The announcement this week that Google released a beta version of a
robust cloud computing platform called Google App Engine that lets
anyone build apps on Google’s renowned and highly scalable
infrastructure underscored a key trend in the software industry today.
Namely that software platforms are moving from their traditional
centricity around individually owned and managed computing resources and
up into the “cloud” of the Internet.
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...instead of just offering applications over the Web in the form of
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Amazon and Google are actually offering an
entire Platform-as-a-Service because they provide the foundational upon
which to build highly scalable and robust Web-based applications in the
same way that the traditional operating systems like Windows and Linux
have done in the past for software developers.
But what's very
different about this model is that no longer is the platform itself
"sold" to the customer who then takes responsibility for running and
maintaining it. In this model, it's the very operational capability of
the platform hosting that is the primary value here (and it's how such
platforms are typically billed).
This has far reaching implications to
both the business models of PaaS vendors as well as their customers.
In the traditional world of software platforms, the cost of the first
copy of the platform was enormous, often requiring companies to invest
hundreds of millions before they could offer the platform to their very
first customer.
Whoever can drive the most costs out of their supply chain while
offering a rich, robust, and easy-to-use platform is likely to rule the
roost.
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