Cloud Computing Platforms Set To Explode in the Market

Cloud Computing. As a frequent speaker, consultant and commentator on cloud computing, SaaS and RIA, I could not help but feel a little twinge of delight with the announcement in a recent IDC press release regarding the market for cloud applications and SaaS in particular “the Software as a Service (SaaS) market had worldwide revenues of $13.1 billion in 2009. IDC forecasts the market to reach $40.5 billion by 2014, representing a compound annual growth rate of 25.3%. By 2012, IDC expects that less than 15% of net-new software firms coming to market will ship a packaged product (on CD). By 2014, about 34% of all new business software purchases will be consumed via SaaS, and SaaS delivery will constitute about 14.5% of worldwide software spending across all primary markets.”

Cloud Computing Platforms uniPaaS is brought to market by Magic Software Enterprises (NASDAQ:MGIC) with a vision of being a unitary platform-as-a-service solution. As a SaaS-enabled application platform, Magic’s goal is to deliver PaaS capabilities in a way that greatly reduces the complexity of creating cloud applications.

RIA Client Support. The first step toward cloud computing is the transformation to a Rich Internet Application (RIA). uniPaaS fully supports development and deployment of RIA applications. As discussed here previously, there are many reasons to deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIA) with uniPaaS.

Multitenancy Support. uniPaaS allows for leveraging any internet or client-server‐based application into a SaaS‐enabled application by providing multitenancy support at the platform level, relieving the developer from resorting to complex tenant‐aware application design and development.

uniPaaS makes sure that for a single implementation of a SaaS‐type application, each tenant will be fully encapsulated and that every tenant specific characteristic is maintained and governed by uniPaaS Management and Monitoring facilities.

The platform level support for multi‐tenancy enables the application vendor to design an application without taking special heed of multi‐tenant design and can remain focused on the application’s basic design. The uniPaaS platform will seamlessly turn the application into a multi‐tenant application by transparently directing the application to the tenants’ data space and by having each tenant served by an independent process. Nevertheless, the uniPaaS platform enables the application vendor to fine‐tune the tenant encapsulated environment in a way that utilizes a Data Space that is shared and common between multiple tenants.

The environment‐driven and component‐based architecture of the uniPaaS platform enables easy customization of every part of the application, thereby achieving a singular application deployment that serves multiple tenants where each tenant gets to experience a tailored application.

The uniPaaS platform as a whole can be deployed on a cloud, using the facilities of a uniPaaS hosting service provider, independently by the application vendor, or even by the end‐customer.

The flexibility of the platform to be deployed as a whole in any location offers the application vendor the flexibility to choose the most appropriate deployment models and commercial models.

Scalability. Application tenants are not bound to specific machines to support extreme usage surges. A redundant array of servers set for the disposal of the application are dynamically utilized for any tenant, according to the capacity required to serve the tenant at any given moment.

Unitary Approach uniPaaS is envisoned as a unitary development and deployment platform. With a single, consistent IDE, there is no need for multiple languages, scripting tools and the like. uniPaaS provides one consistent solution for developing the client or user interface layer, the business logic or core application layer, and the multi-tenant architecture or database layer. For smaller teams and solo developers, a unitary approach has tremendous value.

Metadata driven development. For generations, programmers have been dreaming of a metadata driven approach to application development that allowed them to create programs without rewriting basic functionality and building out the same software architectures repeatedly.I am not just talking about reusability of code, with metadata driven development one can actually avoid certain irrelevancies of programming altogether. It is not a new concept. All languages that take a step up from machine level instructions do this to some extent. With uniPaaS, you leverage the functional capabilities of an application platform rather than writing the building blocks using a text-based language. Low-level functionality is embedded in the application platform and managed through metadata by the developer. Functional abstraction greatly reduces programming effort because metadata platforms give you the ability to modernize underlying technology while preserving and enhancing core-business logic.

With an increasing emphasis on cloud-based applications and the SaaS delivery model, uniPaaS is becoming an increasingly popular application platform for organizations seeking to optimize what Regev Yativ has aptly termed TTC (time-to-cloud). Perhaps the real question is: when will be your time-to-cloud?

Glenn Johnson is a frequent speaker, consultant and commentator on cloud computing, SaaS, RIA, mobile applications and business integration. He is a senior vice president at Magic Software Enterprises Americas.

Is it Time to Look at uniPaaS as a SaaS Enabled Application Platform?

According to Evans Data Research, more than half of developers started the year with plans to develop some sort of SaaS application. That’s pretty remarkable when you consider that almost no one owns SaaS Enabled Application Platforms and development tools.

The implication is that all this SaaS programming is being done the same way enterprise application programming was done 40 years ago – by brute force. In fact, Gartner has stated that cloud computing architecture will need seven years to mature. In a recent press release, Gartner wrote:

"SEAPs are the foundation on which software-as-a-service solutions are built," said Mark Driver, research vice president at Gartner. "As SEAP technologies mature during the next several years, Gartner foresees three distinct, but slightly overlapping, phases of evolution. The first phase, through 2011, will be that of the pioneers and trailblazers; the second, running from 2010 through 2013, will be all about market consolidation; while the third phase, from 2012 through 2015, will see mainstream critical mass and commoditization."

As Gartner says:

As software as a service (SaaS) and cloud computing move toward the mainstream, platform technology emerges that is designed specifically for the requirements of that use pattern. A SaaS/cloud-enabled application platform (SEAP) is an application platform designed for multitenancy and elasticity — the critical characteristics of cloud computing that are absent in the now-prevailing platforms. When a SEAP is deployed "in the cloud" and offered as a service, it acts as an application platform as a service.

Since uniPaaS offers a multinenancy management system and is highly elastic, it would seemingly deserve a place amongst the early leaders in any future SEAP quadrants and waves by leading analyst groups like Gartner and Forrester. But whether the analysts comment or not is far less germane than whether programmers adopt uniPaaS.

Consider just three of the advantages that uniPaaS can offer a developer of a SaaS application:

1. A unitary development and deployment platform. No need for multiple languages, scripting tools and the like. You have one consistent solution for developing the client or user interface layer, the business logic or core application layer, and the multi-tenant architecture or database layer. It’s all their pre-built, ready for you to access.

2. Metadata driven development. For generations, programmers have been dreaming of a metadata driven approach to application development that allowed them to create programs without rewriting basic functionality and building out the same software architectures over and over and over again. With uniPaaS, you leverage the building blocks of an application rather than write the building blocks. Low-level functionality is embedded in the application platform and managed through metadata by the developer. That can save literally years, even decades, of programming effort because metadata platforms give you the ability to modernize underlying technology while preserving and enhancing core-business logic. Furthermore, metadata enhances developer interaction with business users thus shortening application delivery cycle (e.g. prototyping and POC).

3. True forward migration. There is no way to prove the capability of a platform for forward migration because it begs the question, “forward migration to what?” I can not predict the future. But I can document the past. And the surveys we have conducted of uniPaaS users are extremely clear. Without exception, uniPaaS developers point to forward migration of core business application logic as a great benefit of the uniPaaS platform. This is not their speculation or belief about what might happen, this is a retrospective judgment that “it was good” – that uniPaaS in all of its prior lives has provided a consistent forward migration.

So if half of the 500,000+ computer programmers in the US are working on SaaS this year, what tools are they using? The same old cumbersome Java and .NET development tools, I suppose. I am sure that Magic Software would welcome an OEM SEAP conversation with a platform vendor in search of a real, ready-to-go SEAP that is marketable today. Together we could reach those hundreds of thousands of developers. In the meantime, if you want to save a few years or decades and reduce your time-to-market of your SaaS application by an order of magnitude, feel free to contact us one-by-one.
For additional information, please download our FREE! White Paper! entitled "The 5 New Essentials of Building Business Applications."