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SaaS vendors using third-party PaaS as their own
October 20, 2011 | Author: Michael Stromann
An interesting new trend is emerging: SaaS vendors start to use third-party PaaS services as platforms for their own clients and partners. Let's first consider the ordinary situation. For example, there was such SaaS provider as Salesforce. And it provided the online CRM system. The system was growing but the customers wanted more and more new features. Then Salesforce management thought: "we can't implement so many features, and it's not right to make the system too complicated. Let's better create a (PaaS) platform, and let our customers and partners create add-on apps and functions themselves. That's how Force.com appeared. And many others SaaS vendors headed the same way: Google, NetSuite, Intuit, Box.net ... But not all SaaS-providers are so mighty to create own PaaS platform. Or maybe creating own PaaS-platform - is not the smartest option. Why not use one of the existing PaaS-services, such as Force.com?
That's what Workday, Infor and Concur decided to do last summer. They created SDK and interfaces for Force.com and offered their customers and partners to build applications on Force.com and use the data inside their systems. And a few days ago another SaaS-giant SuccessFactors (which is the champion in SaaS-implementation size) has partnered with VMWare to use its PaaS-Platform CloudFoundry.
See also: Top 10 Public Cloud Platforms
