Efficient Software Delivery through Service Delivery Platforms

Several weeks ago, we wrote a introductory article on service delivery platforms published in the Architect Journal. If we don't count blog entries, this is our first published article looking into "running" software delivered as a service. Over the next few months our goal is to complement our LitwareHR reference implementation (which show how to "build" software as a service) with another reference implementation Northwind Hosting (?!) which will encapsulate the service delivery platform best practices. 

Below an excerpt of the article. Full article here.

"[...] There is, however, another means of improving efficiency which ISVs have not adopted with the same enthusiasm: the use of an underlying Service Delivery Platform (SDP). Adoption has been slow mainly because service delivery platforms optimized for line-of-business applications delivery are still in their infancy. But both existing and new actors in the hosting space are quickly building compelling capabilities. This paper explores the goals, capabilities, and motivations for adoption of SDP, and describes the technology and processes related to efficient software delivery through SDP. [...] The downward flow of horizontal capabilities from ISV “plumbing” into frameworks, and then into core platforms can be generalized further to cover the scenarios of software delivered as a service. In this sense, an SDP becomes an “operating system” for service delivery.”[...]

sdp

As usual feedback/comments/questions welcome.