More money for SLA :-)

I envision controlled overlap. PaaS offerings will most likely provide a “core” that can be extended and manipulated to offer greater value.

This sort of relationship is what makes the introduction of hosting providers as serious PaaS players a powerful construct.

That’s a great question and I’ll take the liberty to chime in with my two cents. I do believe that PaaS providers and hosting providers will overlap in functionality to some degree but that will only be the case in the early days of PaaS where there is still an unclear concept of what they are or what they do and where there isn’t a PaaS solution in the market that brings hosting companies into the mix.

As an example we see hosting companies like OpSource trying to move upstream by offering a PaaS mix of their own or companies like Salesforce offering the platform and the hosting themselves.

I believe that the way things will turn out is a handful of PaaS offerings where hosting companies participate by managing the hardware resources that the PaaS offerings use as well as offer additional services like application support and specialized resource allocation but the platforms will handle the application management as well as business services to help run operations.

Clearly there is room for many things to happen but I think that companies that are trying to be the hoster as well as the platform like Salesforce or OpSource can only marginally succeed as a PaaS provider but won’t be able to compete with PaaS offerings that are not tied to a specific host because of the value they offer the ISVs using them.

Cheers,
Abe

Disclosure: I work at Apprenda, a PaaS company.

Do you envision an overlap in functionality between SaaS platform providers and hosting providers?

Or do you see the hosting providers handling the virtualization aspects while the platform handles application management and (more importantly) business aspects?

One thing you’ve pointed out that I didn’t highlight but explicitly believe is the importance of consultants in this ecosystems. Being a transitional period, there is much to be said for having folks with expertise in SaaS business models and technical implementation on your side.

My goal at the platform level is to become a business hub for these interactions. The business and technical coordination possible through a platform is an amazing prospect, and having consultants and hosts on board can help make it happen.

Managed Hosting companies are currently utilizing the SAAS buzz as just that. A Marketing “buzz word” that is utilized for capturing leads.

I do believe that Platforms such as SaaSGrid will have that revolutionary affect that we are looking for.

I also believe that Opsource is a little TOO close to Salesforce to do anything about it.. :-)

Certification of consulting partners such as Konverge on Platforms such as SaaSGrid will go a long way to help ISVs.

We are almost there Sinclair, I see it coming.. :-)

Cheers,