May 19, 2011 | Updated: June 2, 2011

The Forrester Wave: PlatformAs-A-Service For Vendor Strategy Professionals, Q2 2011

by Stefan Ried, Ph.D. and John R. Rymer for Vendor Strategy Professionals

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

The Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service For Vendor Strategy Professionals, Q2 2011

identifying The best Partner choices For iSVs And Service Providers
by Stefan Ried, Ph.D. and John R. Rymer with Pascal Matzke, Andrew Magarie, Alissa Anderson, and Miroslaw lisserman

May 19, 2011 | Updated: June 2, 2011

ExEcUT i V E S U M MA Ry
Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings represent a critical space within the broader cloud ecosystem, as they provide the linkage between application platforms and underlying cloud infrastructures. In order to build a viable cloud market strategy, vendor strategists of independent software vendors (ISVs) and tech service providers need to understand their partnership opportunities in this area. In this report, we outline how Forresters 149-criteria evaluation of 10 PaaS vendors can be used to determine the best partner choices. Our research unveils that salesforce.com, because of its comprehensive PaaS features and strong vision and strategy, represents the top choice for ISVs. For service providers, we see strong performances of Cordys, LongJump, Microsoft, salesforce.com, and WorkXpress, which support multiple deployment and business models. Although PaaS overall is still in the early stages of its evolution with lots of potential risks for buyers, without a strong set of PaaS choices, vendor strategy professionals will struggle to make a safe infrastructure bet for their SaaS application platforms or local ecosystems.

TAbl E o F co nTE nTS

2 PaaS: The Key To Unlock Cloud Computings Power 4 PaaS: An Immature Market With A Fragmented Vendor Landscape 6 Platform-As-A-Service Evaluation Overview 8 PaaS: The ISV Partner Scenario 11 PaaS: The Service Provider Partner Scenario 13 Vendor Profiles 16 Supplemental Material

n oT E S & RE S o U RcE S
Forrester conducted lab-based evaluations in July and August, 2010 with 10 vendor companies: caspio, cordys, Google, longJump, Microsoft, orangeScape, salesforce.com, Tibco Software, WaveMaker, and Workxpress. We did update interviews during January 2011. Forrester interviewed 22 customers under condition of anonymity.

Related Research Documents The Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service For App Dev And Delivery Pros, Q2 2011 May 19, 2011
Platform-As-A-Service Market Sizing July 13, 2009 Platform-As-A-Service is Here: How To Sift Through The options April 1, 2009 Forresters Platform-As-A-Service Reference Architecture February 20, 2009

2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, TechRankings, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Reproduction or sharing of this content in any form without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. To purchase reprints of this document, please email clientsupport@ forrester.com. For additional reproduction and usage information, see Forresters Citation Policy located at www.forrester.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.

The Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service For Vendor Strategy Professionals, Q2 2011

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

PAAS: ThE KEy TO UnLOCK CLOUD COMPUTIngS POWER Cloud computing is exciting for ISVs and service providers because it offers instant access to resources for development and testing; deployment in minutes; easy, even automatic, scaling up and down; and pay-for-what-you-use pricing. Strategy professionals on the ISV side need to evaluate whether their next-generation software-as-a-service application is only based on a cloud infrastructure or will actually leverage pre-integrated components of a platform-as-a-service offering for efficient application development and rapid deployment. Service providers also see an emerging opportunity to consider PaaS platforms as a new alternative to established middleware stacks for the deployment of custom applications they create on behalf of their clients. Many PaaS technology stacks are only offered as a service by the original vendor and could be connected and combined to existing infrastructure. However, some PaaS technology stacks are also available as licensed software stacks and can be operated by local service providers or upcoming cloud providers. This is why platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is so important. With good PaaS products, vendor strategy pros will quickly gain clouds benefits. Without good PaaS products, cloud development is simply too difficult, and the benefits of cloud will flow slowly, if at all, to a broad range of shops. PaaS Defined Forrester defines platform-as-a-service as: A complete application platform for multitenant cloud environments that includes development tools, runtime, and administration and management tools and services. PaaS combines an application platform with managed cloud infrastructure services. PaaS Provides Accelerated Time-To-Market For Vendors If It Is Complete Enough The key value to software vendors of PaaS is obviously the ability to focus on the business application and not on platform technologies. This is especially relevant for ISVs that want to bring a softwareas-a-service (SaaS) application to the market.1 Business requirements need a fast turnaround into a continuous flow of features and releases. Most SaaS applications that have been on the market for a long time use a proprietary platform stack and do not leverage a general-purpose PaaS stack. Meanwhile, most new SaaS applications leverage at least an IaaS or even one of the PaaS offerings evaluated in this report. Salesforce.com is the only original SaaS vendor to clearly separate its platform from the original CRM application. This puts salesforce.com in the PaaS category in addition to its presence in the SaaS CRM vendor space. Despite all the enthusiasm around PaaS, there are still potential risks and shortcomings ISVs and service providers will have to take into account:

Smaller ISVs cannot afford a re-implementation migration is key. Many PaaS stacks

achieve an amazing efficiency for application development, the required multitenant capacities,

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and the manageability in the cloud by introducing new development paradigms. Smaller vendors are not able to rewrite their existing application in a new programming language or to re-create an existing database without reusing existing SQL schema. Leading platforms like salesforce.coms Force.com realized this challenge and the operations of standard Java (Spring) applications or Ruby applications in addition to a disruptive development paradigm. This allows ISVs to migrate existing apps faster and combine them with new development based on the new paradigm and capability of the PaaS platform.

Platform vendor lock-in is a major concern. The deployment of a SaaS application on a

specific PaaS platform is a lifetime bet in most cases. As the category of PaaS matures over the next several years, Forrester expects more interoperability between the leading PaaS providers. However, the possibility to port an application written for one PaaS into another vendors offering is far in the future.

PaaS should help ISVs make money. The time-to-value chain for SaaS applications is beyond
the technical ability to develop and deploy business applications in a multitenant mode. ISVs need support to bring their apps to the market with an app store and many other horizontal PaaS services like billing and SLA management.

Completeness means time-to-market advantage. The more complete a PaaS offering is, the

less time the ISV needs to invest on its own. Strategically, the benefits of completeness conflict with the lock-in concern, if the PaaS components are not based on industry standards. Figure 1 gives an overview of the ideal set of components provided by a PaaS service (see Figure 1).

Forresters reference architecture also contains services important to application development and delivery professionals, such as corporate developers. For an analysis of how the PaaS market satisfies the requirements of that audience, see The Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service For App Dev And Delivery Pros, Q2 2011.2

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Figure 1 Forresters Platform-As-A-Service Reference Architecture

Subscriber SaaS application Multitenant platform Subscriber portal Subscription or purchasing of functionality Browser only No client footprint User management Orchestration of multiple SaaS apps Con gure integration of legacy apps, data, metadata, master data SLA reporting SaaS application Provided by the ISV Application-componentsas-a-service Application components provided by OEM supplier Web 2.0 UI User interface framework Model platform BPMS, BRMS, CEP, BI Provider portal Marketing Pricing Contracting Billing SaaS ALM (versioning, testing, deployment) SLA management Provisioning PaaS sandbox Singletenant dev. test PaaS IDE SaaS ISV

Integration platform Mediation of SaaS components and legacy interaction ESB MDM metadata Application platform Coded business logic Application server DBMS SaaS security framework Infrastructure options: Hosted by PaaS provider Provisioned by scale-out clouds Licensed to private clouds

SaaS migration Traditional app platform: coded business logic; application server DBMS

Local integration hub Legacy/cloud integration (optional)

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PAAS: An IMMATURE MARKET WITh A FRAgMEnTED VEnDOR LAnDSCAPE The PaaS market is a sprawling, fast-changing, and immature market. Most PaaS vendors are small, and even big vendors like Google and Microsoft have incomplete, new products. Salesforce.com has the most mature PaaS, but it just acquired an entirely new PaaS product (Heroku) whose fit into the portfolio and strategy isnt at all clear. Developers vote with their dollars and energy, and both our data and continuing conversations with clients suggest they are not yet voting for any PaaS products. Google App Engine, Microsofts Windows Azure, and salesforce.coms Force.com get attention and adoption, but many ISVs prefer either to work with infrastructure-as-a-service options led by Amazon Web Services or to postpone development in the cloud. Forrester expects ISVs and service providers to shift to PaaS as the available options improve.

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The PaaS markets immaturity is also evident in the relatively low scores registered by many of the vendors in our Forrester Wave analyses. Whereas many Forrester Waves have four or more Leaders, ours only has two. The Four Major PaaS Categories Part of the problem customers have with the PaaS choices is the lack of a clear definition for the category. Dozens of vendors call their products PaaS, despite huge industry disagreements about the definition of a PaaS. There are four major categories of products labeled as PaaS (see Figure 2):

Integrated development environment (IDE) with cloud deployment is a hybrid approach.

The largest category of PaaS products seeks to introduce cloud deployment without changing familiar development environments. The idea is that developers working in Eclipse or Visual Studio will work as they always have, but when deploying, they provide the additional information needed to deploy their applications into a cloud. Developers create code on their local machines but deploy it to a remote cloud data center.

Cloud IDEs place all development in the cloud. In contrast, cloud IDEs offer browser-based

development environments aimed at coders who execute in a cloud data center. Developers code in a remote cloud data center and deploy to that cloud data center as well. The cloud IDEs are similar in function but not the same as familiar Eclipse-based IDEs and Visual Studio.

PaaS for business experts provides powerful new approaches. Several of the PaaS options

target business experts, not coders. They do so with innovative and powerful new tools for creating applications without coding. Some ISVs and service providers will find these products attractive alternatives to IDEs because they speed delivery of new applications.

IDE-neutral cloud runtime solves half the development problem. Some products labeled

as PaaS dont provide development tools at all. Rather, these products provide a platform to manage deployment of applications into cloud data centers and the ongoing scaling and management of those applications. Developers can use the development tools of their choice within the constraints set by the environment. The biggest constraint: Most of these PaaS products today support only one programming language. These products dont fit Forresters definition of PaaS, which requires the vendor to provide a complete platform.

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Figure 2 Four categories of PaaS Products

IDE with cloud deployment Appian salesforce.com Google Servoy LongJump Tibco Software Magic Software Vaakya Microsoft VMware NetSuite WaveMaker OutSystems WSO2 Cloud IDE Appian Cordys Intuit salesforce.com TrackVia WOLF Frameworks IDE-neutral cloud runtime Amazon Heroku Joyent Appistry Apprenda Microsoft CloudBees Red Hat Cloudsoft techcello.com Engine Yard VMware GigaSpaces PaaS for business experts Caspio Cordys IS Tools OrangeScape WorkXpress Zoho

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PLATFORM-AS-A-SERVICE EVALUATIOn OVERVIEW To assess the state of the PaaS market and see how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top PaaS vendors. We initially selected 11 vendors because:

Each corresponded to our PaaS definition, including providing a hosting approach for
production deployment.

Each had a product generally available to customers as of May 30, 2010, when this research began. The collection of vendors represented the most important choices in the market for vendor
strategy professionals. The final list of 10 vendors and the products we evaluated is shown below (see Figure 3).3

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Figure 3 Evaluated Vendors: Product information And Selection criteria

Vendor Caspio Cordys Product(s) evaluated Caspio Bridge Cordys Process Factory (CPF)* Cordys Cloud Provisioning (CCP)* Google LongJump Microsoft OrangeScape Google App Engine (GAE) LongJump Windows Azure OrangeScape R3.0.x Product version(s) evaluated 6.95 5.0 4.0 1.4.0 7.1 Version release date(s) December 2010 December 2010 January 2010 December 2010 September 2010 November 2010 December 2010 December 2010

salesforce.com Force.com Tibco Software Tibco Silver Product Suite: Tibco DataSynapse FabricServer Tibco DataSynapse Federator Tibco Silver CAP (Composite Application platform) Tibco Silver BPM Silver BW Silver MFT Tibco Silver Spot re WaveMaker WorkXpress WaveMaker WorkXpress 3.0.2 2.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 6.2.5 2.4

August 2009 January 2010 May 2010 May 2010 December 2010 December 2010 December 2010 December 2010 December 2010

Vendor selection criteria Vendors corresponded to our PaaS de nition, including providing a hosting approach for production deployment. Vendors had a product generally available to customers as of May 30, 2010, when this research began. Vendors represented the most important choices in the market for vendor strategy professionals. *Based on Cordys Business Operations Platform (BOP-4, June 2009)
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Our Evaluation Criteria Provide A Comprehensive View After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 149 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level buckets:

Current offering. The current offering criteria measure the features provided by the vendor

within its PaaS, addressing architecture, performance and scaling features, application development tools and services, administration and management facilities, cloud connectivity services, standards and interoperability features, and ISV features. Current offering scores are depicted on the vertical axis of the Forrester Wave diagram. The evaluations current offering scores do not measure either product performance or stability and should not be used as a proxy for benchmark tests. Our scoring emphasizes features to enable PaaS in the public cloud, and this put Tibco Software at a distinct disadvantage in our evaluations. With its Silver portfolio, Tibco is primarily addressing internal or private clouds. Proper evaluation of internal cloud offerings awaits further research.

Strategy. The strategy criteria assess the vendors product road map and corporate strategy, as

well as licensing and support options available for its product. Forresters assessments of product and corporate strategy are subjective; the other scores are based on data. Strategy scores are depicted on the horizontal axis of the Forrester Wave diagram.

Forrester eliminated pricing and cost criteria for this Forrester Wave, as the range of vendor capabilities diverged too much to make comparisons meaningful. All of the vendors except Tibco publish their prices on their websites, and so prices are transparent.

Market presence. The market presence criteria include the size of the vendors employee and

customer bases as well as its sales force and other channels. Market presence scores determine the size of the circle surrounding each vendors dot on the Forrester Wave diagram. The evaluations market presence scores do not measure market share and should not be used as a proxy for such estimates.

PAAS: ThE ISV PARTnER SCEnARIO This analysis answers the question: Which is the best choice for an ISV that focuses on the creation of a business application in a SaaS deployment? Application development and ISV services are weighted relatively high. Administration and platform management and performance and reliability are weighted with less priority here, as this is something that a PaaS provider will deliver as a managed service and wont be among the concerns of an ISV. The evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 4):

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Salesforce.com leads the pack with its Force.com offering. ISVs deployed more than 290

native Force.com applications listed on the AppExchange marketplace. More than 700 additional solutions are listed on AppExchange as interfacing or certified with the salesforce. com CRM application. Some native Force.com applications, which are totally unrelated to the CRM core application, are not listed at all on AppExchange. While many ISVs value the technical completeness of Force.com, Forrester estimates a similar number are simply leveraging this platform because of the strong market momentum around the AppExchange marketplace.

Cordys, WorkXpress, LongJump, Microsoft, and WaveMaker offer competitive options.

While Microsoft has one the worlds largest ecosystems of developers and ISVs, the Windows Azure offering is still on its journey to complement the strong infrastructure service with a complete PaaS functionality. The PaaS offerings of Cordys, WorkXpress, and LongJump provide extremely competitive value for ISVs without existing code that is intended to be migrated into the PaaS offering. WaveMaker, recently acquired by VMware, will very likely integrate closely with the Spring framework soon. It is the only open source PaaS offering we evaluated and provides competitive value for form and data centric business applications.

Google, Tibco Software, Caspio, and OrangeScape lack competitive ISV PaaS value. While

many of these vendors perform very well in other weighting views, they provide very limited value to ISVs looking to create a SaaS offering based on higher-level platform components. Google, for example, provides very competitive infrastructure features with a unique pricing model with its Google App Engine. However, ISVs looking for functionality beyond the scalable infrastructure might select another offering.

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Figure 4 Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service, iSV Scenario, Q2 11

Risky Bets Strong Contenders Strong Performers Leaders

Go online to download the Forrester Wave tool for more detailed product evaluations, feature comparisons, and customizable rankings.

salesforce.com LongJump Cordys Current o ering Tibco Software WorkXpress Microsoft

Caspio Google

WaveMaker OrangeScape

Market presence Weak Weak Strategy Strong

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Figure 4 Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service, iSV Scenario, Q2 11 (cont.)

Tibco Software salesforce.com OrangeScape

CURRENT OFFERING Architecture Performance and reliability Application development Administration and management ISV services Cloud connectivity Standards and interoperability STRATEGY Product strategy Partner strategy Corporate strategy Financial strength Go-to-market model MARKET PRESENCE Current usage Services Employees Distribution channels

50% 15% 5% 20% 5% 30% 10% 15% 50% 35% 15% 15% 10% 25% 0% 25% 25% 25% 25%

2.04 3.26 3.75 3.29 2.63 1.25 1.19 0.57 2.73 2.66 2.35 4.45 2.75 2.00 2.33 0.30 4.00 2.50 2.50

3.15 3.28 3.00 4.05 4.00 2.90 4.55 1.13 3.64 3.60 3.50 3.25 3.00 4.25 3.03 1.60 4.00 3.50 3.00

2.17 2.56 4.00 2.95 3.00 1.55 0.76 2.05 2.19 2.84 0.10 2.45 3.80 1.75 2.23 1.90 2.00 5.00 0.00

3.35 3.62 3.50 3.65 2.75 3.70 3.65 1.91 3.34 3.16 4.10 3.35 1.80 3.75 2.85 1.90 4.00 2.00 3.50

2.86 3.22 4.75 3.95 3.50 1.90 1.67 2.93 3.86 4.14 4.80 4.54 4.50 2.25 3.83 2.80 5.00 5.00 2.50

1.83 2.74 2.50 3.83 2.00 0.25 0.96 1.71 2.94 3.70 1.95 3.11 3.20 2.25 2.03 2.10 2.00 2.00 2.00

3.68 4.22 3.50 3.27 4.25 4.05 4.07 2.59 4.32 5.00 5.00 4.70 4.30 2.75 4.55 4.70 5.00 4.50 4.00

2.26 1.98 3.50 3.39 3.38 0.30 1.96 4.37 1.91 2.16 2.70 1.44 2.85 1.00 2.80 0.70 4.00 4.50 2.00

2.20 2.28 2.75 3.12 3.25 1.85 1.78 1.38 3.59 3.70 4.30 3.06 3.20 3.50 2.33 0.30 4.00 2.50 2.50

3.06 2.84 3.75 2.50 3.13 4.50 3.76 0.41 3.72 4.50 2.80 3.10 2.00 4.25 2.25 2.00 4.00 2.00 1.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

PAAS: ThE SERVICE PROVIDER PARTnER SCEnARIO This analysis answers the question: Which is the best choice for service providers that want to act as a local PaaS provider with the help of a licensed PaaS platform or for systems integrators that would like to offer custom developed applications or integration services between corporate users and the PaaS provider? As these service provider models are quite different, we encourage strategy professionals to view detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fit their individual business model through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.4 However, the average service provider weighting is a good starting point. The performance, reliability, and administration features are weighted relatively high in this scenario to support the hosting on a PaaS stack within existing provider landscapes. Furthermore, the architecture criteria are weighted high, as they contain the multitenancy and security features that are crucial for every service provider. The evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 5):

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WorkXpress

WaveMaker

LongJump

Forresters Weighting

Microsoft

Google

Cordys

Caspio

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Salesforce.com is a Leader in the service provider scenario. This result is mainly based on its

strength for these service providers that offer custom application development and individual integration services between salesforce.coms applications and on-premises legacy applications. Service providers that heavily emphasize a value contribution of their own hosting services obviously may find salesforce.com less attractive.

Cordys, Google, Microsoft, LongJump, and WorkXpress offer competitive options. These
vendors PaaS services or licensed PaaS stacks support multiple business models of service providers and systems integrators. For example, Getronics/KPN is hosting Cordys to offer customers the mashup of business processes between various cloud and legacy systems.

WaveMaker, Tibco, Caspio, and OrangeScape lack value for service providers. Some offerings,
like Tibcos Silver, are relatively new on the cloud computing market and are still looking for a way to transform their success in other business models to the PaaS and cloud approach.

Figure 5 Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service, Service Provider Scenario, Q2 11

Risky Bets Strong Contenders Strong Performers Leaders

Go online to download the Forrester Wave tool for more detailed product evaluations, feature comparisons, and customizable rankings.

Cordys Tibco Software Current o ering WorkXpress Caspio Google

salesforce.com

Microsoft LongJump

WaveMaker OrangeScape

Market presence Weak Weak Strategy Strong

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Figure 5 Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service, Service Provider Scenario, Q2 11 (cont.)

Tibco Software salesforce.com OrangeScape

CURRENT OFFERING Architecture Performance and reliability Application development Administration and management ISV services Cloud connectivity Standards and interoperability STRATEGY Product strategy Partner strategy Corporate strategy Financial strength Go-to-market model MARKET PRESENCE Current usage Services Employees Distribution channels

50% 20% 35% 5% 20% 5% 10% 5% 50% 10% 10% 20% 30% 30% 0% 25% 25% 25% 25%

2.65 3.44 3.40 3.37 2.17 0.85 1.29 0.07 2.47 0.77 0.80 4.45 2.75 2.00 2.33 0.30 4.00 2.50 2.50

3.57 3.05 3.60 4.08 3.45 3.40 4.15 4.36 3.09 0.45 2.20 3.56 3.00 4.05 3.03 1.60 4.00 3.50 3.00

2.65 2.96 3.80 1.90 2.57 1.50 0.42 0.15 2.69 1.58 0.20 3.34 3.80 2.35 2.23 1.90 2.00 5.00 0.00

3.02 3.84 3.60 3.36 1.76 3.70 2.83 0.15 3.52 4.42 2.80 4.14 1.80 4.75 2.85 1.90 4.00 2.00 3.50

3.16 2.40 4.80 2.28 3.07 2.20 1.51 0.32 3.96 2.88 4.40 4.54 4.50 3.25 3.83 2.80 5.00 5.00 2.50

1.91 2.81 1.70 3.53 2.11 0.85 0.87 0.50 2.56 0.55 2.50 3.42 3.20 2.05 2.03 2.10 2.00 2.00 2.00

3.41 3.81 3.40 4.41 3.34 4.15 3.50 0.29 4.24 5.00 5.00 4.70 4.30 3.35 4.55 4.70 5.00 4.50 4.00

3.07 2.07 4.20 3.58 2.62 0.50 2.13 4.90 1.56 0.27 1.10 1.35 2.85 1.00 2.80 0.70 4.00 4.50 2.00

2.11 2.47 2.20 1.96 2.44 1.65 1.68 0.15 3.18 0.55 3.10 3.43 3.20 3.90 2.33 0.30 4.00 2.50 2.50

3.10 2.75 3.90 2.42 2.33 4.50 3.69 0.01 3.14 4.50 1.40 3.65 2.00 4.05 2.25 2.00 4.00 2.00 1.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

VEnDOR PROFILES Leaders: A Cloud Powerhouse Formed The Category For ISVs

Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com helped to create the PaaS category, having begun exposing

the platform underlying its CRM SaaS product years ago. Despite its success as a SaaS vendor, salesforce.com executives like to say they run an application platform company. Salesforce.coms aggressive investments to expand its Force.com portfolio in late 2010 adding new products and acquiring Heroku certainly support that notion. Forrester estimates that salesforce.com has more than 10,000 accounts using Force.com as a development platform (as opposed to using it for extending the salesforce.com applications), perhaps as many as 25,000. Salesforce. com markets the Force.com portfolio through its own field force, but hundreds of partners also promote and extend the platform.

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WaveMaker

LongJump

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Microsoft

Google

Cordys

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Strong Performers And Contenders: Startups, Upstarts, And A Software goliath

Cordys. Cordys is the successor company to Baan, once a strong contender in enterprise

resource planning (ERP) software. Cordys primary strategy is to spread its technology through partnerships with ISVs and service providers, and it has built notable features to support that strategy.5 Cordys partnership efforts are just about to show results on a larger scale, and we expect to see much progress from Cordys during 2011. Cordys reports having about 500 accounts and more than 100,000 individual seats. This represents strong progress in a relatively short period of time.

LongJump. LongJump also brings extensive experience with packaged applications to its PaaS
endeavors. The companys innovations in development tools for multitenant applications give it a strong product. LongJump also hopes to attract a strong following of ISVs and solutions providers, but it is just beginning to show results. We expect to see more in 2011. Forrester estimates that LongJump has at least 100 accounts, perhaps as many as 250.

Google. Google is also a cloud pioneer; three years ago, it began offering a platform to

access the substantial resources that run its search service. Google App Engine (GAE) is the centerpiece of a burgeoning roster of services available for developers at code.google.com. Googles initial target was web developers, but in 2010, it expanded into the enterprise market as well. Googles customer base is difficult to get a fix on, as the service is freely available. Google reported having 250,000 subscribers (individual developers) during the past 12 months, but the number could be much higher. Google sells GAE primarily through its web presence but has begun working with ISVs as well.

Microsoft. Microsoft got into the PaaS game relatively late years after salesforce.com. PaaS is doubly difficult for Microsoft to embrace: It involves not only new technology but also a dramatic change in business model. Microsofts progress is impressive; the company reports having 31,000 customers for its Azure platform. Microsofts partnering efforts are just beginning to kick in, as only about 100 of its enormous partner roster have committed to Azure. The upcoming Azure appliance, which was not subject to this Forrester Wave evaluation, will offer an additional option for service providers that want to leverage their own hosting capabilities. It would have brought Microsoft clearly into the Leader camp of the service provider model.

WaveMaker. Think of WaveMaker as the PowerBuilder of PaaS. The companys clever strategy

was to double down on an innovative tool for creating database applications in Java and supplement that tool with open source Java frameworks to create broader platforms. The result: a nice liftoff in the market, followed by acquisition by VMware. WaveMaker reports having more than 7,000 accounts, and in its short tenure as an independent company, it had signed up between 10 and 20 commercial ISVs.

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Caspio. Caspio is the PaaS pioneer youve probably never heard of. The company was founded

in 2000 and has customers in 40 countries and 2,500 accounts in total. Youve not encountered Caspio because the company focuses on businesspeople, not developers and not ISVs. Caspios reference customers validated this claim: They were businesspeople, not developers. Caspio is best known for creating interactive, database-driven web applications easily. Caspio has sold direct through its web presence and word of mouth, but in 2011, it will begin developing a partner strategy as well.

WorkXpress. Youve probably not heard of WorkXpress and definitely not seen anything like

it either. The company began life as a solutions house, hiring out to create applications. The WorkXpress platform resulted from the observation that there has to be a better way to create solutions. WorkXpress is designed to let business experts create very sophisticated applications. One of the companys reference customers was the operations leader for a small manufacturer who had built an ERP system for his employer while doing his day job. WorkXpress sells directly to mostly small enterprises, reports having between 500 and 1,000 accounts, and has only recently begun to build ISV partnerships.

OrangeScape. One way to look at OrangeScape: It fills the gap in Googles strategy for PaaS

aimed at business experts. OrangeScape runs on top of Googles cloud infrastructure and so coexists with GAE. OrangeScape also hopes soon to fill the same role on Windows Azure. OrangeScapes innovation is its sophisticated spreadsheet-like tool for building application models. The company is just getting started, with about 50 accounts and about 30,000 seats. OrangeScape has a nascent partner program.

Tibco Software. Tibco is one of the largest middleware vendors in the industry, and it

recognized the emergence of cloud computing as a new platform generation early on.6 Tibco has moved relatively quickly to bring its distributed computing technology to the cloud and made key acquisitions like DataSynapse during 2009 to further bolster its portfolio. Tibcos primary interest is in beating its main competitors IBM, Oracle, and Software AG to the market for internal, or private, clouds. But we expect the company to also develop a public-cloud presence. Tibco is just getting started in PaaS, with fewer than 50 accounts and about 10,000 seats.

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SUPPLEMEnTAL MATERIAL Online Resource The online versions of Figures 4 and 5 are an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product evaluations and customizable rankings. Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each solution:

Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.

Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their products functionality. We

used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendors product capabilities.

Customer reference calls. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also
conducted reference calls with two of each vendors current customers. The Forrester Wave Methodology We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) their representation of important PaaS approaches. The number of PaaS choices was too large to fit into Forresters Wave research methodology, so we evaluated a sampling of vendors. Clients should not interpret our decision not to evaluate a vendor as evidence that we feel that vendor is unworthy of consideration. We eliminated vendors that have limited customer references and products that dont fit the scope of our evaluation. After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop the initial evaluation criteria. Our criteria allowed us to look for explicit developer controls over a cloud application created with each PaaS. Some of the PaaS options we evaluated dont have strong developer controls over configuration, deployment, and management those vendors hide these details to simplify the environment. In our experience, enterprise developers dont yet trust these transparent approaches they want controls. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires, demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.

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We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large corporations and like organizations and/or other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document and then score the vendors based on a clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor strategies evolve. EnDnOTES
1

Weve explored the difference between traditional ASP deployment models and SaaS deployment. See the August 14, 2008, Forresters SaaS Maturity Model report. For an analysis of how the PaaS market satisfies the requirements of that audience, see the May 19, 2011, Forrester Wave: Platform-As-A-Service For App Dev And Delivery Pros, Q2 2011 report. We evaluated Heroku but dropped the product from our research because our evaluation criteria would have led to an unfair comparison. We designed our criteria to evaluate PaaS products that provide their own application development tools and services. Heroku provides a PaaS deployment framework and basic application services, but it relies on the Ruby ecosystem to provide development tools, frameworks, and utilities. Please reach out to Forresters inquiry service, if you need more explanation on the importance of specific criteria and guidance how to create a custom Forrester Wave weighting. For more insight on the strategy of Cordys and the turnaround from the initial go-to-market to the current partner-focused approach, see the January 30, 2009, The Strategic Turnaround: Cordys Repositions To Verticals With An Indirect Sales Model report. For an overview of the traditional middleware market, including revenues by vendor, see the December 30, 2009, Market Overview: The Middleware Software Market, 2009 report.

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