Someone reminded me that SIIA is next week in Amsterdam. It’s just as well I got the reminder or I would have missed what promises to be an excellent event. Organized with the not inconsiderable assistance of Phil Wainewright, a fellow Irregular and ZDNet blogger, SIIA promises to showcase some of the best saas/on-demand/cloud (SOC) apps people around. That includes CODA2go (disclosure, CODA is a site sponsor) and NetSuite. Both companies are fielding their CEOs so we can expect some pretty hard core pitching as well as from others on the various panels including Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO. On this occasion I don’t mind. What?
Sure, as a buy side guy I want to hear the raw war stories of customers trying to make sense of business applications but surprising as this may seem, I’ve never heard either CEO make a case for SOC, nor Mr. Vogels. Shame on me, I know. Sometimes you need to hear those pitches to see how well they jibe with what you think you know.
Of particular interest to me will be the panel that discusses how companies that are rooted in the on-premise world can successfully transition to SOC. Here’s the intro:
Not to be outdone by their pure-play SaaS brethren, traditional ISVs are adopting SaaS and Cloud Computing strategies – some under hybrid business and technology models, others cutting the cord and fully transforming their businesses. Learn from those who have successfully made the journey or are well down the road in shifting from product- to service-led businesses.
Given the way SAP has pretty much mufffed the introduction of Business ByDesign, I’d like to learn what the panel knows that the mighty SAP has missed. I’ll be doing as much filming as I can, along with reporting proceedings here and elsewhere. There are going to be some terrific learnings.
As an aside, I did all my trip planning either with the help of Kayak, Google search and crowd sourcing assistance via Twitter. My how things have changed.
