Programmable SaaS? That's platform as a service
June 1, 2008 —
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Ted C. Mesa is not a geek—“you’d need my CIO to give you that answer,” he says when pressed about the technical underpinnings of his company’s shipping management software-as-a-service—but he knows his business. As president and founder of Point&Ship Software, in Walnut Creek, Calif., Mesa has merged overnight package delivery experience with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, formulating a novel Web-based solution.
“In 1997, one of our clients said, ‘We want to be a paperless company by 2000.’ So we retooled our billing system and added in other carriers. Then, Sarbanes-Oxley kicked into gear, meaning public companies and every private company exceeding US$40 million in revenue had to validate and categorize all expenses. Thanks to the Enrons and MCIs of the world, shipping has shifted from the mailroom to the boardroom.”
Meanwhile, shipping’s importance continues to rise. Increasingly, Point&Ship’s .NET and SQL Server-based SaaS is interacting with other applications, such as a major retailer’s point-of-sale (POS) system. “At the POS, they can literally click on our logo and tell the customer how much shipping will cost. The big-business implication is: It’s real-time information and it’s also capturing an expense they don’t capture today.”
Not only have Mesa’s customers embraced the Web as an interactive platform, but also, according to Mesa, “No one is looking to put in servers anymore; everyone wants on-demand services. Our clients are saying everything is browser-based.” According to Mesa, that interest prompts him to consider a new evolution: offering his shipping management service as a programmable platform.
“Platform as a service is the quantum shift we’ve all been waiting for,” Mesa said. “You’re nimble, your ROI drops significantly and the impact is immediate.”
While companies such as Point&Ship don’t make the nightly news, they are vital to a new ecosystem built around PaaS. But how has this evolution emerged?
Many paths to PaaS
When it comes to software, the big new thing isn’t always so new. In 1961, Turing Award-winner John McCarthy predicted utility computing. But nearly 40 years passed before the application service provider (ASP) concept approached viability.
Related Search Term(s): Cloud computing, SOA & SaaS
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