It’s very clear that the infrustructure of web products and components is starting to consolidate into ready-to-go solutions from hosting, applications, and (like LongJump) complete enterprise application development plaforms.
According to Om Malik:
The platforms on which we have done business for over a decade are starting to provide diminishing returns; the smart money, meanwhile, is seeking new platform structures.
We completely agree with Om’s assessment. The time is certainly right for Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions like LongJump. With functionality on the web ever improving, the need to drive down operational costs always looming, the agility of a business a paramount importance, it’s only a matter of time for enterprises large and small to move some key areas of their business on the grid.
LongJump’s introduction of its new Workflow Designer had some great comments from the media. Its ability to map, route and automate business processes is something everyone can easily understand and see value from. Plus, its uniquely simple visual design definitely breaks away from most web-based applications.
“This process would ordinarily be accomplished over email or even physical slips of paper that make their way through various ‘in’ and ‘out’ boxes around the office. Now it can all be handle in one central online location with variously designated user accounts for employees.”
“Workflow is a nice addition, not only because it helps all of the features of LongJump work together well, and go to work for you, making sure emails are sent, events are added to the calendar, customers are served promptly and more, but also because it does the same with the third party applications.”
”Smart vendors are the ones that, like LongJump, go the extra mile and actually build applications that their business customers will find useful. This tackles both aspects of the curse of customization: you give people somewhere to start, and you constrain them into choices where you at least have some idea of what their needs are likely to be, so you can make sure you’ve built those needs into the platform already.”
“Human Resources may establish a customized workflow process for new job candidates, whereby the workflow process takes the potential candidate’s record through multiple hand-offs and stages, including resume review, telephone interview, in-person interview and multiple interviewer sign-offs and approvals.”
Last year, LongJump gave a sneak peak of the customizable business applications platform at the Under the Radar conference presented in Mountain View, California by Dealmaker Media. Today LongJump is back as a member of the Graduate Circle comprising a hand-picked group of companies that have “graduated” from being under the radar and are gaining major momentum.
If you happen to be in Microsoft’s offices, do stop by the break area where we can show you some of the cool new stuff we’re working on. Our CEO Pankaj Malviya is also going to be presenting an update about our current successes as well as our vision and plan going forward.
By the looks of the companies showcased and our own momentum, it is an exciting time to be providing webware business services and applications as more of your typical backend operations and enterprise data moves necessarily to the web. The on-demand application promise is key to strengthening collaboration, management and information exchange between staff, departments, partners, and customers.
Vator.tv’s Bambi Francisco had a followup interview with CEO Pankaj Malviya and how LongJump was able to reach a point of self-sufficiency and profitability without backing from any venture capital firms.
Pankaj states that when you are bootstrapping on your own, the key is working every customer relationship to its full potential so you can build revenue as well as an enduring customer.
Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s CEO, is featured on vator.tv with Bambi Francisco discussing the company, how LongJump is helping small business, and the approach taken with LongJump and Relationals.
Pankaj discussed how the enterprise media industry successfully adopted Relationals CRM for managing customer relationships and sales operations as well as providing strategic business analytics.
LongJump, on the other hand, is focused on empowering the smaller and medium-sized companies and departments with a web-based application platform that offers customization, analysis, and policy-driven operations.
LongJump has been shortlisted as a nominee for the Webware 100 in the Productivity category featuring products like application suites, groupware, and web platforms. It is an honor for us to be selected from what we understand was over 4,600 nominees. The top 10 winners are announced across 10 categories on Monday, April 21, the day before the Web 2.0 Expo opens (which LongJump is a sponsor at).
Rafe Needleman of CNet’s Webware once called LongJump “Back Office in a Box,” and we like that term. Rafe also indicated:
LongJump’s pitch is that the apps interconnect. People and companies that you use in one app can easily be found in another. Also, users don’t have to construct or modify the apps (aside from adding their company logo if they wish) for them to meet most basic needs.
LongJump’s CEO Pankaj Malviya provided some perspective to the entrepreneur and venture capital community on how LongJump built its business to the readers of the Under the Radar blog. The posting entitled “To VC or Not VC – Going It Alone,” provides the history of the company as well as the approach it took getting to where it is today.
There are times when a VC will let you get away with things, because they’ve already hedge their bets with you by investing in other companies. They might overlook a bad decision and tend not to intervene until it’s too late. Going at it alone forces you to grow within your own means. It’s also the best way to ensure applied innovation – that is, innovation with real revenue potential rather than just a technological potential.
As part of their feature on startups and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, LongJump’s CEO Pankaj Malviya is interviewed by Fritz Nelson at InformationWeek discussing how every enterprise can reduce capital expenditures and drive productivity by using and customizing business software applications on the LongJump platform. Pankaj also discusses how various SMBs and enterprises are using LongJump to securely and quickly support and automating their business processes.
“It’s nice to see a company willing to bite at the heels of SalesForce.com.” - Fritz Nelson
Pankaj made a pitch for vator.tv last week. It’s up now where in 43 seconds he describes what we’re all about. Of course, anyone who’s ever subscribed to LongJump knows that our platform is much deeper, but if you have 43 seconds and want to appeal to as many people as possible, you lead with the hand you are strongest in: a catalog of ready-to-go customizable business applications.
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!
