Webapps are mainly focused on the consumer. Accessibility, pricing, ease of use and remote updates are a natural fit for this market.

Few apps are actually focused on the entreprise market. I’m not talking about Enterprise 2.0 as some like to call it — a different approach of working and collaborating — but rather about using traditional webapps in the entreprise.

Companies do recognise benefits of using webapps and they’ve already started to switch internal software to webapps; the collaboration nature of webapps makes a perfect sense in the context of the enterprise.

Actually, it’s not the features or the licensing cost but more the delivery model that makes companies reluctant to subscribe to Internet services.

Trust, Privacy and Control

The fundamental difference between consumer and enterprise needs is about trust, privacy and control.

Companies are not yet ready to put their confidential data on someone else computer; it will take time for Internet companies to be trusted; even Google is still not there and privacy policies are not enough to build trust.

On the other hand, companies trust their IT department but distributing webapps (as classic software) is complex to manage for both IT and providers.

We have a situation where service providers want to license webapps because they want control on software; companies wants to buy webapps as software because they want privacy of their data.

Packaging Web Apps as Virtual Appliances

A pragmatic and technical solution might help both parties to be happy: delivering webapps as virtual appliances.

With virtualization technology, you can build a webapp in a trusted, tested and controlled environment ready to be deployed inside the enterprise whatever the platform is; build one, deploy everywhere.

On the IT department point of view, deploying the appliance would be a lot easier; no need to install a specific OS, configure a web server, setup a database; everything would be self-contained into the virtual appliance — with the guarantee that it runs safely and controlled in-house.

On the provider point of view, there would be no difference managing these appliances than managing hosted servers. Updates would be delivered over the Internet to a distributed network of appliances across customers. Licensing remains the same as with hosted webapps, it’s just that software is virtualized inside enterprise walls.

The idea is not actually new. VMware already packages popular open-source applications as virtual appliances.

Virtual appliances are revolutionizing the way enterprise software is developed, deployed, and managed. Customers can easily install and deploy virtual appliances for pre-integrated solution stacks that speed up time to value and simplify software management.

Using Amazon EC2, you can even host your virtual appliances and pay only for what you use (in terms of CPU, storage and bandwith) — a very good fit for small businesses who still want a dedicated service.

The way we get software has changed, we can use these technologies to better sell to the enterprise without waiting for them to be opened for the Internet. Web 2.0 for business is not dead, it’s still software and we just need to deliver it.

UPDATE (28-03-08): SaaS as an Appliance is also discussed in a blog post at Computing at Scale.