• 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

REST Primers, Tutorials and Examples

• How I Explained REST to My Wife – Ryan Tomako’s great plain-speak story of REST is the stuff of legends. Someone needs to turn it into an Xtranormal movie.
• Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures – The complete dissertation by Dr. Fielding published in 2000 for UC Irvine. Think of it as the opposite of explaining it to your wife
• Learn REST – A deep online training session by Dr. M. Elkstein that takes you into making REST calls from a variety of languages including Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. It also can be used to design wrappers around a variety of REST APIs in your language of choice.
• How to Build a REST app in .NET – MSDN offers information on using the Windows Communication Foundation to call REST APIs.

REST Development and Testing Tools

• RESTClient – A Mozilla Firefox extension that replicates calls made via REST and displays responses right from the browser.
• jQuery JSON-REST plugin – A plugin to jQuery that enables simplified calls through Javascript. Also of note is the reference for .ajax() calls.
• cURL – A binding for PHP to simplify making REST/HTTP calls.

REST References and Discussions

• This Week in REST – A weekly roundup of news about REST maintained by Ivan Zuzak. He includes blog posts on a variety of subjects.
• RESTwiki – A compendium of resources that are all about REST. This isn’t a very active reference, but it’s pretty comprehensive.
• Programmableweb API Directory – Lists APIs from a variety of services to help build Mashups by pulling in data from services like Facebook, Twitter, and GoogleMaps

*Bonus* LongJump Platform as a Service REST Resources

• REST API Reference – We have exposed almost all of our internal functionality with accessibility through our web service. It’s like having a complete backend enterprise environment accessible via REST calls.
• REST API Cheat Sheet – If you’re an old-hand at making REST calls, this quick reference gives you what you need fast.

Technorati Tags: architectural style, representational state transfer, rest

Says Ellison:

“Multitenancy is a horrible idea. What it means is, everyone’s data is commingled, everyone’s customer list is in a single database. That’s a horrible security model. In the 21st century, the way we support multiple customers is called ‘virtualization.’”

Certainly Ellison is entitled to his belief (or his right to say it), but let’s face it: the more copies of Oracle you have running (virtual or otherwise), the better it is for Oracle.

Software companies should consider stackware a “horrible SaaS business model” — especially in that it negates the business, operational, and economic value of multitenancy: everything from streamlining deployment operations, improving core development, maximizing common resources, and only repeating what you need, not the entire frigging architecture.

You might even argue that having multiple databases could be considered even less secure because now you’ve created many entry points into your systems and no way of knowing when you need to lock down the entire platform. One more thing: data in a multitenant environment is not “commingled.” Tenant walls, if built properly, still require you to have access rights to see data — access rights that, as just mentioned, can be shut down from a central point. No one freaks out in an apartment building about their neighbors commingling their groceries or sheets.

At Softletter’s SaaS University last week, the topic of multitenancy was a lot more constructive. Several sessions touched on it from establishing a basic understanding of how it works to what is really on the minds of SaaS businesses. Mike Ormerod from Progress Software had an excellent overview and it refutes Ellison’s point, identifying several types of multitenancy in which you can have multiple apps, multiple databases, even multiple architectures. Likewise, our own platform refutes Ellison’s point about a single database as you can build essentially instances between infrastructures that act like tenants, and deploy across instantiations.

That’s not to say you absolutely need multitenancy. If you’re building B2C type solutions or specific point solutions, not having MT is not a deal breaker. But for enterprise class solutions where a lot of complexity happens at the configuration level and where your clients are demanding manageable customization, not having multitenancy can increase your operating and licensing costs dramatically.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, larry ellison, multitenancy, oracle, saas, saas university, softletter

But there is clear trend towards SaaS and the Public Cloud, especially when businesses require higher productivity for less investment as we move to all things digital and accessible.

From where LongJump sits, we do see Private Clouds still being necessary. That’s why we do have an option for ISVs and partner businesses to fully install our entire platform and host it themselves. There is just some information you can’t put into distribution that even hint at a security compromise, whether it is sensitive financial information, intellectual property, health records, or legal information.

Obviously the attraction of Public Cloud solutions is clear:

• No IT commitment or investment
• Highly scalable and encourages growth
• Recurring revenue
• Remote management

In the end, the question for VARs, MSPs, and solution providers is: “What will my customers be willing to do to save some serious money?”

If you have both, find a partner who can do both.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, crn, hosted software, isv, msp, private cloud, public cloud, saas, var

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

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

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

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

First, let’s talk “stuff.” If you mean by data, absolutely. As Facebook’s recent stumble has indicated, customers should be able to freely move their content. In fact, any application platform should have published APIs that are enable you to migrate data in and out of the system. And their code-based development should support industry standard syntax and logic like Java so at the very least, you can migrate custom logic and processing. But if you mean the applications themselves, which you could argue is the valued piece, that is going to take awhile.

Applications are a combination of data structures (or data models), processing, presentation, a range of interaction that works in concert with the existing platform. As such, every platform vendor has ways of adapting those structures to help businesses leverage as much of the pre-built platform as possible. For PaaS providers, the application modeling and framework are part of their magical sauce, often uniquely optimized for their operating environment, mixed with a large dose of customer requests, and added to that many late night hours of ingenuity. Why? Because there is no all-encompassing platform yet, but each step takes us closer.

Alan Zeichick of SD Times has a more sensible response to issues of standardizing the cloud.

Standards, hastily enacted, can stifle innovation. Cloud computing is in an early experimental growth stage. Sure, we have some well-entrenched early success stories, such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com, but it would be a potential tragedy to allow the early work of three companies to be codified as standards. We need time for their cloud offerings to shake out for a few years. We need time for new players to enter the market with new technologies – and new ideas. We need time to broaden the base upon which the standards are made to go beyond commercial interests.

To add to Alan’s point, as we build our platform, our job is never done. Companies are finding more and more uses for LongJump and with each new use comes a handful of new requirements — sometimes involving a change to our modeling and framework. It’s exciting because it’s making our platform richer, more robust and more sophisticated with every update.

If you asked us today to adhere to a standard, we would say: “for what… and whose?” It’s not like millions of companies are jumping online creating applications and abandoning their traditional architectures. At this point a cloud standard would be like asking companies like us to band together to set rules and speed limits and street etiquette before we’ve reached escape velocity. Yes, it’s safe, but completely impractical.

When WiFi was in its early stages (or the Internet for that matter), standards came about when adoption became wider. Adobe held PDF until it ensured that everyone could read it. HTML is still changing as new browser technology is introduced. You want standards? Help improve adoption of these platforms and lobby for the changes that will make them interoperable. Don’t hang up projects based on interoperability first.

And if you’re worried about lock-in, pick an application platform vendor that is willing to work with you on those issues. Talk to them. Give them a chance to address those issues, one-on-one. It’s still early and you can help define the platform you need. And that is better than any standard.

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

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

SaaS solutions have been around for going on 10 years now and the time is right to see broader and deeper adoption of this approach to application development and utilization. Lower risk processes like sales, marketing and HR have provided the first set of users to benefit from shorter implementation times, easier to use applications and functionality that is perpetually kept up to date. Now that enterprises are faced with doing even more with even less, SaaS should be considered as a replacement more mission-critical internal business processes as well as customer facing applications. By all means grieve, but know that SaaS has been waiting patiently for you since the day you first met. She’s grown as platform and so have your needs.

The traditional technology adoption cycle has just received a jarring inflection point kick in the pants. Typically new technologies move through a predictable path from early adopters to market laggards the same way almost every other commodity introduced into the marketplace. It is a challenging cycle that many technologies fail to overcome (does anyone remember bubble memory and hand-held scanners?) but fairly predictable none the less. According to Geoffrey Moore in his book, Crossing the Chasm, each stage along the way requires certain strategies and tactics that increase the likelihood of success.

Assessing the Grieving Process

The last few months have dramatically changed the landscape globally and everyone will be looking at everything they do from a different perspective. We are just now getting out of the denial phase of dealing with this crisis and heading smack into anger over how this all happened and happened so quickly. If this path is continued, bargaining will ensue and that means evaluating what can be done differently to survive in the new economic reality. From an organizational perspective that means looking at every cost associated with everything to see if it can be done away with or done more cheaply in another way (saas starts looking better for a broader role in the business.)

Without this shock to the system the status quo would have been maintained because there would not have been a compelling reason to change what was already in place. Companies do not experience depression, the next phase of coping with a tragic event, even though the people that make up an organization can and often do experience it quite profoundly.

So that leaves acceptance of the fact that a bad thing has happened and the only choice is to adapt or die. Since death of an organization means serious economic disruption to all concerned, adapting to leaner and flexible processes is the only viable choice. These types of changes are always talked about in an organization but ultimately there is little motivation to go through painful change when everyone feels like the ship is generally going in the right direction.

While SaaS and cloud computing are not a panacea, it does offer organizations the ability to get in, get up and get running more quickly and cost-effectively than traditional software applications. While the TCO debate continues over whether saas is cheaper with larger user populations over a long period of time, there is one major component that is overlooked when calculating the benefits of saas. Continuous upgrading of a SaaS platform means a company never has to go through an upgrade or deal with the incompatibilities so-called suite product offerings.

The reality of SAP and Oracle’s products is they are a mixture of legacy code bases from the companies they purchased over the years. So adding a configurator to your CRM system means a whole new implementation with business disruption and resource drain to do the implementation. Further, if the configurator gets an upgrade there is no guarantee that it will work with your existing versions of opportunity management and demand planning. This is why so many companies are running customer support systems that are 2 years past the last upgrade and in numerous cases outside standard support from the vendor. It’s also why SOA has become a mantra in many IT circles.

The Time to Move On

Today everything must be reevaluated with more and more organizations looking at their legacy systems and transitioning them to the cloud. They will be able to do it more quickly with less money and maintain the applications with fewer people. In addition they will be able to react more quickly to changing market requirements and even globalize operations to take advantage of lower labor costs or access to new market opportunities. It is time to realize that building a SAS 70 II compliant data center is better left to those who do that sort of thing for a living. Likewise, it is time to acknowledge that the lower levels of the software stack have commoditized to a point where there should be little or no need for a staff of database architects and programmers, no matter where their located, hammering endlessly at an attempt to hone the perfect application to keep the business running. Situational, composite applications that adhere to enterprise conditions and dynamics and are turned around in days rather than months are the new new things.

2009 will be a watershed year for SaaS because the cost of maintaining the status quo is no longer sustainable in the face of seismic economic changes. The organizations that will survive, or even thrive, going forward are the ones whose systems don’t prevent them from making the necessary changes to their business model or operating practices. All the talk of building an agile enterprise will be put to the test this year and cloud offerings will be one of the key enabling technologies that will increase the likelihood of success.

There is life after traditional legacy applications in the enterprise and it’s time for both you and SaaS to go forward together into this new life.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, crossing the chasm, database, geoffrey moore, IT department, IT projects, IT silos, legacy applications, saas, Sales and CRM, soa, software-as-a-service

Enter PaaS.

First, I’ll admit right now, I’m not a developer. I’ve written some applications before in a variety of languages including assembly, C++, Pascal, Java, and BASIC, but coding was not my calling. However… as a business user, there is some real advantage to the PaaS model, especially as it crashes into a sustained, cooperative relationship with agile developers.

Specifically two major points of the Agile Manifesto (“Customer Collaboration” and “Responding to Change”) are inherently easier in a PaaS environment. PaaS provides a significant amount of customization and configuration at the non-coding level, which can deepen a user’s commitment to the application.

For example, I can “self-service” myself to design some very sophisticated automated actions or generate elaborate reports, normally reserved for a DBA and programmer. Such as with LongJump’s data policies or workflow or validations, many automated processing functions are laid out in an easy-to-convey way. I just have to have an understanding of how to dissect the data.

And when I reach my limit of expertise on the design platform or when the platform’s native functionality reaches a wall, I can turn to my buddy, Joe the Agile Software Developer, and say, “Can you write me a connector to our backend such-and-such?” or “Do you have time to write me a simple cleansing algorithm to hunt down bad email addresses?”

The parameters are fairly well defined. The constructs of the platform are very clear. Best of all, changes can happen in near real-time. If Joe writes a Java function for one of our objects, it can go live immediately without having to reinstall a thing. Checked in code is usable the moment it leaves Eclipse. While web developers might say “so what” to that, for enterprise developers, it can be something prized.

And if Joe’s code is close enough to what I need for another object, and I can read enough of it to know where my differences are, I can copy and paste the code for use in another object. It becomes one less thing Joe needs to do for me (freeing him to play WoW or whatever it is programmers do with free time — probably read about coding).

The end result are applications that not only work the way the end user needs them to (point number 2 of the manifesto), they are essentially alive – adapting whenever I have a new business need. And the realization of those changes are not measured in weeks or months or even days – more like minutes.

As a business user, because I’m tailoring the app to my own needs, there’s also a real stickiness to it and more satisfaction as we grow old together. As I mature, as our processes mature, the app matures with me. It’s mine.

And isn’t that the point of agile development?

Technorati Tags: agile manifesto, agile software, application development, developers, programming

This is something we’re predicting will coalesce; right now it’s a bunch of individuals doing this on their own, but we expect lean software to catch on… Lean software could be the antidote to bloated vendors, products and applications and could be helpful in a down economy.

Rymer describes lean software as:

An approach to building, delivering and running software that values fit-to-purpose, simplicity and time to results above all. Lean approaches minimize complexity, startup time and resource usage, and [avoid] features and methods not essential to fulfilling the application’s business purposes. Developers can easily combine Lean software components with others when large systems require more features.

Rymer is spot on in discussing the need for programmers to build leaner, smaller applications. One thing the Web 2.0 push has taught us was to be more introspective when it comes to our application needs. Do we really need every application to be a monolithic exercise in features and functionality? Probably not. Lean software is also very much akin to situational applications.

At the same time, the platform those applications are built on are extremely important. The platform itself must be rich enough to support agile development models where apps can be deployed at will and common business infrastructure components don’t have to be built up from scratch. It is also important for the platform to allow situational and lean applications to connect to each other natively so you don’t end up creating another application silo.

Rymer also stated seven principles to follow for developing lean software:

1. Use fit-to-purpose tools and platforms
2. Employ a lean and agile development process
3. Follow standards that enable pluggable components for tools and applications
4. Hire skillful developers
5. Leverage open source
6. Optimize deployments
7. Rent or outsource context and own core applications

As Rymer mentions, there are some solutions already in the form of OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative), SaaS (software as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service), which provide modular and elastic alternatives to heavy solutions.

Technorati Tags: application development, custom applications, developers, enterprise applications, eweek, forrester, john rymer, lean software, PaaS, situational applications

• 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

The panel discussed how PaaS addresses the Long Tail of IT applications where vendors like Oracle, SAP are not focusing. IT, despite being resource constrained, can still provide the business with these apps using PaaS and still have enterprise levels of integration across their other applications and databases. Additionally, the panel also talked about their respective approaches to convincing developers on using their platforms either via leveraging Java and established database design skills or more proprietary languages like APEX (Force.com) that is similar to Java and C#.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, PaaS, saas

They often run $100-million or more to make. The reason is that every movie project is a product; fully conceived and produced from the lines in the script to the distributed prints that get sent out to the movie theater. Hollywood studios often have to create everything from scratch, and most of the time, have to recreate entire worlds for every different movie. That might work in the entertainment industry or in art, but if IT services outside core business functions took that approach, it’d be a plot for disaster.

To understand how IT has gotten to where it is today, we need to examine how new applications are introduced.

Application Development and Deployment 1.0

Traditionally, IT would have to purchase physical hardware and then deploy some type of application infrastructure. That includes web servers, application servers, databases, creating application frameworks, etc. Of course, that means someone has to manage each of those layers. Scalability, data recovery and security issues also come into play. In many cases, much of the resource time and costs involved in building occur before the application has ever been defined.

Then application managers and architects are tasked with:

• Requirements gathering
• Designing and creating data models
• Designing user interfaces
• Mapping out workflows and processes
• Building connectors to external systems

Invariably, the endeavor involves essentially developing, quality assuring and releasing a complete software product. This internal product comes burdened with a list of technical, business and review requirements, a series of development cycles, and a complete application infrastructure that is specific for that one type of operation. It also needs to have some method for connecting to existing systems.

In the process of pulling together even simple applications, developers will have to find ways to build or buy application components for security access controls, user authentication, data view management, reports and dashboards, custom processing, and much more. Businesses often bring in independent contractors or services companies or platform specialists.

The IT application portfolio gets thicker with more vendors, more off-the-shelf software and an increasing number of sub-projects. Applications take on a life of their own, which is why entire suites of solutions are geared towards application lifecycle management.

Let’s also add that features that are developed in these silos often cannot be leveraged into other applications. They are disconnected and separate. This drives the cost of maintenance sky high and results in unpredictable IT spending whenever that application needs to be updated.

Ultimately, the application becomes its own silo and development teams have to reinvent the wheel for every new business problem or application function. Over time, multiple silos start appearing and management of these fragmented applications becomes more complex and expensive.

Application Development and Deployment 2.0

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions like LongJump can add significant value to enterprise IT by enabling IT to better serve the business, operate at a strategic level with business divisions and rapidly deliver application solutions to business partners.

PaaS enables IT organizations and their CIOs to do more faster and for less. They are able to deliver on-demand business applications quickly and easily to manage data, streamline collaborative processes and provide actionable analysis. PaaS solutions reduce the complexity of custom applications across the organization, enabling better use of the IT dollar and improving overall processes.

Technorati Tags: application development, custom applications, IT projects, IT silos, Longjump, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud, Longjump, PaaS, Platform, saas, Sales and CRM, Service

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

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.

Pankaj Malviya is the Founder & CEO of LongJump.

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

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

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.

Last year, research firm IDC came out with 10 Ten Predictions for SaaS. These includes:

1. Large ISVs Will Spin Off On-Demand Versions of Products
2. Small and Medium Enterprises Remain a “Tough Nut to Crack”
3. Microsoft Strengthens SaaS Resolve
4. Software on Demand Providers Focus on Partnering
5. Mini-Ecosystems Emerge to Extend the Reach of SaaS
6. SaaS Enablers Continue to Aid Availability of On-Demand Offerings
7. Merger and Acquisition Activity Continues
8. SaaS Providers Concentrate on Improving Offerings and Customer Experience
9. Hosted Application Management Becomes a Stepping Stone Towards SaaS
10. 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 storage per month type pricing or some combination of the two.

• 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!

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.

• Web Presence
  Services focused on establishing a web presence for small businesses and helping them distribute information.
• Web Commerce
  E-commerce application focused on selling products and services.
• Web Applications
  Back-office applications that help businesses improve productivity, efficiency and cut cost.

LongJump is very much about meeting the needs of small businesses in the areas of web applications. Most business today, both big and small, have already solved their web presence problem! Others have made progress in enabling web commerce (selling products or services) on their sites or through third parties, but only recently have small businesses began to focus on leveraging web applications to take their business to the next level. I talked about this in my previous post on LongJump and Enterprise 2.0 Evolution were I conclude that:

By making Web 2.0 technologies accessible to small and medium-sized business from a cost, value and time-to-market perspective, LongJump is trying to deliver on some of the business benefits of Enterprise 2.0.

• Open Source Does Not Mean “Software as Service”
  Open source simple means the software itself is available at no cost. The software still needs to be installed, deployed and maintained – which is usually the real cost associated with any business software service. Many small business simply don’t have the time or resources to host and maintain complicated business applications.
• The Quality of Open Source Software Varies
  The quality of open software varies from package to package. Because most open source applications are built by unpaid volunteers, bug fixes or complex features are sometimes not a priority. Most small business are better off using a reliable, world-class business application suite they can depend on.
• Understand the “Hidden Cost” Associated with Open Source
  Installation, support, integration and customization are the real costs behind running and maintaining business application. An all-inclusive services like LongJump removes these “hidden cost” from the equation and delivers business application functionality at an affordable and predictable cost.

While open source maybe an options when it comes to desktop applications, business applications require a level of reliability, security, performance and quality that is best delivered through a world-class enterprise-grade business application platform.

• Know Your Cost: Cost is always important, especially for small businesses. Many solution promises to be a complete turnkey package, but usually this “one size fits them all” promise is a mirage – hence the need for customization or integration. This is where the real “hidden” cost comes in. Because LongJump is focused on enabling codeless customization, applications can be customized effortless by customers themselves. Key components of core application also come pre-integrated, eliminating additional integration cost.
• Know Your Service: A lot of online services come without support or provide minimalistic online support. Support is important and shouldn’t be overlooked. LongJump, on the other hand, is committed to providing world-class support to its business customers. We provide online customer and technical support via our support link and are committed to responding immediately to your support needs during business hours with a resolution (or explanation) of the issue within two business days!
• Know Your Upgrade Path: Before using any service, it is always a good idea to understand your “upgrade path” and upgrade options. There is always some level of “lock-in” associated with using any online service so be sure you understand how a service can grow with your business.

LongJump provide a suite of applications in our application catalog that help address small business needs in these areas including financial applications like the Vendor Manager, business and project management solutions like OfficeSpace, human resource management applications like the Employee Manager and Job Leads, and others are aimed at helping small business owners be more successful.

• Ready to run: The idea that on-demand applications require no installation and minimum setup in order use
• Pay as you go: The idea that you only pay for what you use. LongJump’s “Pay as your grow” approach provides even greater flexibility in allowing you to pay based on the number of users or the amount of storage your applications use.
• Short learning curve: The idea that on-demand application require a minimal amount of training. Additional resources like LongJump University and support help accelerate the learning curve further.
• Codeless customization: The ability to customize applications without coding or development. This one of the core value propositions of the LongJump platform.
• Loosely coupled integration: The idea that on-demand applications have adopted a loosely coupled, service-oriented approach to integrating with external system.
• Constant monitoring and feedback: The idea that a company like LongJump can and does improve the quality and applicability of their platform by listening to and learning from customers.

In general, many of these characteristics apply to on-demand application offerings. The LongJump’s platform, however, offers other unique benefits that continue to speak to the advantages it has over conventional software:

• Inter-application integration: The ability for applications to share information between each other
• Collaboration and community: LongJump tries to leverage the web as a collaborative platform for sharing information between team members and this notion is evident in many of its applications.
• Website Integration: LongJump understands that no application is an island and that customers need to be able to integrate their LongJump applications with their existing websites or other online properties. As a result, LongJump provides a growing range of “cut-and-paste integration” options to users.

Enterprise 2.0

So Makes You an Enterprise 2.0 Organization?
A lot of companies, especially smaller organizations, have started embracing Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 concepts to take their businesses to the “next level”. This list (from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference) does a good job of highlighting some of the differences between Enterprise 1.0 and Enterprise 2.0 companies.

Source: Enterprise 2.0 Conference

This interest in services and solutions for small and medium-sized business is sometimes understated by the actual size and importance of small businesses in our economy.

According to the SCORE, small businesses are big business! The estimated 25.8 million small businesses in the United States are responsible for the following:

• Generating 60 to 80% of net new jobs annually over the last decade
• Employing 50.6% of the country’s private sector workforce
• Representing 97% of all the exporters of goods
• Representing 99.7% of all employer firms

The good news is that as more and more small businesses are having to use the same business tools used by larger enterprises, LongJump and others are there to “bridge the gap.”