The nourishing MISO soup

Every SaaS and cloud computing vendor should be thanking MISO - Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle.

So Google Apps and Zoho should celebrate that Microsoft may allow its channel to offer a pay-as-you-go Office offering. Should they not be afraid? If it is priced at $ 10 a user a month, they can run circles around it.

So amazon, Joyent and others should rejoice that IBM is still unraveling the  "physics" of SaaS and cloud computing - and basically still trying to sell mainframes.

So salesforce, NetSuite et al should celebrate that SAP's SaaS will be delayed by at least a year. Usually bigger vendors freeze an emerging market by just announcing a product. But when their product is delayed it gives the early players a better shot at the pent-up demand. Update: Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite mentioned this factor in their earnings call

Finally, Workday, SuccessFactors et al should be gleeful the only real innovation to come out of Oracle Applications in a while has been around Siebel On-Demand. If SaaS is right for its CRM, why not for HR and other functional areas?

Here's the fundamental law of reciprocity. When you are small, a 1% market share gain is far far more important than a 1% loss when you are big. And when the big "gift" that to the small, it is that much more nourishing.

Comments

[Chris Yeh]

It's like the eternal battle between big men and guards in basketball. If I'm the smaller guy, I should be using my speed to drive to the basket. If I'm the lumbering giant, I should be camping out in the post and methodically trying to work my way inside for a layup.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Chris, good analogy - and since the big men make 20 to 30X what the guards make, it behooves them to just play defense so we end up with baseball type scores in basketball!