Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Pradeep Rathinam, CEO of Aditi Technologies (Part 4)

SM: From what I’m seeing, the CRM and related systems, for instance, is one of the areas where an enterprise buys largely public cloud solutions. Of course, there are other big silos which people are procuring largely from public cloud solutions, talent management and various other management areas, and then there’s a long-tail application development that’s going on that’s using platform-as-a-service to enhance some of these core applications that are being dropped in as public cloud solutions. Is that consistent with what you’re seeing? >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Pradeep Rathinam, CEO of Aditi Technologies (Part 3)

SM: Yes and no. How much of this what we call bootstrapping, using platform-as-a-service, a SaaS platform, I guess, do you see happening in small startups?

PR: We’re seeing a lot of them. What’s happening is the new companies that are coming right now, the companies that are starting up are starting with such low overhead costs and infrastructure. The difference between the startup costs in the past versus what you see now is fundamentally the cost of infrastructure and platforms that were very heavy in the past. Tools, all of the things that you required to build an application at scale, the need for billing systems, metering systems, integration with credit cards, a whole bunch of things that were very complicated and required large teams of people, large infrastructure, have fundamentally been disrupted with the platform-as-a-service. So, we can … we’re seeing a lot of that in the Microsoft eco-system right now. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Pradeep Rathinam, CEO of Aditi Technologies (Part 2)

SM: Let’s double click down on each of the areas that you discussed. How much are you familiar with what’s happening in the world of small software companies – software companies, in general – using software-as-a-service to get out into the market with new solutions? One of the case studies that I have looked at quite closely is a company called Apptio that launched quite some time ago. It was one of the earliest adopters of Force.com, and the company released a contract management software product on Force.com and rapidly bootstrapped to $5 million plus in revenue. It’s a very nice case study in that a small company could bring a product to market without putting into it too much [money]. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Pradeep Rathinam, CEO of Aditi Technologies (Part 1)

As more and more companies transition to cloud computing, the demand for platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will continue to grow. That will pose no problem for Aditi Technologies, which is already among the top three PaaS solution providers in the world and among the top five Microsoft technology partners in the United States. Aditi offers solutions to its clients in four domains:  digital marketing, cloud solutions, enterprise social and product engineering.

Sramana Mitra: Hi Pradeep. Please give us some context about Aditi as well as you personally. >>>

Newly Public Proofpoint Offers a View Into Cloud Security

Market researcher Canalys estimates that the worldwide enterprise security market will grow 8.7% this year to $22.9 billion worldwide. The anti-virus segment will retain the highest market share of the enterprise software market, contributing 11.3% of the total market value and reporting 6.8% growth over the year. Cloud security, in particular, is seeing significant adoption, and Proofpoint’s IPO indicates the beginning of several public offerings. Also in the pipeline is Qualys. Of course, the IPO pipeline for SaaS and cloud companies is significant right now. Many companies in the $75 million-$150 million range are waiting in the wings.

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Microsoft’s New Products Move Away from the Desktop

According to Gartner’s recent estimates, worldwide PC shipments during the first quarter this year grew 1.9% over the year to 89 million units. The results are a pleasant surprise, considering the 1.2% decline that was projected by Gartner. Shipment increases were driven by growth of 6.7% growth in the EMEA and 2% in the Asia/Pacific markets, where shipments grew to 28.2 million and 30.3 million units, respectively. Japan is also seeing strong recovery following the earthquake last year, and shipments grew 11.5% to 4.4 million units. However, the Americas were weak markets, with PC shipments falling 3.5% over the year to 15.5 million units in the U.S. and Latin America showing a 3.2% decline to 9 million units.

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Workday Challenges Oracle and SAP in Talent Management

Software-as-a-service based enterprise business services provider Workday is expected to hit the market with an IPO this year. A few analysts believe that Workday’s IPO may be more worth their while than that of other Internet giants like Facebook. I certainly believe this is an organization to watch. Workday operates in the cloud computing and SaaS markets, which are both high-growth areas. According to Forrester Research, cloud computing is projected to grow to $240 billion by 2020 from $40.7 billion in 2010. Gartner estimates the worldwide SaaS market will grow 17.9% this year to $14.5 billion and to $22.1 billion by 2015.

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Demandware Riding High on IPO

Analysts estimate that global e-commerce revenues will grow from $316 billion in 2010 to $653 billion by 2015. Further, they estimate that the market for cloud-enabled e-commerce platform services will grow 21% annually from 2010-2015 to reach $11.3 billion, from $4.3 billion estimated in 2010. Counting on this growth, e-commerce platform services provider Demandware recently made their IPO.

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