Today I noticed I was admitted to participate in Software As A Service Topic of Computable a big ICT magazine in the Netherlands. The magazine has a large website for jobs, opinions, events, ICT topics and so on. There are a number of ICT topics like ERP, BI, Infrastructure, etcetera and SaaS is one of them. Quite lot of ICT company have people in these topics acting as experts. I lately focus more on Software + Services:
Software plus Services describes the idea of combining hosted services with capabilities that are best achieved with locally running software. It describes composite applications created by combining traditional software with remote services to provide consistent and seamlessly integrated user experience across devices and form factors. Software plus Services is a concept that Software As A Service (SaaS) complements the traditional packaged software running on both client or server by services adding value (Wikipedia)
Microsoft is currently working on the concept of Software + Services. There satement around Software + Sevices is:
The future is a combination of local software and Internet services interacting with one another. Software makes services better and services make software better. And by bringing together the best of both worlds, we maximize choice, flexibility and capabilities for our customers. We describe this evolutionary path in our industry as Software + Services. (Microsoft Architecture)
Microsoft Architecture Journal 13 was completely around this concept. Inside this issue (October 2007) articles appeared like Ray Ozzie’s vision, Internet Service Bus (I blogged about this a couple of times and even written an article in a Dutch Software Release Magazine May 2008), Enterprise Mashsups, Astoria …
Concept Software + Services has also a connection to OSLO; Microsoft’s project to take SOA to the next level. Oslo technologies will further leveraging technologies available now including BizTalk Server 2006 R2, BizTalk Services, .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio 2005. 2008 there will be a wave of innovation and launches by Microsoft of products like Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, .NET Framework 3.5 and SQL Server 2008. These innovations will provide-the foundation for the next generation of SOA and Web-based applications spanning “on premise” software and ‘in the cloud’ services, an approach Microsoft calls Software + Services (there you go the connection).
Coming PDC conference in LA this fall more revelations and information will be spread about concept Software + Services. If you are into this like me and want to know, witness more PDC will be good place for it. If you cannot attend watch channel 9 for subject “Oslo”: Managing Software + Services Applications by Oliver Sharp, there is nothing there yet but after the conference of session it will be there. Microsoft website around SOA and Business Process is also a good resource.
Technorati:SaaS,Microsoft OSLO,PDC 2008