Google introduces App Engine - "a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure." Phil Wainewright writes about that and other platforms. Last week's debate between SAP's Plattner and salesforce.com's Benioff was also focused on platforms.
With all this focus on developer tools and platforms, are we giving up on pre-cooked, packaged applications? And where are outsourcers in all this? With SaCS offerings they have the opportunity to allow companies to leverage existing on-premise application investments while getting many of the benefits of SaaS. Clearly the zeitgist in the enterprise software industry seems to be about Platform-as-a-service.
But then again, give it 3 months and may be we will be onto something else?
