated world of custom programmed, self-supported, enterprise software and it makes it SIMPLE.  I won't go into a litany of why or how in this post, but believe me when I say that if you're up for the change-management, replacing all your on-premise software systems with SaaS will make your life more simple.  Hence the name: DreamSimplicity...

The fact that you're reading this blog is a step in the right direction, but in addition to learning about SaaS at DreamSimplicity.com, I would highly encourage you to visit the Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) website to learn more.  Not only do they have a host of information pertaining to software and SaaS, but they also hold frequent events in various locations where you can learn about and see SaaS in action first hand.  Coming up at the end of this month is one of SIIA's semi-annual OnDemand conferences being held right here in our back yard in San Jose.  One of the reasons I'm most excited to attend is the great speaker line up.  They truly have put together an A-list speaker panel with pillars of industry like Zach Nelson of NetSuite, Lars Dalgaard of SuccessFactors and Michael Lock of Google Enterprise.  Additionally, there will be a number of up-and-coming SaaS companies there to get a glimpse of things to come in the world of SaaS.