These several "layers" of functionality potentially differentiate Microsoft from the competition.

Quoted: Our research identifies several layers of functionality ranging from system infrastructure to business process. Microsoft’s offerings include:
- System infrastructure services (Amazon EC2)
- Application infrastructure services (Force.Com & AppEngine)
- Application services (Exchange Online)

Didn't see this coming.

Quoted: Force.com for Facebook is a free set of tools and services that enables developers to harness the power of the Facebook and Force.com platforms to build business applications for Facebook.

Quoted: The SaaS 20 Stock Index tracks the software as a service market, using software as a service companies and a few traditional high-tech firms moving into SaaS.

Quoted: The key to being able to view the Cloud as hardware is in which services from the Cloud you consume. Does the Cloud Platform you’re looking at present you with essentially virtual hardware, or is it focused on fairly proprietary services? In other words, are these Cloud Services something that impacts your software architecture very little and is it easy to find extremely similar services from many vendors?
...
I would argue that Amazon EC2 and S3 qualify as virtual hardware while Amazon SimpleDB does not.

Interesting.

Quoted: First, was the story of GE launching Aravo, a SaaS Supply Chain solution. I was surprised to see this one pass so quietly, because it is so symbolic of the uptake of SaaS among Big Enterprise. There aren’t many companies who can serve as a better poster child for this than GE, for example.
...
Second, I was perusing the latest good quarter’s results from my old Alma mater Callidus, and chanced upon some fascinating figures for their SaaS business:

I agree. Interested how this plays out at Microsoft w.r.t. Azure.

Quoted: In this era everything is different - the stack, the players and the potential for value creation. Let's outline the basic shape of this emerging era, in particular defining what makes up the new stack

HCM is a natural fit for SaaS...

Quoted: "Besides the need for simplicity around human capital [software], there's also the question of where do companies want to invest time and resources," Singh said, who was with Smoley at a Workday event in San Francisco on Tuesday. "Frankly, HCM isn't considered an area of innovation and growth for companies. You're looking for lower cost of ownership and a [faster] time element, and that makes HCM SaaS much more attractive."

Quoted: The services by design approach, if it works, could let SAP protect its profitable licensed software business, get more services revenue from those customers, and address concerns large companies have with putting some of their most sensitive business data in the cloud. For mission-critical applications like accounting, "I don't think large companies will go on demand," Kagermann says.

Quoted: Is it just me, or do the announcements we hear from Salesforce seem to just make a lot more sense than a lot of the tie-ups we hear about on the consumer side of the Web? Last month, the company announced a deal with Google to launch Salesforce for Google Apps, and from what I’ve seen in my brief tour of Visualforce, we’re about to see a lot of really useful applications being cranked out by developers in the Salesforce community. It certainly adds more credence to the theory that Facebook apps are just for fun.