Platform-as-a-Service Getting Attention

David Linthicum posted a good overview today on the shift from applications on-demand to development and enterprise architecture. He states that:

“…many of the same benefits realized when leveraging on-demand applications are just as apparent, perhaps more so, when considering platform and architecture. Benefits such as shared services and processes, shared design and architecture patterns, and built-in integration capabilities. There are also huge cost savings, considering that the infrastructure is hosted and maintained outside of the enterprise, typically with lower costs and reduced downtime.”

In May, Bill McNee at Saugatuck Technology had a similar message in his SaaS 2.0 Sandhill.com article. He also points out that “effective management of the usage and benefits of such services requires consulting and analytics - delivered as part of the overall SaaS bundle.”

As the platform message gets more and more attention, the importance of analytics to the broader adoption of SaaS applications and acceptance of “PaaS” architectures should not be underestimated. As Ken Rudin wrote last November, the walls are down in the traditional business intelligence market. On-demand analytics is a reality today and the benefits are becoming clearer and clearer, as you can see from these recent LucidEra reviews. I just hope nobody decides to launch “analytics-as-a-service”. That acronym definitely will not fly!

posted by Darren Cunningham at 9:30 pm

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