When working at prior jobs, one of the things that always nagged me was the feeling of always being behind. Not behind in "getting work done" sense. That's just a fact of life because there's always more to do than you can get done.
When I first joined TurboPower, several of the guys were placed on a team to write a product named Internet Professional. It was a library containing controls for FTP, SMTP, etc. It was a good product but it was written too late in the game. It was a "Me too" product.
The being behind was more related to timing, to doing something when it's at the leading edge of things. Doing something when the market is ripe for it. Avoiding being "bogged down" while seeing cool things happening, things in which you can't yet invest time.
Over the past days, we've seen announcements of Windows Live. And Scoble writes about Internet Connected Components. Then we see Microsoft memos leaked where Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie write that SaaS is Microsoft's next focus. Copies of those memos are posted on Dave Winer's blog.
Somewhere in there I was led me to the blog What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Sam Ramji, one of the people on the Microsoft Emerging Business Team. In it he writes about Software as a Service (SaaS).
Of course, this software as a service idea isn't new. In the late 1990's, I remember investing in Oracle back because of their Application Service Provider aspirations. And I remember slapping myself because I didn't sell that stock at its peak, just before the bubble burst. Could it be that the market is ready for a focus on this kind of software? Or the market could be made ready by a gorilla like Microsoft?
I'd like to find out. I'm giving myself a year to learn about the people in this area and to figure out what kind of niche I can fill.
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Sean Winstead
Tags: ISV