When a company vows to turn an industry on its head, it might not seem surprising for it to announce plans to host an event called 'Summer 05' during the Australian winter. That is what Salesforce.com, one of the market leaders in supplying solutions to customers over the internet, has done.
Tzuo Tien, the company's senior vice-president for products, said the world of software creation was now in its third stage which was radically different from the first two.
'A long time ago, it was all customised software. Then came client/server. Now with Web-based offerings such as Amazon, Google, eBay and ourselves, we are giving power back to the users,' he said.
The original model was created by IBM. It sold the hardware, software and the services necessary to make everything work. This method was expensive but you got custom-made software.
The Unix world ushered in shrink-wrapped software that was cheaper and more standardised, but still expensive and often hard to tweak to suit a particular business.
Now we have on-demand software. Nobody needed to be taught how to use Amazon or Google, Mr Tzuo said. Mr Tzuo and his company are not just targeting a few big players such as Oracle, Siebel or SAP. They are going after the entire software industry.