The Evolution of SaaS

Jan 8, 2007 by

Regardless of whether one believes that Darwinian evolution is how the species of this planet came to be, most will agree that the premise and underlying structure of evolution is both powerful and to some degree measurable in the real world. One of the most important things to ask IS “Why study history and why attempt to understand the underpinnings of our origins?” The answer, in my opinion, is simple: we study history to mitigate risk in the present and future, and build on a foundation of measurable results. That said, understanding how SaaS came to be, and where it’s heading with the powerful concepts of the SaaS Platform and ecosystem. This complements one of my earlier posts regarding the categorization of SaaS, and I’m definitely looking for input as I view the unfolding of these definitions a communal effort.

I find that diagrams do a much better job at explaining concepts rather than multiple paragraphs of banter. As a result, I’ve put together a brief overview of how I see the evolution of SaaS unfolding. The evolutionary variable (measured over time) is how SaaS was/is implemented:

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The timeline focuses how SaaS (On Demand) implementations have changed. Generally, implementation can be hidden from a user, but that’s not always the case. For example, a “streamed” application like Office 2007, while it would fall under the category On Demand, is far different than say Zoho’s web office, both from the implementation standpoint and the viewpoint of the end user. Looking at the timeline, however, one underlying theme is present: overtime, implementations converge to abstraction. We see this all the time in the IT industry, whether it’s the operating system abstracting the hardware layer (HAL), development languages such as C# and Java abstracting away some of the more difficult concepts such as memory management, our industry noticeably thrives on simplifying through abstraction. This is how we become more efficient, less vulnerable; abstraction helps us become a well-oiled machine and helps the end user see more and more value. With this abstraction also comes the ability to harness it as a common ground through concepts such as valuable SaaS ecosystems. Prior to platform and platform-esque implementations, the concept of the ecosystem would have been overly difficult to introduce and implement correctly. The evolution of SaaS is continually refining the various SaaS species to be more in-tune with the long term, ensuring that it’s here to survive the long haul (short of a catastrophic asteroid landing, of course).

SaaS is continually pushing towards a day where both use and development of SaaS applications is easier. Nonetheless, many of the early SaaS successes (Salesforce.com, WebEx, RightNow, etc.) were the precursors to this abstraction, which is something that the industry should value since they laid the groundwork for moving forward and turning SaaS into a viable delivery mechanism. Now, these same industry leaders are trying to move into a more abstract space with their own product-centric platform introductions. While they may succeed, history has shown us that it’s not the oldest species that survives, but the smartest, and these companies are going to face a slew of new SaaS platform players. These SaaS players are looking to enable the next-generation of applications for the enterprise, and hope to carry the genetics of SaaS but leave those early species behind with the dinosaurs.

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The SaaS Swivel, Double Line, and Rig Setup

Dec 11, 2006 by

I’ve been keeping tabs on an interesting company named Swivel for a little while now. I bumped into their blog recently, and have read a couple of articles, including one by ZDNet blogger Mitch Ratcliffe. The basic idea behind Swivel is to be a central place for intelligently parsed and analyzed data for use in interpretation. In essence, it is an “Analysis as a Service” (AaaS) platform (For the record, I hate making up names/acronym/phrases, but for lack of a better description, I had to). From my understanding, one can upload oodles of data, which the Swivel compute farm then operates on and provides analytic cross-sections of. Through these cross-sections, you’ll be able to extract valuable correlation (although I think that if Swivel is successful, it will catalyze the abuse of passing correlation on as causation. I have enough of this reading Digg). You don’t need to be an oracle to see that there is huge monetization potential around this concept. Right now, the Swivel website is very consumer, fun-data centric. Long-term, however, Swivel can be positioned as the analytic store-house for corporate data that requires analysis. Companies could add data (Ratcliffe suggested something akin to Amazon S3, which is a superb positioning in my humble opinion), let Swivel do its magic, and then interpret the neatly digested data for competitive advantage/market analysis/etc. But what’s more important is how a service like Swivel plays into the SaaS ecosystem and can benefit the end-user in a more general, more pliable case: integration. Bear with me on the forthcoming analogy.

To anyone that takes fishing seriously, the offshore swivel knot will be familiar to them. For those of you that aren’t anglers, the offshore swivel knot is generally used for big-fish trolling in deep sea or large fresh-fresh water fishing. Normally, you attach a swivel and clip to a fishing line (or in this case, a double line). The swivel and clip allows you to quickly remove a lure/rig from your line and snap on a different lure or rig without having to untie & retie. The offshore swivel knot is a special way to tie the swivel to the line such that there are multiple strands of line attached to the swivel. In the event that one strand snaps, the others can still provide support, hopefully long enough to get the fish onto the boat. Your choice of lure/rig to attach to the swivel is dependent on what type of fish you want to attract. Here is a diagram summarizing the knot and final setup (borrowed from Fishing Cairns):


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This entire fishing setup is analogous to where I see Swivel and their value proposition fit in. Swivel has the potential to allow many different SaaS applications to tap into it’s tightly wound data without having to jump through hoops. Through Swivel, multiple (different) SaaS applications can tap into strong, reliable analyzed data without repetitive integration headaches, similar to how the clip allows an angler to attach different lures to the same, reliable knot. If a knot strand breaks, or analytic cross-section weakens, you have many more to rely on. Data and its analysis is part of the “special ingredients” involved in making any good application. Something like Swivel, horizontally coupled across different applications, will be ultra-beneficial to end users. They use the right rig (application) for the right fish (business need) without the hassle of having to retie the rig (integration of complex data).

Swivel and the concept of a data analysis platform are very exciting. I frequently go to Italy to visit family, and during one of my trips, an uncle said “Vai al mare, se ben vuoi pescare.“ The idea behind this proverb is that if you want to fish well (aka catch big fish) you need to fish in the sea (that’s where the big fish live). Well, the Internet is our sea. If they get it right, company’s like Swivel will definitely become a standard part of the tackle box.

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