Cyber Security Institute

Friday, November 09, 2007

Reaching For The Next SaaS Wave

It should come as no surprise that Cisco Systems and Adobe Systems, two companies that enjoyed spectacular growth establishing them as tech blue-chips during the nascent Internet, are also among the first companies to embrace the software-as-a-service model (SaaS) (define) as the vehicle of choice for the Internet’s next evolutionary phase.  On Thursday, both companies outlined their vision, their expectations and some of their new offerings for this emerging SaaS platform at the Software and Information Industry Association’s OnDemand conference in San Jose, Calif.

Several hundred attendees, ranging from established tech players to upstarts hoping to carve out a niche in this booming space, came in search of new ideas, potential business partners and maybe even a little validation of their emerging Web 2.0 strategies.

“What’s clear to me as I look out into this room is that I’m looking at the future of the software industry,” Donald Proctor, senior vice president of Cisco’s collaboration software group, said during his keynote address kicking off the conference.

Unified communications—-the cobbling together of instant messaging, Web conferencing, e-mail, desk phones, mobile phones, blogs and all the other tools employees and businesses use to communicate into one central location or platform—-and collaboration—-the tools and processes needed for meaningful productivity—-have replaced customer relationship management (CRM) (define) as the markets of choice for the SaaS crowd.  That’s partly because those applications lend themselves so well to a browser-based distribution model and partly because they’re precisely the type of applications employees and companies need to manage their data and business processes online.

Cisco CEO John Chambers, during a conference call Wednesday with analysts following the company’s first-quarter earnings report, couldn’t have been more clear when he repeatedly said unified communications and collaboration will not only be the key to Cisco’s growth in the next 10 years but will “drive the next wave of productivity around the world.”

Cisco isn’t the only company that’s caught on this tectonic shift in communications.  “It’s enabling people to collaborate on documents that matter,” said Erik Larson, director of marketing and product management for Adobe’s business productivity unit.  Larson said boundaries such as time and physical locations or technology platforms and disparate browsers have impeded productivity for years.

http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3710121