Revealed: Confidence trick at heart of cloud computing May 20th 2008

See the confidence trick at the heart of cloud computing? Banking relies on a similar trick, but seems to (mostly) get away with it.

In part one of this article I introduced Phil Wainewright’s five layer PaaS model. Phil asked readers to say which layer they would prefer to use for building a SaaS application. Readers had cast 173 votes by May 15th.

In part two I looked at layer one: do-it-yourself and layer two: managed-hosting. Neither is suitable for SaaS ISVs. In part three I move up to PaaS layer three: cloud computing. Might this be more suitable for ISVs building SaaS solutions?

Cloud computing was the most popular choice of Phil’s readers. 27% said they would prefer it to develop a SaaS application. I wonder how many of them realise that cloud computing, just like banking, relies on a simple confidence trick…

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SaaS ISVs: Know your customers or risk going to jail April 28th 2008

Many countries have strict “Know Your Customer” laws. SaaS ISVs will increasingly have to navigate their way through these laws.

ISVs must consider their jurisdiction, as well as that of their customers, suppliers, processing utilities and data storage providers. Not knowing enough about your customers can be expensive, and could even land you in jail. PaaS providers can add value to European ISVs by abstracting these jurisdiction issues and keeping track of future legal changes.

In Is jetting to Cuba this summer a bad idea for European SaaS ISVs? I reported on how the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) can impact non-US companies. A European travel agent appeared on the OFAC blacklist for selling Cuban holidays.

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