SaaS vs. On-Premise: What Did You Do This Weekend?

Here's a tweet from salesforce.com customer Jeff Grosse:

I'm glad that Salesforce.com is performing an upgrade to my CRM system tonight so I don't have to.

Compare that with Dan Blake's description of upgrading Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0:

We’ll be installing the update to the update in the CourseMax data center this weekend. It’s a pretty involved process. Here is the process we’ll go through:

• Apply the update in the sandbox
  • Since our CRM server roles are split up, we’ll have to install it four times
• Run through the test plan on all four servers
• Apply the update on the production servers
  • Six different servers this time
• Run through the test plan again on Production

... This is also why I’m not really comfortable yet with the 2 month update cycle. I like to keep current with updates but it is a lot of work. Keep in mind that this is in addition to the testing and updating we do for our own software. If we would have installed the first version of Update Rollup 2 we would have had to go through this whole process twice within a month [emphasis added].

This might be the most compelling argument for SaaS I've heard - you get to keep your weekends!

SaaS Competitive Advantage: Capital Expenditure

"If credit remains tight, then one of the first things businesses are going to cut is capital expenditure — either because they can’t stomach the risk, or because they can’t raise the finance. The upside for SaaS vendors is that those cash-strapped businesses will find the pay-as-you-go SaaS model highly appealing — especially if it helps deliver operational cost savings at the same time. So while the credit crunch seems certain to harm the front-loaded cost model of conventional software sales, SaaS should continue to grow by picking up some of those canceled projects."

http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=589

"Apex Code Is Not a Niche Tool"

"[Apex Code] is not a niche tool for a proprietary platform -- rather, it's a Java-like language with an Eclipse-based tool ecosystem and excellent facilities for unleashing immense gains in developer productivity and enterprise project success."

http://blog.sforce.com/sforce/2008/05/proprietary-mis.html

CODA 2go

I've been enjoying the CODA 2go blog. It's been interesting to see some of the process of developing the first large-scale enterprise application on the Force.com platform. It was especially exciting to see CODA 2go launch last week at Dreamforce Europe. Check out their demo here:

http://video.coda.com/CODA2go-sneakPeak.htm

CODA's efforts are clearly pushing the Force.com platform in new directions and I hope that other Force.com developers will also blog about their development experiences as well. I can't wait to test-drive CODA 2go.

Speaking of Platforms...

My last post made me realize that I haven't already pointed out Marc Andreessen's excellent essay: The three kinds of platforms you meet on the internet.

And if the essay itself wasn't reward enough, check this out:

Get Your salesforce.com Org Under Version Control

Jeff Atwood, a software engineering hero to many, recently wrote about version control for databases.

His post spurred me to use the Force.com IDE to put my latest salesforce.com project under version control. It's dead simple to utilize a version control system for your entire salesforce application now: S-Controls, Apex code and salesforce schema included. (Here are the instructions for Subversion: Force.com Code Share)

If being able to define a database, build complex logic and create a sophisticated user interface wasn't enough to convince everyone that salesforce.com is a true development platform, the Force.com development environment just made it a little bit harder to deny.

And the whole platform is delivered as a service...

Domain Languages: Apex

Tip #17 in The Pragmatic Programmer is:

"Program Close to the Problem Domain."

Lately I've been spending a bunch of time building Apex web services for my customer and I can tell you that it's a super powerful language. My pseudo-code translates almost line-for-line in to Apex code. Here's an example:

//get the oppty line items for this oppty
List opptyLineItems = [Select Id, PricebookEntry.Product2Id from OpportunityLineItem Where OpportunityId = :opptyId];

In C# this one line of code would translate to four or five lines of code. Visualforce is the equivalent development productivity lever for user interfaces. Pretty cool stuff.