SaaS

One period of my career that I always try to keep in mind was my time with Salesforce.com. It was 2002—the economy was in lockdown mode and everyone was looking for innovation on a budget. I started selling Salesforce Automation (SFA) as a multi-tenant SaaS solution, and it turned out to be exactly the right offering for the right market at the right time.

I’m always amazed to hear how fast things happen in the technology industry. It’s true—entire platforms can go from revolution to obsolete seemingly overnight, and we all know of companies that burned bright as startups and then went bankrupt in the blink of an eye. This is what keeps our world so exciting. It’s the new thing, the next thing, the bigger-faster-cheaper model taken to extremes.

There aren’t many issues left that we can see in terms of black and white. Everything has nuance—there are shades and complexities, levels of acceptance, and so on.

Here’s an exception. If you handle credit card data, your product or service is either PCI-compliant, or it’s not. Period.

I know this isn’t a fun topic. You want to focus on launching a commerce API but instead you spend time on figuring out how to comply with a long list of confusing rules. It’s a hassle and an obstacle. But it’s also vital.

Among enterprise experts and providers at this year’s NYC CloudExpo, I attended Deploycon 2012, the enterprise Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) conference organized by Rishidot Research earlier this month. While having already formed several opinions to share as a panelist, I still kept an open mind—I wanted to absorb all I could about this emerging space.