I am pretty excited about this blog as it gives me an opportunity to write about hot topics that are pushing the envelope of computing to a whole new level. Even though this blog is more about opensource, I have written a few posts on the topic of cloud computing. Now I will write about cloud computing exclusively on the new blog and use this blog to talk about issues related to opensource. I am also excited about working with Zoho folks as they are a company with a base in my home town (in India). I have bumped into Zoli on and off at various blogs, social networks, etc.. This is the first time I will be working closely with him. It was a great pleasure to get introduced to Ben and other folks in the Cloud Avenue team. The most interesting part is that we are spread all over the world and we use the SaaS apps to collaborate and diminish any effect of this geographic distribution. This is the advantage we can derive by moving the computing away from our desktop to the clouds. I am pretty sure this team will make Cloud Avenue a one stop shop for everything cloud computing.

I also want to point out that our company in India consults clients on the advantages of moving their operations to cloud. We have seen how small businesses in India and Asia-Pacific regions have benefited from cloud computing. The experience I gain(ed), by being part of the team working in India, will also help me refine my posts but I will not promote anything that will benefit our company in my posts on the Cloud Avenue blog.

The blog will be launched on monday but it shouldn’t stop you from subscribing to the feed today itself. Come on over and walk with us down the Cloud Avenue.

Update: The site is live now.

PS: Probably, this is the last time I might be posting something related to cloud computing. Soon, I am joining a blog about cloud computing as a member of their editorial team. I will post my thinking about the field in that blog and focus on open source, open standards and open web in this blog.

The first talk was by Kris Krug. He gave some photography tips.

Related articles

• Study: Cloud computing to brighten future of data centers

SaaS and ASP have a somewhat similar philosophy but there are many differences that makes SaaS more competent in the marketplace than the ASP in the previous era. Lemme, explain the differences in this post.

• ASP was single tenancy whereas SaaS has multi tenancy. This offers SaaS the much needed ability to scale. ASP was limited to single organization and hence high cost of implementation. Since SaaS is shared by multiple organizations, without compromising on the reliability, security and privacy, the cost for businesses is very minimal compared to the implementation of ASP.
• In many cases, the underlying cloud is built upon open source software. The application stack also uses open source software overwhelmingly. This reduces the cost of infrastructure by several fold, thereby, bringing down the cost of implementation to a much smaller level. Today, a small business having three employees can have CRM fro free and a company with 5 employees can have it for as low as $24 per month. I am not sure about Zoho’s infrastructure but many SaaS vendors rely heavily on open source software and the associated cost savings (plus the cost savings due to multi tenancy) is passed on to the customers.
• Some SaaS vendors offer the source code under one of the open source licenses. This helps organizations some reliability in the case of SaaS vendor going out of business. As I have explained in some of the previous posts, businesses can take the source code and their data and host it anywhere in the cloud. Since the cost of cloud infrastructure is almost close to zero, this option saves a huge amount of money for businesses compared to the ASP approach.
• Unlike the ASP approach, SaaS vendors can release a particular version and it shows up for all the customers. This reduces the time and cost involved in support and security implementation. Unlike ASP, all the SaaS customers will be using the same version of the app.
• Another important aspect of SaaS vis a vis ASP is the pay as you go model (which I forgot to add in the original post and Peter Laird pointed out in the comments). This is very important from small business perspective. This kinda approach is akin to utilities where you pay only for what you use rather than a fixed amount every month.

There are various other advantages of SaaS over ASP. I am just pointing out to some of the advantages that are important according to many industry analysts (including me :-)).

PS: The basic structure of this article is based on one of the old articles on the topic by Julie Craig in one of the Internet.com reports. I added my ideas about cloud computing and open source to that structure.

One thing Gates won’t be leaving behind in retirement is his distaste for open source software. After one scientist asked if Gates would consider open source uses in health research, the man who built his $280 billion company on the power of intellectual property bristled.

"There’s free software and then there’s open source," he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, "there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with."

Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. (Yes, Linux fans, we’re aware of how distorted this definition is.) He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: "I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them," he said, adding with a shrug: "That may seem radical."

The funny part about the whole episode, aside from his ignorance on the matter, is that he is saying to scientists that their approach in academia, which was responsible for propelling the world to the current advanced state, is nonsense. It is time for him to realize that opensource itself was inspired by the scientists in academia. Bill Gates joins Jaron Lanier in his ignorance about science.