• David Carr at InformationWeek talked about how “customers will be able to add social media features to their applications, and also make those applications available to mobile users”
• David Strom at ReadWriteWeb noted “Relay has the look and feel of a Facebook or Twitter news feed that is increasingly being used for a variety of social enterprise applications to show real-time visibility and activities”
• Jason Campbell over at CMSWire had the most provocative point in his analysis comparing LongJump to Salesforce.com
• Andrew Hickey at CRN indicated that resellers, VARs, ISVs and MSPs view is that “the integrated cloud platform gives developers and solution providers the ability to embrace converged cloud, social and mobile applications”
• Kristen Nicole at the SiliconAngle blog definitely made the connection about how important it is to be “creating simplified processes for businesses to utilize their existing data”
• Brittany Farb, who covers technology for DestinationCRM, stated “LongJump is the first platform-as-a-service provider to offer a social and mobile integrated platform, enabling business to take advantage of cloud, social networking, and mobile technologies”
• Mike Vizard, covering IT trends at ITBusinessEdge, notes how Relay and Javelin can solve a key issue affecting today’s small and medium sized enterprises: “One of the problems the average company today has with developing anything that looks like a custom application is all the complexity involved.”

The original release is available here.

**UPDATED**

• I left off a great in-depth interview by Martin Tantow at CloudTimes with Pankaj where they go into LongJump as a company, as a service, and more. Truly a unique piece.

Technorati Tags: andrew hickey, brittany farb, cmswire, crn, david carr, david strom, destinationCRM, informationweek, itbusinessedge, jason campbell, javelin, kristen nicole, mike vizard, mobile computing, online database, readwriteweb, relay, siliconangle, social computing

David Strom over at ReadWriteWeb has a great primer on the range of online database tools on the web. Some of the benefits include:

The process is very straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the service and safe from harm. And you don’t need to learn any Web/database programming skills either.

Right now, many organizations are looking to move away from spreadsheets for record management and process tracking, so it’s a good time to start finding a better way to collaborate around information. After all, there are risks abound with emailing data back and forth or relying on spreadsheets with unknown data quality.

This analysis was based on what David and RWW examined in mid June 2011. He encourages companies to do spend some of time checking out particular features that are deal-makers or breakers. You can do so with LongJump’s free trial program for 14-days. Of course, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact our App Geniuses for help. Moving from a spreadsheet to a database can be tricky when you start modeling your data in a more optimized way.

Technorati Tags: excel, online database, quickbase, spreadsheet, trackvia

LongJump was awarded it’s 2nd AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies award in a row. LongJump was featured in the Cloud Applications Platform category for its online database and platform-as-a-service (paas) solutions along with nine other vendors. According to the site:

Inclusion in the OnDemand 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. LongJump was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

The OnDemand 100 winners were selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists, and industry insiders.  The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2011 list.

Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn, also added:

As the digital information created by businesses continues to explode at astronomical rates, the need to store, manage, socialize, and share this information is becoming extremely challenging. By providing innovative technologies that help enterprises better compete in this new era of information complexity and move their data out into the cloud, the OnDemand 100 represent some of the highest-growth opportunities in the private company marketplace.

LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya responded:

We are proud for our team’s inclusion in this year’s Top 100. To be named with such great game-changers is an honor and shows that private small businesses are still the great innovators today.

Technorati Tags: alwayson, cloud computing, saas, software-as-a-service

LongJump, a pioneer in platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and private cloud business applications, announced today that leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC (www.idc.com) named LongJump as one of five companies in a report published October 4th, 2010.

“We view IDC’s analysis of the advancements in application development and deployment platforms as proof that as more enterprises become comfortable with public and private cloud computing, the process of creating applications will be the next critical strategy to drive innovation and productivity,” says Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump. “There are far too many software solutions that need to be built and trying to do it the traditional way is costly and high-maintenance.”

The complete press release is here on the company’s website.

Technorati Tags: application development, award, cloud computing, idc, Platform-as-a-Service

The Inc. magazine has ranked LongJump as one of their Inc.5000 of fastest growing private companies. LongJump and its leading cloud application platform is positioned at #1090 overall including #74 of software companies and #23 in the San Jose Metro Area.

Says Inc. president Bob LaPointe:

“The leaders of the companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 have figured out how to grow their businesses during the longest recession since the Great Depression. The 2010 Inc. 5000 showcases a particularly hardy group of entrepreneurs.”

According to Inc.500, the 2010 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2006 to 2009.

Technorati Tags: bob lapointe, inc 500, inc magazine, PaaS, Sales and CRM

SEAL Mobile and Mash-up Micro-Apps are lightweight enterprise applications providing a secure access to on-premise and/or cloud enterprise applications via simple interfaces for common tasks. These are available across various business domains from Supply-Chain, Logistics, Procurement and Manufacturing to Financials, HR, CRM and Performance management.

Their Micro-Apps are delivered to mobile platforms like the Blackberry, iPhone and Google Android.

You can visit them at SAPPHIRE in Orlando, booth #721 for a demo.

If you want to learn how they were able to get to market so fast, you can attend our next Ziff Davis Enterprise eSeminar May 26 at 1PM Eastern.

Technorati Tags: android, blackberry, cloud computing, custom applications, erp, iphone, isv, PaaS, saas, sap, sapphire

Recognized for creating new opportunities in cloud computing and SaaS

SUNNYVALE, CA, April 16, 2010 — LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the OnDemand Top 100 winners. Inclusion in the OnDemand 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. LongJump was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

View the complete release here.

Technorati Tags: alwayson, cloud computing, PaaS, saas, software-as-a-service

ChannelWeb has recognized LongJump as one of the 20 Coolest Cloud Companies, positioning it with the likes of Amazon EC2, Google App Engine and Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. This comes on the heels of last week’s naming of LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya to their list of Top 25 Technology Thought Leaders. As indicated by ChannelWeb,

“LongJump is actively rounding up ISVs to brand and host their own SaaS offerings.”

The channel community is one area where cloud computing can truly be a “sky’s the limit” proposition. With all that experience in IT and application services, VARs, MSPs, and solution providers can realize significant potential creating vertical applications that meet the needs of businesses across the globe.

It is likely why ChannelWeb is actively discussing cloud computing:

“Cloud computing platforms facilitate and ease the deployment of applications into the cloud, limiting the cost and complexity by cutting the need to buy and manage hardware and software. As cloud computing continues to gather steam and more VARs and their clients are looking to design, develop, test, deploy and host apps in the cloud, a robust, flexible platform has become a must-have.”

Technorati Tags: channelweb, cloud computing, crn, isv, msp, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, var

ChannelWeb has named our CEO Pankaj Malviya one of the top 25 Technology Thought Leaders. Specifically, editors were most impressed that:

“Malviya is breaking new ground in the cloud computing market with LongJump, an innovative software company with an end-to-end cloud platform. The LongJump offering is winning raves from solution providers for its flexibility and firepower. It’s also garnered a number of awards including Everything Channel’s XChange Tech Innovator’s Xcellence award and a place in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.”

Says Pankaj:

“I’m honored to be selected as a thought leader with the likes of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Ray Ozzie and Donald Ferguson. It is a testament to the eventual tide-shift that has emerged through cloud computing technologies for enterprises of all sizes and their critical relationship with channel solution providers and ISVs.”

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, everythingchannel, gartner, magic quadrant, pankaj malviya, xchange

Scott Dahlgren at The VAR Guy posted an article today about how VARs, solution providers, MSPs and others in the IT channel can really capitalize on cloud computing. Specifically he looks at how the PaaS model presents the widest opportunity for the channel to be involved in the cloud. He states:

The current trend is improving time to market and time to revenue which is greatly dependent on how quickly you can build and deploy an application. The opportunity to add value now is not so much in technical competency but in a Partner’s understanding of the business problem that needs to be solved and then building that application in a way that adds the most immediate value to the business.

He also highlights the LongJump partner program:

LongJump launched their VAR program last quarter that provides a development platform, backup, storage, ability to scale easily, network, security, and pre-built applications for $15/user/month. Partners can then develop web applications and sell them for whatever price they choose.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, it channel, msp, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, solution provider, thevarguy, var

Mike Vizard at CTOEdge had a thoughtful post regarding the challenges facing IT in determining how much to rely on software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms to deliver applications versus running those applications on their own internal infrastructure. He adds:

The real question IT organizations might want to ask themselves in 2010 is why they have to make this kind of decision in the first place. In an ideal world, IT organizations should be able to develop an application that can be dynamically deployed as a service or on their own local infrastructure as they see fit.

You can read the entire article here.

Technorati Tags: application development, enterprise applications, IT projects, on-premise, saas

The LongJump platform made its debut on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Applications Servers. Incidentally, we were one of only two PaaS-capable platforms to be featured, and the only one which could operate as a PaaS and on-premise. Pankaj Malviya, CEO and Founder of LongJump, had this to say:

“We believe LongJump’s placement in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant demonstrates that PaaS is emerging as a true alternative for enterprises in the application server market. Application platforms in the cloud are ideal for building and delivering innovative enterprise-class solutions that meet dynamic business requirements in record time. LongJump squarely addresses a sizable void for powerful, user-configurable, web-based business applications, without compromising the security and control businesses require.”

This realization by Gartner that PaaS must be included in the conversation when it comes to businesses looking at streamlining application development is something we’ve been talking about for awhile and appreciated.

You can view the press release here.

Technorati Tags: application development, application server, cloud computing, gartner, magic quadrant, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

According to ChannelWeb:

The people who made CRN‘s list of the Top 25 Most Innovative Executives of 2009 put big profits into solution provider pockets with breakthrough products and channel programs that cover the most explosive emerging technology markets, from cloud computing to virtualization to VoIP…  innovators pushing the envelope to propel solution providers to new heights.

And specifically about Rick:

McEachern, for his part, a 20-year Silicon Valley entrepreneur, is providing the sales and marketing muscle that is setting LongJump apart from the rest of the pack. Key to that effort is a world-class solution provider program.

Technorati Tags: crn, everythingchannel, msp, rick mceachern, saas, var

Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump was at SIIA OnDemand in San Jose last week to showcase the LongJump cloud applications platform. While public and private cloud infrastructure may be top mind, the applications that sit in that cloud also need a revolutionary strategy. LongJump presents a streamlined approach to application development that leverages the shared power of a multitenant business platform to minimize time to market and manual effort.

You can watch the short 6-minute video here.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, custom applications, isv, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, siia

Database and technology analyst Ken North examines how Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions help accelerate adoption of the cloud model within organizations. As we have indicated many times ourselves, and Mr. North comes to a similar conclusion:

PaaS solutions have particular appeal for startups, projects with ambitious deadlines, and organizations with a limited budget for capital expenditures. PaaS can remove the capital expenditure roadblock without the burden of diminished functionality. The richness and variety of development environments is one reason the PaaS model has appeal for system integrators and developers, particularly those building web applications. … PaaS has much to offer today to those who are building and integrating systems. PaaS users can create custom solutions and make full use of business process modeling, workflow tools, object modeling, data modeling and packaged applications.

As always, Mr. North’s analysis is very in-depth and is a must read for anyone looking at the varying solutions available for PaaS.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, dr dobbs, ken north, multitenancy, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, techweb

Bill Ives of theAppGap took an extensive look at LongJump‘s application platform recently. The article looks at how LongJump is able to help businesses quickly build an object model, add processing, reporting, and even extend applications using industry standard development tools such as Java. According to Bill:

I can certainly see the benefit fit of using a platform such as LongJump to create web-based applications. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog out of the box intelligent objects can reduce the time and cost of developing and delivering data-driven applications. The business building block approach should allow developers and corporate IT teams to reduce the time to market or deployment, since they can bypass the need to repeatedly recreate common business processes and functions, as well as develop basic web functionality.

The complete article is available here.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

China Martens of the 451 Group provided an in-depth Market Insight Service report discussing LongJump and its potential as a PaaS provider inside and outside the corporate firewall. The 451 Group also provided a comprehensive look at where LongJump is in relation to other cloud computing companies and a fairly complete review of the company’s history and trajectory from SaaS provider to offering a multi-tenant application platform for service providers.

LongJump is keenly aware of the challenges it faces in attracting enterprises and ISVs to opt for its PaaS as they take a leap away from Java and .NET and into cloud app development. It’s at the start of what is likely to be a lengthy wooing process and points to its first five ISV customers as a good start in a matter of months. We see LongJump having more stability than some of its pure-play rivals, given its steady-as-it-goes CRM business, and expect it to successfully weather the likely approaching consolidation of small PaaS providers.

In addition, the report states the value opportunity for ISVs:

Companies of all sizes are eager to develop their own SaaS/cloud applications, and some will be particularly interested in the levels of control over branding and deployment that LongJump offers in some of the versions of its platform.

If you are a subscriber to The 451 Group’s research, you can view the complete report here. Access is also available as a trial, or if you would like to receive a copy of the report, leave a comment on this post or on our Twitter feed and we’ll contact you.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, customer relationship management, isv, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, private cloud, saas, software-as-a-service, the 451 group

Michael Coté, one of the analysts at RedMonk talked with LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya about platform-as-a-service on the cloud.

He writes:

Back in February, LongJump started providing their platform to ISVs packaged to be used as a private PaaS, where “private” means “run on your own,” just as “private cloud” does. That is, these ISVs would use the LongJump platform to develop and then sell SaaS applications… Since February 2009, they’ve had 5 ISVs sign up, each creating of delivering SaaSes with LongJump in very narrow industries like electronic equipment maintenance, HR, and drug trial management.

Michael and Pankaj also discussed the current trend for PaaS providers towards delivering what developers need vs. what the industry is providing.

One of the more interesting statements from Pankaj was that development shops were finding the lack of traditional (to use my modifier) ALM (application lifecycle management) in PaaS development annoying. Folks like Force.com – and the wider “cloud” world” – the conceit goes, don’t provide enough hooks to fit into the software development process that people are used to. The thinking is that there’s a cultural mis-mapping between how people want to develop software for the cloud and how the cloud wants (if only by omission of other options) people to develop software. Bringing up the specter of ALM-weakness is a good ploy and segmenter: if you know what ALM means, you probably like it, and if you don’t know what ALM means, you’re probably not worth selling to.

To read the complete article, click here.

Technorati Tags: alm, application lifecycle, cloud computing, developers, isv, PaaS, saas

James Maguire over at Datamation listed his seven top cloud computing acquisition targets: companies that are “desirable choices” for the “giants” of the industry. Among his targets, Maguire includes IaaS provider GoGrid, cloud enabler Enomaly, storage service provider Vaultscape, cloud manager RightScale, virtualization appliance provider AppZero, application manager Elastra, and our very own application platform LongJump.

It’s an interesting “fantasy league” piece and we find it more flattering than serious about being a target. After all, it is nice to be desired or at least desirable.

And he offers on one of the more concise descriptions of LongJump we’ve seen in awhile:

Among other uses, Longjump is leveraged by developers who want to bring to market an extensive multi-tenant application, without building their own platform. (Think, for instance, of the way that Salesforce’s Force.com offers a development platform.) So ISVs and other service providers can use Longjump to sell SaaS offerings.

In other words, Longjump is a Platform-as-a-Server (PaaS) provider. Or, more accurately – warning, here comes deep jargon – it’s an APaaS, an application-platform-as-a-service play. This is because the Longjump solution offers a virtualized application development platform.

While there is nothing wrong with a bigger company using over the right technology to make a mass push, there isn’t that much acquisition activity lately in the cloud space that we’ve seen. Part of the reason may be that many of the larger players are looking at the entire cloud market, and will likely play in the traditional parts of cloud computing first. The first acquisitions will likely be in the infrastructure based virtualization and management solutions or point solutions that fill a gap, then the platforms. But because a platform like LongJump has such broad appeal with ISVs and enterprises alike, we have just as strong a chance at making an impact through partnerships and deals as we would through being acquired.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, datamation, isv, james maguire, multitenancy, PaaS, saas, software-as-a-service

Our latest LongJump release (version 6.2) has hit the cloud with something desperately needed in today’s business application space: Flexibility and Visibility. Flexibility in the way that information is displayed and visibility into a deeper set of information and analysis. Many of today’s cloud applications come out of the gate serving a basic set of functions in a basic way. Rarely can the interface adapt to suit the needs of a wide array of users, and few can match LongJump’s depth in terms of features, scalability, and adaptability.

Over the course of the next week, we’re going to take in-depth looks at some of the big features that have been added like Digital Signatures, New Form Layouts, Object Inheritance, RSS/Atom Feed Report Publishing, and Data Snapshots.

Until then, be sure to check out our feature tour and the press release.

Technorati Tags: atom feed, cloud applications, digital signature, form processing, rss feed, snapshot data

LongJump will be a featured exhibitor at the Sun JavaOne conference this week at Moscone Center in San Francisco. We’re located in the Cloud Zone at Booth 511. Be sure to stop by and say “Hello,” if you’re going to be there. We’ll be demoing some new upcoming business and developer functionality that we think really changes the game when it comes to web-based application platforms.

The Pavilion hours are:

• Monday – 3PM to 7PM (with a Reception from 6 to 7PM)
• Tuesday – 11:30AM to 7:30PM (with a Reception from 6 to 7PM)
• Wednesday – 10AM to 4:30PM
• Thursday – 10AM to 2PM

We also have 2 free full conference passes (worth $2000 each) that we will give away to the first two people who sign up for a free trial account. Just go to our registration page and for “How did you hear about us” type in “JavaOne Blog Post.” Sorry! Only the first two responders can get the passes.

If you are late to the game, you can always sign up for the Pavilion Only pass at the JavaOne Registration page.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, developers, java, javaone, sun

Yesterday featured a nice article from Chad Berndtson of Computer Reseller News on their ChannelWeb blog about LongJump’s BAP. Chad spoke with company Chairman Rick McEachern about the impedous for the platform and the growing need for software producers to want to privately build, brand, deliver and control SaaS applications.

“We thought midsize ISVs between $40 million and $200 million would be the sweet spot,” (McEachern) said. “But we find ISVs whose companies are well over $1 billion coming to us, too. It’s very interesting that it spans the very small to the very large. What they’re saying to us is: ‘Basically, what you’re telling me is you’ve got Salesforce in a box and we can private label it?’ Well, that’s not really our message, but essentially, yes, it’s that. It’s OK with us if you want to put it in those terms.”

The complete article is available on the ChannelWeb site.

Technorati Tags: application development, developers, isv, on-premise, saas, software-as-a-service

Gartner analysts Yefim V. Natis and Robert P. Desisto produced the first comprehensive research note on LongJump’s Business Applications Platform with some key insight for those looking to take advantage of online and on-premises based PaaS. They take an honest look at the opportunities and challenges we face with our platform, but are buoyed by our current success so far.

LongJump is starting this expansion on a promising note — even at this early stage, it is already referencing two ISV customers poised to go to production with their applications, built on LongJump BAP.

Yefim and Robert also did an excellent job summarizing how to choose the right platform for the goals of your business:

The company took this direction in response to requests from prospects, and, in doing so, responded to the reality of the multiple patterns and reasons why organizations choose cloud-style application platforms:

• Many small and midsize user organizations and small ISVs are attracted to productivity and low cost of the cloud platform development (these prospects are served by the LongJump On-Demand service offering).
• Many large user organizations are attracted to the productivity of the cloud application platform environment, but insist that their data must remain on-premises (these prospects will be best-served by the single-tenant version of the new LongJump BAP).
• Many large ISVs wish to offer business applications as a service, but demand full in-house control and ownership of the underlying application platform (these prospects will be best-served by the multitenant version of the LongJump BAP).
• Some large user organizations are looking to build private cloud services in-house (these prospects also will be best-served by the multitenant version of the LongJump BAP).

Ultimately, while we know we have a golden product on our hand and that there is a real market need, our own execution will determine our level of success. So far, however, the signs are positive.

Gartner subscribers can log in and read the complete report here.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, gartner, multitenancy, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Gartner has named LongJump one of it’s Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing System and Application Infrastructure for 2009. Below is an excerpt of the report available to Gartner research subscribers:

Why Cool: LongJump is a cloud application infrastructure service provider delivering an application-platform-as-a-service (APaaS) offering. The company also has a history as a CRM vendor and offers a solution called “Relationals” (also the name of the parent company) that is delivered as a cloud application service.

Its Business Application Platform, branded as LongJump, is similar in concept and origin to Force.com’s underlying salesforce.com CRM application. LongJump is a APaaS cloud platform provider that stands out. It offers a runtime environment and a multitenant development environment, and it supports the creation of multitenant applications. It also offers multitenancy configuration options that allow the user to store data in a common multitenant database, one tenant database instance that is dedicated to the user or in a mixed multitenancy model. The service offers a visual development environment and uses Java as its programming language. LongJump also offers a range of delivery options. In addition to the cloud computing service, the company supports hosting of its environment on third-party infrastructure (for example, Terremark Worldwide data center, Amazon EC2/Amazon Simple Storage Service [Amazon S3] or installation as software in an enterprise data center).

Who Should Care: IT managers who are looking for flexible on-premises and off-premises deployment options using a business-oriented platform will find LongJump’s approach useful.

You can read the complete press release here.

Technorati Tags: app, cloud computing, cool vendor, gartner, multitenancy, PaaS

SaaS Vendor Converts Offering to Packaged Software
“After finding that numerous enterprises are not comfortable running applications outside their firewalls, one longtime SaaS vendor is converting to an on-premise model. “

Jeffrey Kaplan at Seeking Alpha writes…

Proliferation of SaaS and Cloud Platform Players Continues
“This new ‘portability’ is in response to the growing demands among enterprises to house their SaaS apps behind the firewall. It is also another example of the rapid technological advancements in the SaaS/cloud computing industry which increasingly permits this new form of ‘hybrid’ solution to occur.”

Technorati Tags: cio, on-premise, saas, software-as-a-service

Led by John Rymer, Forrester’s research team including Randy Heffner, Jeffrey S. Hammond, James Staten, and Wallis Yu, provided an extensive report entitled “Platform-As-A-Service Is Here: How To Sift Through The Options” on several PaaS vendors, including LongJump. The report discusses the rewards and risks of PaaS for application development and includes products up and down the PaaS stack, and is one of the most extensive reports on the topic.

The basic reward of PaaS is that it allows IT groups to defray capital costs and some operations costs (configuration, management, reliability, and scalability) to a vendor. PaaS shares these potential advantages with other forms of “cloud computing.” If the economics work out, application development groups should be able to use these cost savings to improve their responsiveness to the business’ needs for new and changed applications.

The Forrester report also deep dives into how enterprises can start planning for PaaS-based initiatives with a pragmatic approach to their long tail IT applications, including on-premise deployment as offered by LongJump’s new platform configuration.

Forrester recommended that application development managers begin to experiment with PaaS to determine its potential future value. Forrester is convinced that today’s PaaS market contains at least the seeds of the next generation of application platforms, if not one or more of the companies that will drive the category. We recommended considering how PaaS can help deal with current business needs and listed important factors to consider when working to create a prudent initial approach to PaaS.

The complete report is available on Forrester’s website here. If you subscribe to their research, you can get the report for free.

Technorati Tags: application development, Application Strategy & Selection, Architecture & Technology Strategy, Computer Architectures, Data Management, Development Tools, forrester, Information & Knowledge Management, IT department, IT Infrastructure & Operations, IT Services, john rymer, Outsourcing, PaaS, Packaged Applications

From ComputerWorld’s Mark Everett Hall (which includes an interview with LongJump customer NES’s CTO Izak Joubert)…

Get cloud tools, but forget the cloud
“(Joubert) wanted an application platform that let him quickly create new services without having to update complex database schemas. Joubert evaluated Force.com, App Engine and other cloud services, but settled on LongJump… According to Joubert, LongJump cuts out all of the “building block” work in app dev for his team. As a result, his current development project, which would have taken 18 months using .NET, will be wrapped up after three and half months.”

From CNet’s Charles Cooper…

LongJump to foster private clouds for corporate IT
“Private clouds… typically offer stronger security and reliability and are thought to have special appeal to IT managers keen on keeping their use restricted to company employees. LongJump, which sells an on demand enterprise applications platform, is licensing technology that will let IT managers build apps on a cloud platform as a service and keep local control of their data.”

From ZDNet’s Phil Wainwright…

LongJump puts PaaS on-premise
“In a move that will horrify purists but bring a smile to the face of many conventional ISVs desperate to launch SaaS offerings of their own, platform-as-a-service provider LongJump is today making its platform available as customer-installable licensed software… In my view, LongJump’s hybrid offering plugs a gaping hole in the market today, both for ISVs and for enterprises. No conventional software vendor offers a fully equivalent hosted PaaS alternative to its on-premise platform.”

From InfoWorld’s Tom Sullivan…

LongJump Puts SaaS Inside IT Shops
“By installing the software in-house, IT shops can take control of otherwise hosted functions, such as multi-tenancy, application delivery, and portability… Likewise, ISVs and SaaS providers can use LongJump’s Business Applications Platform to add more features and capabilities to existing services.”

From Paul Miller of The Cloud of Data…

LongJump embraces private Clouds with new licensing model for Business Application Platform
“Business users are able to take a degree of control over their own application needs, whilst reassuring the CIO and IT Team that everything is running on top of a single set of secure infrastructure over which they have control.”

From Markus Klems of Cloudy Times…

Control the Cloud: Licensing LongJump
Enterprise and ISVs now have control and have a choice to take a proven application platform and install it internally, within their corporate firewall or private cloud, without worrying about compliance, security, or confidentially issues.

Technorati Tags: charles cooper, cloud computing, cnet, computerworld, infoworld, mark everett hall, paul miller, phil wainwright, saas, software-as-a-service, tom sullivan, zdnet

LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) product for on-demand application creation, has been selected as a finalist by the editors at Webware.com, a CNET site, for the 2009 Webware 100 Awards in the category of Infrastructure and Storage. In each of the Webware 100 categories, there are 30 finalists, and from that list will include 10 winners selected by the general public.

Voting ends April 30th. All the winners will be announced on May 19.

To vote, click here.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, cnet, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, rafe needleman, webware

LongJump, along with companies like Akamai, AMD, AT&T, Cisco, CSC, EMC, IBM, Red Hat, SAP, Sun Microsystems and VMWare, proudly joins the Open Cloud Manifesto, the first step in defining vendor-neutral interoperability standards for cloud based platforms.

The manifesto defines cloud computing as:

• Scalability on Demand
• Streamlining the Data Center
• Improving Business Processes
• Minimizing Startup Costs

It also lists the challenges of adopting cloud computing in real-world business environments including:

• Security
• Data and Application Interoperability
• Data and Application Portability
• Governance and Management
• Metering and Monitoring

The goals of the manifesto is to promote:

• Choice
• Flexibility
• Speed and Agility
• Skills

And as cloud computing matures, there are several key principles that the manifesto hopes to address to ensure the cloud is open and delivers the choice, flexibility and agility organizations demand. We are eager to work with other cloud providers to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption (security, integration, portability, interoperability, governance/management, metering/monitoring) are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards. The goal for vendors should be to not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms. We also recognize that all platforms must try to adopt existing standards wherever appropriate while also helping to define new standards that promote innovation.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, cloud manifesto, open cloud

The gang at CS Techcast, a podcast by Consortio Services, talked with the CEO of LongJump, Pankaj Malviya, about Platform as a Service to get the scoop on cloud computing trends for business. They discuss the adoption of cloud computing platforms within corporate IT teams, and how PaaS provide a point in evolution for developers to create enterprise applications in the cloud. Pankaj also discusses how LongJump is one of many platform tiers within cloud computing. The interview also examines how PaaS changes IT’s perspective to evaluate their focus in their organizations in regards to cost savings, security, and capabilities inherent in the platform they build on.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, IT department, PaaS

Technorati Tags: application development, coghead, custom applications, enterprise applications, PaaS, Platform, Platform-as-a-Service, techcrunch

Among the topics they discussed were LongJump’s bootstrapped roots, the software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) industry, cloud computing as a whole impact on enterprises and businesses.

To listen to the complete interview, along with Steve’s interviews with Court Cunningham, the CEO of Yodle and Daren Tsui from MSPOT, click here.

Technorati Tags: bootstrapping, cloud computing, innovators radio, PaaS, pankaj malviya, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, software-as-a-service

By now, everyone knows the value of software as a service (SaaS) to small and midsize companies. But eventually, PaaS could have an even more profound effect on growing companies’ access to the applications they need. Platform as a service is a technique that makes it faster, easier, and cheaper to develop and deploy custom SaaS applications using existing components.

With PaaS solutions, more vertical industries that have traditionally been excluded in custom software circles will likely find a fitted answer without paying a large amount for consulting. In addition, Paul states that “growing companies can expect PaaS to deliver not only more customized software at faster speeds, but also better prices.”

Technorati Tags: PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, smb

So how hard could it be for those same service providers to deliver network-based apps, be they simple things such as e-mail and hosting or complex applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management? The answer is, it turns out, pretty hard. But that doesn’t mean that carriers have — or should — give up on delivering software applications via their networks. It just means they have to be smarter and savvier, even as the types of services and apps that can be delivered via the network cloud are rapidly proliferating — from relatively simple messaging and security services to full-blown virtualized computing environments that can be “rented” by the month or hour.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Service providers have a maturation process they will need to go through to become software distribution channels. Since they are primarily geared towards an SMB market, they will require ready-to-go solutions that have immediate, meaningful impact, yet be able to take the shape of the businesses they are trying to serve.

For LongJump, we’re certainly trying to lay some groundwork in this area. LongJump, has partnered with service providers in some instances, including Singapore Telecom and Jamcracker, to deliver a broad range of platform-based application services to businesses.

“Every ASP application needs to have the ability to be customized; there isn’t a single customer willing to take a completely canned product,” said Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump, of his company’s platform play. “If a service provider were to try to build what we can provide for them, it would take years. That’s our story: They can operate a single platform and build very powerful apps that they can offer individually but also are designed to talk with one another.”

In the end, it makes perfect sense. Service providers are the keepers of the pipes. As their business becomes more commoditized, they need to differentiate their services and take on a more value-added reseller role.

Technorati Tags: asp, carriers, cloud computing, jamcracker, PaaS, saas, service providers, singtel

LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya was a featured guest on the PricewaterhouseCoopers Start Up Show hosted by Steve Bengston September 25th. Pankaj and Steve discussed how Platform-as-a-Service as an organizational application development platform and the future of cloud computing can help businesses improve their IT services.

He talked about the need for PaaS, benefits, state of the industry and market, implementation, what applications work best in the PaaS model, and the future worldwide adoption of PaaS.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Martin Heller of Infoworld comments in “Cloud application builder adds development suite” :

“From what I saw in the demo, however, any Java/JSP developer should be able to become productive with LongJump fairly quickly, and the pre-built relational objects provided should make quick work of many common applications.”

 Sarah Perez of Readwriteweb.com writes in “LongJump Extends Itself With New Developer Suite” :

With the new LongJump Development Suite, an I.T. department can build the app they need, then use the included visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling. Alternately, they could instead choose to hand of the integration of the app with another system or application to a developer (or team of developers). Finding a developer to work with LongJump shouldn’t be an issue since the suite provided is a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), something that’s used by 69% of Java developers today.

Svetlana Gladkova of Profy.com remarks in “LongJump Further Enhances Its PaaS Offerings to Developers” :

“…the fact that all the development and deployment are conducted online on LongJump platform means significant cost reduction for a business that can not afford the traditional infrastructure to run a business application on its own (while it is possible to ensure hosting of the applications elsewhere as well).”

Bob Thompson from CustomerThink Corp. remarks in “Jumping Into Cloud Computing Platform War: LongJump” :

“From a demo I saw, it seems developers can easily create custom applications, using a combination of data objects, workflow, business rules, etc. And custom Java code if you need it. I can envision developers creating fairly complex applications in a few days, and deploying immediately via the cloud.

From a technology standpoint, I’d say LongJump is on a par with Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. Both are powerful and built to support enterprise-grade applications.”

He goes on to say…

“LongJump strikes me as one of the real gems in the cloud computing market. Assuming it can execute its marketing strategy well, I think it will attract developers who like the robust platform, easy-to-use interface and standard Java code for customizations.”

Finally, Mark Hendrickson from Techcrunch observes in “LongJump Challenges Force.com with New Developer Suite” :

“LongJump will provide a sandbox area for developers to test their Java applications before deploying them into production. The platform also implements a reusable relational data object model that’s intended to save you time recoding when developing several applications.”

We’d love to hear from you if you have additional feedback on our Developer Suite.
 

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud computing, java, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

• Basic concepts of PaaS, e.g. benefits, technology, potential risks and hurdles, etc.
• Applications suitable for PaaS
• Roadmap for successful adoption and integration
• Q&A

Date:
Wed., Sept. 24, 2008

Time:
8am Pacific Time
11am Eastern Time

Duration:
1 hour

Speaker:
Derek Cheng,
Director of Products and Marketing,
LongJump

To register:
http://www.longjump.com/paas-webinar/land/paas-webinar-sep08.htm

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud computing, PaaS, Web2.0

This makes yet another case for SaaS and Cloud Computing solutions. Many organizations are under the false belief that traditional, on-premise systems are safer and more reliable than leveraged enterprise software that is offered on-demand. In the case with Childs, his IT terrorism is still being assessed, but authorities say undoing his denial of access to other system administrators could cost millions of dollars. However, if San Francisco’s data were hosted, a simple call to the application provider (with proof of administrative creditials) could have restored access in minutes, as well as lock-out Childs from any future access. Hosted software providers are like an additional safety firewall for businesses.

Most SaaS providers like LongJump operate on fully-monitored, secured backends. Data is mirrored, backed up on a daily basis, and an entire operational workflow is engaged before critical changes are made. In addition, people with access to sensitive systems are screened and no one has “exclusive rights.” A third party SaaS provider can quickly correct these types of catastrophes (which thankfully are rare, but always possible) and save organizations like the City of San Francisco the cost and embarassment of a renegade IT terrorist.

Technorati Tags: hosted software, IT administration, on-demand, on-premise, saas, San Francisco, software-as-a-service, Terry Childs

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.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, GigaOm, IT department, on-demand, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Mark Hendrickson of TechCrunch says in “LongJump Wants You to Stop Pushing Paper Around the Office“:

“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.”

Leslie Poston of Profy says in “LongJump Releases New Features“:

“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.”

Phil Wainewright of ZDNet analyzes the entire customization trend in “Customization: curse or blessing?”

 ”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.”

David Sims of TMCNet says:

“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.”

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.

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 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.

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.

You can vote for LongJump in the Webware 100 Productivity Category here.

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.

You can read the entire article here.

“It’s nice to see a company willing to bite at the heels of SalesForce.com.” – Fritz Nelson

For the complete video and article, click here.

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.

• 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!

The term SaaS has given rise to many SaaS-related cousins. Krissi Danielsson did a great post title “Attack of the -aaS Acronyms, or a Quick Glossary of SaaS Cousins” on this growing trend. Some notable acronyms that actually related to SaaS include:

• 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!

• CIO Weblog: More on the SMB SaaS front
• Column 2: LongJump Revisited
• Paul Gillin: Demo stuff that I’ll use
• SmallBizTechnology.com: LongJump – Business Applications for Collaboration…

I especially liked Paul Gillin’s post about useful small business services at DEMOFall which concludes with the following quote:

As a small-business owner, my financial management processes are embarrassingly rudimentary. At some point, I probably should make the switch to Intuit’s QuickBooks, but LongJump would argue that it can deliver all that functionality and more for a low monthly fee. The initial service combines 14 common business applications and an integration platform that developers can use to add others.

Nick Gonzalez at TechCrunch just did a great article on our library of customizable business apps! Nick writes:

So, as promised earlier, LongJump has seeded their platform with a suite of applications that can be remixed by their users. The suite consists of 13 business applications that will be free to use through the end of the year.

LongJump builds on the success of our parent company’s (Relational) enterprise business application platform. Nick points out that this platform is currently used by “over 100 enterprise level customers.” The good news is that because LongJump is built on a tried and true enterprise-grade platform, it ensures a reliable and scalable solution for its small to medium-sized business users.