Are You Ready for EAPAASW?
March 31, 2015
I saw a tweet about a new report from a mid tier consulting firm. I was interested because a former employee suggested that the company was “virtual.” None of the McKinsey/Booz Allen walnut paneling or assistants with cool accents. Folks work from Starbucks, home, or a tomb silent Barnes & Noble I assume.
The write up is “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service Worldwide.” I am into magic. I believe in the tooth fairy. I know that there are pots of gold at the end of every rainbow.
But I was surprised to learn about EAPAASW. I think the idea is that cloud computing makes it possible to use Amazon, Google, or Salesforce instead of on premises implementations of hardware and software. I think that the idea is reasonably well accepted.
According to the report I saw, the mid tier consulting firm sees the world from a different perspective. I suppose I would too if I had to pay a mortgage, save for a child’s college fund, and make it through the day as a high powered technology expert. The segment I marked was:
Application infrastructure functionality, enriched with cloud characteristics and offered as a service, is platform as a service (PaaS). Gartner refers to it more precisely as cloud application infrastructure services. Application platform as a service (aPaaS) is a form of PaaS that provides a platform to support application development, deployment and execution in the cloud. It is a suite of cloud services designed to meet the prevailing application design requirements of the time, and, in 2015, includes mobile, cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics innovations.
This paragraph is chock full of buzzwords. And it sounds almost important with the Internet of Things, design requirements, and the hook “application infrastructure services.”
Now who are the big dogs in this kennel? Salesforce and Microsoft are the leaders. I find this interesting. Poor old Google is relegated to challenge status. Really? A challenger. Hmm.
The niche players are interesting because I recognized only one company in this group: Zoho. The others are essentially new to me. How many of these do your recognize as the niche players in this EAPAASW space? Engine Yard? OutSystems? CloudControl? NTT Communications? OrangeScape? Quite a mixed bag. I wonder if NTT Communications knows that it is a niche player against the likes of OrangeScape?
But who are the visionaries? This is a fascinating list because it mixes some large and confused outfits who are not in the Marco Polo category from my vantage point in Harrod’s Creek. check out these firms: IBM and SAP are visionaries?
But there are some others who can define the future; for example, Indra gnubila? Okay. Indra gnubila. Interesting. I wonder if IBM and SAP know much about that outfit or Mendex or MIOsoft for that matter? RedHat makes the list as does the ever sharp eyed Software AG. And what about Progress Software? Yep, still around. Still low profile. I think that outfit made a run at search and content processing and fell on its sword.
There is an interesting omission. Where is the modest outfit Amazon? Where is the giant and somewhat confused Hewlett Packard?
If you need to know about EAPAASW, check out this report. If the link goes bad, well, that’s life. On the other hand, if you find a report that makes Google a challenger and IBM a visionary, you may want this document now. If you are interested in the next big thing, Gartner has identified outfits which are likely to make your really wealth when you invest in them. I wonder if I can invest in Indra gnubila, which may not be exactly like Google. (See Gnubila.)
Quite a remarkable document from a mid tier consulting firm. Dave Schubmehl’s recycling of my research under his name on Amazon now faces a challenge in work from another mid tier firm. What’s next, experts?
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2015
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