The weekly bulletin is a great resource for LongJump users and includes product and service updates, hints and tips, training dates, and other useful information.
Last week, I mentioned we would be announced pricing for the LongJump platform shortly. You can visit our Service Pricing page for our newly announced pricing options.
As we promised, you will find that our pricing is both reasonable and competitive! In fact, you will be able to continue using OfficeSpace for FREE (with certain storage limitation) and don’t forget that the complete LongJump Application Suite is FREE until 2008!
The entire LongJump Application Suite will be available for only $19.95/month with a similar commitment. Please visit the Service Pricing page to better understand the different pricing options as well as any data storage cost associated with them.
The long-awaited Campaign Manager is finally available. The campaign manager allows to design template-driven email marketing campaigns and distribute them to lists of prospective customers. The Campaign Manager includes some some of the following features and benefits:
Powerful List Management: Import and export lists into LongJump. The Campaign Manager also comes with a complete set of list management tools including merge, de-dupe and the ability to support opt-outs.
Customizeable Templates: The Campaign Manager comes with built-in customizeable templates you can use for your email campaigns. You can also use the built-in design wizard to create your own or simply important your own designs or HTML templates from services like vFlyer.
Image Hosting Included: LongJump is capable of hosting all the images used by your HTML email campaigns taking the hassle out of the process.
Comprehensive Metric and Reporting: LongJump provides comprehensive metrics and statistics on how many people received your email, how many open it, how many opted out and other important marketing information.
White-Listed Delivery: LongJump is partnered with VerticalResponse, the premier email delivery service, to ensure that correspondence is white-listed for delivery across spam filters.
Automate Follow-Up Tasks: LongJump makes it easy to assign a call back to any of your team members when someone opens or clicks on an email. This accelerates the selling process and proactively goes after those who have expressed an interest in your offering.
The LongJump Campaign Manager is an easy, effective and cost-effective email marketing solution that let’s you create professional-looking emails with no technical experise and to establish and build strong and lasting relationships with your customers. Give it a try today!
Gartner, the world’s leading IT research firm, recently released their list of Top 10 Technologies for 2008 that touched on a couple of SaaS-related technologies and trends. Those of you who follow our blog will recall the post I did last week on Software as a Service: Alphabet Soup were I examined some of the emerging terms and acronyms in the SaaS space. In their top 10 list, Gartner talks about the idea of SaaS-related Web Platforms (Web-Oriented Architecture or WOA) as one of the potential next big things.
What is WOA?
Depending on who you ask, WOA (Web-Oriented Architecture) is either SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) on steroids or a web-based “cloud computing” environment. Gartner sees them as “providing service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes”, while other’s like Nick Gall are simply using WOA to refer to SOA that uses a more modern and flexible XML protocol - REST (a less complex method of using XML to communicate with applications) as opposed to SOAP (an older, more complex approach to the same problem).
What about SaaS?
Enough tech-babble and back to business! Gartner points out that “Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets and companies must evaluate where service based delivery may provide value in 2008-2010,” and sees web platforms and the natural progression to SaaS. Along with the their previous projections, it looks like the next couple of years will mean good business for SaaS application providers!
Mashups, Composite Apps, and Social Software
Mashups and composite applications continue to enjoy the technology spotlight. For those unfamiliar with these terms, mashups actually come from the music industry and refers to applications that combine data from more than one source into a single application. Composite applications are similar, except they consume enterprise and enterprise-ready sources versus Internet-based sources. Gartner also sees consolidation in the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment (also known as Enterprise 2.0) and companies increasing buying social software and collaborative technologies, good news for companies playing in that space!
Conclusions
Its good to see Gartner continued support of the overall SaaS movement. Some of you old enough to remember know that Gartner has always been a proponent of cost-cutting through it support of technologies and services like network computing, outsourcing and most recently SaaS. Also encouraging is the appetite enterprise continue to have for Web 2.0 technologies and their ability to embrace SaaS as an acceptable software delivery model.
Large ISVs Will Spin Off On-Demand Versions of Products
Small and Medium Enterprises Remain a “Tough Nut to Crack”
Microsoft Strengthens SaaS Resolve
Software on Demand Providers Focus on Partnering
Mini-Ecosystems Emerge to Extend the Reach of SaaS
SaaS Enablers Continue to Aid Availability of On-Demand Offerings
Merger and Acquisition Activity Continues
SaaS Providers Concentrate on Improving Offerings and Customer Experience
Hosted Application Management Becomes a Stepping Stone Towards SaaS
SaaS Will Help Drive a Software Industry Transition to Subscription Licensing
Many of these seem obvious or mundane, for example the trend on the part of large software vendors (like Oracle and IBM) dabbling in SaaS products, constant talk about mergers, or Microsoft continued interest and rhetoric in the space, or all the crocodile tears being shed about the SME market and so fort and so on! There are a couple of the predictions, however, that I found rather interested and worthy of exploration:
SaaS Providers Concentrate on Improving Offerings and Customer Experience: One of the key differentiators here at LongJump as I see it, is our focus on customer service and user experience. Companies selling into the enterprise have traditionally been on the hook for providing either first-line or second-line customer support. This notion of customer support, however, is new to the many SaaS “Internet-come-lately’s,” after all they come from a background of free use and no support. But regardless of whether you are focused on the SME or enterprise marketing, customer support become extremely important once you start collecting money from people and this is something SaaS providers need to understand.
SaaS Will Help Drive a Software Industry Transition to Subscription Licensing: One of the traditional barriers to software sales has been the readiness of companies to buy into new pricing models. Although subscriptions are nothing new, subscription licensing for software in the enterprise is! I see traditional “enterprise-wide” per site, per CPU, per server, per seat and per user licensing is being replaced with more flexible by per user/month and storageper month type pricing or some combination of the two.
LongJump comes with two key support and IT applications that can help your business address their support and IT needs and are worth taking a look at. These applications include:
Support Case Manager
The Support Case Manager provides a complete case management support solution through a built-In customer self-service portal. The Support Case Manager is an extremely robust application that allows you to not only track cases securely but also provides such advanced features like notification options, a customizable workflow as well as escalation policies. One of its “killer features” is the ability to integrate it directly into your website using a single line of HTML code!
IT Asset Tracker
Most IT departments maintain (or should maintain) important financial, service and location information on laptops, desktops, servers, mobile phones, and other equipment you may have in your company. Too often we here stories like the 1,100 laptops missing from the Commerce Department or other organizations which is a result of poor (or non-existent) inventory management! The IT Asset Tracker does a great job of help solve this problem by enabling to track assets by serial numbers, asset tags, expiring warranties, lease status, or a list of other factors. Additionally, it comes with the ability to generate financial reports based on asset allocation or department!
LongJump was built on a solid platform and has tons of features, but one of the questions we get asked most frequently is “but how much is this going to cost us?“.
We totally understand! I mentioned number of times our goal of providing a cost-effective solution for small to medium-sized business moving their business to the Web and many of your are eager to know what our pricing will be! The good news is that we plan on formally announcing pricing next week. Stay tuned and we’ll let you know as soon as the new pricing is available!
I recently ran across a great article on CIO magazine on Software as a Service (SaaS) usage statistics by application and by industry. Although the numbers behind the chart probably come from a more enterprise-centric sampling of companies, I think they are interesting and are probably a good indicator on some of the types of applications and markets SaaS platform providers should be focusing on. Gartner estimates that in 2005, 5% of all business software spending was for applications delivered using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model and it rightfully expected the figure to grow to 25% by 2011. Their most recent projections saw the worldwide SaaS market reached $6.3 billion in 2006 and forecasted it growing to $19.3 billion by the end of 2011.
It seems the only think more popular than software as service or on-demand applications in the language, acronyms and lingo associated with them. The purpose of this post is to try and decipher some of the buzzword and acronyms floating around in the area of Software as a Service (SaaS) so the next time you are at a dinner party and the subject comes up, you can impress your colleges with your obvious mastery of the subject area – after all, he who knows the most buzzwords wins!
Software as a Service (SaaS): Software as a Service is defined as a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops, hosts and operates a web application that is used by customers over the Internet. This is by far the most common, and in my opinion, the most accurate term used to describe software being delivered as a service.
On-Demand Software:
This is another term company used to refer to software as a service (SaaS). This term speaks to the benefit of SaaS (primarily the fact that SaaS application are available “on demand”). “On-demand applications” and “on-demand technology” are alternate versions of this term.
Application Service Provider (ASP): This is the grand daddy of SaaS terms! The Wikipedia defines an ASP as “business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network.” So SaaS companies are essentially using an ASP model to deliver their own applications (originally ASP were focused on providing a host of third party application through their service). It is also note-worthy to point out that not all ASP applications were web-based. The term ASP evolved from the more common term ISP (Internet Service Provider) and become popular in the late 90’s. Just goes to show you that SaaS is not as new a concept as many of us think!
Platform as a Service (PaaS): Term used by Salesforce.com to describe its new Force.com offering that enables businesses to create and run applications on-demand.
Mashups as a Service (Maas): Bloggers around the Web are using this term to refer to the “convergence of SOA with Web 2.0.”
There are a number of acronyms that sometimes get used when talking about SaaS that are worth being aware of. Most of these directly or indirectly relate to SaaS. These include:
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): Key to SOA is the idea of build applications out of modular web-based software services (SOAP, XML-REST, WSDL, i.e.). The goal of SOA is build software that reuses modular “loosely coupled” web-services which each represent a chunk of functionality. SaaS application are NOT necessarily build on SOA, although some SaaS companies expose their API’s as services than CAN be leveraged by applications build on SOA. You will find that the technology community is very fond of using both words together as in: “SOA for SaaS” or “SOA meets SaaS”. (See Wikipedia)
Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP):
This term refers to a popular technology stack of open-source software used by a growing number of software developers to build and deliver applications. Not all SaaS are built on LAMP, but it is a popular and inexpensive platform for building and deploying SaaS applications. Other popular technology stack used to deploy SaaS applications include: Java/J2EE (used by SalesForce.com and LongJump for example) and Microsoft .NET.
Software and Service (Software + Service, SaaS 2):
Microsoft’s vision to migrate SaaS to the desktop. Although Microsoft is a proponent of SaaS, it’s roots and strengths obviously lie on the desktop. Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie describes this combination of desktop and SaaS with the following quote: “SaaS 1 meant the web; SaaS 2 has come to embrace the unique value of the client.”
Situated Web Application Platforms (SWAP):
A term that I like coined by blogger Pete Thomas used to refer to SaaS platforms such as LongJump. Although I have yet to find an actual definition of the term, I have started to see the term (or similar terms as as “Situated Applications”) being used and it sounds cool and very buzzward-ish!
I hope you find this list of SaaS related buzzwords useful and perhaps you can put them to good use at your next technology mixer or office party! Enjoy and I hope you get a SOA-enabled, SWAP-like, MaaS-infused, PaaS-capable, LAMP-powered, ASP-delivered on-demand SaaS platform for Christmas! There you have it - 100% buzzword compliant in 2008!
The term “Social Enterprise” has been floating around for some time. I am a big fan of “buzzwords” so obviously this is one I have followed. The “Social Enterprise” simply refers to the adoption of new social media technologies within the enterprise. Having been involved in past in helping “tame the Internet beast” for use within the enterprise at companies like Epicentric, I find this trend very exciting! The “Social Enterprise” is similar the notion of “Enterprise 2.0” but the former has a focus that the latter term lack – Social Media! Proponents of the “Social Enterprise” call attention to companies using social media technologies such as social networks, collaborations tools, blogs, RSS, syndication, wikis and social bookmarking internally as part of their business!
Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web (who is one of my favorite bloggers) recently did a great post titled “The Social Enterprise - What Works, and What Doesn’t” that looks at the reasons for the social enterprise. It focuses on the need for both agility and self-organization within the enterprise. Alex makes points out that “…with the increasing speed at which our society operates, we are seeing that companies have had to become more agile in order to compete.”
LongJump and the Social Enterprise
The LongJump application platform is very much about increasing the speed of business. LongJump enables the rapid use and adoption of businesses application within small and medium-size organization as well as groups within the enterprise. Some of the core application on the platform, such as OfficeSpace and Customer Manager, were designed to enable collaboration and self-organization. Components like discussions and document sharing enable user-generated content within the enterprise to be shared quickly and openly in a secure environment.
Levels of the Social Enterprise: Technology + Business + Network At its core, the LongJump platform embraces the idea of sharing and collaboration by building key application on top of common data and application components. Data, such as contacts, company and other internal business objects can easily be accessed and shared among applications at a technology level. For example, the Sales force automation application leverages the contact manager, task manager and email.
Additional, applications like OfficeSpace, enable collaboration and sharing at a business level. So business concepts like relationships (vendor, employee, i.e.) and transactions (invoice, payables, i.e.) have a common understanding throughout the platform and can be shared and used between applications.
The way the LongJump platform integrates and interacts with external applications also speaks to its spirit of networking and integration at a network level. By providing the ability to openly and easily interact with external application and resources (Website integration to collect sales or job leads for example), LongJump essentially enables collaboration with external applications as well.
