PaaS will become Custom SaaS

The SaaS marketplace is following the same path as the Enterprise Software market of 1980s and 1990s. First applications were sold are "turnkey" solutions and vendors kept the source code to themselves as the "secret sauce". Ofcourse customers wanted to customize them so application were developed so they can be configured and the more successful applications became platforms that the application was built on so that they could be changed more easily.

Salesforce.com is trying to create a customization platform via Force.com etc.

Other (smaller) SaaS vendors need to move their applications to standard stacks:
- Java
- PHP/Perl
- Ruby
-.NET
and get them running under a PaaS product like Cloud Foundry.

Then they will have a basis for re-architecting their product to make it easier to customize by:
- integrating with RAD tools like Eclipse and Source Control like GIT.
- Perhaps developing a core part of the application that are services that are not customized and an outer core that can be customized.
- Writing the documentation that developers need to customize the product.
- Perhaps running it on there own-labeled Cloud Foundry implementation on Amazon AWS.

Surely, Enterprise software vendors will also move their products to standard stacks in a PaaS product to more effectively compete with the Saas product vendors.

Products like SaaSgrid that are proprietary tools for building SaaS application are repositioning a PaaS. SaaGrid is now Apprenda Platform as a Serice for the .NET platform.

We will know this is starting to happen when PaaS vendors announce support for applications rather that just system software products and start adding more features for developing SaaS applications.

The PaaS market is getting crowded so this is an indication of a market starting to develop. For Java alone there a dozen participants:

   Amazon Elastic Beanstalk 
   CloudBees Run@Cloud
   Cumulogic 
   Google App Engine
   IBM SmartCloud Application Services
   Microsoft Azure 
   Oracle Public Cloud
   OutSystems Agile Platform
   Red Hat OpenShift 
   Salesforce.com Heroku for Java
   VMWare CloudFoundry
   WSO2 Stratos/StratosLive 

References
Custom SaaS Calls for RAD PaaS