Welcome to Web 3.0: Now Your Other Computer is a Data Center

This guest post is written byMarc Benioff, chairman and CEO ofsalesforce.com');' shape='rect'>salesforce.com. He has been widely recognized for pioneering innovation with honors such as the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the SDForum Visionary Award, Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, and being ranked No. 7 on the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT survey by eWEEK.

For almost ten years now, we have been witnessing a decisive shift from client-server software to software as a service. Google, eBay, and Amazon.com established the value of multi-tenant internet applications in the consumer market, and salesforce.com, Google, and others have been proving that this same multi-tenant model is winning in the enterprise as well.

This shift to Web-based applications has generated two powerful waves so far. Now, we are seeing a third wave?one that we are calling Web 3.0?and it may prove to be the most significant and disruptive yet to the traditional software industry.

While the world doesn't need another buzzword, I feel that both the emerging generation of entrepreneurs and developers, as well as traditional software ISVs, need to grasp the enormity of Web 3.0 and its potential to create change, disruption, and opportunity. Web 3.0 is about replacing existing software platforms with a new generation of platforms as a service.

To put Web 3.0 into perspective, we need to look at all of the major waves in the history of the Web. They are not defined by distinct periods of time, but are best seen as overlapping waves of adoption.

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