Christopher Lochhead (former CMO at Mercury Interactive) makes a good point when he says that one of the most important aspects of SaaS is how it changes the acquisition model for companies: what previously took months for a purchase now can be done in hours or days. But this may be overly simplistic: staff still needs retraining and business processes need to be adjusted or redesigned around these new systems – that’s a given – in most cases…

When adopting a new SaaS application, let’s say migrating from Act to SalesForce, user retraining and business process remapping is required to make an effective transition.This can be a time consuming and expensive proposition all by itself.

The lower cost solution for those who are happy with the software they’re using is to do a relatively painless migration to an on-demand IT Infrastructure. Sometimes referred to as hosted applications, the true on-demand IT Infrastructure has SaaS model pricing (fixed cost per seat) and must be a one-stop shop where all applications a business relies on are hosted on a single platform. This releases the business from the need for owning servers, associated hardware and software and employing staff to manage all that.

That’s my 2 cents for today – happy cloud computing!

To some, it’s elastic computing, to others, utility computing or a hosted database development platform. Yet others promote SaaS and hosted applications as the Cloud. Like a lot of things, what Cloud computing is really depends on you. And that’s a good thing.

Our point of view is in line with Serguei Beloussov, the CEO of Parallels, who recently said "We believe one of the key advantages of service clouds is the ability to offer a complete suite of applications, You have to be a one-stop shop.” (article ). We agree that a single platform, where all your applications are hosted, holds value for many midsized enterprises. These organizations would otherwise struggle to properly support, or simply pay too much, for their computing platforms. The EasyOffice is a "one-stop shop" where common applications as well as your line-of-business applications, that you’ve chosen to run your business, are all hosted on one platform.

The varying forms of Cloud Computing are useful to different firms for different reasons. As part of your technology strategy, consider what value is offered by these varying models and develop a total cost of ownership model for your computing infrastructure. Make sure your TCO model includes critical "intangibles" like the cost of management focus on IT. Then decide how the Cloud should look to you.

Happy Cloud Computing!