SaaS: partnerships, acquisitions, and exciting times (or, an exciting week)
SaaS: partnerships, acquisitions, and exciting times (or, an exciting week)
This week has been really exciting, in the world of cloud computing. What many people though would happen is finally taking shape: cloud computing companies are starting to collaborate or, in a more drastic move, acquire each other.
The two big ones, in the world of project management, are the acquisition of Bantam Live (which was purchased by Constant Contact) and Manymoon (purchased by Saleforce). The Bantam Live acquisition raised some interesting technical questions: Bantam Live is written in Ruby On Rails, whereas Constant Contact is based on Java. There is nothing definite from a strategic point of view; for current customers, Bantam Live will be free from this moment and there is no plan on development. Manymoon's acquisition seems to be more focused on Salesforce's intention to enter the Google market. According to our sources, Manymoon's development will continue as usual, and the current payment plans are maintained. So, existing customers shouldn't experience any disruption.
The next big partnership is between Ericsson and Akamai. Ericsson doesn't need introductions: they have been in the mobile sector for years, and have network infrastructure as well as telecom services, and has some 90,000 employees. Akamai is really strong in content delivery services, especially for videos and applications. They claim that they have up to 10 million concurrent streams at any one time, and that their 85000 servers send out between 15% and 30% of all Internet traffic. Akamai will benefit from accessing Ericsson's contacts and carriers and will deliver even more contents to mobile devices, whereas Ericsson will be able to provide contents reliably.
All in all, big clouds seem to have started incorporating smalled clouds, and really big companies (like Ericsson) started partnerships with our cloud-based companies to provide services. Who will the players be in the next -- say -- 5 to 10 years?
