About Us

AppRapids is an open source information service. This blog is a test and will provide me with information that furthers my understanding of how information diffuses via the World Wide Web. The focus of this blog / information service is on the boundary between on premises enterprise software and “services” available via an Internet connection. Sometimes these are called “cloud services.” At other times, marketing specialists use “Software as a Service” or “Platform as a Service”. The proliferation of acronyms like SaaS and PaaS server to confuse enterprise customers and often the vendors themselves. We want to focus on what makes sense, and we will point out what seems out of balance.

The service is very simple. I have hired a number of professionals to assist me in identifying interesting open source documents. We are then going to talk about those articles and the organizations whose products and services are described in the articles. Some articles will be more of an “MBA slant.” I take a dim view of those who learned business in university. I prefer to learn from those who have done business well and made a profit.

In a sense, we are providing  abstracts of articles we think are important and available in the open source. The sources include online articles, blog posts, and some documents produced by various government agencies. I will make an attempt to get a sponsor for this blog. Early on, I want to insert code for Google’s AdSense. Nevertheless, expect us to take a sharp, critical view when we discuss technology, companies, services, and assertions based on data we think are “interesting”, which is my code word for specious or probably flawed in some way.

Going forward, I want to continue to explore how the open source information follows a particular story and what entities surface in those stories. If you have comments or suggestions to make about this research exercise, please, write me at gumdrop1@mail.com.

Stephen E. Arnold, December 6, 2011