Everybody like to talk about a future of enterprise computing in terms of traditional on premise software models versus software-as-a-service models. But in reality we're looking at a future where both models are blended together to provide the highest amount of flexibility for the business the applications were designed to support.
And instead of weighting for Microsoft, SAP, Oracle or Google to figure that IT organizations might want to take a look at the innovative approach to software deployments that is being pursued by QAD.
This week QAD announced a suite of enterprise applications aimed at manufacturers that allows the customers to blend how they want to roll out the company's software. For instance, customers may choose to run some modules on premise while opting to deliver other companion modules as a service.
More interestingly, the entire suite of applications could be rolled out on premise in one geography and then made available as a service in other geographies as part of a globalization effort. The key to all this flexibility is that data across all these different delivery models is automatically updated and synchronized so customers don't feel like they are dealing with multiple instances of the same application.
What's interesting about all this is while bigger companies are preaching about their religious fervor for one favored software deployment model over another, here's another example of a smaller software company leading the way forward to the next generation of enterprise applications.
No doubt just about every software application is going to be delivered in some form of a blended computing model but if the big vendors are going to talk about it more than actually doing it then maybe they should step aside and let some of the smaller industry players start explaining to people what is actually going to be really happening today instead of some far off tomorrow outlined in a bunch of slides.