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Well in case you haven't heard Google Apps launched it's reseller program about a month ago. What I'm curious about is how many tech consultants out there feel comfortable enough with Google apps as a viable SaaS solution to resell and why, and for those who don't, why not?

There seems to be plenty of Google "fanboys" out there and rightly so as Google has become a leading tech innovator however they are positioned as a powerful proprietary giant in the industry. This vaguely reminds me of Microsoft but Google seems to play nicely with others, for now...

Read more about it here: Google Apps Reseller Program

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AFAIK, Google's AppEngine only supports applications written in Python/Django.

I'm not in the market for a Web-Hosting-Only provider, and I doubt any high-end SaaS shop would, either. Of course, I could be wrong. :-)

Considering all the software version dependencies and the rapid-release cycles of Libraries and Frameworks (especially Rails, which is now on Revision 2.3 -- *Grr!*), it's just not feasible in my mind to create a "homogenized" SaaS Hosting Server that is all things for all applications. At least not for Ruby/Rails.

I've still got an old Rails App in Production that requires an older version of the Soap4R library, for example -- and there's no customer budget to have that App upgraded anytime soon. Meanwhile, my "modern" Rails Apps can't coexist where the older Apps are deployed unless I explicitly deploy unique library versions within those "modern" Rails Apps.

Needless to say, the Rat's Nest of managing versions and dependencies will be an interesting problem for ANY SaaS Hosting Provider to solve; and I personally don't think Google has the Engineering Talent to pull it off. Google may have been the "Heroic" innovator some years ago, but the company has long since lost its direction.

Overall though, I think there's a large profitable market in SaaS for all Service Level providers. Whether it's automated Scalability like RightScale/Mosso, cheap shared hosting options like DreamHost, or a Fully Administered/Managed Solution (my specialty), there's plenty of room for us all to thrive. :-)

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