Lars Leckie's Blog

In a recent report, Gartner made some bold predictions around the near-term future of SaaS. In essence they are endorsing that the SaaS model has increasing leverage over existing software models as the IT spending tightens:

Worldwide software-as-a-service revenue in the enterprise application market is
on pace to surpass 2007 sales by 27% and to more than double by 2012, a market
research firm said Wednesday. Revenue this year is on track to rise above
$6.4 billion, compared with $5.1 billion last year, Gartner said. In four years,
revenue is expected to reach $14.8 billion.
(from Antone Gonsalvez at InformationWeek)

While it is always a little dangerous to follow predictions from analysts when considering your specific market or application, this announcement is an interesting one given the current economic conditions.

We share this premise at Hummer Winblad and have invested heavily in the SaaS model...with over 15 portfolio companies to date including Omniture (web analytics), EmployEase (HR management), Aria Systems (Subscription Billing), etc. We see the model having some key strengths in this market:

1) Lower entry point customers - easier to get started, lower risk to trial, limited upfront expenditure. Also, the ability to buy or try without getting all the traditional enterprise sales points involved (IT, finance, etc)

2) Build vs Buy for business services - SaaS models become more interesting as companies debate if they should try to build out the service themselves via internal teams, or go with a known working solution where they can leverage existing best practices.

3) Lower TCO - often the best way to justify a SaaS offering is to have a customer lay out the true cost of the internal infrastructure

The SaaS wave appears to be continuing to gain momentum...lets hope we can really see the category double by 2012...

Lars Leckie is part of a star-studded lineup of speakers at SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo. Between them, they'll be covering every aspect of the hottest IT topic for years, with not just Amazon but also IBM, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Intel, HP and a host of others all offering, using or developing high-end computing services typically described as “cloud computing” - through which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided as a service using Internet technologies.

Forrester Research analyst James Staten calls cloud computing "classic disruptive innovation - where the mainstream dismisses the product and small companies have time to create a real differentiated value." But there are so many offerings just now that what infrastructure architects are looking for above all is a set of organizing principles they can use to guide them in choosing between them all.

Such principles. and a host of associated topics, will be addressed in San Jose by a Top Speaker Faculty that includes:

• Dr Werner Vogels - VP & CTO, Amazon.com (Keynote)
• Mike Feinberg - Senior Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure Group, EMC
• Steve Herrod - CTO, VMware
• David Bernstein - VP & GM of Network Applications Infrastructure, Cisco
• Rob Weltman - Director of Grid Services, Yahoo!
  
• Peter Nickolov - President CTO, 3Tera
• Kevin Haar - President & CEO, Appistry
• Songnian Zhou - Co-Founder & CEO, Platform Computing
• Patrick Harr - CEO, Nirvanix
• Gerrit Huizenga - Cloud Solutions Architect, IBM
  
• John Keagy - CEO & Co-Founder, GoGrid/ServePath
• Sajai Krishnan - CEO, ParaScale
  
• Reuven Cohen - Founder & Chief Technologist, Enomaly
• Mike Eaton - CEO, Cloudworks
• Jonathan Bryce - Founder at Mosso (Rackspace)
• Nati Shalom - CTO, GigaSpaces
• Don MacAskill - CEO & Chief Geek, SmugMug
• Billy Marshall - Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, rPath
• Dr Thorsten von Eicken - CTO & Founder, RightScale
• Jonathan Pyke - Chief Strategy Office, Cordys
  
• Jason Stowe - Founder & CEO, Cycle Computing
• David Young - Co-Founder & CEO, Joyent
  
• Dave Durkee - Founder, CEO & Technical Director, ENKI
• John Janakiraman - CTO, Skytap
• Stuart Charlton - Chief Software Architect, Elastra
• Lars Leckie, Principal, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
• Dr Rich Wolski - Professor, U.C. Santa Barbara
• Javier Soltero - Co-Founder & CEO of Hyperic
• Omer Trajman - Director of Field Engineering, Vertica Systems
  
• Rachel Chalmers - Senior Analyst, Enterprise Software, The 451 Group
  
  and with a special Cloud Bootcamp on November 20 led by
  
  
• Alan Williamson, Founder at Blog-City.com, Creator of BlueDragon
  

All breakout sessions are all listed in further detail here.



Speaker Faculty - SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo


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Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities
Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities Offered on a First-Come First-Served Basis. To inquire about sponsorship and exhibit opportunities please contact Carmen Gonzalez at 201-802-3021 or by email at events(at)sys-con.com. Currently, a limited number of sponsorship and exhibition packages with multiple sponsorship discounts are available for the upcoming events.

A Who's Who of Virtualization and Cloud Computing Technology Rock Stars!
SYS-CON faculty alumni include such notable speakers as: Bret Adam (rPath), Deepak Alur (JackBe), Theo Beack (BEA Systems), Kevin Brown (Kidaro), Donato Buccella (Certeon), Bob Buffone (Nexaweb), David Christian (MindBridge), Jonathan Clark (Thinstall), Ariel Cohen (Xsigo Systems), Andrew Conte (APC), Simon Crosby (Citrix Systems), Kurt Daniels (Parallels), Sujil Das (Mellanox Technologies), Kevin Epstein (Scalent Systems), Shai Fultheim (ScaleMP), Rick German (Stoneware), Dror Gill (Ceedo), Ravi Gururaj (VMLogix), Matthew Haynos (IBM), Stephen Herrod (VMware), Arthur Hitomi (Endeavors Technologies), Gordon Jackson (DataSynapse), Peter Jensen (Thinstall), Steve Kaplan (AccessFlow), David Kleidermacher (Green Hills Software), Madhur Kohli (Levanta), Brian Korn (Scalent Systems), Gary Lamb (AccessFlow), Rich Lechner (IBM), Matt Lee (Neocleus), Victoria Livschitz (Grid Dynamics), Bob Lozano (Appistry), Peter Manca (Egenera), Andi Mann (EMA), Jerry Melnick (Marathon Technologies), Mark Milligan (VirtualLogix), Shridhar Mittal (iTKO), Hezi Moore (Reflex Security), Phil Morris (Sun Microsystems), Parviz Peiravi (Intel), Geva Perry (GigaSpaces Technologies), Harry Petty (Brocade), Stephen Pollack (PlateSpin), George Pradel (Vizioncore), Bob Quinn (3Leaf), Ben Rudolph (Parallels), Bill Scarborough (VMware), John Stetic (PlateSpin), Brian Stevens (Red Hat), Robert Steward (DataDirect), Allen Stewart (Microsoft), Butch Villafor (Egenera), Roland Wartenberg (SAP), Matt Waxman (EMC Corporation), Julian Weinstock (Desktone), Hubert Yoshida (Hitachi) and Kurt Zieglar (SIMtone).

The Most Distinguished Faculty November 19-21, 2008 -San Jose, CA
SYS-CON’s upcoming faculty includes such distinguished speakers as: Dan Avida (Opus Capital), Alex Bakman (VKernel), Michael Berman (Catbird), Ken Berryman (Symantec), Brad Brown (TUSC), Jonathan Bryce (Mosso), Donato Buccella (Certeon), Rachel Chalmers (The 451 Group), Stuart Charlton (Elastra), Reuven Cohen (Enomaly), Dave Durkee (ENKI), Mike Eaton (Cloudworks), Yakov Fain (Farata Systems), Walter Falk (IBM Global Technology Services), Mike Feinberg (EMC), Joe Fitzgerald (ManageIQ), Kyle Gabhart (Web Age Solutions), Anup K. Ghosh (Secure Command), Michel Gien (VirtualLogix), Alex Givens (UC4 Software), Dr. Robert Hagmann (Coral8), Patrick Harr (Nirvanix), Ralph James (RSSBus), John Janakiraman (Skytap), Mike Kemp (Liquid Computing), Lynn LeBlanc (FastScale), Lars Leckie (Hummer Winblad Venture Partners), Patrick Leonard (RogueWave), David Linthicum (The Linthicum Group), Paul Lipton (CA), Jay Litkey (Embotics), Bob Lozano (Appistry), Jim Mackay (iTKO LISA), Billy Marshall (rPath), Dave McCroy (Hyper9), Dwayne Melancon (Tripwire), Leslie Muller (DynamicOps), Mike Neil (Microsoft), Baldwin Ng (Microsoft), Peter Nickolov (3Tera), Gerardo Pardo-Castellote (Real-Time Innovations), Cornelius Pone (PPC), Bob Quinn (3Leaf), Sean Rhody, Jesus Rodriguez (Tellago), Michael Rowley (Active Endpoints), Nati Shalom (GigaSpaces), David Snead, Javier Soltero (Hyperic), John Suit (Fortisphere), Ratmir Timashev (Veeam), Omer Trajman (Vertica Systems), Dr. Werner Vogels (Amazon), Thorsten von Eicken (RightScale), Ed Walsh (Virtual Iron), Roland Wartenberg (SAP), John Whaley (MokaFive) Alan Williamson (Blog-City), Steve Wilson (Sun Microsystems), Rich Wolski (U.C. Santa Barbara), David Young (Joyent) and Songnian Zhou (Platform Computing).

Cloud Computing Technology Providers and Contributors in 2008-2009
The following companies are among the providers and contributors of Cloud Computing technology: 10Gen, 3Leaf, 3Tera, Absolute Performance, Accenture, Akamai, Amazon.com, Appirio, Appistry, Areti Internet, Boomi, Box.net, Canaan Partners, Cloud9 Analytics, CloudWorks, CNI Systems, CohesiveFT, CSRware, DataDirect, Dell, DNAmail, eBay, Elastra, EMC, EngineYard, Enki Consulting, Enomaly, Excelian, Flexiscale, Fortress ITX, Forum, GigaSpaces, GoGrid, Google, HP, IBM, IBRIX, Joyent, JumpBox, Layered Technologies, Level 3 Communications, Linxter, LongJump, MDV, Microsoft, Moka5 (MokaFive), Mosso, NewServers, Nirvanix, Ocarina Networks, OpSource, Panorama Software, Peer1 Networks, Pervasive Software, Platform Computing, PLX Technology, Qlayer, Rackspace, RampRate, Red Hat, RightScale, rPath, Salesforce.com, Saugatuck Technology, ServePath, Skills Matter, Skytap, SnapLogic, SOASTA, Sun Microsystems, Symphoniq, Symphony Services, Tap In Systems, Teneros, Terremark, Transitive Corporation, Univa UD, Verizon Business, Vertica, VMware, XCalibre, Zabovo.com, ZOHO and Zuora.

Virtualization Technology Providers and Contributors in 2008-2009
The following companies are among the providers and contributors of Virtualization technology: 3PAR, Accellion, Acronis, Actional, Active Endpoints, ActiveGrid, activePDF, ActiveServers, ActiveState, Actuate, Adaptec, Agile Software, AGiLiENCE, Agilysys, Akorri, AlachiSoft, Alter Logic, Altor Networks, Altova, AMD, AMDAHL, Amentra, Amyuni, anacubis, Apani, APC, Appcelerator, AppSense, AppStream, Array Networks, Ascential, Astaro, Attune Systems, Autodesk, AutoVirt, Availl, Avanade, Azul Systems, Barracuda Networks, BEA Systems, B-hive, Black Duck Software, Blackbaud, Blade Network Technologies, Blue Coat, Blue Lane, BlueArc, BlueNote Networks, BluePheonix Solutions, BMC Software, Borland, Bristol Technology, Brix Networks, BroadVision, Brocade, Burton Group, Business Objects, CA, CalAmp, Cassatt, Cast Iron Systems, Catbird, Cayenne Technologies, Ceedo Technologies, Cenzic, Certeon, CiRBA, Cisco Systems, Cision, Citrix Systems, ClearApp, ClearCube Technology, CollabNet, Compass America, Composite Software, Compugen, Compuware, Configuresoft, Continuity Software, Coraid, Courion, Coyote Point Systems, Crescendo Networks, CSC, DataCore, DataSynapse, Dell, Desktone, Digipede Technologies, Double-Take Software, Ecora Software, EDS, eG Innovations, Egenera, Elastra Corporation, Electric Cloud, Embotics, EMC Corporation, Emulex, Endeavors Technology, Enigmatic Corporation, Enterprise Management Associates, Entuity, EqualLogic, Ericom Software, ESRI, EVault, eXludus Technologies, F5 Networks, FalconStor, FastScale Technology, Foedus, Force10 Networks, Fortisphere, Forum Systems, Fujitsu, GemStone Systems, Getronics, GlassHouse, Green Hills Software, Grid Dynamics, GridGain Systems, GT Software, Hitachi, HP, Hyper9, Hyperic, IBM, ICEsoft, IGEL Technology, Illumita, ILOG, IMEX Research, Information Builders, Ingres, InstallFree, Integrien, Intel, Intellium, International Computerware, iTKO LISA, JBoss, Juniper, KACE, Kidaro, LeftHand Networks, Leostream, Lifeboat Distribution, Liquid Computing Corporation, Liquid Technology, Lynux Works, Mainline, ManageIQ, Managed Methods, ManageSoft, Marathon Technologies, McAfee, Mellanox Technologies, Microsoft, Mid-Atlantic Computers, Mindbridge Software, Mindreef, MKS, MonoSphere, Motorola, MQSoftware, mySoftIT, NASTEL, Ncomputing, NEC, Neocleus, NeoPath Networks, Neoware, NetApp, Netegrity, Neterion, Netuitive, Neverfail, Nexaweb, NextAxiom, Nimbus, Nimsoft, Niyuta, NoMachine, Novell, ONStor, Opalis Software, Open Kernel Labs, OpenSpan, OPNET Technologies, Optaros, OpTier, Oracle, Pano Logic, Parallels, Parasoft, Perforce Software, PHD Technologies, Phoenix Technologies, Phurnace Software, Pillar Data Systems, PlateSpin/Novell, Progress Software, Prolifics, ProSync Technology, Provision Networks, QLogic, Quest Software, Racemi, Raritan, Raxco Software, Red Hat, Reflex Security, Resolution Enterprises, RingCube Technologies, Riverbed Technology, Rogue Wave Software, RSA Security, Sagnet Solutions, SanDisk Corporation, SAP, SAVVIS, ScaleMP, Scalent Systems, Seanodes, Secure Command, Secure Computing, Sentillion, Shavlik Technologies, ServInt Internet Services, Silpion IT Solutions, SIMtone, Skytap, Skyway Software, Software AG, Sonasoft, SourceGear, Splunk, StackSafe, SteelEye Technology, StillSecure, StoneFly, Stonesoft, Stoneware, StoreVault, StrikeIron, STT WebOS, Sun Microsystems, SunGard, Supermicro Computer, Surgient, SWsoft, Sybase, Symantec, Systar, TBD Networks, Tenfold, TheInfoPro, Thinstall, Third Brigade, TIBCO Software, Tidal Software, Tideway Systems, TOA Solutions, TRANGO Virtual Processors, Trend Micro, Tresys Technology, Trigence, Tripwire, Ulteo, Unisys, United Devices, VaST Systems, VDIworks, VeeAm Software, Verari Systems, Verio, VeriSign, Vicom Computer Services, VirtenSys, Virtera, Virtual Iron, VirtualLogix, Virtugo Software, Virtutech, VisionCore, Vizioncore, VKernel, VMLogix, vmSight, VMware, Vordel, vThere-Sentillion, Vyatta, WaveMaker, Web Age Solutions, WSO2, Wyse Technology, XDS, XenoCode, Xiotech, xkoto, Xsigo Systems, Zenith Optemedia, Zeus Technology.