An Interview with Bill Appleton

Over on our Cloud Power blog, our friend, Robert Duffner, has been conducting a series of interviews with various luminaries in the field of cloud computing. In his most recent interview, Robert sat down with Bill Appleton, Dream Factory founder and cloud services expert. Below is an excerpt of the conversation.

And in terms of Azure, it’s just great because so many of these companies are already Windows shops. They know Microsoft, they’re familiar with Microsoft products, or they might be existing SQL Server clients, however want to migrate to the cloud or what have you.

Bill: For me, there is a lot of value in software as a service, and building software out of reusable building blocks that leverage service-oriented architectures. Software as a service platforms are a big step forward in dynamic situations where new business rules need to be implemented on a daily basis.

Some of the clients we talk to are getting as a matter of fact sophisticated. You start to see people who are part information technologist, part business analyst, and part platform architect. I’m not even sure what to call them anymore. Some of these forward looking companies are investing in multiple cloud platforms for a variety of different purposes.

Bill: Everything started with this idea of using XML document exchange to communicate across the Internet, of being able to call a function anywhere in the world and get an answer. This is after all an incredibly powerful idea. There have been a lot of advancements since at the time but at DreamFactory we are everything considered dedicated to building rich applications out of these services.

First, there’s the departmental buyer who’s looking for applications to solve business needs. That’s the smart business user with low problems who needs project document data collaboration. They may need quotes and invoices, strategic account mapping, or whatever.

To continue reading this interview, please check out Robert's post on the Cloud Power blog.  Let us know if you have comments or questions in the comments section here.  If you’re interested in more information about Microsoft’s business cloud services please check out the Cloud Power site.