SaaS gains enterprise cred

Google's Postini acquisition and Salesforce's development capabilities lend enterprise-level chops to the software-as-a-service model With two important announcements, one this week and one last, we are finally starting to see a critical mass build around SaaS (software as a service). And, as I've written before, it is time for enterprise IT to take the model seriously. Last week we saw Google -- after a four-mo

Google's Postini acquisition and Salesforce's development capabilities lend enterprise-level chops to the software-as-a-service model

With two important announcements, one this week and one last, we are finally starting to see a critical mass build around SaaS (software as a service).

And, as I've written before, it is time for enterprise IT to take the model seriously.

Last week we saw Google -- after a four-month partnership with Postini -- decide to buy the security and compliance SaaS vendor outright. This week Salesforce.com finally dropped the other shoe, officially calling its offering what it had already unofficially become, a PaaS (platform as a service).

In terms of gauging the likely success of Salesforce's strategy, the only thing I'm unsure of is whether the acronym PaaS will catch on as well as SaaS has.

By dubbing itself a platform company, Salesforce is now poised to lead the charge -- well, to be one of the leaders, anyway -- that will see hosted applications dominate the software industry. Traditional vendors will just have to jump on the bandwagon whole-heartedly, and ramp up their current half-hearted attempts at hybrid SaaS solutions, or be pushed aside.

Salesforce's Summer 07 launch includes the kinds of components any developer would expect from an enterprise-level environment. For example, the platform now offers multiple sandboxes. In addition to the usual production and development environments, there are now staging and training environments, lending support to all of IT's software development requirements.

On top of that, there is the Apex programming language, which, if you take Salesforce at its word, is the "world's" first multi-tenant programming language, according to Kendall Collins, senior vice president of product marketing at Salesforce. Collins also says the language is "Java-like in its syntax."

I use the phrase critical mass here to illustrate that the SaaS phenomenon started slowly with Salesforce.com, but, as the model gained credibility, SaaS solutions have reached into other application categories such as human resources, supply chain management, and business intelligence.

Salesforce has been the leader here, continually taking the SaaS model to the next level. It opened its APIs to third-party ISVs, in essence giving its customers a reason to stay with Salesforce by offering services it lacked.

Now, just when SaaS growth might have stalled, either because it wasn't offering the custom development capabilities enterprises require or had multiplied into too many proprietary systems, we see Salesforce's platform gaining depth and breadth with its own language and toolsets. If done well, Salesforce could become the standard-bearer for the SaaS industry.