To keep up with our need to provide ongoing, agile support content quickly for our very feature-rich platform, LongJump is introducing our Support Wiki site that encompasses all things technical. It will be a single destination for how-to’s, product/platform information, tutorials, and how things work.
Our support and engineering teams will contribute to the site, as well as our partners.
Like all good technical documentation, the LongJump Support Wiki will be a living document, growing and refining as we have more use cases and features to talk about. The goal for our customers is to be able to find up-to-date information quickly and easily to solve their problems or get information. This is never more true than with LongJump’s focus on our Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution.
Our CEO, Pankaj Malviya, has been published on GigaOm recently discussing the how IT and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) solutions can work hand in hand.
Below is the complete article:
The Long Tail of IT
Pankaj Malviya, June 25, 2008
Everyone who has worked in — or even with — an IT department knows that the demand for projects always exceeds IT’s ability to deliver them all. IT is able to address only those most highly prioritized, core business projects that receive the budget, staff and priority to develop, test, deliver and maintain over time. If projects don’t make the “A” list, the project either doesn’t get done or workers have to find a way to do it themselves.
Today’s more tech-savvy, Web 2.0 workforce has increasingly resorted to getting the tools it needs from SaaS software providers. In an ideal world, IT must be an active partner in prescribing technology to help the rest of the business work better together, move information efficiently, and get the answers needed to make the next strategic or tactical decisions. This is what the Long Tail of IT is all about: really important IT automation projects that would help the business but that consistently don’t make the list of must-do projects.
The platform-as-a-service evolution that is starting to emerge (for example, with solutions from Amazon, Google and LongJump) is one that has potential to restore the luster of the IT department, because these solutions are focused on delivering “customized, situational applications” that connect to a range of common and uncommon processes.
Platform-as-a-service provides a turnkey environment to build applications that teams can use to share data and collaborate. There is no infrastructure to install, and the time and cost to build, deploy and customize new applications is greatly reduced.
PaaS solutions should also be able to integrate with other sources of data using simple web-services APIs. Connecting to enterprise data sources securely is fundamental. Additionally, customization is extremely important; applications that are created must meet the unique requirements of businesses. PaaS should provide a visual way to create new forms, model and automate processes and workflows, and implement actionable data policies.
Rather than needing to work with a one-size-fits-all application (and an extensive, dedicated IT architecture), PaaS platforms need to be able to draw from functional domain experts from Marketing to Sales to HR to easily customize applications, or quickly create and publish situational applications, that are better suited to their unique business requirements. The PaaS platforms also need to deliver enterprise-level service, security, and hardware and software architecture, as well as rich functionality for each application, ranging from configurable dashboard widgets to a flexible database architecture that enables extensive relationships between application data, search capabilities across all applications, etc.
PaaS’ rise is built upon need. The fact that PaaS is on demand and in the cloud is driven by the reality that IT isn’t able to support its multi-departmental constituents with a flexible business platform of information and collaboration. Information workers don’t have time to build a server, manage a database, design a UI, etc. PaaS offers a convenient, predictable, leverageable alternative to yesterday’s big IT initiatives.
That doesn’t mean IT is off the hook, however. In fact, PaaS needs IT to succeed. Not just to bless the technology around security and scalability issues, but to be the guiding light of information management:
How do you organize your data permissions?
What data needs to connect to other data to form applications?
Do the new applications meet required compliance standards for users’ data protection? What should that data and application look like?
How much is customer-facing, and how much is back-end?
What external systems need to connect to this data?
PaaS gives IT something it never had: the ability to manage the ‘I’ without the need for too much ‘T.’ No hardware to install; no database to optimize; no web servers to update. PaaS provides structured, centralized data and processes that are enterprise-agnostic. The focus is then realigned on the applications one can build and the business problems one can solve, not on the technology that built them.
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.
Company Appoints Vice President of Business Development to Lead Newly Unveiled Partner Program and Drive Channel Strategy
Sunnyvale, CA May 19, 2008 — LongJump, a platform for highly customizable, interconnected on-demand business applications, announced today that it has appointed Jay Noble as its new Vice President of Business Development. Noble brings with him more than 20 years of enterprise-level consulting and implementation experience as well as a solid track record of sales and marketing successes, overseeing CRM-focused project implementations and teams. In his new role, Noble will spearhead the company’s sales and partner channel strategy.
Noble’s appointment follows closely on LongJump’s recently unveiled Jumpstart Partner Program, which was developed for resellers who want to leverage a true enterprise-grade, multi-tenant, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and deliver database-driven custom applications that meet their customers’ needs. The program provides partners with an exceptionally attractive incremental revenue channel where they can monetize LongJump’s application platform with their own premium services, while benefiting from LongJump’s support of lead generation campaigns, business opportunity referrals, and generous multi-year commission plans.
“Until now, there has not been a SaaS provider that has developed a compelling channel proposition for partners, which is absolutely essential to bring SaaS to more businesses,” noted LongJump’s founder and CEO, Pankaj Malviya. “Jay’s experience and success on the reseller side provides LongJump with an important perspective into what the VAR and developer partners need from SaaS vendors to expand their revenue opportunities.”
Noble has a wealth of knowledge in sales, marketing, and customer support, and has led numerous implementations of enterprise CRM software at global companies, including Apple, Sybase and Hawaiian Telecom. Prior to joining LongJump, Noble served as President of North American Operations for saaspoint, a leading Salesforce.com implementation partner, where he helped deliver several major projects at Fortune 1,000 companies. Previously, Noble spent four years as a top senior manager and CRM practice leader at BearingPoint. In this role, Noble spearheaded several multi-million dollar systems integration projects within Fortune 500 companies and was a key member of the PeopleSoft and Salesforce.com alliance teams.
“LongJump’s on-demand platform is trailblazing how enterprises of all sizes can collaborate, manage information, and simplify business process optimization,” stated Noble. “The LongJump team demonstrates a focus and commitment to truly help our channel partners maximize their revenue potential with LongJump’s suite of interconnected applications.”
Noble holds a Bachelor’s degree in Management from Oral Roberts University. He currently resides in San Jose, California.
Partners Drive Day-to-Day Relationships with Client, Enjoy Upsell Opportunities and Earn Multi-Year Commissions
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Friday, April 25, 2008 – Today at the Web 2.0 Conference and Expo, LongJump, a provider of highly customizable, interconnected on-demand business applications, unveiled a “Jumpstart Partner” reseller program. The new program serves the requirements of resellers, developers, and consultants with either a vertical market focus or a functional business area focus, such as CRM or HR. LongJump helps partners implement their technical expertise and best practices and provide customized consulting services and training to businesses.
LongJump’s Jumpstart Partner Program is ideal for resellers who want to leverage a true multi-tenant, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and deliver custom database-driven applications that meet their customers’ needs. The program was designed to provide partners with an exceptionally attractive incremental revenue channel where they can monetize LongJump’s platform with their own premium services.
“To stay on the leading edge, resellers want to participate in the growing SaaS market. Therefore, LongJump plans to invest aggressively in our partners through lead generation campaigns, business opportunity referrals and generous multi-year commission plans. We believe that resellers will find LongJump a true partner in growing their business and maximizing revenue-building opportunities,” noted Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s CEO.
Although SaaS-based solutions are growing in popularity, resellers who have customarily delivered on-premise solutions have looked to leverage the ease of delivery of SaaS but still maintain a strong connection with their customers and provide premium services. With its new program, LongJump will maintain the customer relationship merely from a technology perspective, but the day-to-day relationship with the customer will be owned by each partner. LongJump’s robust enterprise-grade feature set and uniquely affordable price point also gives partners the opportunity to upsell their services across the entire organization.
The Jumpstart Partner Program has two participation tiers: a Silver Medalist and a premier Gold Medalist level. Certified partners benefit by having more leads directed to them by LongJump. There is a one-time program fee for certification, but to kick-start its program, LongJump will waive the program fee for the first 20 partners who sign up at the Gold Medalist level.
As part of its Jumpstart Partner Program, LongJump will provide comprehensive sales tools and materials, sales support for complex deals, lead generation and qualification programs, training and certification designed to rapidly prepare partners to build applications and provide custom implementation services to their existing customers or new ones. LongJump also plans to participate in co-marketing initiatives with Gold Medalist partners.
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.”
Businesses are faced with a rising challenge today: There is more data that they have to deal with rather than not enough. This fact, coupled with the increased speed in which everything now has to happen, has meant that businesses more than ever have to take all of that data and automate as much of their actions as possible to maximize productivity.
Workflows themselves are nothing new. Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Business process reengineering, and Lean systems have all focused on some aspects of workflow management and improvement. By establishing and standardizing best practices, many organizations have streamlined the physical aspects of operational tasks.
But more often than not, the software tools to move that information across the organization (such as forms, faxes, emails and even intranets) have not kept up, involving additional complexity, consultation, and process-slowing human error. Systems that are built are often customized to such a point that changing them would cost businesses considerable time and expense. And in most cases, workflows are only built for the most important activities rather than the most common.
LongJump today introduces a graphical Workflow Designer to help businesses map out their data-driven, repeatable processes and route actions across an organization, enabling consistent best practices and streamlining delivery cycles. With the easy-to-use, web-based Workflow Designer, users sharing data and activities in LongJump are empowered to improve operational efficiency and quality and information flow.
With a simplified workflow metaphor, yet with extensive capabilities to support to virtually any business process, both simple and compless processes can be automated and routed throughout an organization. Everything from vacation and expense approvals to hiring processes to creative production projects, to service delivery can be mapped out in LongJump, its data stored, information and actions routed to key constituents, and its status maintained.
To learn more about how to create workflows using LongJump, click here for the feature guide.
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.
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.
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.
Company Appoints Vice President of Business Development to Lead Newly Unveiled Partner Program and Drive Channel Strategy
