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

LongJump, a leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) software provider, announced the availability of Version 7.0 of their application platform which adds a range of collaboration capabilities for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. This new release focuses on helping ISVs (independent software vendors), their developers, distributor and partner channels, and customers collaborate seamlessly with each other within the platform.

Says LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya:

“SaaS technology vendors today must address the fact that web users all want to work better together. LongJump Version 7 provides a premier platform for addressing social networking, community building, and collaboration that naturally extends into enterprise business applications.”

You can read the entire press release here.

Technorati Tags: developers, isv, PaaS, saas, var

Many thanks to Adam Day, VP of Business Development at HRAnswerlink for his participation on describing how his firm was able to leverage LongJump’s on-premise PaaS to drive rapid deployment of their new SaaS offerings.

This follows past eSeminars including:

• Cloud Computing, SaaS and Its Impact on Channel Solution Providers

• New Strategies For Building Business Applications In 2010

If you’d like to view this eSeminar and any in the past that cover SaaS, PaaS and Cloud Computing, you can click here for recorded archives.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, enterprise, enterprise applications, isv, IT department, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, software-as-a-service

PaaS is the next transformational wave in software-as-a-service and it’s already here. Are you ready? Join us for an insightful and practical examination of PaaS and its effect on how businesses can accelerate SaaS application development.

Stefan Ried, Senior Analyst at Forrester will share the latest Forrester research on PaaS as it relates to public and private cloud implementations and how enterprises, ISVs and IT outsourcers can take full advantage of its unique properties.

This webinar will also uncover the platform elements you need to execute a comprehensive PaaS strategy including:

• Rapid design tools for modeling data and processes
• Standards based software development
• Public, private and virtual private cloud options
• Integrated ISV/VAR/Outsourcer features (subscriber management, billing, etc.)

When
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
@12PM Pacific Daylight Time (@3PM Eastern Daylight Time)

Presenters
Stefan Ried, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Rick McEachern, EVP Business Development, LongJump
Pankaj Malviya, CEO and Co-Founder, LongJump

Click to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/519899832

Technorati Tags: application development, enterprise, forrester, isv, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

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

According to Nancy Hammervik, senior vice president, events, Everything Channel:

“The XChange XCellence Awards winners are selected by top solution providers at each event and honor the vendors with the most exceptional products, programs and technologies. Congratulations to all of the winning companies. They have demonstrated that they deliver high-quality solutions and have many satisfied business partners.”

The award was accepted by Rick McEachern (left), Chairman and EVP at LongJump on Wednesday. The award was presented by Robert Nitrio, CEO of Ranvest Associates and an Advisory Board Member of the XChange Tech Innovators Conference.

Remarks Pankaj Malviya, CEO and founder of LongJump:

“We are delighted and honored to be named winner in the ‘most innovative technology’ category at Everything Channel’s XChange Tech Innovators Conference. The award reflects the appeal LongJump’s Cloud Application Platform has with VARs, MSPs, ISVs and solution providers, because they can quickly and successfully build their own SaaS offering to sell to their own customers and begin earning a new revenue stream in the cloud economy.”

You can read the complete press release here.

Technorati Tags: crn, everythingchannel, isv, msp, Robert Nitrio, var, xchange

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

Come visit us at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo this week in Orlando at Booth 523. We’ll be participating in a Cool Vendor presentation and we will be positioned in a Magic Quadrant for the first time.

Be sure to come by to discuss our new Reseller Partner Program for VARs, MSPs and ISVs and see up and coming features in our next release.

Technorati Tags: gartner, isv, itxpo, msp, var

GARTNER SYMPOSIUM/ITxpo, Orlando, FL, October 19, 2009 – LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced a value added reseller (VAR) program for its LongJump Cloud Applications Platform from the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. LongJump’s reseller program appeals to solution providers, Managed Service Providers (MSP), ISVs and VARs who want to take full advantage of opportunities in the Software-as-a-Service market, generate recurring subscription revenues and leverage LongJump as a platform for the delivery of ongoing custom products and new service offerings. LongJump’s program lets VARs leverage its powerful, multi-tenant cloud platform to launch their own branded SaaS business, build custom database-driven applications or customize LongJump’s existing CRM offering to meet their clients’ specific needs.

In the face of adverse market conditions, businesses are holding back on big ticket IT consulting projects, forcing VARs and solution providers to shift strategies and focus on smaller IT projects. Now is the time for resellers, solution providers and MSPs to diversify their customer offerings by offering SaaS solutions. Forrester estimates by 2016 70% of all SaaS business applications will be built on a PaaS platform, and that the PaaS market will grow to more than $15 billion in 8 years. For software vendors considering adopting SaaS in the short-term, Forrester recommends leveraging an existing PaaS offering to mitigate losing more time-to-market.

LongJump’s VAR program allows VARs to profitably create solutions for large and small projects and offer those solutions to clients on a subscription basis. Leveraging the company’s PaaS provides a way for VARs to directly participate in a SaaS business model by facilitating rapid application development to fulfill clients’ long tail of IT projects, while also creating new recurring revenue streams to help their own bottom line.

“The LongJump VAR program is designed to give resellers and solution providers a profitable and fast way to tap into new cloud revenue streams,” stated Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump. “We are providing our reseller partners with ready-to-use applications and a flexible PaaS solution to capitalize on for ongoing customer application opportunities.”

Program Features Keep Partners in the Driver Seat

LongJump’s VAR program provides real financial advantages to resellers by 1) delivering recurring revenue streams, 2) ensuring that they own the entire customer relationship, and 3) providing a platform for the delivery of additional business process consulting and automation. The program includes:

• Your Business, Your Branding: VARs can offer their own branded solutions to their customers.
• No Program Fees: VARs can quickly get started by offering SaaS products to their customers.
• Recurring Revenues: VARs earn recurring revenue based on the pricing they set for their customers. Wholesale service price is NOT a percentage of revenue.
• No Hardware or Software to License: LongJump’s multi-tenant platform is fully hosted, eliminating the need for expensive infrastructure and operations costs.
• VAR Customer Control: The reseller will always be the customer’s point of contact. Resellers manage billing and support so that customers are not faced with the hassle of having to deal with different vendors, contracts, etc
• Platform and Product Training: LongJump will provide free training for resellers to certify them on the platform and help them understand how to create and customize client solutions.
• Technical Sales Support: For sales situations where technical expertise can help close a contract, LongJump will work with the reseller as a member of their team to provide answers to customers.
• Sales and Marketing Materials: Partners will be supplied with relevant sales and marketing materials that can be customized, including datasheets, white papers and other documentation about LongJump.

Partners Achieve Success with LongJump

LongJump already counts a number of VARs participating in its program. For example:

• Carlsbad, CA-based Ximix does business with a diverse portfolio of companies in healthcare, military and defense, manufacturing, real estate and financial services and leverages LongJump’s platform having built hundreds of custom applications for HR, billing, employee management, etc. Rob Brown, a Ximix cloud evangelist and consultant, commented, “Good information management is about reducing complexity and PaaS eliminates having to manage a large ecosystem of SaaS vendors. For many organizations, we avoid the cost creep that is associated with more established vendors like Salesforce by developing on LongJump’s PaaS offering, but its real value is its application-agnostic framework which enables delivery of any transactional database-driven application extremely quickly. This means as our clients grow and require changes to their application portfolio, the apps that we prototype and build on LongJump can be extended and reused or translated into new apps on-the-fly — drastically tipping the economy of scale in our favor.”
• Atlanta, GA-based Emery Creek Solutions joined the company’s VAR program to take advantage of customizing its CRM to maximize customer opportunities. “LongJump’s CRM was easy for us to get up and running and customize. It is the most comprehensive CRM product I’ve used,” said Tim Frey, partner at Emery Creek Solutions. “With LongJump, we have been able to integrate our customer information and automate our sales processes, allowing our team to work quickly and more efficiently.”

Pricing and Availability

LongJump delivers enormous value to the channel. LongJump applications and PaaS platform have all the capabilities required for enterprise adoption and is comparable with other PaaS platforms that charge customers from $65 to $200 per user/per month. However, LongJump’s aggressive channel pricing creates a terrific opportunity to channel resellers to start offering branded SaaS solutions to generate recurring revenues.

The LongJump VAR program is available now starting at $15/user/month and includes LongJump’s pre-built and custom applications. Resellers can set the end user pricing.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, forrester, gartner, isv, itxpo, msp, referral, reseller, Sales and CRM, var

Pankaj Malviya Examines How Enterprises and ISVs Can Capitalize on Private Clouds for Their SaaS Applications

LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced that Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump, will be speaking on emerging cloud computing options for business at IDG CloudWorld™ in a session titled, “Salvation in the Private Cloud: Platforms at Your Service.” The session will be held on Wednesday, August 12, from 3:00 -3:45 p.m. at IDG’s CloudWorld conference held at Moscone Center West in San Francisco.

Malviya will examine the growing trend and appeal of “private clouds,” and looks at the advantages of a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution used to develop and deliver web-based applications internally within the company’s own servers and behind its own firewall or on another preferred IaaS environment, such as Amazon EC2. For ISVs, private clouds and PaaS position them to offer new business models from a multi-tenant platform that lets them create SaaS applications faster and reduce development costs.

Forrester estimates the PaaS market will grow over eight years to $15.2 billion.  And Gartner predicts the future of corporate IT is in private clouds.  Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Thomas Bittman recently advocated that embracing private clouds not only enables corporate IT the benefits of clouds within the enterprise, but also the flexibility to use public cloud computing services as soon as they mature.

“The flexibility and utility of cloud computing won’t be leveraged by businesses until security and control is addressed. LongJump is one of the only proven PaaS providers that is successfully meeting the needs of enterprises and ISVs by enabling the development of world class SaaS applications within the public and private clouds,” noted Pankaj Malviya.

Malviya is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in enterprise software design, development, and implementation for Fortune 500 companies. In 2006, Malviya founded LongJump as an early cloud player that maintains the position of giving companies control of where their applications are hosted. Some industry experts have noted that LongJump’s highly portable approach is aimed at delivering the “Holy Grail” of cloud computing and even calling the platform “Force.com in a box.”  Notably, Gartner recently named LongJump as the only cloud application platform to earn its “Cool Vendor” designation.

CloudWorld will provide a comprehensive look at this emerging technology that is becoming increasingly important to the enterprise for its cost savings, scalability and agile functionality. For more information on the conference, interested parties can visit: www.cloudworldexpo.com.

About LongJump
Based in Sunnyvale, California, LongJump is a service of Relationals Inc., a privately-held, proven provider of on-demand CRM and SFA business applications to more than 400 enterprise companies. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog of highly customizable, business applications help companies reduce the time and cost of developing and delivering data-driven applications. Its business building blocks let developers and corporate IT teams gain significant time-to-value, since they can bypass the need to repeatedly recreate common business processes and functions. LongJump is the first platform-as-a-service provider to bring robust customization, integration, and powerful functionality to businesses of all sizes, enabling them to quickly design, implement and do further customization in an easy, affordable way.

About IDG World Expo
IDG World Expo (www.idgworldexpo.com) is a leading producer of tradeshows and events for professionals and consumers seeking world-class education, strategic business relationships, and access to industry-leading products and services. IDG World Expo’s portfolio of conferences and events includes Macworld®, Electronic Entertainment Expo® (E3 Expo®), Next Generation Data Center™ (NGDC™), OpenSource World™, and CloudWorld™. IDG World Expo is a business unit of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research and event company.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, forrester, gartner, isv, on-premise, PaaS, pl, Platform-as-a-Service, private cloud

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

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

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

As many of you know, LongJump.com uses MySQL Enterprise Edition as our backend database. Like many, we chose it for its scalability, refined support and performance-for-value business case.

Sun Microsystem‘s MySQL has invited us to present a case study for rapidly building SaaS applications. Enterprises and ISVs acknowledge the trend toward SaaS and many are looking for cost effective ways to SaaS-enable their applications, their processes and their business models to enable greater efficiency and collaboration. However, the best path to developing SaaS applications still remains uncharted.

This webinar will feature Brian Gerhold, Director of Engineering at Simco Electronics and Pankaj Malviya, Founder/CEO of LongJump. In this presentation we’ll examine how Simco’s development team built a next-generation SaaS application which automated data collection, reporting and compliance leveraging MySQL and the LongJump development platform.

Brain will discuss how Simco approached common SaaS application development problems and the solutions that lead to their success.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can accelerate the development and deployment of MySQL-backed multi-tenant SaaS applications, in your data center, hosted environments or in the cloud, this webinar is for you.

• Thursday, June 11, 2009: 13:00 (1PM) Pacific time
• The presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long followed by Q&A

To take part in this webinar, sign up here.

Technorati Tags: developers, isv, mysql, saas, simco, sun microsystems

Sunnyvale, CA, Tuesday, March 31, 2009 – LongJump, a leading provider of software that powers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today unveiled that its LongJump Business Applications Platform can be licensed for use within an enterprise’s data center or licensed by independent software vendors to build and host their own high performance, scalable, multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) applications.

The LongJump Business Application Platform will appeal to two market segments seeking more control and faster time to market benefits. The first will be enterprises that want the capabilities of a PaaS for custom application development but require more control of the data, such as those dealing with government and civil agencies, financial and compliance processes, and health and patient related information. The other is Independent Software Vendors and Service Providers that want to launch new, branded SaaS offerings but realize that developing a comprehensive, multi-tenant platform can be cost prohibitive and limits how quickly they can get to market and generate revenues.

The Emergence of the Private Cloud

Corporate IT has long sought a quick way to visually assemble information management applications for their divisional users. One catalyst is the acute recession that has forced many companies to slash budgets and require IT to cut costs and increase efficiencies within their departments and data centers. LongJump’s Business Application Platform approach improves corporate IT productivity by helping them build a “private cloud” that provides a common foundation for building custom applications which run securely behind their own firewall. LongJump also provides a unified interface, integrates with business data and systems, creates dynamic transactional applications, and easily handles the complex relational information architectures.

According to David Cearley, VP and Gartner fellow in Gartner’s Web and Cloud Computing service, “Just as in the early days of the Internet, the cloud definition is best-suited to include a public cloud (external, like the Internet) and private clouds (internal, like intranets). Private clouds will be used by companies that do not want to have their IT-related services available to external customers but that do want to leverage the delivery and acquisition model the cloud enables.”

With its new offering, LongJump delivers the most flexible alternative for corporate IT looking to leverage all the benefits of rapidly building applications in cloud platform as a service, but within their own premises. In highly regulated industries such as healthcare or finance, information security and compliance are paramount and keeping local control of their information is an absolute necessity.

“Our business is about using our financial expertise to deliver a great customer experience,” says Dan Yoder, Chief Operating Officer at NES Financial. “Technology is an important part of our business model; it’s an enabler for service delivery. However, because of the nature of the transactions we handle, it’s important that NES Financial have control of the platform and information. It makes sense for us to implement a comprehensive applications platform approach for bringing new financial services to market by leveraging the best technology platform we could find that would help us do that. We found LongJump to be that solution.”

A Multi-tenancy Platform for ISVs and Service Providers

Even companies that offer hosted applications today realize that the ever increasing requirements to add more features and platform capabilities stretches their organization by increasing costs, demands for specialized IT developers, and risk as complexity rises. ISVs and Service Providers know that SaaS offerings represent a great revenue growth opportunity for them but they need to accelerate their time to market with their solution, preserve their branding and user experience uniqueness and differentiation, and reduce costs of delivery so they can maximize profitably.

To many ISVs, assigning their customer to a third-party PaaS provider presents too much risk, especially when they become subject to the PaaS providers’ delivery services. ISVs need to control the service delivery – where they host the platform, manage the service levels they deliver, and enforce their own operational policies for their customers. They also want to have more control over how they price their service offering – as high or as low as their business deems appropriate. They want to remain the customer’s main contact for the service offering – from end to end.

“Before we made our selection, we evaluated several CRM vendors, including some well-known competitors to LongJump. We felt that not only did LongJump go the extra mile to understand our unique business needs, but they also provided the most flexible application framework platform to address the complex business needs of an entrepreneurial company with global mindshare,” stated Robert Peake, Chief Information Officer, of The David Allen Company. “The functionality of their offering helped us realize the vision of how to optimize our business processes over time. We’re looking forward to a long and successful relationship with LongJump.”

LongJump’s Proven Platform Removes Hurdles and Delivers Full Control

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.

• Control of Delivery Options: The LongJump Business Applications Platform gives businesses multiple deployment options to choose from in deciding how and where they want their platform to run. So whether Hosted, On-Premise, or run by LongJump’s professional Managed Services, businesses ¾not the platform vendor¾ now have full control of their customers, data, and applications, while avoiding vendor-driven policies, updates, changes and lock-in. Companies have broad flexibility to decide how to deploy their licensed LongJump platform; they could opt to deploy a private, behind-the-firewall instance, or use a virtualized hosting provider like Amazon EC2. Companies can choose to outsource infrastructure or use existing internal infrastructure.
• Control of Multi-Tenancy: It’s critical to any SaaS offering that the underlying data model supports multi-tenancy. This is the architecture that virtually partitions each account to serve multiple customers from a single shared instance of an application while enabling every account can have its own personalized experience. LongJump’s patent-pending, multi-tenancy Business Application Platform provides businesses with several multi-tenancy configurations to meet their varying requirements, including: Multi-Tenant/Single Database, Multi-Tenant/Multiple Database, and Mixed-Tenancy, supporting both models simultaneously.
• Control of Application Portability: More than ever, businesses require flexibility and options because business conditions can change overnight. What made sense to host in the cloud at one time might need to be hosted in another environment in the future. With LongJump, the applications businesses create are portable; hey can be developed in the cloud and moved to another LongJump deployment in one’s datacenter or with another hosting provider. Businesses can benefit from multiple delivery options because the application structure, rules workflows, views, dashboards – everything that makes an application unique – can be packaged and moved.
• Control of Release Management: Even though PaaS is novel, the way companies develop software is not. For compliance, quality and control reasons, companies follow the industry standard develop, test and release methodology. The LongJump Business Application Platform enables companies to create development, staging and production instances, and assign different development roles to each instance. Software releases are packaged and released to each instance until it has been approved for production release. This removes a barrier to software development inside the enterprise and enables development teams to productively work the way they always have. Corporate IT can also have a certified catalog of applications that are available for internal users to subscribe and use. LongJump’s flexible deployment also enables businesses to selectively update their clients to new applications, rather than forcing all clients to move at once to new software.
• Control of Branding: Service Providers or ISVs that license LongJump can fully customize the user interface to maintain their branding and user experience. With full branding control Service Providers and ISVs know that from the moment a customer logs in to when they log off, they will see only their company’s branding creating.

“Until now, companies have not had a PaaS solution that gives them the full control over how and where they choose to run their applications, data and customer information. Our new Business Applications Platform was designed to address the requirements that our customers and prospects were asking for, and we’re very pleased that LongJump has stepped up to the plate to fill a void in the market,” noted Pankaj Malviya, founder and CEO of LongJump.

Pricing and Availability

The LongJump Business Application Platform is available now for Licensing by Enterprises, Software developers and Service Providers. Call 800.886.9028 for pricing details based on system configuration options.

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