rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for Web 2.0
November 19, 2005 at 9:52 pm · Filed under Web 2.0
I attended the TechCrunch / Riya launch party last night. Pictures on Flickr are here. It was a good time — thanks to Michael Arrington for hosting the party.
Some people I met or reconnected with:
- Steve Gillmor. We talked about the AttentionTrust a bit; I’ll blog more on that soon. Unfortunately I jokingly raised the “Office Dead” topic with him and Robert Scoble again and found myself in a minor repeat of the Geek Dinner / Parking Lot discussion (described here in a previous post).
- Of course, Robert Scoble — he brought his son. Seems like a nice kid.
- Zach Coelius of Triggit. Zach, it looks like you jumped on FeedBurner after our discussion!
- Ramana Kovi of ePlatform. Robert Scoble first blogged about ePlatform here. I sat in on a demonstration that Ramana gave to Steve. Kind of a Web portal allowing parents to manage the whole family’s Internet experience. All on .NET, too.
- Many of the Meetro guys. They all moved out here from Chicago a few weeks back to setup shop in the Valley.
Tags: Attention, riya, techcrunch, Web2.0
November 17, 2005 at 9:45 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing, Web 2.0
John Powers, the President of Digipede (my company) was recently interviewed by WindowsHPC about the Digipede Network, how it fits into the distributed computing market, and how it is a good fit with SaaS providers. We designed it with SaaS in mind. After all, we came from a company where we had a SaaS product (and enterprise products) that needed scale-out (I mention the product briefly in my previous post).
You can read the full text of the interview, here: An Inteview with John Powers, President of Digipede Technologies.
Tags: Digipede, grid, HPC, SaaS, Web2.0
November 17, 2005 at 9:16 pm · Filed under Web 2.0
In his post Contrary Evidence at the SLC, Sam Ramji of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team is surprised by big CIO resistance to SaaS pricing models. No surprise, really, that CIOs want the best of all possible worlds (a ceiling on price with lowering price as appropriate and lowest overall cost).
He makes some good points about confusion surrounding standard (or lack of standard) pricing models and conflation between value-based and usage-based pricing. I certainly agree that pricing models are getting more complex. There is a real need for simplified / standardized pricing as well as licensing agreements. This would be a real help to all types of software vendors.
Back in the Web 1.0 days, my former company Energy Interactive sold SaaS to large energy providers (both vertically-integrated electric utilities and deregulated energy suppliers). Of course, we called ourselves an Application Service Provider (though SaaS is a better term).
At the time we sold the hosted product as a one-time setup fee plus annual bundle of license, maintenance and support. We also sold the product as installed software with a perpetual license + maintenance and support. There was a direct correlation between the size of the customer and their level of comfort with the SaaS model: the bigger they were the more they wanted to just buy it and install it themselves. Truthfully, we didn’t want to sell it as an installed product for the typical reasons (i.e., it was much easier for us to maintain and support it if we had direct access to it, etc.).
Again and again we had to convince the large prospective customers that it made sense for them to go with the SaaS model then for them to host it themselves.
Of course, times have changed: SaaS is more accepted. Small customers (both individual users and small to midsize companies) certainly benefit from it; however, Mr. Ramji has detected that this is still the case for large enterprises. Certainly there are the financial and licensing issues to be resolved, but this will continue to be a hard sell for the large enterprise that is used to having absolute control over their brand, operations, IT environment, security, etc.
I don’t have the answer to question, “will SaaS fail to penetrate large enterprises”, but I do think it will continue to be a hard road.
Tags: SaaS, Web2.0
November 15, 2005 at 9:36 pm · Filed under Web 2.0
I just signed up as an AttentionTrust member (check out my spiffy new graphic in the sidebar). I have been meaning to do this for some time since it became public. I started following it after meeting (or at least disagreeing with) Steve Gillmor back at the Dave Winer’s Geek Dinner for Scoble. I may disagree with him over the pending demise of Office, but he is doing truly interesting work on attention.
It will be very interesting to see how the big players (i.e., Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc.) deal with user-controlled attention. My guess is they will completely ignore it unless enough users demand it. Of course, if just one of them buys into it then maybe it will be adopted by everybody.
I am looking forward to (and willing to help, if necessary) the Internet Explorer version of the AttentionTrust Extension. I work in Internet Explorer pretty exclusively (it just doesn’t make sense to use Firefox when developing with Microsoft Visual Studio). Actually, for what it is worth, I use the tabbed Maxthon browser which makes use of the Internet Explorer engine.
Tags: Attention
October 25, 2005 at 6:49 am · Filed under Web 2.0
Last night, Dan and I went to the geek dinner Dave Winer hosted for Robert Scoble. While I’ve been to many parties and dinners full of geeks, this was my first “geek dinner.”
There was an interesting mix of people: entrepreneurs from Web 2.0 startups, various software developers, many bloggers, and other assorted geeks.
The highlight of the evening for me was the discussion that started just before the restaurant closed. We adjourned to the parking lot to continue until it became too cold and too late (although, apparently Robert and Steve Gillmor kept it going for another hour and a half, see Geek dinner Gillmortastic). It was a little challenging to get Steve Gillmor’s entire point, although I guess Robert finally got it after we all left.
The conversation was, I think, a typical one: why Microsoft doesn’t get Web 2.0 (i.e., how Google will beat Microsoft). Steve Gillmor has some pretty strong views about the mind share that Google has regarding applications. Yet he believes that Office will lose (or has lost) the battle. It appears that he wants to see AJAX-enabled interfaces to everything. All browser-based, all thin-client.
I think the major point of disagreement between Gillmor and many others in the crowd had to do with the utility of browser-based software models. For example:
- Gillmor wants to do all of his RSS reading on the Web. I don’t. I prefer a model with the advantages of a smart client (rich UI and disconnected operation) that also allows me a surely Web-based interface. Newsgator is a perfect example of this. Both Robert and I use NewsGator in Outlook and from the Web. I also use it from my WM5 device. Even better, they are all synchronized.
- Gillmor wants to write all his articles in e-mail. He said something to the effect of “e-mail will supplant the use of Word in the next six months”. This comment nearly resulted in a wager. I believe he is talking about a very small group of technologically-savvy early-adopters.
If Gillmor prefers Web-only, then more power to him. And he is right, there are many like him who feel the same way. But there are also a huge number of people (and these are not just corporate users) that prefer the installed-software model.
Google has enjoyed a great deal of popularity as an answer to Microsoft’s dominance. They have a stockpile of goodwill and trust from people simply because they are not Microsoft. This is not permanent. The bigger they get, the more profitable they are (if that’s possible), the more people they piss off with their own kind of over-reaching, the more this is going to wane.
And Microsoft is not standing still. Certainly, they’re concerned about Google (and I hope more concerned about supporting different models of user interaction than just Google). Next year is going to be a big year for Microsoft. I am not ready to count them out of this “Web 2.0” market.
Tags: ajax, Gillmor, Microsoft, office, office12, Web2.0
September 23, 2005 at 8:02 am · Filed under Web 2.0
Robert Scoble is spending a bit of time refuting this point. The latest post is here where he refers to responses to the current company meeting. He is in a good position to refute these claims as he has a broad view of what products are coming at Microsoft.
I do find the premise that “Microsoft is done for” a bit naive. I’m sure people have reason to be skeptical about recent management changes, execution of new projects, and as far as I know, concerns about company morale and cohesiveness.
But, so many are so anxious to relate the story of Microsoft’s imminent demise that they are not seeing straight. People keep looking for the next big thing and then making the connection that is the Microsoft killer.
Linux was going to dethrone Windows. Well, no. Certainly very many machines that might be running (and licensing) Windows are running Linux; however, the growth of new machines running Windows is phenomenal. Microsoft is winning this battle.
Now Google is going to dethrone Microsoft. How again?
- With the best search engine out there?
- With the best mapping / sattellite software?
- A new special-purpose OS (quick, everybody: rewrite everything! Microsoft will be buried in a year!). (Dan has recently posted some thoughts on this)
- With new applications for Windows? A new Word processor?
- In the enterprise?
I see much more opportunity for synergy between these companies than one destroying the other (I actually have tremendous respect for Google, by the way). I can understand why there is a battle here starting with the search engine (and going down into the OS). Microsoft wants to be the top search engine (eyeballs equate to revenues in the search market). But, this doesn’t equate to Google causing Microsoft’s demise.
And of course, Microsoft is not sitting still and waiting to be destroyed by anybody. Not only are they creating new products (and product features), but they are working on a bigger more connected vision that is actually pretty cool.
I think the big problem is that the Microsoft haters will always hate Microsoft. These people revel knowing that Google and Microsoft are at war and hope they have finally chosen the right horse.
Anyway, I think the reports of Microsoft’s death are greatly exaggerated. (apologies to Mark Twain).
Tags: Google, Microsoft, Web2.0
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