Corporate Blog

The History of Native Applications

By: Bill Appleton on Aug 13, 2010

In and around the year 2001 I started to create web applications that completely exploited a given service architecture without any other server support. Using the DreamFactory Player, the application would come down to the client and then start talking directly to the cloud. This allowed us to connect rich client user interfaces directly to powerful cloud services. There are mind-boggling advantages to this architecture for cloud applications.

Since all communication is between the desktop and the service architecture, these applications are globally scalable. You get the application from our web site once and then you are done with us. The web service might not be globally scalable, but we sure are. In addition, these applications are much more secure for the customer, because their confidential data and single sign-on information never touches our servers. That's good, because we don't have any servers. We live off the cloud.

One of the biggest advantages to this architecture is that these applications are extremely fast. We can execute most service transactions in less than a quarter of a second. If we had to proxy the transaction through some other server then the time balloons to around three or four seconds. This is a huge difference that really determines what type of application you can build in the first place. For example, when the user clicks on a popup menu we can dynamically populate the drop down list prior to display.

This was obviously the right architecture for building applications on cloud platforms, but there were massive and unprecedented technical difficulties in learning how to create software that could work in this manner. We had to build a compelling application with only the raw services that were available to us, and in the beginning these were quite limited. The applications itself had to be built out of individual entities available in the cloud database, nothing else. We had to develop new ways to cache and leverage the data to make sure the applications were performant. We also needed a new security model for addressing cloud services from the client. Many changes have been made to the DreamFactory Player over the last ten years to accommodate all these needs.

The first service platform that was rich enough to support this new type of applications was the .Net My Services (Hailstorm) product from Microsoft. We built an amazing set of calendars and other widgets on top of this platform, but Microsoft cancelled the project in 2002. Soon thereafter salesforce.com started pushing their REST and then SOAP service architecture, and we started building some really amazing applications on top of salesforce. They provided a way for us to embed these application inside an IFRAME with single sign-on credentials so that the DreamFactory applications could work as a seamless part of the salesforce CRM product.

Other salesforce partners pursued a different strategy. They would embed a web application written in JSP, ASP or whatever in the IFRAME. When they received the single sign-on credentials they used them from the server side to perform limited integration with salesforce mixed with their own data and process. In the worst case scenario they just embedded a pre-existing application and somehow tried to coordinate their account with the current salesforce user. We needed a way to explain how our applications were different to salesforce and the media. I started referring to other applications as "billboards" because they were basically just advertisements for services outside of the ecosystem, and I started calling our new style of application "native" because we totally leveraged the salesforce platform.

Customers can definitely tell the difference. Our "native" applications store all their data in the customer's own salesforce account, so you can use salesforce dashboards to report on our applications, or salesforce workflow to customize them. You can add custom fields to various objects and these fields show up in our user interfaces. Customers really responded to the new security message as well. They don't have to worry about the security of our our data center because we don't have a data center. We can't lose their data and we can't see their information. As a result DreamFactory Software has published some of the most popular applications on salesforce's marketplace the AppExchange. We currently have the number one title in Project Management, Release Management, Document Management, Reports and Dashboards, Application Development, and a few other categories.

The term "native application" is now widely used on various cloud platforms including Intuit Workplace and Cisco Webex Connect. Sometimes the vendor does not consider applications written with the DreamFactory Player to be "native" because they are pushing some other tool set, but that is a political distinction, not a technical one. Things are good at what they were designed to do, and the DreamFactory Player is the best way to build and deploy a cloud application that I am aware of. Learning to build applications that live off the cloud was the right strategy for us.

Talking With Ray Ozzie

By: Bill Appleton on Mar 17, 2010

I had the pleasure of talking recently with Ray Ozzie about the Windows Azure platform at Microsoft's annual Professional Developers Conference. Ray had given the keynote earlier, and all of day one was focused on Windows Azure, especially the new product SQL Azure which they were rolling out at the conference. This is a self healing, zero maintenance, remotely administed SQL database hosted on an elastic grid. Customers can remotely change the size of their database up to 50 GB, and spawn any number of new databases with a click or two.

Azure is more than a software technology. Ray talked about how the software goes in the box, the box in the rack, the rack in the case, and then the cases are positioned around the world in co-located data centers. Every time Microsoft does this the cost is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. One week we noticed some speed problems on the Azure Blob service, the next week Microsoft dropped two new data centers and the problems were gone. You get the idea.

So our engineering teams are working on a direct interface to SQL Azure with no servers in between. This architecture couldn't be cleaner: the DreamFactory Player on one end an a SQL Azure database on the other. The results are quite impressive: fixed and variable response time for average transactions are up to three times faster than the other cloud platforms. There is never a lag or delay: this database is dedicated to my company. The DreamFactory Suite can load gigantic projects or very large data tables with awe-inspiring speed.

This product is a perfect fit for IT, because they can use all their existing tools for moving SQL data in and out of the database, or they can use tools from the DreamFactory Suite. Our TableTop product is great for browsing and reporting on all the data. The Monarch product can move data between SQL Azure and all other cloud platforms. They can use Formfactory for application or forms building. We have a great suite of tools for maximizing the potential of SQL Azure.

One problem is that customers must often administer their new cloud database with the same old tools they were using for their hosted database. It's three steps into the cloud and then two steps back towards the data center. To solve this problem we have created a fully functional Cloud Administrator for SQL Azure, so that end users can administer their SQL Azure database configuration from any browser with no software installation at all. This is an incredible breakthrough that makes SQL Azure easy to administer for less-technical business users and IT professionals alike. I think Mr. Ozzie would be proud.

Cloud Computing Mainstreams

By: Eric Rubin on Jan 18, 2010

Cloud computing enters mainstream IT. This presentation outlines the evolution of PaaS, key trends, and key vendors in 2010. View my slideshare presentation here.

Independent Cloudware Vendors (ICVs), the new ISV

By: Eric Rubin on Jul 28, 2008

At DreamFactory we coined the term “Cloudware” to illuminate a new type of web application architecture. This new architecture follows a similar division of labor as the software versus hardware stack in today’s premise based solutions. Put simply, cloudware is to cloud computers as software is to hardware.

Cloud computers are the virtual equivalent of your PC or Server. They offer the processing, storage and other infrastructure required to run your favorite S/W applications. The trailblazers in this new market of cloud platforms are companies like Salesforce.com, Amazon, Intuit, Google, and Cisco.

Much of the focus in the market today is on this half of the equation- the realization of utility based computing. The attention is justified as these virtual computers are game changing. They offer elastic processing, storage, and db capabilities for the next generation of developers. The emerging leaders in this space are companies that have the enormous scale and deep pockets to offer these virtual computers at commoditized prices. Buying cpu cycles, database, and storage is now truly like buying electricity.

This frees developers like us from having to build the infrastructure too. If you think about it, the first generation of Web developers had to have core competence in the whole stack- i.e. required to achieve operational excellence in software and virtual hardware. The next generation of Web developers will likely follow the natural specialization path that software did when it unbundled from the mainframe in the 70 and 80’s- when the term Independent Software Vendor (ISV) first appeared and companies like Microsoft, Symantec, Autodesk, Intuit, etc began to emerge.

This then shines a light on the consumer facing half of utility platforms- the Independent Cloudware Vendors (ICV) built directly on top of these next generation platforms. DreamFactory’s DreamTeam Project Management application is a great example. It is delivered native to the dominant cloud platforms in the market today. This specialization in cloudware offers DreamFactory great economies which we pass through to the customer in the form of really robust products, at a much lower subscription rate.

In short, the relationship between Cloudware and cloud platforms is symbiotic. I have been in software for over 20 years now, and there has always been one constant- Software sells Hardware. There really is no difference in this new world, Cloudware sells Cloud Computers.

The Importance of Habitual Destinations in a Platform

By: Eric Rubin on Nov 28, 2007

In some ways we are all like Norm on Cheers. We are creatures of habit drawn to community. Once we have found our preferred destinations, it’s hard to pull us off our bar stools. This seems to be more pronounced in our corporate lives where the herd dynamic further slows the movement that drives change.

In the world of platforms, these “habitual destinations” play a key role- and are potentially the game changer for the next generation of platforms. They are the anchor tenants that seed the creation of the new platform.

For example in the consumer world of platforms, think of MySpace, Facebook and eBay. Their anchor tenants have generated a user community in the 100’s of millions that habitually frequent these destinations. This then becomes the ante to court an ecosystem of partners to develop value added capabilities to service the new marketplaces they create. You can see a virtuous cycle emerge; end users spend a greater percentage of their time doing more in the same destination- which in turn creates additional barriers to entry and switching costs to the benefit of the platform provider.

In the professional markets think Salesforce.com and WebEx. Each has an enormous following of professionals that habitually frequent their destinations. Each is also leveraging their anchor tenants as a gravitational force to attract third parties to contribute to the ecosystem. Again, from the end user perspective, you get more productivity from a single destination. And again there is an advantage in critical mass to discourage competition in that it creates higher barriers to entry and higher switching costs. Moreover, in the professional world, integration between solutions is important, and this is an inherent aspect to these platforms.

Each of these examples also highlights the other half of the habitual destination equation- community (or in business terms, collaboration). This is the disruptive part of the equation that threatens the entrenched players. The Window’s desktop is arguably the most dominant destination for any user, but it was designed to be an island (the p stands for personal…) and collaboration is the Achilles heel that threatens the Windows franchise as the defacto destination. In other words users are spending less time on the desktop and more time on collaborative (read web) destinations.

To summarize, the trend in next generation platforms is that they are anchored by a habitual destination, and built from the ground up on the foundation of community.

BI Platforms- Solving the Paradox of Functionality vs Usability

By: Eric Rubin on Dec 5, 2007

Is it possible to have a “one size fits all” BI application that appeals to both power users and executive users? It has historically been a catch 22 leaving the executive user in the dark. On one end of the spectrum you have to generalize the application to solve for any problem, and on the other end of the spectrum you need to solve unique problems for individuals. Distilling it down to its purest form, power users (analysts, domain experts, ops people) require robust tools but business users require straight forward applications.

The common approach is to try to dumb down the tool for the business user. But this has never worked- tools adoption within business users has always been low and that isn’t likely to change.

A new approach, with a paradigm shift, is needed – delivering BI as a platform, not just a tool. The elements required of this platform are three-fold
1) A robust set of tools to address the needs of sophisticated power users solving general problems.
2) A frictionless publishing platform for building and improving the unique domain specific apps that these experts produce. Of equal importance, these apps need to be published to “habitual” destinations where end users can consume these applications effortlessly without a behavioral change
3) Built-in “one click” customization in the delivered apps to enable full interactivity for the end-user – with zero programming.

Put simply, the solution is to provide a platform that allows power users to be s/w publishers. The end result is that business users get their unique requirements for BI delivered in a way they can consume it – as a professional application – not as a tool, and not as a report.

The difference between an app and a report is also an important distinction when gauging the value of BI for decision making. Reports are flat, serial and output only. They discourage exploration in all directions. Applications offer a dialogue – they’re fully interactive, they allow for simultaneous and threaded exploration, and they support input as well as output.

As an example of the paradigm shift, let’s explore a mini app built on the Carousel BI platform – Sales Forecast Cockpit. A power user – in this case a sales operations person – creates the application using a simple drag, drop, and connect model from a palette of business components. This specific app provides views of your opportunities by closed, commit, and raw pipeline. Carousel’s built-in right-click customization allows users to change views by rep, by product, by status, or by any of the criteria that an opportunity object allows. The app is fully interactive, supporting input as well as display. For example, you can drill down on the detail of an opportunity and change its status from pipe to commit. The estimated time to build this type of mini-app is 1-2 hours. Sales ops then publishes the app – in this case to a tab in salesforce.com – for the consumers of the app (sales managers). Sales managers have immediate and frictionless access to the product with no behavioral change as salesforce.com is a habitual destination. They can drill down to see detailed information by clicking on a chart, change the slice of data they’re seeing with a single click, and even perform minor enhancements to the product in the field (or iterate back to sales ops to complete the cycle.)

In short, the platform approach addresses the needs of both the power user and the executive masses without compromising either end of the spectrum.

Cloud Based Platforms- What’s All the Excitement About?

By: Eric Rubin on Nov 27, 2007

At the beginning of 2006, Salesforce.com introduced a visionary concept that is changing the way corporations buy applications. They merged a cloud based business platform with consumer oriented marketplace concepts, resulting in the AppExchange. Less than two years later and they have over 700 partners participating in the ecosystem.

It turns out that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Nearly every significant technology company has introduced a similar combination- Cisco/WebEx Connect, Microsoft Live/Online/Dynamics, Amazon S3, Oracle On-Demand, Sugar Exchange, SAP A1S, Google Gears and recently NetSuite SuiteBundler.

What’s behind this trend?

From one perspective, there is an open field opportunity to be the next dominant platform provider for business software, and the battle lines are being drawn.

But from my perspective this is much more than a turf battle. It turns out that the efficiencies offered by cloud based platforms benefit all of the parties in the equation - the platform provider, partner community and the end-customer.

From the platform’s viewpoint, these new apps extend their footprint in the enterprise, raising switching costs and thereby reducing churn. They can also monetize their excess bandwidth in new ways, both to their installed base with platform licenses as well as with the partner ecosystem via marketing services.

To the partner, the platform can dramatically reduce time to value, lower customer acquisition costs, and turn large fixed upfront costs into much smaller variable costs.

The end customer gets to better leverage their investment in the anchor tenant (in the case of AppExchange, the anchor tenant is salesforce.com).

Probably the most powerful aspect of these platforms, however, is that they enable a third option for IT- best in class applications developed by third parties that are Native to the platform. In the past IT had to choose between one or the other- “jack of all trades” suite providers that were tightly integrated or best of breed applications with poor interoperability. Now customers can have their cake and eat it to- best of breed native apps that share a common data and services’ bus- and are fully interoperable "out of the box".

As the first company to build applications from the ground up on these new platforms, we are experiencing the movement first-hand. At an ever increasing rate the mantra we are hearing from the ecosystem buyers is "we want native apps".

What's New With DreamFactory at Dreamforce 2007

By: Eric Rubin on Sep 13, 2007

We have been very busy at DreamFactory since the launch of AppExchange in ’06. We have grown from one application (DreamTeam) to a suite of 7 category leading applications in our “Essentials suite”. During this period we have experienced a tremendous uptake in customer adoption and have well over 1,000 companies using one or more of our applications.

DreamForce is the season where the DreamFactory app machine goes into overdrive, and we will be featuring significant enhancements to nearly every application in our suite, including:

1) A time and expense module integrated with DreamTeam
2) Advanced resource management for DreamTeam
3) A major rev of Carousel - introducing “plug and play’ mini apps that take I/O dashboards to new heights
4) Microsoft Office interoperability with FormFactory

We are also pleased to announce a new product in the suite - DoX for ad hoc document collaboration.

DreamFactory embodies a new pace of innovation which extends into every aspect of our business. A powerful and virtuous cycle is emerging that empowers the customer in ways that are not possible with traditional s/w delivery. It’s simple and powerful - customer adoption drives CDI (customer driven innovation) which drives our delivery of continuously improving products. In essence, we view our mission as unlocking our customer’s domain expertise and transforming this into best in class business applications. Think of it as “have it your way” applied to the most critical applications.

We will be demonstrating all of these capabilities and more at DreamForce so please stop by Booth #229 to catch up with us.

DreamFactory Speaking Panels at Dreamforce 2007

By: Bill Appleton on Sep 13, 2007

Hi everyone,

Dreamforce 2007 this year is just around the corner from Sunday Sept 16-19. DreamFactory will be in Booth #229. Come by and learn about our suite of applications for sales, marketing and services. We have great apps that are huge time savers for advanced business analytics, project management & team collaboration and release management to highlight a few of our applications.

Also, DreamFactory will be on 3 speaking panels this year and I'll be speaking on these 2 below:

Leveraging the Best of AppExchange and WebEx Connect

http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/tracks/tracks/a1y300000004C9ZAAU/

The combination of AppExchange and WebEx Connect, a collaborative composite application platform from WebEx (now a part of Cisco), will enable a new generation of on-demand business applications and services. Learn first hand from developers on both platforms the strengths of each and how they both should play a role in your development and distribution strategy.

2:30 PM (PDT)
Tue, Sep 18, '07

From Garage to Glory: Secret Tips & Techniques of Top AppExchange Developers

http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/tracks/tracks/a1y300000004C9YAAU/

Build an app in days. Market to customers on the AppExchange. Generate real revenues and grow your business. Learn from the top developers and entrepreneurs that have done all three as they share their stories and secrets on building an on-demand company on the AppExchange.

11:30 AM (PDT)
Wed, Sep 19, '07

Ken Neff, VP of Products & Services will be on another panel talking about the new meta-data push capability we added to Snapshot that will ultimately allow the ability to push customizations to production environments:

On-Demand Development Lifecycle & Tools

http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/tracks/tracks/a1y300000004C9WAAU/

Track: Developer: Apex & Beyond

2:30 PM (PDT)
Tue, Sep 18, '07

See you there!

Join DreamFactory on Work 2.0 Web Seminar with Phil Wainewright

By: Eric Rubin on Jul 12, 2007

Hi,

Tomorrow I'll be featured as a guest presenter on Phil Wainewright's webex series called "Series Work 2.0: Conversations with Phil Wainewright." Phil is an Industry Analyst and well-known blogger on SaaS and On-demand Topics. I'll be talking about DreamTeam on WebEx Connect. Join the call if you're interested in getting a sneak peak of what we're buidling on the new WebEx Connect platform.

Details:

July 13th @ 11:30 AM PDT | 12:30 PM MDT | 1:30 PM CDT | 2:30 PM EDT

Join Web pundit Phil Wainewright for a series of unscripted conversations with business people to learn how they are transforming business processes using WebEx. Gain insight into the new collaborative social software and its use in today's working world.

The way we work has changed. Gone are the days of large, vertically integrated organizations where everyone involved in a project worked for the same company. Today we work with a globally distributed network of partners, colleagues and customers. Our competitive advantage comes from speed, flexibility and connections, not size, scale and seclusion.

As one of the first companies to develop applications on the WebEx Connect platform and a key AppExchange partner, DreamFactory has unique insight into designing applications for SaaS platforms. The DreamFactory suite of solutions for sales, marketing and project management are specifically designed to support the new collaborative work paradigm.

Welcome to the DreamFactory blog.

By: Eric Rubin on Jul 12, 2007

We are entering an era of unprecedented change in the delivery of enterprise applications. SaaS providers are leading the charge with rapid innovations addressing the immediate needs of businesses. Moreover, they are delivering these capabilities with a new business model that is in direct alignment with the customer’s success. New SaaS platforms have emerged that threaten to unseat established providers by offering a shared “enterprise o/s”. These new platforms are enabling a new generation of ISV’s like DreamFactory that create applications that are both Best of Breed AND Native- sharing enterprise data and services- eliminating application silos or the need for intermediate integration services.

This blog will focus on the opportunities and challenges of this category of next generation ISV’s who build native products on enterprise SaaS platforms like Salesforce.com’s AppExchange, and WebEx Connect.

Our agenda is to share our perspectives in the hopes of stimulating a dialogue that in turn can help shape our direction moving forward.

So please stay tuned.