Monday, March 02, 2009
Ryan Nichols
- Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering at Google, on the idea of cloud warfare: ""Paradigms of the past skew our vision of the present-- that's what's going on here. Maybe 10-15 years ago, the platform you were on influenced the applications you could run. Platform lock-in really mattered. The Internet has changed that. Through the web, we've created a platform that's open enough that you can just expect these apps to work together."
- Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, on the question of whether startups should use cloud platforms: "Markets are moving so much faster today. If you make the decision to use the old paradigm, not only are you spending a lot more money, you just can't compete."
- Paul Buchheit, Co-founder of FriendFeed and creator of Gmail, on the power of bringing together multiple cloud platforms: "The Internet is a single computer. When working with one machine, I no longer need to worry 'where is my data'-- end-users don't need to care"
- Amitabh Srivastava, Corporate VP of Windows Azure, laying out a surprising perspective on the future of cloud platforms: "I think you'll see a new set of platforms come in, each will be open and inter-operable."
- Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon: "The real value comes from aggregation of these resources...this will enable a whole new generation of applications that could never be built before."
- Lew Tucker, CTO of Cloud Computing at Sun Microsystems, on whether interesting businesses can be built on the cloud platforms of others: "The next Google is going to be built on the cloud. If you were starting today, you'd start directly on the cloud."
Even those stalwarts of the old world, SAP and Oracle are starting make more SaaS/PaaS noise . A topic we'll explore further later this week as part of our 2009 predictions series.
You can watch the entire three hours of the event here.
You can also watch it on co-presenter's ooyala's neat player.
Labels: Cloud Computing, Google, PaaS, SaaS, salesforce, Tech Crunch
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
C is for Cloud: Appirio raises Series C from GGV and Sequoia
Chris Barbin
Given today's headlines, we're humbled to announce our Series C funding from GGV Capital(formerly Granite Global Ventures) and Sequoia Capital. Amidst all the uncertainty confronting business and IT in today's economic climate, one thing remains certain: enterprise IT is moving to the cloud. That single idea is at the core of Appirio's business, and is an idea that's worth investing in precisely because we're in the worst spending environment any of us can remember.
The headlines for most venture-backed startups are grim: "Tech start-ups call it quits," writes the Wall Street Journal, as GigaOm describes "VCs sowing panic in their portfolio companies." We remember the buzz created by Sequoia's all-portfolio meeting last fall, featuring a picture of a slaughtered pig with all the fat removed.
Why is Appirio growing so dramatically in this environment?
Its a cliche that the easiest time to raise money is when you don't need it. Appirio's business model is strong and our services business has been profitable since our founding in October 2006. We create substantial value for our clients and share in the rewards of their success.
But it is still "early days" in the business of accelerating the adoption of on-demand in the enterprise, and we're excited to have our new partners at GGV Capital on-board. GGV specializes in deploying expansion capital, and today's investment from GGV and Sequoia Capital will be invaluable in our continued efforts to invest in products built on Force.com & Google App Engine, supporting and evolving our team of cloud computing professionals and investing in and innovating along side our strategic partners Salesforce.com, Google and Facebook.
Consider, for example, our other announcement today-- Appirio's expansion into Japan, the second largest IT market in the world, barely penetrated by traditional packaged application vendors. We believe that Japan has the opportunity to completely leapfrog on-premise packaged software and migrate directly to custom applications developed on an on-demand platform. Being part of this process (and the largest Force.com deployment in the world) is tremendously exciting.
We invite you to get involved. Schedule a discussion with us, take a trial of one of our products, look into joining our team, or even just contribute an idea. The transition to cloud computing is one thing to be certain of, even in these very uncertain times. We look forward to working together!
Labels: Cloud Computing, Google, PaaS, SaaS, salesforce, Sequoia-Capital
Monday, November 03, 2008
Salesforce and Facebook: Connecting the Cloud
We loved today's virtual bear hug between Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com and Sheryl Sandburg of Facebook at Dreamforce. It reminded us of the embrace between Marc and Eric Schmidt of Google back in April, for a couple of reasons:
- Another cloud to connect: There are 110 million active users of Facebook... many of these people also find time to work in between their wall postings. Facebook is an open, on-demand application platform, much like Force.com.
- Further consumerization of enterprise IT: Consumers have become accustomed to using the incredible power of social networks to connect with old friends and family in their personal life. Now, with Salesforce and Facebook together, these same people can use the power of this same social network to get their job done.
- Not just demos: People have talked about bringing the social network to the enterprise every day since "Enterprise 2.0" hit the radar. But today's announcement went further-- we saw real business scenarios with the potential to create enormous value for the enterprise. We are thrilled to be part of all this-- we built the recruiting scenario shown by Marc and Sheryl on stage. This is a preview of an application we think every HR head needs to consider.
Labels: cloud, Dreamforce, facebook, keynote, salesforce
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Waiting for the On Demand Generation?
Labels: Cloud Computing, Dreamforce, On Demand, SaaS, salesforce, Software as a Service
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Who is “fit” to provide enterprise apps?
Narinder Singh
The SaaS blogosphere has been abuzz these last couple of days discussing Sergey Solyanik’s assessment that Google’s culture is “not fit” for enterprise apps. We’ll say up front that Appirio runs our internal communication and collaboration using Google Apps, and have helped customers big and small do the same. We have been highly impressed with the quality, reliability, and rate of innovation in these tools, admire and respect the culture that created them, and have no hesitation calling them “enterprise ready.”
But we think that with all this talk about Google’s corporate culture, people are missing the real point—the culture of today’s traditional on-premise technology vendors is no longer “enterprise ready.”
Let me explain-- we believe that there is a cultural mismatch between the needs of today’s businesses and the cultures of traditional on-premise technology providers:
Today’s business needs agility, the culture of enterprise technology is anything but. As the global pace of change accelerates, business leaders need their IT staff and SI/ISV partners to be saying a lot more “yes” and a lot less “no.” It is no longer acceptable for an IT partner to make vague promises about a release 3 years out. When a CIO asked Hasso Plattner at the Churchill Club’s SaaS debate when he should move to SAP’s SaaS solutions, he was told to check back in “5 years, at least.” Is that what it means to have an “enterprise ready” culture?
Today’s business needs openness, the culture of enterprise technology is anything but. Traditional enterprise vendors have in their very DNA the idea that openness is dangerous to their business models. Businesses in all industries have accepted the notion of core vs. context—you focus on what you are good at and rely on seamless connections with a network of partners to provide the rest of your solution. Ironically, traditional enterprise software is one of the last industries to embrace this change. One of Hasso Plattner’s key lessons from SAP’s ill-fated experiment with SaaS is that “what is inside the system has to have a coverage level which is close to 100 percent,” he says. Openness will be there in name only—the intention is that everything you need is inside the system. Such a system has never existed, and never will. Is this what it means to have an “enterprise ready” culture?
So what does it mean to have an “enterprise-ready” culture? Of course, every traditional enterprise vendor wants to be agile and open, and many have made admirable strides in that direction, including SAP through its Developer Community and eSOA initiatives. And there is much more required to deliver enterprise solutions than agility and openness. There are the table stakes of reliability, security, and having a solution that meets a real business need. But today’s business requires IT partners with a culture that can do both-- be deeply rooted in agility and openness while delivering reliability, security, and business value. We think that Google and salesforce.com, the leaders in on-demand, have achieved this goal: Salesforce offers both trust.salesforce.com AND ideas.salesforce.com. Google offers highly innovative applications that scale like no traditional enterprise application will ever be able to.
But whether or not you agree with us that Google’s corporate culture is “enterprise ready," the real point is that its traditional on-premise competitors are most certainly not.
Labels: BusinessModels, Google, salesforce, SAP, Software, Software as a Service
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Google and salesforce.com : Solutions for business, meet solutions for businesspeople
Ryan Nichols
Salesforce, meet Google Apps… this is an introduction we’re happy to make and an occasion we are excited to be a part of. As the first partner of both Google Enterprise and salesforce.com, Appirio is excited to see these two leaders in on-demand solutions come together to change the way that business is done.
Salesforce has revolutionized software for business. Their on-demand solutions for business have changed what it means to develop, deploy, customize, and use a business solution. Google has revolutionized software for business people. Their on-demand solutions for business people have un-chained us from our desktop productivity applications and changed the way that business people interact with information and with each other.
The technology of their joint offering is exciting enough: Use Gmail and Gtalk directly from Salesforce. Find and add Google Docs as you work in Salesforce. Synchronize your Google Calendar and your Salesforce Calendar. Create Google Gadgets from your CRM data. We’ve been working closely with our partners at salesforce.com and Google to make much of this possible.
But what gets us excited is how we plan on using this technology to impact the business of our customers. Bringing Salesforce and Google Apps together solves one of the biggest pain points companies have today—the gap between the tools that businesses need to run and the tools that people use to work.
Businesses suffer when the tools that support these two types of activities aren’t connected. First, of course, is the cost in productivity and efficiency—everyone has experienced how much time is wasted copying, pasting, importing, exporting, and plain old retyping to bridge these different tool sets.
But the real cost is misalignment. When the communication and collaboration of business people occurs without the context of business information, or when a business process occurs without the context of communication and collaboration, the outcome is certain: poor decisions, poorly executed.
Traditional enterprise software companies have failed to bridge this gap. The excitement around each new announcement between a traditional provider of solutions for business (e.g., SAP) and a traditional provider of solutions for business people (e.g., Microsoft) quickly fades to disappointment and failed expectations. This failure is inevitable because on-premise software is too inflexible to bridge this gap. The simple fact that enterprises would have to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade to recent versions of SAP and Microsoft before thinking about joint solutions dooms the effort.
On-Demand changes all of this...again.
Today’s announcement and the future
On-demand solutions offer the potential to finally the bridge the gap between the tools that businesses need to run and the tools that people use to get things done. That’s what makes today’s announcement so exciting. Building on the platform salesforce and Google are providing, Appirio is delivering four new products that allow Salesforce and Google users to easily synchronize calendars, collaborate on marketing campaigns, find and embed documents, and create and share customized CRM dashboards. In addition, we have expanded our services for Google and salesforce customers to leverage these new offerings.
At Appirio, we’re already using Google and Salesforce together to change how our customers do business:
- Helping account teams collaborate in the context of their customer information in Google Documents and Sites
- Helping marketing teams coordinate their campaign timelines using Google Calendar
- Helping service and support teams leverage a knowledge base of their collective experience, captured in Google Documents and Sites
Over the past several months, we have helped numerous customers, including salesforce.com, benefit from Google Apps. Creating products and services to bring Google and Salesforce together in the enterprise provides Appirio a unique perspective. We believe that on-demand offers a way for providers like salesforce.com, Google, and Appirio to create compelling solutions for customers that cannot be matched by the rigidity of the on-premise approach. While this future may take time to reach all parts of the market, we believe it is inevitable and every enterprise needs to find a path to that future. We look forward to doing our part to help....
Labels: Google Apps, SaaS, salesforce, Salesforce for Google Apps
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Where in the World is Appirio?
While I would like to claim that the reason this blog hasn’t been updated since September is because the entire company has been out of the office solving world hunger, that isn’t exactly true.
However, we have been busy. Over the last few months we’ve been working with our customers on many exciting initiatives to accelerate on-demand in the enterprise by capitalizing on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms that have now emerged from the likes of Salesforce.com, Google and Amazon.com. While these projects may be less awe-inspiring than actually addressing the issue of world hunger, they reflect that on-demand has become an option for both enterprise applications and general application "infrastructure."
Dolby Laboratories Taps SaaS to Arm Customer Service Reps and Enter a New Market
The proof of concept highlights the power of development-as-a-service, as well as the potential of SaaS platforms like Force.com. Appirio and Dolby Laboratories brought together the flexibility and lower overhead of on-demand software with the value of leveraging existing IT investments to show how to lower costs and adapt systems more quickly and easily.
The entire proof of concept took less than a week to design, develop, create and test. Using legacy on-premise platforms, it would have easily taken that long to get the hardware / software / network / security setup so we could begin – not to mention the effort to configure the database, create the logic and workflows, integrate it with external internet service and actually design and build out the user experience.
This is just one example of the interesting and innovative things we’ve been working on during these months of silence. In future pieces we’ll describe how to take advantage of on-demand applications and align them with emerging SaaS platforms to create an overall SaaS strategy for the enterprise.
Image from the Dolby Laboratories prototype created with Visual Force
Labels: appirio, salesforce, salesforce.com
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
IT Management & Governance In an On-Demand Model
The IT landscape for Salesforce.com customers is quickly growing complex. With over 400 applications on the AppExchange today – with projections of 1,000 by late 2007 – and the upcoming Winter '07 release and the Apex programming language, sound IT management and governance practices are essential. In the past, a single application such as SFA or Service & Support was manageable for a line-of-business leader or an aspiring IT professional. They could gather requirements, build a business case, sell internally and then implement. With the increasingly complex platform now offered by Salesforce.com, where customers have access to applications, extensions, API’s, partners and the platform itself, determining the tradeoffs among building, buying, and partnering requires a thoughtful and collaborative approach among the business, IT, and the Salesforce.com community.
Some Appirio customers have recently completed extensive application and server rationalization exercises as part of the launch of an on-demand strategy. Inventory analysis is a great first step towards on-demand portfolio management, and uncovers a number of obvious opportunities to migrate on-premise applications to the on-demand model. Many traditional project and portfolio management principles apply, but in the on-demand world there are four key strategies for CIO’s to apply:
- Centralize the Approval Process. All new IT project requests should flow through a single, cross-functional, company-wide approval process with common selection criteria. In the past, on-demand software vendors have thrived by working around traditional IT, which creates redundant projects, additional costs, and inefficient use of resources. Under this decentralized model, many departments (often including IT) are finding, promoting, and implementing siloed on-demand applications that solve a specific problem for that particular department, but perpetuate vendor bloat, cost creep and integration headaches. Further, many existing Salesforce.com customers and their IT departments may not be aware of the capabilities and benefits of the AppExchange platform. To take advantage of the benefits of a true on-demand platform, CIOs must have the business, IT, Salesforce.com teams in sync. The CIO should be aware of all projects currently in queue, and knowledgeable of the end-to-end platform capabilities. This linkage is essential to driving adoption, integrating the user experience, ensuring corporate buy-in, and keeping costs down.
- Apply Early Adopter Factors. Let’s face it, we are in “early adopter” territory: standardizing an on-demand platform for a company with thousands of users, hundreds of legacy applications, complex business models and an “on-premise” mentality.. Along with the benefits of the on-demand model, there are inherent risks, with few end-to-end enterprise class success stories today. The development methodologies and assets are far from mature, and for every ten integration challenges, there are twenty solutions presented. Based on the evolving nature of on-demand platforms and applications, CIOs are well advised to estimate timelines somewhat longer than rollouts of a single application, and to anticipate increased costs associated with training, development, integration and data cleansing and migration.
- Keep Up with the Upgrade Roadmap and Partner Ecosystem. Remember that when you use on-demand vendors, your software is automatically upgraded with each new release. New partners and applications appear on the AppExchange every day. In short order, enterprise customers can expect features that they were planning on building to show up in new releases, and will notice applications that they were expecting to buy to show up on the AppExchange or other marketplaces. CIOs making the platform decision should demand early visibility not only into traditional product roadmaps, but also ISV and SI applications. Specifically, power users and CIOs should find out which applications are actually being used - particularly in large deployments of more than 1,000 seats - and how they are scaling in terms of volume, security, integration, and usability. This information, and the ability to talk directly with other companies making similar investments, will have a direct impact on a CIO’s make, buy, or partner decisions.
- Salesforce.com is Not Just for Sales. Education, awareness, and sponsorship are critical. While it seems obvious to those of us who ”get” on-demand vendors like Salesforce.com, most executives, functional leaders, and even salespeople, do not understand the future direction and capabilities of the AppExchange platform. The notion of building an application development platform using an on-demand model is new for most people, and it takes awhile to fully appreciate the profoundness of this change for typical IT operations. To really drive platform adoption across the enterprise, the executive team needs to consistently educate and drive awareness thru sponsorship and active, visible pilots that demonstrate value to end users and the business.
Labels: AppExchange, appirio, cio, on-demand, SaaS, salesforce, salesforce.com
