All right, admittedly this is a stretch. I actually picked up a physical dictionary today (who doesn’t use dictionary.com?) to see what I could do with SaaS. This is the best I came up with. Thanks to Wikipedia (who doesn’t love Web 2.0?), I discovered that the oil of the Sassafras tree is a key ingredient in the street drug MDMA or “ecstasy.” Now maybe the heat wave here on the East coast has me a little high, but as I have finished the reporting on the SaaS story for GITS and continue to investigate the Enterprise web 2.0 market… I think I might predict a rave party coming on in the knowledge-worker universe.
If what I’m hearing is true, and it’s THAT easy to create these “long tail” micro situational apps, we are headed for a serious reshuffling in the balance of power, once again, in the tech business.
Hi Mike, a few days ago Phil Wainewright’s blog on ZDNet generated 33 comments regarding whether or not SaaS is ready for prime time. Check it out if you get a chance. The post is “IT Shops afraid of SaaS.” I’m just getting comfortable with the New, New Net and its born-again nomenclature. Sometimes I mix up the technologies, but one thing that remains clear to me is the radical democratizing nature of self-service and self-fulfillment these technologies deliver to the enterprise user/knowledge worker. Drag up any old cliche from decades past– a sea change, a paradigm shift, a breakout business model– it all spells FREEDOM RINGS for the beleaguered intelligent guy/gal/department/organization whose attempts at productivity have been thwarted by controlled IT budgets, cut IT budgets, outsourced IT departments, and limited desktop collaboration software solutions. I once wrote an op-ed in Computerworld about the Wild, Wild Web in the 1.0 era, but I’m feeling the web has matured significantly this time ’round. The foundation of this next generation is similtaneously about sharing and individuality– kind of like Ayn Rand meets Karl Marx. Very interesting, indeed. I’m loving it.
Interesting find on SaaS. I had no clue. SaaS’s future makes me think about information that’s tucked away in a typical Enterprise and how it interacts with information out on the Wild Wild Web. I know there’s a sweet spot here, a safe way for the information to be used inside and outside of the Enterprise easily. A way for customers, partners, vendors, and everyone else with interest in a company to use the company’s data and services to create their own Enterprise applications.