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

We produced a video articulating what companies that want to build SaaS solutions in the Cloud need to focus on to successfully deliver applications on the web. For a deeper dive, you can also view our presentation on “The Strategy for Bringing SaaS Applications to Market.”

Both also look at how LongJump enables your business to develop and deliver robust software as a service solutions on our application platform quickly so you can focus on your core business.

Here is the video transcript as presented by LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya.

Are you looking to start your journey to building a SaaS business? Well, in our experience, you can expect to encounter a range of obstacles that can keep you from turning your idea into a lasting business.

For example… You will need a multi-tenant architecture if each customer expects to have a unique experience and their own set of configurations. You will need to address how to manage tenants and bill for services. How do you ensure your architecture can meet your performance and scalability requirements? How will you handle application deployment and updates? Those are just the basics to getting your software-as-a-service business up and running.

As you grow, you may look to expand internationally. What will you need to meet localization requirements? Will you work with partners to add to your solutions and extend into an application ecosystem? And how can you offer built-in SOAP and REST support so other systems can get data from your applications?

These considerations for delivering a complete service are just as important as getting to market. But to meet these challenges, ISVs risk pulling resources away from their core competencies.

To this, we offer you LongJump: the proven multi-tenant platform that enables you to rapidly build, manage and deploy a variety of relational database applications, and the foundation of successful SaaS businesses.

In fact, LongJump is the same underlying platform we used to launch Relationals CRM, which is serving hundreds of enterprises, and our ever-growing LongJump.com on-demand service for departments and small business. Now we make this same proven platform available to you to launch your own SaaS business.

LongJump eliminates the need to design and build entire application architectures from scratch, and instead, provides a comprehensive white-labeled platform hosted on your own servers or on the cloud. So instead of putting your energies on technical challenges, you can focus on your core business, reduce your time to market, and move towards building a complete service.

Creating applications can be as easy as browsing the web. Just start by creating relational data objects in a drag-and-drop web environment that are infused with the common business building blocks every organization needs. Quickly add customizable views, reporting, and form controls. Visually configure business rules and workflow processing, as well as a comprehensive set of administrative safeguards. If you need deeper functionality, use our Java API and rich developer toolkit to add custom code. LongJump also provides the application lifecycle tools including packaging, release management, even translation and localization – all in a complete solution that provides high performance, scalability, and security.

The result? Full-featured enterprise applications that are built in a matter of weeks instead of months. LongJump can help deliver solutions to market faster, reduce complexity and save on resources.

There is one more important advantage. With LongJump, you own your customers. You control the relationship, where your business solutions are hosted, SLAs, pricing, and when to release new updates to your customers.

When you combine our rapid application development capabilities and rich feature set with the unprecedented platform control, LongJump truly is the Platform at Your Service.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, hosted software, isv, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

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