‘SaaS Makers’ Give Rise to a New Dotcom Boom

Feb. 13, 2013 - PRLog -- The dotcom boom's widely noted fizzle in 2001 did not mark the end of Internet businesses; rather, it was only the beginning, according to research highlighted by cloud computing provider Virtual Global, provider of the platform-as-a-service SaaS Maker™ suite. The dotcom boom is often characterized as a bubble that lasted only a few years, but in fact, today's rapidly growing cloud computing movement represents the resurgence of a more mature—and longer lasting—version of the dotcom boom.

New PaaS development tools, like Virtual Global’s SaaS Maker, lower the cost of building your own dotcom to zero. "The cloud has changed the game," said Cary Landis, Virtual Global CEO and one of the creators of the NIST reference architecture for cloud computing. "Cloud is the final ingredient to the dotcom era, and with these tools, we can look forward to a new wave of innovation with real lasting power." SaaS Maker includes free developer accounts, and allows developers to publish scalable SaaS solutions for subscription-based revenues.  These same systems may have required millions of dollars twelve years ago.  This begs several questions: What would happen to Facebook if all of a sudden, millions of software developers could build and launch their own social network in just a few weeks?  What would happen to big system integrators if small software businesses could build the same systems at a fraction of the time and costs?  “This is real, not pie in the sky.  It’s the ‘printing press’ for software developers,” says Landis.  “These PaaS tools are changing the industry.”

Termed the "dotcloud boom" by techie.com editor-in-chief and former dotcom marketer Dan Blacharski, the current movement adds the ingredients that were lacking the first time around. "The reason the first dotcom bubble burst wasn't because of overspeculation, which is what most people claim. It was because the technology just wasn't ready," said Blacharski. Throughout history, innovators and investors have entered markets entirely too early.  History always repeats itself.  Bill Gates’ WebTV was clearly too early for the slow Internet of the millennium.  Java was too early for its time, but Sun had enough muscle to help it stick around long enough to be on time.  There’s a saying in Silicon Valley that “Being early is the same as being wrong.” Rarely in history have so many people been too early as in the dotcom boom days.  One of the greatest things about being early is that you’ll eventually be on time if you stick around.

“Early dotcoms often required millions of dollars in startup money back then, for programming from the ground up and building out a data center from scratch—not to mention, the Internet was still unbearably slow," said Landis. "But times have changed. The SaaS makers of today can enter these markets with little more than brainpower and some hard work."

Aside from faster development and saving cost, PaaS have a number of other benefits. These tools also allow users to create concept business applications quickly without writing code. This rapid prototyping can serve as a way to gain customer buy-in or valuable feedback earlier in the development process. The tools permit quick changes and updates that would otherwise be costly. Additionally, all SaaS applications are all inherently ready for the cloud, with the ability to be deployed easily. Cloud-based computing has introduced a new era of how information is stored, created, altered, and shared.

Industry analysts are expecting the SaaS market to explode.  Gartner is estimating the SaaS market to reach $14.5 billion by 2015, and nobody knows how much growth over the next decade.  Vinton Cerf, who is often attributed as Father of the Internet, describes software as “an endless frontier”.  The ‘low hanging fruit’ of commodity infrastructure will soon dry up.  The future value of cloud, as with prior computing models, will lie within software innovation.  The big software vendors will need to defend their thrones in the new age of software innovation – an age in which anyone with a good idea and an Internet connection can launch their own dotcom.

About Virtual Global:

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation with a Northern VA presence, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the SaaS Maker™ cloud platform for building SaaS applications without programming; TeamLeader™, a real-time team management system; and Cloudipedia, a website that brings cloud computing information to entrepreneurs. Since 1995, Virtual Global’s technologies have served commercial and federal customers worldwide with enterprise-class IT needs.