Seven Business Models and Five-layer Cloud Service Stack

In this lecture, we outline the seven business models that encompass the entire software industry, from traditional software to open source, to outsourcing, to SaaS, to the consumer Internet. The intent is not to argue that one model is better than another, but rather to make sure, as a software business, you know which model you’re trying to succeed in.

Application Cloud Services

Anyone contemplating building new applications or transforming their existing applications to cloud services can today take advantage of 1000s of cloud service provided by companies large and small. This lecture begins at the application layer with application cloud services. This layer of the stack is of interest to the business users. We’ll discuss all of the application areas that have benefited from being delivered as a cloud service – both horizontal and vertical. Case studies include Concur, Webex, Opentable, Blackbaud, RightNow, Taleo, Successfactors, Vocus, Constant Contact, eBay, Google Apps and Omniture.

Platform Cloud Services

In this lecture we discuss horizontal and vertical platform cloud services. Horizontal services are designed to provide many of the development environments we’ve seen in the traditional world. Perhaps the best example of this is Microsoft's Azure. We'll discuss other horizontal platform services including Google's AppEngine. These new services, instead of focusing only on the developer, include much of the operational environments that were traditionally separate. Vertical platform services, while more restrictive allow the developer to leverage the data models supported by applications like salesforce.com, Netsuite and Facebook. Developing software in the newer models is not exactly the same as the traditional methods; we’ll talk about how it’s different and why it addresses some of the fundamental challenges we’ve encountered in traditional software development.

Compute & Storage Cloud Services

Beginning with a short introduction to the original cloud service (the network) we will discuss some of the economic challenges and opportunities for data center cloud services. This will lead us to discuss the emerging series of compute & storage cloud services pioneered by Amazon Web Services. We'll discuss numerous case studies where companies have begun to use these new compute and cloud services for biotechnology, healthcare, financial services and consumer facing applications.a