On software as a service
The AppExchange presentation at ETech by salesforce.com was very interesting and these guys might be into something since they have the potential of finally popularizing ASP business software by lettting people develop on their ASP platform and reducing the barriers of entry (it is not trivial how to take software even if it has a Web interface and make it available as an ASP where many users migth be running multiple instances of the software in the same hardware). Their model is somehow limited since it only is accessible to salesforce.com users (the “somehow” in the sentence comes from the fact that they have 400,000 users which is pretty large). On the other hand, it is very favorable for third party software vendors since it is basically completely free and they do not ask for a revenue share model or anything). I will definitely keep an eye.
The speaker had a funny remark when demoing an app using Google Maps that he referred as the “canonical mash-up” (another speaker today actually made a point of showing a mash-up with Yahoo! Maps “since everyone else is showing mash-ups with Google Maps”).
He also referrer to Web 2.0 companies as the Triple AAAs:
CD
