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