A New Force for the Cloud - VMWare and salesforce.com Bring Java to the Party

Narinder Singh

Later today, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and VMware CEO Paul Maritz will hold a webinar announcing VMforce. VMforce is an enterprise Java cloud that allows developers to create and reuse Java applications, with many of the benefits of force.com automatically provided - because it is running inside of VMforce. Let's cover briefly what it is, and more importantly, implications for CIOs and your cloud strategies.

What is it?
VMforce at its core is a place you can run your Java web applications. Almost anything that can be packaged in a WAR (web application archive) can be run in VMforce. Even more than that, the Spring framework is supported so that developers can directly use the framework that reinvigorated Java for web applications (and adds to application portability). While very useful, this alone would have been a disappointment because it could be replicated by any savvy vendor. With VMforce, you get substantive higher and lower-level features that make it a potential game changer. First, because the data is stored in Force.com (to your Java apps it essentially looks like a relational database), it taps into many of the key capabilities of the platform. When you run your standard Spring app in VMforce, your users get standard Force.com capabilities to create reports, dashboards, workflows, triggers and alerts, add search, manage user security, interact with other Force.com apps and even edit and change the data if you allow. Just simply based on where it's deployed, you can multiply the usefulness of your application. Second, because of what VMware provides your application gets scalability without your having to actively manage it. No longer do you need to worry about load balancing and flexing your infrastructure to handle the peaks and valleys of volume.

We'll expand on many more advanced usage scenarios and possibilities in future posts, but for now let's focus on the immediate implications for enterprises.

What does it mean?
For VMware, it affirms a solid stake in the public cloud. VMware technologies often power the private cloud school of thought, but with the SpringSource acquisition, the public cloud is also a fertile ground for VMware. VMforce provides an extension / other option to what VMware has already started with Cloud Foundry. Partnering with salesforce.com shows a willingness to differentiate their offerings for the public cloud (i.e. you won't be able to just decide to run VMforce inside your enterprise). Our belief (as always) is that innovation in the public cloud moves much faster and assuming a stable partnership, we'd expect nothing less here.

For salesforce.com, its a bit more sophisticated. It already has a full Force.com platform, which for most scenarios, is actually much quicker for application development and deployment. Yet, we still think this is an incredibly positive move for them with the enterprise. Here are the top three reasons why.

1. Even if it's faster, people won't rebuild an app they have spent many years building. We've seen this curtail Force.com progress in the past. A potential customer buys into the value, but is hamstrung because they would have to recreate an application they have already spent years on. Now they will have a viable option of moving this application to a new platform with much less effort, get all sorts of benefit from that move, and then make an educated decision on where to develop new functionality (and have the two parts interoperate seamlessly).
2. Allows reuse of a world of innovation. One of the limitations of Force.com has been the lack of content for the platform. Even if it was faster and better, each new innovation had to be created from scratch. Java has the benefit of over 15 years of content that's readily available for every new application. Every edge case seemingly has an open source option already written. Need voice recognition, GPS, credit card validation, etc. in your Force.com app, now you can assemble the capability instead of writing it from scratch.
3. Even hesitant enterprise CIOs will have a place to start. In the end, this may be the most important of the three implications (certainly the least 'technical'). If you are an enterprise, chances are you are either a .NET or Java shop (or both) and you have invested years in building skills and capabilities around those core technologies. The ability to expose your Java resources to cloud development on next generation cloud platforms like Force.com will be appealing. Over time, these developers will gain an appreciation for how cloud development can extend their reach and allow faster and more flexible creation of business applications that their users love.

Microsoft has clearly proposed what the future should be for .NET development and the cloud. For Java, a historical strength has been vendor independence. Yet that also means a less directed future for Java in the cloud. The combination of the technical credibility of VMware and the cloud credibility of salesforce.com immediately makes VMforce one of the early leaders in that space. Now just hurry up and get it out to market !

Bringing Confidence to the Public Cloud

By Chris Barbin

Earlier this week, we were honored to be named the overall winner of the AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100. Our award is a tribute our great partners (and previous AlwaysOn award winners) Google and salesforce.com, our fantastic team, and most of all, the 180+ pioneering enterprises that we've worked with since 2006. It was with great humility that I addressed a roomful of CEOs from some of the top on-demand companies - each a thought leader - on the state of the cloud movement and what we collectively needed to do to separate (cloud) hype from reality. Today, with our $1M Cloudsourcing Guarantee, we take another step towards building more confidence in a cloud-centric world.

When we began three and a half years ago, we projected savings from the cloud. We projected more flexible systems, better alignment with the business, the expansion from SaaS apps to platforms, etc. Now, we have seen each of those elements proven in the field with dozens of enterprise customers. Yet for each customer beginning their journey to the public cloud we repeat a cycle of initial disbelief because the claims of value are so much greater than past experiences.

Enterprises today are accustomed to a very different world. The vast majority of IT spending, over 70%, is spent on keeping the lights on. CIOs have been burdened with brittle, capital-intensive IT infrastructures that make it hard for them to support the needs of their businesses. That is why every CIO survey ever done highlights "business-IT alignment" as a key priority (here's a survey from this week). With cloud applications and platforms, CIOs finally have the opportunity to not only reduce costs but really anticipate and support the needs of the business. But the question remains, how do you move fast with the cloud before you have experienced first-hand the sharp contrast between it and prior paradigms?

Among our customers, we've seen cloud applications and platforms move from the edges to increasingly become a core part of the IT architecture. Enterprises are now pursuing a much more thoughtful, architecture based, business case-driven approach to migrating to the cloud. As a result, they are moving from adopting point applications to building complete business solutions that bring together multiple cloud applications and cloud platforms. This emerging trend is called "cloudsourcing" - sourcing complete solutions to run your business on the cloud, through a combination of cloud applications, cloud platforms and cloud infrastructure.

This transition is not going to happen overnight. CIOs must take this journey in steps and to do so develop their CAP - Cloud Adoption Plan. In fact, we strongly believe that if you are not moving 10% of your spend – people, projects, apps, ops – to the PUBLIC cloud each year, you will overspend, lag your competition and be out-innovated. This is why we are building roadmaps with some our leading enterprise customers to move at least an additional 10% of their IT (people, software, hardware) towards the cloud every year.

The Path to Cloudsourcing
We think the final destination in this journey is running a business 100% in the cloud. That’s the eventual goal of cloudsourcing– and it matters, because being 100% in the cloud is a lot better than being even 50% in the cloud. As a serverless enterprise, we have enjoyed dramatic benefits - We've grown our business 400% over the past 2 years, spent about 3% of our revenue on IT (half of what benchmarks say a company our size should spend), and have no capital tied up in IT infrastructure.

Launching Our $1M Cloudsourcing Guarantee Program
It is because of the contrast between these two worlds that we are launching our $1M Cloudsourcing Guarantee program. For companies that cloudsource 100% of their IT to Appirio and the public cloud, we are guaranteeing that they'll save at least $1M in steady-state TCO. If they don't, we'll make up the difference. You simply couldn't do this with private cloud technology. Our work with 180+ customers over the past 4 years, indicates that this guarantee is actually quite modest. We've found that even companies that adopt a handful of cloud applications can see 30-40% TCO savings. By drawing a clear ($1M dollar) line in the sand, we hope to set a benchmark of minimum expectations C-level executives can have for their future state IT - a world of lower cost and increased flexibility. While traditional vendors try to preserve the status quo and persuade you to spend more on IT, we're excited to help you spend a lot less, while getting lot more.

Cloud Perspectives: Guest Q&A with Blogger and Cloud Commentator Ben Kepes

The number of cloud computing events these days can be almost overwhelming. Consider the conferences this month alone: Cloud Connect, SaaScon, Salesforce.com's Cloudforce, Cloud Computing Expo and AlwaysOn OnDemand (and we're probably missing a few). During our tour of some of these fine events, we had the chance to spend some time with Ben Kepes. Ben is well known for his contributions to the Cloud Ave blog, and is an analyst, entrepreneur, and cloud commentator (@benkepes). Since he spends so much time talking to vendors and users in the cloud space, we thought it'd be interesting to get his perspective on things. Here's what he had to say.

As a long time cloud evangelist, how would you compare the adoption of cloud computing today with other great IT moments in time?
Adoption and promise are, sadly, two different things. We are at a point in time when a perfect storm exists that matches the commodotization of consumer electronics and ubiquitous connectivity with a new generation that is less concerned with where their data is. In theory everything is poised for Cloud Computing to have a rapid ascendency and, in fact, this is happening in the consumer space - witness the iPad, Facebook, Gmail et al. However in the enterprise space companies still have some niggling concerns, many of which are created by the fear, uncertainty and doubt that traditional vendors create in order to protect their existing market positions.

That said, the cloud revolution is different to the PC or Windows revolutions before - for the first time truly powerful computing is accessible by almost everyone, almost everywhere - that is a game changer.

What do you think of all the "cloudwashing" happening in today's industry?
It's understandable - vendors who have long been lulled into complacency by supernormal profits, and who are unwilling or unable to change the way they work have been caught off guard by the cloud revolution. Their only option seems to be a two pronged approach. The first stage of this is denial - we've seen this with a number of legacy vendors dismissing cloud as a fad. We're now entering stage two, which is where legacy vendors rename all their products with a cloud prefix (it's kind of like the "e" branding of the dotcom bubble, or more latterly the "i" branding). The biggest tragedy with cloudwash though is that it confuses the market and does damage to all concerned.

Any advice for what customers should ask when trying to separate the real cloud solutions from the pretend ones?
Simple really... here's a checklist
-If there's no API.. it ain't cloud
-If you can't self provision... it ain't cloud
-If it isn't immediately scalable... it ain't cloud
-If you can go and touch the hardware.. it ain't cloud
-If it is application or operating system dependant... it ain't cloud
-If you "own" the hardware of software outright... it ain't cloud
-If you can't walk into an internet cafe anywhere in the world and use it... it ain't a cloud

Where do you think companies can benefit most from the cloud - IaaS, PaaS or SaaS?
Horses for courses really. They all have their benefits. End user customers and line of business folks will most benefit from SaaS, whereas IT shops will see IaaS as a lifesaver (or they should). Prototyping houses can use PaaS to accelerate their activities.

How do you think a company in high growth mode can best apply cloud computing?
It's a no-brainer really. A high growth company needs to be able to rapidly scale, to add seats at will and to handle usage spikes without difficulty. Doing this without the use of the cloud makes absolutely no sense.

How do you think a large enterprise looking to increase its focus on innovation can apply cloud computing?
Cloud allows for rapid prototyping and a "fail fast, fail quick" approach. Enterprises can build custom apps on a PaaS solution rapidly, can utilize SaaS innovation applications and can scale business operations quickly and easily.

What do you think people should start thinking about related to cloud computing that they aren't today?
The world is changing - your competitors can move fast, develop fast and obtain high level services more economically than ever before. Everyone needs to think about how they can position themselves to compete in this new paradigm. It's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow.

Google Atmosphere: Everything Surrounding the Cloud

Ryan Nichols

Yesterday, Google assembled 300 or so IT executives at an event called "Atmosphere" (everything that surrounds the cloud...get it?). Speakers ranged from Google's technology leaders to author Geoffrey Moore and analyst Mary Meeker to a panel of innovative CIOs. Equally impressive was the audience that Google assembled for this event-- many in the crowd could have just as easily been up on the stage themselves. Here's what we learned from this amazing gathering:

1. Enterprise adoption isn't just hot air

The highlight of the day was seeing 3 Appirio customers speak on a panel of 4 leading CIOs innovating on the cloud. Listen to how the CIOs of Genentech, Motorola, MWV (MeadwestVaco), and Seagate talk about their experience with cloud computing:

• Todd Pierce, CIO of Genentech said "We spent more in legal fees than we did in Google Apps subscriptions. And we didn't find any issues that we couldn't mitigate, manage, or otherwise overcome."
• Walt Oswald, CIO of Motorola, said "In the world of Microsoft Exchange, we had a physical server that someone could steal and have everything. With Google, those emails are across thousands of systems. No one person has that access. Our legal team, security team spent a lot of time looking at this, and we came to the conclusion that it was more secure than our current environment."
• Mel Shaffer, CIO of MWV, said "With your own data center, you have a single point of failure. With Google, it's much more resilient architecture."
• Mark Brewer, CIO of Seagate, said "You have to dive in to learn the lessons. My metric for success: nobody even mentioned our Google migration in the management team meeting after our go-live."

These are all 10,000+ person companies who have cut through all the hype surrounding cloud computing to make a business-case driven decision that the cloud belongs at the core of their enterprise architecture. While it's great to see Google Apps continue to attract 3,000 new small businesses every day, it's this level of enterprise adoption that we found most exciting.

2. The clouds will be connected

This was a Google conference, but there was definitely acknowledgement that there's more than one cloud in the sky. Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff and head of product marketing Kraig Swensrud showed off Chatter, the Salesforce Collaboration Cloud. Dr. Werner Vogels discussed the Amazon Cloud. Google's own Vint Cerf (called the "father of the internet") said "Inter-cloud interaction is a very rich area for exploration, and I don't think there are a lot of answers yet."

To demonstrate the possibilities, we were thrilled to have Appirio's own PS Connect product shown on-stage by Google's Brad Horowitz. We've used gmail contextual gadgets to bring together relevant information from your cloud-based enterprise applications directly inside each email you read. As an example, an email from a prospect will bring up all the related opportunities from your salesforce.com CRM system. We're able to connect the clouds to help you respond appropriately to each message... Just an example of what's possible when you bring together multiple cloud platforms.

3. PCs won't be the primary consumers of the cloud

We were reminded again and again over the course of the day how important mobile computing devices are as a channel for cloud computing. It started on registration-- every attendee received a slick new Google Nexus One phone. Benioff demonstrated Chatter on an iPad, an iPhone, AND a BlackBerry. And Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker hammered the point home, with dozens of pages of statistics on how profoundly mobile computing will affect the industry. Mobile internet usage is undergoing the fastest technology adoption curve in history (gaining 85 million users over 11 quarters). There will be more mobile internet users than desktop users by 2014.

That means mobile phones will soon be the primary means of consuming cloud services. Google's reaction? "We're designing for mobile first. That's where all the real action is going to be," said Eric Schmidt.

Mary's message to CIO's? Be ready. "The desktop internet was just a warm-up act for what's going to happen for the mobile internet."

4. Cloud isn't just about cost

The economic climate in 2009 meant that every conversation about cloud computing was driven by the tremendous cost savings driven by shared infrastructure. But yesterday, there wasn't a lot of attention paid to Google's amazing $50 per user per year price point. Instead, the focus was on business user productivity.

Geoffrey Moore quipped "Nobody says 'I need to be productive today, let me login to SAP'", as he declared a crisis in white-collar productivity driven by legacy, on-premise IT. He argues that cloud-based communication and collaboration have the potential to drive the next generation of competitive advantage in the enterprise.

Google's response? Google's enterprise head Dave Giriard promised to "open up Google's entire candy store to the enterprise."

Music to our ears. Hopefully Google's Atmosphere will provide even more oxygen to the cloud computing ecosystem.

Our top 5 takeaways from SaaSCon 2010

"IT can finally make people happy"
Balakrishna Narasimhan

Earlier this week, we were proud to sponsor SaaSCon 2010. It was an excellent, end-user focused conference that gave us a chance to connect with many of our customers, companies like Flextronics, Genentech, Diversey and City of LA. Being with such a forward thinking group really energized us and we're excited about where we are as an industry. We thought we'd take the chance to highlight our top 5 takeaways from the event.

1) SaaS and cloud adoption have moved past the tipping point
Most conferences typically feature point SaaS or IaaS adoption uses cases and conversations are dominated by concerns about security, SLAs, disaster recovery and lock-in. SaaSCon was a refreshing change in a couple of ways. First, 5 of the 13 end-user speakers run multiple cloud applications today . Second, questions about security, SLAs, DR, etc. came up but there were concrete answers, and the answers came from end-users rather than vendors. For example, City of LA has an SLA of 5 minutes downtime/month for Google Apps and a contract with their service provider, CSC, to migrate their mail to a different platform if they alter their strategy.

This market shift is borne out by more than just our impressions. In his presentation, Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies talked about a recent survey of enterprise IT customers showing that 60% of enterprises use a SaaS application today and even more importantly, 90% would recommend SaaS applications. There's no longer any question that SaaS and cloud computing are here to stay.

2) Cloud has moved from the periphery to the core of IT
Since cloud applications and platforms have become part of the mainstream of enterprise IT, there's been a shift in the way companies consume cloud applications and platforms. In the past, application adoption might've been driven by a rogue sales team within a company, or a team in R&D who wanted to spin up and spin down hundreds of servers, but now, cloud is a core part of enterprise IT. Cloud adoption is jointly driven by business and IT, it's more well thought-out, it's more architecture and roadmap-based and increasingly relies on multiple underlying platforms. Companies like Genentech, Flextronics and others are ushering in the era of what's being called "cloudsourcing" - sourcing complete solutions to run your business from the cloud.

3) Running multiple cloud applications creates new challenges, which vendors are just now starting to address
Given the increasing role of cloud applications in the enterprise, there was a significant amount of time devoted to cloud integration challenges and strategies. Genentech, Flextronics, Schumacher Group and Panasas all had something to say here, as they are all running multiple cloud applications and have integrated them into their overall IT architecture. The overall consensus is that the basic problems of data integration and user authentication are being solved by vendors such as Cast Iron, Boomi, etc., but there are still gaps in the area of process orchestration, end-to-end monitoring across cloud/on-premise platforms and testing tools.

4) Cloud gives IT the opportunity to change the way the business runs
Frankly, one of the most inspiring sessions of conference was Todd Pierce's on how Genentech has used the cloud to run their business better. Genentech uses Google Apps, Salesforce CRM, Force.com and App Engine (for custom development) and SAP ERP. Todd described his decision to make the cloud a core part of his strategy as a "bet my job decision".

His enthusiasm for what he's been able to do was palpable as he described a few of the examples of what cloud applications have enabled within his company:

• New ways to reach physicians - A physician portal built using Salesforce and SAP to enable physicians to find and purchase new products
  
• Ability to unbundle enterprise applications to expose key tasks in Gmail - As an example, he described a very popular Work Order iPhone application that exposes SAP functionality in much friendlier and more mobile interface
  
• User adoption and mobility - An iPhone application for the sales team with access to sales reports, account information and calendars. After launching this app, recorded activities/week in Salesforce nearly doubled!

His succinct and telling summary was that in his job, "you don't get to make people happy very often", and so he's thrilled that he's able to make people happy on a consistent basis since he's begun cloudsourcing his business.

5) IT has the opportunity to finally align itself with the business
Chuck Hollis of EMC recently blogged about the state of IT. The themes that emerge across the many sources Chuck looks at is that CIOs are focused on better aligning with the business, supporting customer-facing processes and driving process improvements. Chuck ends on a slightly depressing note that in spite of these aspirations, business-IT alignment is still elusive in over 60% of enterprises. Even more depressing, this is probably the same as what every CIO survey ever done says.

As the companies at SaaSCon demonstrated, the cloud gives finally gives IT the power to change this dynamic. At Appirio, our objective is to help IT truly enable the business, whether it's with our cloud services or with our products such as PS Connect. Helping change the role of IT within the enterprise is one of the things that excites us most about cloud computing. If you are using the cloud to transform the role of IT within your company, and would like to share your story, leave us a comment below or email us!

Salesforce Chatter Matters - Our Experience with Chatter

Balakrishna Narasimhan

When Salesforce Chatter was introduced in December at Dreamforce amid much hype, many were rightly skeptical. We have believed from the beginning that Chatter is a potentially transformative addition to the Salesforce platform. We are building Chatter into our products, launching the industry's first social services management applications, and over the past month have started using Chatter within our own organization.

This week, the focus will again be on Chatter at Cloudforce New York, so we thought we'd take a quick look back at the past few months and see how Chatter has impacted Appirio.

How Chatter has impacted our offerings
Everyone talks about the TCO and agility advantages offered by building in the cloud but something that's often overlooked is the near instant ability to innovate. Within the space of a few months, our PS Enterprise application acquired a snazzy new user interface and became the industry's first social services management application. All with almost no intervention from us.

This is one of the areas where cloud computing truly breaks with the past. In traditional development paradigms, taking advantage of new platform capabilities would require rearchitecting the application on the new stack. Of course, taking full advantage of new capabilities like Chatter requires more than just switching it on, but it's more a matter of identifying the business scenarios that are most impacted by Chatter and redesigning those parts of our app rather than having to rearchitect it or rebuild it.

How Chatter has impacted our business
About a month ago, we started using Chatter within Appirio. In typical Appirio fashion, the introduction was met with innovation from our R&D team, who quickly wrote an app that would automatically follow everyone else within Appirio. Within a few weeks, our Chatter stream has become as vibrant as my newsfeed on Facebook. The benefits we've seen so far are:
1) Collaboration across teams: There are already multiple examples of people saying they're working on something and finding out that someone else did something similar through Chatter. For example, I mentioned that I was working on creating a new "book of services" profiling all our offerings and I quickly got input and awesome content from members of our pre-sales and delivery teams. Almost instantly, I had what I needed to pull the book together.
2) Real-time context: It's completely different to go to leads, opportunities, projects or accounts and immediately see the latest related Chatter. For example, we were looking for a customer to speak at one of our events recently and I narrowed it down to a few candidates. By looking at the Chatter related to each account, I quickly saw that our CEO was going to be meeting with one of the customers the next day. I replied to his Chatter asking him to see if the customer would be interested. The next day, we had our customer speaker!
3) Building our community: We have a very dispersed team with only one physical office location and many of our 200 team-members working from their home offices. With Chatter, it's easy for everyone to participate in conversations and actually meet others within the company who are working on similar things. It also makes it easy for our team to share important personal milestones with each other. For example, our CMO has been Chattering it up about his new iPad!

What Chatter could mean for your business
Chatter has also changed every Salesforce or custom development project that we've done or will do. There's now a significant new capability that we can bring to our customers to help them make their sales, support and business-specific processes more effective. The amazing thing is that unlike with traditional software, every customer of ours who's already live on Salesforce or has a custom app built on Force is in a position to take advantage of Chatter. The question is how to get started with Chatter. To address this question, we've developed a Chatter Energizer workshop to help you identify where the best opportunities for Chatter are and arm you with the technical tools to get started. Get started with your Chatter Energizer workshop today!