ReadWriteEnterprise

It's been a crazy conference week with VMworld and Dreamforce '11 going on at the same time. News from those shows have been all over ReadWriteWeb's channels this week, like the VMware vFabric Data Director announcement, and CloudStack going 100% open source.

We also looked at storing Salesforce data locally, and Microsoft's digs at a certain virtualization vendor over cloud computing.

This week SplashData will announce the launch of SplashID Enterprise 2.0, featuring updated Windows and Mac OS clients, new mobile apps and a Web-based application for better ID management. They have also integrated the service into Microsoft's Active Directory and now offer a free 30-day trial for unlimited users, and $5 per user per month afterwards.

They are the latest in a long line of password management tools that bridge the gap between traditional packaged software and cloud apps that are designed to be deployed across the enterprise.

An article by Derek Singleton on the blog for Software Advice talks about five things that he sees makes SaaS unique, including the talent draw of cloud companies, the ability to scale up operations more smoothly, the way cloud software is being purchased and consumed and other reasons.

While Singleton makes a lot of sense - and I do like the folks on Software Advice and think they are generally smart guys - he is missing a few major drawbacks with SaaS that are holding things back for better enterprise adoption.