Thank you for your comments. We agree with you regarding control. Lack of control is, and should be, a question from all enterprise customers, regardless of vendor size or balance sheet. You mentioned two reasons for concern around lack of control—mundane physical infrastructure disruption and negative liquidity.

In April (http://bungeeconnect.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/announcing-bungee-grid-ec2-bungee-application-server-and-community-source-code-licensing-plans/) we announced our approach to providing businesses with the control they need to embrace PaaS.

First, the Bungee Application Server provides enterprises with the ability to self-host an instance of the Bungee Grid ( http://bungeeconnect.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/announcing-bungee-application-server/ ). This directly addresses the issues around mundane physical delivery disruption. Customers can host the BAS in the manner that best suits their needs, whether that is on their own hardware, with 3rd party hosting providers or even Amazon EC2. Bungee Connect is the only Platform-as-a-Service to offer enterprises this federated hosting model.

Secondly, we also announced licensing options ( http://bungeeconnect.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/bungee-labs-outlines-source-code-release-plans-for-bungee-application-server/ ) that provide customers with access to the source code for the components that comprise Bungee Connect. In the event that Bungee Labs ceases to exist, customers have access to the code under licenses that enable them to continue running and maintaining the server code.

Like you, we don’t believe a one-size-fits-all approach is going to work for many businesses. We will continue to add options that will provide enterprises with maximum control over their application platforms.

In the coming weeks, we will further address this topic here, on this blog.
We have presented these options to many organizations who have confirmed that this is the right approach. I hope you will agree.

Please reach to me directly if you would like to discuss this further.

Dave

Using examples like thin client access and wikipedia to draw conclusions does not cut ice with the mid- sized IT enterprise. They are all well aware of Web client access and many have collab solutions.

The core concerns do not even involve security; lack of control is the issue I hear in my business of de-funking ERP and vertical solutions and creating w20 alternatives to server heavy failures.

The industry is just starting to compile its list of ‘disaster stories’ of hosted, toasted services that became unreachable. Even Amazon and some notable SAAS and PAAS providers have shown true colors by saying nothing when the Sh-t hit the fan.

Venture backed platform providers (grid, cloud, SAAS, PAAS) are look upon with a jaundiced eye by many established mid=sized ‘real’ businesses that are longer lived than many of the vendors they attach themselves to. My clients cannot turn over invoicing to a company that raised 5-10M, and might not provide continuity if the next round is DNF.

So what can we do with on-demand applications and platform providers to ensure continuity and availability? I recommend that the SAAS-PAAS-Grid industry find ways to get third party certification for continuity in the event of negative liquidity or more mundane physical data infrastructure disruption. There should also be a underwriting standard for insuring these VC backed hosts.

Without this type of Gold Seal on PAAS, or other viable fail over solutions, SAP, Oracle, and IBM will rule the roost for many mission critical use cases. It’s a matter of control.