Platforms and Lock-in

Gluecon Wednesday, Mark Suster said that Force.com AppExchange & are mostly about blocking. I think that it is almost an exact quote. As tweeted and hoped that someone see to react. It did not, at least on Twitter. But had few people mention me with some questions about what meant the brand. The truth is that I do not know, and I cannot speak on behalf of the brand.

Any platform provides some degree of lock-in APIs lock a developer in particular interaction mode. When using Flickr API, make decisions that I blocked on that platform. I can help others, but each one is a certain amount of work and switching costs can be very high depending on the depth of the API. Similarly, to create an application for Facebook, it only works there. I architect things I can redistribute in other platforms, but it's a job that I blocked on.

At the other end of the spectrum are works of IaaS as AppEngine, Amazon Web Services, and Heroku. To varying degrees, each of these causes some lock-in Heroku is probably the most general. The Rails code execute can have pretty much run any other Rails environment, but I have to live within some limitations for running on Heroku. Sure that AWS is only Linux on EC2, but as soon as use S3, SimpleDB, or anything else, I've blocked. In the same way AppEngine and BigTable.

Before this I am not very sure what brand it would be only through sales. Force.com is true, is largely about creating applications that work with data from the sales force, and if I have invested time to build a Force.com application or gotten used to the characteristics of one I bought is more difficult for me to change, but heck, that is true for almost any platform. I am quite hevily invested in OS X at this time, but said that you due to the ability of OS X to run applications is primarily on blockade at would be a stretch. It is part of value.

Say that something is primarily "about lock-in" implies that it provides another little value because lock-in is the quid pro quo that we pay most of the platforms for the value they provide. The fact that customers buy SF apps to enhance your experience leads me to believe that they are seeing value and denies comment Mark for my reasoning.

So, perhaps mark to write a blog entry that gives us his thoughts on the platforms. Until then, I'm not sure I see the logic.

Posted by windley on May 27, 2011 2: 24 PM

View the original article here