Comments on CIO's Guide to Cloud Computing and On-Demand | Appirio: Short the Global SIs

Professionalism is absent in the post. A cheap one...

2010-01-06T07:05:41.789-08:00

Professionalism is absent in the post. A cheap one!

Totally agree.

Global SIs are the modern eq...

2009-03-04T23:46:00.000-08:00

Totally agree.

Global SIs are the modern equivalent of the mainframe B.U.N.C.H, - Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data and Honeywell.

The future belongs to global PaaS plays such as Force.com and a new generation of SaaS solution providers, of which Appirio is clearly a leader.

Chris,

Great post and I agree completely wi...

2009-03-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

Chris,

Great post and I agree completely with what you are saying:

The thing that makes it so difficult for the established SI is that some of the the major premises of SaaS/PaaS are so completely different to the classic enterprise world.

As an example in our business we like to say "easily defined, quickly built (or configured), delivered as a service, all of which bears little relation to the enterprise software world, which is mired in; business case, use case, specifications, resource allocations, coding etc. all built around a specialist person(s) for nearly every one of those tasks.

It is just a world in which they cannot compete without literally breaking the entire mold and unfortunately the mold is so big that breaking it probably kills the whole business.

It's the same reason that people have found it difficult for large software companies to create SaaS products, it is just a profoundly different operating environment where virtually every aspect of success has a different measure.

Ed Loessi
www.faulknertechnologies.com
http://twitter.com/edloessi

Great points, Prashanth-- thanks for the commentar...

2009-02-12T15:44:00.000-08:00

Great points, Prashanth-- thanks for the commentary.

1) Completely agree on shorting the traditional on-premise software companies... that's a major theme of 90% of our other posts ;)

2) IBM clearly thinks cloud computing is big-- they're investing millions in advertising around it. But that doesn't mean they're going to be able to effectively capture the opportunity.

3) Cloud computing will definitely be big enough to support hundreds of thousands of consultants, but the cost AND revenue models of the Global SIs will keep them from making the switch.

Thanks again!

Ryan @ Appirio

Very well written post, but there are a couple of ...

2009-02-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

Very well written post, but there are a couple of points to think about:

1. Before short'ing SI's, i think we will have to short the software companies. The SI's are in the same boat as SAP or other enterprise software companies - the bulk of their business comes from LOB's which they don't want to cannibalize.

2. Are the global SI's not focusing in this space at this time as they don't see a sizable opportunity - market size not meeting their type of appetite.

3. Can global SI's even become players in this space? Their skill sets / cost models etc - Will it be even possible. Are 100000 people/sized organizations required to deliver services around SaaS/PaaS etc

More later

Prashanth Rai