• Salesforce Mimics Twitter and Facebook; Adds Likes and Replies to Chatter
  

Charles Seybold looks back at the beginning of his software designing days to see what lessons still apply. As he says, “the guidelines for software design leadership are the same as ever.” He dives deep into the three largest influences on today’s software design as well as five guidelines for developing software correctly.

• Confessions of an Old Software Designer
  

It’s no surprise that small-to-medium sized businesses are turning to the cloud, given the enormous advantages the cloud gives in business agility and cost models.  Ben Kepes delivers this case study of how and why a non-profit turned to the cloud.

• Cloud IS the Choice of the New SMB Generation
  

As the layers of cloud computing continue to expand, sub-layers within the stack become exposed and require classification.  Dave McCrory uses his blog to divide PaaS into four distinct models.

• Current PaaS Patterns – Types of Paas

This is a great little nugget from Brian Prentice.  The message is simple: Form follows function.  Brian’s point that, “For the end user, every additional capability beyond what serves their direct purpose is superfluous ornamentation,” is spot-on; this is why we are seeing a trend towards situational applications and applications built on platforms that enable rapid delivery of functionality without the bells and whistles, such as Force.com.

Three key points:

…as a software solution evolves to meet as many as many users “requirements” as possible, it actually ends up obfuscating value to its constituents rather than increasing it.

…users are clearly seeking ways to rid themselves of this ornamentation. That message is largely lost on those responsible for creating these solutions for them.

When function follows clear purpose, form can follow function.