Opening up Software as a Service (SaaS)

In all the hype around Software as a Service (SaaS) as a way to bring down prices and drive value to the customer, one thing is conveniently overlooked: SaaS is the ultimate lock-in platform.

As Chris Keene, CEO of Wavemaker, suggests, however, SaaS may well succumb to the same forces that are driving software to open up:

Although SaaS development platforms like SalesForce and Coghead have gotten a lot of attention, this market has so far been remarkably closed and proprietary. The Platform as a Service leader, SalesForce, has both a draconian hosting policy (host your apps and data anywhere, as long as it's with us!) but also a proprietary language (who needs Java when you've got Apex!?).

Moving forward, the same trends driving open source adoption everywhere else in the industry will ultimately drive SaaS adoption of open source, particularly by ISVs whose business plan does not include a low multiple sale to their proprietary hosting provider. Future SaaS platforms will converge with traditional tools, offering on-demand development based on traditional programming languages with built-in tools for mash-up based development for basic users.

Who will drive this move to open? Well, Chris clearly feels that his company, Wavemaker, will be among them (though I have money on Bungee Labs to help fuel this move, as well: Bungee is not nearly as closed as Chris' post would suggest). But the real driver of this will be Google.

Google already has open-source Gears, and is also increasingly opening up its App Engine. Over time, Google will determine this market, and its stance is increasingly open. Open source, open APIs, and open data.

At that point, service will determine who wins the most customers and operational efficiency will determine who profits most from them. The former will be increasingly influenced by those vendors who make "software" easy to use. The latter will be influenced by those who quickly learn to manage scale through tools like Reductive Labs' Puppet, Amazon's EC2, etc.

Disclosure: I am an advisor to Bungee Labs.

[ctkeene]

Matt - Google may help us get there (and of course Bungee too!) but the company that is driving the most disruption now is Amazon. What cloud computing has to do with selling books beats me, by Google's Python-only App Engine looks like a youthful prank compared with EC2 (and we used to sell a Python development platform too - if we'd only waited we could have been the premier App Engine tool - rats!)

[pfmcnamara]

Matt, at Coghead we want to see standards emerge for cloud computing platforms that can establish a framework for 'open'. Our developers don't deal with source code in the traditional sense. When you create an application in Coghead, you are creating an XML representation that we call the application definition. Developers can export their XML definitions and share them with others. We also allow authors to license their apps using an 'open definition' license (if they choose) -- this means others can modify and redistribute the application definition. Its similar to a BSD-style licensed but constructed in a way that makes sense when you are dealing with a declarative model.

In the future, we would like to see multiple services able to interpret XML application definitions in a consistent way. XML is radically redefining the way applications get written and distributed and the way those applications interact with other web services. Looking at the definition of 'open' simply through the lenses of traditional source code is too limiting for the future of computing.

Paul McNamara
CEO
Coghead

[markkcd]

I strngly disagree. You imply that moving to a SaaS solution is locking yourself to them - it's simply not true. The reason why people like SaaS solutions is that they don't have to worry about the technology. They literally don't care much about the underlying technology providing it gives them what they want at a price they can afford. They are only locked in if they can't transport their data easily and in my experience most SaaS vendors are incredibly open in this regard. So the thing to check is: does my SaaS vendor provide an easy and standardised way for me to get my data in and out of the system? If the answer is "yes", then you're not locked in, no matter if the vendor is using open source or whatever technology.
The impact of open source and standards for users of SaaS solutions is much more likely to be in the area of price - if the SaaS vendor can contruct and maintain their environment more cheaply then they are able to deliver their multi-tenant service at a lower cost per user. But it's not about lock-in.