LongJump, a pioneer in platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and private cloud business applications, announced today that leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC (www.idc.com) named LongJump as one of five companies in a report published October 4th, 2010.

“We view IDC’s analysis of the advancements in application development and deployment platforms as proof that as more enterprises become comfortable with public and private cloud computing, the process of creating applications will be the next critical strategy to drive innovation and productivity,” says Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump. “There are far too many software solutions that need to be built and trying to do it the traditional way is costly and high-maintenance.”

The complete press release is here on the company’s website.

Technorati Tags: application development, award, cloud computing, idc, Platform-as-a-Service

As a developer you are the tailor, with access to configuration-ready suits and the ability to make edits to a suit as needed. You work with your customer, understand their needs, and guide them to the right configuration for their purpose. You help them try on the closest suit possible to what they need, and then you do your finishing work after you’ve met. When your customer comes back, together you try on the fitted suit and hopefully it is exactly what they need at that time. As that customer grows (or shrinks), you can help modify the suit so they get the most life out if it as possible.

What don’t you do? You don’t weave and dye your own fabric. You don’t re-invent cuts or create your own button holes. You don’t make your own buttons. In short, you don’t start from scratch. The result is that suits are made faster and relatively less expensively, and your customer gets what they want.

Agile Developing for the Enterprise Using PaaS

As more businesses and organizations begin to adopt agile methodologies to improve customer responsiveness and rapidly develop applications, it would seem that software tools have to be agile-ready. So far, most of the focus on those agile tools happens to be on the project management and delivery lifecycle phases, but what about the actual development of applications? Developers must examine how application creation tools can best support agile software development as a business strategy.

One example that comes to mind is the development of internal business applications. In the past, it was virtually impossible to build custom, enterprise-grade applications for every department. Now, because the current generation of users is so web savvy, having to deal with hard-coded legacy database applications and spreadsheets is not only ill-conceived and impossible to manage, it can ultimately lead to increases in operating costs and be rife with error.

The primary response from IT organizations has been to decouple the information from the application. Such is the nature of SOA/XML. That’s fine for the IT developer, but completely unusable from a departmental end-user standpoint – the people who have to use the data and face the information management challenges on a daily basis. They still have to rely on an in-house development resource or highly paid consultant to get to that data in a meaningful way that integrates with their work processes.

PaaS can be the ideal solution to solve that problem by making it extremely easy to design, develop, adapt and service web-based applications, while leveraging a comprehensive enterprise-class service environment. It is so easy to build apps that a significant amount of development and changes can be realized in a single meeting or overnight. This gives the user access to new functionality almost immediately. And very savvy users can even make the modifications themselves – simply by changing configuration options – offloading minor development tasks from the coders.

Our new whitepaper “PaaS and Agile Development: The Application Platform for Enterprise Transformation” covers everything a CIO, software product manager, scrum master, or architect needs to know about leveraging PaaS as part of an Agile strategy.

Technorati Tags: agile development, agile manifesto, agile processes, application development, cloud computing, extreme programming, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

We’ve introduced a new library of videos that cover the deep set of features within LongJump’s public and private cloud PaaS. Over time, this library will be extended and refined so that businesses, developers, partners and ISVs interested in LongJump’s SaaS application platform can quickly watch a short video on the features that matter to them most.

You can watch these videos from our website at http://www.longjump.com and by clicking on Video Tour on any of the web pages.

The library covers the platform’s major areas including:

• Application Design
• Development
• Reports
• Access Controls
• Productivity Features
• Personalization
• Release Management
• Distribution
• Maintenance

The videos are also available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/LongJumpVid.

Of course, no video can do what a live demo can, so you can also contact us for a complete walk-thru or sign-up for a free trial.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

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

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, linkedin, PaaS, Platform-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

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

Scott Dahlgren at The VAR Guy posted an article today about how VARs, solution providers, MSPs and others in the IT channel can really capitalize on cloud computing. Specifically he looks at how the PaaS model presents the widest opportunity for the channel to be involved in the cloud. He states:

The current trend is improving time to market and time to revenue which is greatly dependent on how quickly you can build and deploy an application. The opportunity to add value now is not so much in technical competency but in a Partner’s understanding of the business problem that needs to be solved and then building that application in a way that adds the most immediate value to the business.

He also highlights the LongJump partner program:

LongJump launched their VAR program last quarter that provides a development platform, backup, storage, ability to scale easily, network, security, and pre-built applications for $15/user/month. Partners can then develop web applications and sell them for whatever price they choose.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, it channel, msp, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, solution provider, thevarguy, var

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

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

Database and technology analyst Ken North examines how Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions help accelerate adoption of the cloud model within organizations. As we have indicated many times ourselves, and Mr. North comes to a similar conclusion:

PaaS solutions have particular appeal for startups, projects with ambitious deadlines, and organizations with a limited budget for capital expenditures. PaaS can remove the capital expenditure roadblock without the burden of diminished functionality. The richness and variety of development environments is one reason the PaaS model has appeal for system integrators and developers, particularly those building web applications. … PaaS has much to offer today to those who are building and integrating systems. PaaS users can create custom solutions and make full use of business process modeling, workflow tools, object modeling, data modeling and packaged applications.

As always, Mr. North’s analysis is very in-depth and is a must read for anyone looking at the varying solutions available for PaaS.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, dr dobbs, ken north, multitenancy, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, techweb

PaaS allows application developers to simply build applications in the cloud, without ever having to worry about hardware acquisition and configuration, software installation, configuration, and maintenance, scalability, availability, backups, recovery, etc. You just sign up and start building, deploy with the push of a button, and pay for your usage as you go.

Bobrowski suggests that enterprises have a real option for cloud computing as some PaaS vendors start offering licensed versions of their platform. He urges enterprises keep their eyes “on the emerging trend of new PaaS and IaaS technologies that are available for licensing within your own data center as you consider how you might transition applications from inside your data center to the cloud.”

He also met with LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya to get some perspective about how our customers are using our installable business applications platform to develop applications faster.

“We are not exclusively a cloud vendor and PaaS on-demand is just one vehicle for our customers to derive value from the LongJump platform,” LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya told us. “In fact, our customers take a movable application approach so they can develop on one instance (our PaaS, for example), test on another (a LongJump instance on Amazon EC2), and publish on yet another (LongJump in a private hosting environment). Our real value is helping to streamline application development and delivery and being agnostic to the application infrastructure. With more private cloud options entering the market, there is also less risk for businesses because they still don’t have to outlay any hardware to develop and test their applications.”

For the complete piece, click here.

Technorati Tags: amazon ec2, cloud computing, enterprise applications, iaas, on-premise, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, private cloud

Bill Ives of theAppGap took an extensive look at LongJump‘s application platform recently. The article looks at how LongJump is able to help businesses quickly build an object model, add processing, reporting, and even extend applications using industry standard development tools such as Java. According to Bill:

I can certainly see the benefit fit of using a platform such as LongJump to create web-based applications. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog out of the box intelligent objects can reduce the time and cost of developing and delivering data-driven applications. The business building block approach should allow developers and corporate IT teams to reduce the time to market or deployment, since they can bypass the need to repeatedly recreate common business processes and functions, as well as develop basic web functionality.

The complete article is available here.

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

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

Gartner analysts Yefim V. Natis and Robert P. Desisto produced the first comprehensive research note on LongJump’s Business Applications Platform with some key insight for those looking to take advantage of online and on-premises based PaaS. They take an honest look at the opportunities and challenges we face with our platform, but are buoyed by our current success so far.

LongJump is starting this expansion on a promising note — even at this early stage, it is already referencing two ISV customers poised to go to production with their applications, built on LongJump BAP.

Yefim and Robert also did an excellent job summarizing how to choose the right platform for the goals of your business:

The company took this direction in response to requests from prospects, and, in doing so, responded to the reality of the multiple patterns and reasons why organizations choose cloud-style application platforms:

• Many small and midsize user organizations and small ISVs are attracted to productivity and low cost of the cloud platform development (these prospects are served by the LongJump On-Demand service offering).
• Many large user organizations are attracted to the productivity of the cloud application platform environment, but insist that their data must remain on-premises (these prospects will be best-served by the single-tenant version of the new LongJump BAP).
• Many large ISVs wish to offer business applications as a service, but demand full in-house control and ownership of the underlying application platform (these prospects will be best-served by the multitenant version of the LongJump BAP).
• Some large user organizations are looking to build private cloud services in-house (these prospects also will be best-served by the multitenant version of the LongJump BAP).

Ultimately, while we know we have a golden product on our hand and that there is a real market need, our own execution will determine our level of success. So far, however, the signs are positive.

Gartner subscribers can log in and read the complete report here.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, gartner, multitenancy, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) product for on-demand application creation, has been selected as a finalist by the editors at Webware.com, a CNET site, for the 2009 Webware 100 Awards in the category of Infrastructure and Storage. In each of the Webware 100 categories, there are 30 finalists, and from that list will include 10 winners selected by the general public.

Voting ends April 30th. All the winners will be announced on May 19.

To vote, click here.

Technorati Tags: application development, cloud computing, cnet, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, rafe needleman, webware

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

There’s a new, vendor-neutral site called Power in the Cloud that is completely focused on situational applications: custom applications that are tailored to meet specific business needs. They have a particular interest in the different platforms, like LongJump, that are geared towards situational apps and are having some interesting discussions around some of the advantages and challenges of this emerging space.

The discussions tend to be around how the more advanced business user or analysts can take advantage of these platforms, but they also recognize tools for more hard core developers.

Here’s their coverage of LongJump.

Technorati Tags: enterprise applications, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, situational applications

Among the topics they discussed were LongJump’s bootstrapped roots, the software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) industry, cloud computing as a whole impact on enterprises and businesses.

To listen to the complete interview, along with Steve’s interviews with Court Cunningham, the CEO of Yodle and Daren Tsui from MSPOT, click here.

Technorati Tags: bootstrapping, cloud computing, innovators radio, PaaS, pankaj malviya, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, software-as-a-service

Unfortunately, the article seems to miss the point. Platforms like LongJump, while are easy enough for savvy business users to create applications, also improve the position of coders. Why?

1. Developers are going to have to code a lot less and will not have to revisit applications they create as much because the majority of the object and process modeling needs in the application are already provided as part of the platform framework.
2. That means less boring coding like writing yet another rule engine or yet another SOAP connector for some small special project. Instead, the evolving challenges of development can be tackled instead of being quagmired in reinventing the wheel.
3. PaaS also reduces the cost of application development for highly specialized applications, allowing companies to do more with less resources while also optimizing internal processes and improving transparency of information.

Sophisticated applications, those with special needs or complex processes, will still require custom coding or customization of some kind that will require the discipline of a skilled developer who understands data, efficient processes, actions and design.

What PaaS does provide is an opening for a new kind of application development where business units, instead of running their operations on spreadsheets and emails, can quickly create collaborative applications, workflows, processes and reports for basic business tracking, management, and analysis.

One way to think about PaaS is that it is sort of like of Adobe Dreamweaver. The basic core function is to create a usable solution to a problem quickly and easily. If you need more sophistication, the coding engine is there for an HTML/Javascript expert, but in the meantime, a business user can go in, mock up what they need, make basic edits, or even have a serious contender solution and not have to code a single line. These would be applications that most companies would not have paid a developer for anyway.

So if you’re a coder, relax. We’re just getting rid of the junk work so you can spend your time on the cool stuff.

Technorati Tags: developers, infoworld, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

By now, everyone knows the value of software as a service (SaaS) to small and midsize companies. But eventually, PaaS could have an even more profound effect on growing companies’ access to the applications they need. Platform as a service is a technique that makes it faster, easier, and cheaper to develop and deploy custom SaaS applications using existing components.

With PaaS solutions, more vertical industries that have traditionally been excluded in custom software circles will likely find a fitted answer without paying a large amount for consulting. In addition, Paul states that “growing companies can expect PaaS to deliver not only more customized software at faster speeds, but also better prices.”

Technorati Tags: PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, smb

We have heard from dozens of IT organizations charged with building web-based business applications for their constituents that meeting all of their needs is simply not possible. This is why IT silos and rogue/situational applications occur. LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya discussed this in The Long Tail of IT.

Yet many CIOs have yet to wake up to new ways to provide greater services while also lowering costs. The answer is to get your head in the cloud.

According to Goldman Sachs in their July 2008 IT Sales Opportunity survey of 100 CIOs, less than 2% of them said cloud computing was a priority. In fact, it was ranked last in a series of initiatives. Instead, their approach is to cut rather than invest modestly in these flexible services.

In an increasingly competitive business environment and with the emergence of cloud computing and its off shoot, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, these CIOs seem to be missing a bigger picture.

That’s because PaaS offers businesses a very demonstrable ROI while also strengthening operations an organization. Both these factors should have CIOs taking a closer look at PaaS not only for its economic benefits, but as an opportunity to improve information management and processes across the enterprise.

PaaS can add significant value to enterprise IT by enabling CIOs to better serve the business, operate at a more strategic level with business divisions and rapidly deliver application solutions to business partners. PaaS also provides a modest-cost approach to cloud computing that doesn’t require infrastructure procurement, datacenter overhead, and minimizes risk.

LongJump believes that PaaS can provide an economy of scale savings to businesses’ application initiatives immediately and in the long run. At the same time, organizations can improve their maturity level, delivery a greater breadth of services, and have more control over their information.

For more information about the economics of PaaS and Cloud Computing, I invite you to read our whitepaper: “PaaS-onomics: A CIO’s Guide to using Platform-as-a-Service to Lower Costs of Application Initiatives While Improving the Business Value of IT.“

Technorati Tags: cio, cloud computing, economics, goldman sachs, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Software vendors throw around the term “enterprise” quite a bit, and while LongJump is no different, for us, the term has a real meaning. For our applications (everything from our CRM solutions to our Employee Manager) and our Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), LongJump truly supports the notion of an enterprise: a business or organization that features multiple departments.

This is critical to understanding the depth of our platform, including our built-in team and role permission management system that offers enterprise-grade security to our highly extensible application interface. Our business model was built with enterprises of all sizes in mind. From the 10- to 20-person startup to the 20,000 Fortune 500 company, we’ve tried to maintain a critical balance between functionality and affordability because in the end, both spectrums have a thirst for both. The small company is going to need powerful tools if it hopes to grow and a Fortune 500 company is going to mature, deep functionality at an economy-of-scale to support all their constituents.

Obviously SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and PaaS solutions provide that immediate time-to-value. You’re up and running on a complete platform and application space literally in seconds. Your team just logs in and is ready to start working. But certainly there are concerns, as indicated by J. David Lashar in The Hidden Cost of SaaS. Lashar states:

The relatively limited scope for configuring or customizing a SaaS initiative makes for low-cost, fast-paced implementation. However, this limited scope and implementation may not support the requirements, may not include the automations, and may not generate the intelligence (i.e., reports and dashboards) that are critical to the business. In other words, SaaS may actually impede the ability to realize full entitlement to CRM value. The cost is not a direct cost, but rather an opportunity cost in terms of lost CRM benefits, at least for enterprise-scale organizations that can afford on-premise solutions and might therefore be able to achieve greater CRM benefits from the greater functionality available from those solutions.

Certainly it is true that many SaaS CRM providers (and even on-premise CRM providers) have a limited scope in their ability to draw from enterprise sources and connect to the entirety of operations within a business. One reason is that those tools are often left to only certain members of the team. Others have to fend for themselves because of the cost of adding them as users. That’s why a platform strategy is critical, because platforms are extensible and designed to connect multiple applications and multiple departments. The economy of scale allows for a greater reach across the entire enterprise.

For example, LongJump’s SOAP Web Services API provides a direct connection point to a variety of web systems and is key to understanding how even on-demand applications contribute to the enterprise. Many SOA initiatives are locked into exchanging information across certain systems. Rarely do end-users see the benefit to help streamline their processes or analysis.

At LongJump we really believe that if you’re going to implement a PaaS solution, and you expect it to be wide-ranging enough within your multi-departmental enterprise, it needs to be truly affordable today as well as tomorrow.

This means supporting a complete enterprise view for everyone in the organization, not just a priviledged few.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, enterprise, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, soa, software-as-a-service

ORLANDO, FL, GARTNER SYMPOSIUM/ITxpo CONFERENCE, Monday, October 13, 2008 – LongJump, a leading Application Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, unveiled a new release of its platform with features and functionality aimed specifically to meet requirements of corporate enterprises. LongJump already enables corporate IT to fully implement the LongJump platform, with its built-in application creation, workflow and customization, and data analysis capabilities ? all without the added infrastructure costs or data center overhead. In addition, LongJump’s new release provides sophisticated, actionable trending analysis, email-based workflow interaction, sandboxing for improved management of the testing and deployment process, and mobile access to applications. LongJump will be located at booth #510.

“Until now, Global 2000 organizations have struggled with delivering and maintaining dozens of applications and data silos,” noted Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s founder and CEO. “The core value of PaaS is to enable companies to create multiple, interconnected applications to serve all of their operational teams on a common, integrated platform. We’re pleased to deliver LongJump’s latest platform release that squarely supports key requirements of our corporate enterprise customers.”

PaaS = SaaS-based Application Development

Resource-taxed enterprises are increasingly moving to take advantage of the ease and flexibility that PaaS and SaaS solutions offer; however, IT still has concerns, and one of the most pressing is around the robustness of these platforms.

A September 2008 Gartner report titled, “Control Personnel Costs to Reduce Your Application Support Budget,” notes the following: “IT Key Metrics Data shows that approximately 38% of the IT budget is directly attributable to applications that support the business operations, including financial management and ERP, corporate performance management (CPM), SCM and CRM applications.”

Enterprise IT requires ways to reduce costs, development time, quality testing, delivering and maintaining application infrastructure, as well as increasing reusability of application components to streamline delivery and support. With Platform-as-a-Service, enterprise IT can build more applications on the same platform, and the economies of scale will take effect to dramatically lowering the costs of all subsequent application initiatives.

Since its inception, LongJump has delivered its enterprise-grade applications platform with a focus on eliminating obstacles that keep established companies from adopting PaaS on a wide-scale basis, such as proprietary scripting, proprietary languages, availability, and reintroducing new information silos.

With its ability to scale quickly, leverage existing data natively across different applications, and extend its platform with industry standard, Java-based tools, LongJump’s platform already addressed many of these enterprise concerns. This new release introduces an additional layer of functionality that enterprises rely on, including greater interoperability, enhancing security, and extending reporting to support audit and compliance requirements.

Key enhancements to LongJump’s new platform include:

• Business Process Automation:
  • Email-based Workflow Approvals: Lets users trigger workflow activities using any email device
• SOA Integration:
  • Compliance of common SOAP-encoding standards such as WSDL / WS-I: Integrates seamlessly
    with other systems or SOAs
• Application Release Process and Compliance:
  • Sandboxing: Enables a company to create a separate instance of LongJump in order to test applications before deploying them into a production environment. This gives enterprises consistent control to test applications in advance of rolling out updates in a more manageable and secure way to support regulatory and business process requirements.
• Mobile Access:
  • Mobile Access: Provides WAP-based wireless access for BlackBerry, iPhone and other webenabled mobile phones and devices
• Security Enhancements:
  • LDAP server integration and authentication: Enables integration into Single Sign-On enterprise environments
  • Additional Security Login Controls: Ensures login identity based on computer MAC addresses and personal security questions
  • Visibility Controls: Supports an added layer of control for certain data fields for securing specific information
• Enhanced Reporting:
  • Historical Data Tracking: Tracks history of data in specific fields for trending and analysis
  • Additional Reporting: Provides improved user reporting and auditing to support compliance
    requirement

The company’s announcement comes on the heels of its LongJump Development Suite announcement for developers eager to exploit SaaS-based application development and delivery.

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 150 enterprise companies. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog of highly customizable, business applications help companies reduces 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. For more information, visit www.longjump.com or call 800.886.9028.

Technorati Tags: enterprise, gartner, itxpo, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya wrote an article on the “Seven Key Requirements Corporate IT Needs from PaaS” for TechCrunchIT and it was featured today.

In it, Pankaj discusses how cloud computing initiatives are gaining momentum with businesses of all sizes, particularly with enterprises that are looking to adopt the right solutions to address their ongoing business and IT challenges. He also discussed the broad range of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings that enterprise business and IT units are examining more thoroughly as a direct evolution of SaaS-based, single-discipline solutions that are targeted toward the horizontal enterprise.

These seven requirements for PaaS are what we have been hearing from LongJump customers when they are evaluating the right solution. Specifically, enterprise IT departments that PaaS will surely impact.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, enterprise, PaaS, pankaj malviya, Platform-as-a-Service, saas, software-as-a-service, techcrunch

LongJump CEO Pankaj Malviya was a featured guest on the PricewaterhouseCoopers Start Up Show hosted by Steve Bengston September 25th. Pankaj and Steve discussed how Platform-as-a-Service as an organizational application development platform and the future of cloud computing can help businesses improve their IT services.

He talked about the need for PaaS, benefits, state of the industry and market, implementation, what applications work best in the PaaS model, and the future worldwide adoption of PaaS.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service

Martin Heller of Infoworld comments in “Cloud application builder adds development suite” :

“From what I saw in the demo, however, any Java/JSP developer should be able to become productive with LongJump fairly quickly, and the pre-built relational objects provided should make quick work of many common applications.”

 Sarah Perez of Readwriteweb.com writes in “LongJump Extends Itself With New Developer Suite” :

With the new LongJump Development Suite, an I.T. department can build the app they need, then use the included visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling. Alternately, they could instead choose to hand of the integration of the app with another system or application to a developer (or team of developers). Finding a developer to work with LongJump shouldn’t be an issue since the suite provided is a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), something that’s used by 69% of Java developers today.

Svetlana Gladkova of Profy.com remarks in “LongJump Further Enhances Its PaaS Offerings to Developers” :

“…the fact that all the development and deployment are conducted online on LongJump platform means significant cost reduction for a business that can not afford the traditional infrastructure to run a business application on its own (while it is possible to ensure hosting of the applications elsewhere as well).”

Bob Thompson from CustomerThink Corp. remarks in “Jumping Into Cloud Computing Platform War: LongJump” :

“From a demo I saw, it seems developers can easily create custom applications, using a combination of data objects, workflow, business rules, etc. And custom Java code if you need it. I can envision developers creating fairly complex applications in a few days, and deploying immediately via the cloud.

From a technology standpoint, I’d say LongJump is on a par with Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. Both are powerful and built to support enterprise-grade applications.”

He goes on to say…

“LongJump strikes me as one of the real gems in the cloud computing market. Assuming it can execute its marketing strategy well, I think it will attract developers who like the robust platform, easy-to-use interface and standard Java code for customizations.”

Finally, Mark Hendrickson from Techcrunch observes in “LongJump Challenges Force.com with New Developer Suite” :

“LongJump will provide a sandbox area for developers to test their Java applications before deploying them into production. The platform also implements a reusable relational data object model that’s intended to save you time recoding when developing several applications.”

We’d love to hear from you if you have additional feedback on our Developer Suite.
 

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud computing, java, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Sunnyvale, CA, Monday, September 22, 2008 – LongJump, a leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, today unveiled its LongJump Development Suite for developers eager to exploit the business opportunities and advantages of Internet-based application development and delivery. LongJump’s developer suite reflects the growing interest in cloud computing, which Gartner named one of the top ten strategic technologies for 2008, noting that web platforms are emerging to provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through cloud computing environments. Merrill Lynch predicts that within the next five years, the annual global market for cloud computing will swell to $95 billion.

While LongJump has already enabled businesses to harness a feature-rich platform to rapidly prototype and run multiple new applications without coding, this new offering provides advanced capabilities for developers with a Java-based set of tools to develop applications at the code level, allowing almost limitless enhancements and extensibility — all within a PaaS environment.

“Platform-as-a-Service is not only real; it is inevitable. For LongJump, capturing the hearts of developers and businesses alike means incorporating industry standard tools, building a full-featured enterprise-level platform, and reducing the time it takes to complete application projects,” stated Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s founder and CEO. “LongJump’s PaaS offering brings a unique approach to eliminating the costs, complexity and repetition inherent in developing and deploying business applications.”

Platform-as-a-Service Emerging as Cost-Effective Cloud Computing

Traditionally, businesses that needed flexible applications would need to buy, build, and maintain a complex architecture of servers, databases, application frameworks and solution design. The PaaS model provides developers and enterprise IT teams with a more cost-effective way to extend or build custom applications. With LongJump, businesses can benefit from significant “time-to-value” and ongoing adaptability since they can bypass the need to recreate common business data models, processes and functions. That, coupled with an on-demand, web-based platform, makes PaaS the ideal platform for a range of business critical applications and situational applications that often exceed the budgets and commitment businesses can provide.

Standards-Based Approach Shortens Time to Market

Unlike most PaaS providers offering platforms that rely on proprietary code and languages to build hosted applications in the cloud, LongJump has opted for a standards-based approach by leveraging a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), used by 69% of Java developers, according to BZ Research. 

“Many have tried to distill the definition of PaaS to its most essential elements, but nearly everyone emphasizes flexibility and customizability relative to SaaS and ease of deployment relative to custom-built software. End-users prize SaaS applications for their universal accessibility, high degree of reliability and convenient pricing. These applications, however, are still packaged functions at their core and cannot always be fully customized for an enterprise’s internal purposes. PaaS products attempt to win on customizability by providing users with a hosted palette of components that can be assembled as needed into business applications.” noted enterprise software analyst Vishwanath Venugopalan, of The 451 Group, a technology industry analyst firm, in a recent report. “Relative to custom software built and deployed in-house, PaaS offerings attract user interest for ease of deployment and reduced time to market.”

LongJump’s PaaS offering enables the use of customizable, reusable application “Building Blocks” including objects, scripts, component extensions, business logic, data policies, and workflows that greatly improve the speed of application development and sharing of data across applications. Once data models and processes are created by either clicking or coding, these building blocks can be reused across the platform to serve a variety of business needs. For example, a single contract object and its records can be created and reused by business teams such as sales, business development, compliance, legal, and finance by simply modifying data policies and workflows.

The new LongJump Development Suite includes a visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling as well as advanced coding and scripting features for developers who are familiar with Java, so they can enhance and extend applications or completely create new data models and processes from scratch. Additionally, LongJump provides a set of web service integration points using SOAP and RESTful APIs to seamlessly connect to external systems or platforms. When LongJump Objects are extended, those fields are immediately available for integration with SOAP and REST APIs, workflow processes, and the built-in report creation wizard. 

Key features in LongJump’s Development Suite include:

Industry Standard Tools and Plug-Ins

• All coding is done in Java, JSP and HTML-based code
• AJAX library and data model definitions and usage enable developers to reuse existing LongJump functions and UI
• Plug-in available for Eclipse IDE

Extensive Customization to Business Building Blocks

• Custom actionable data definitions provide the ability to manipulate data as needed or launch custom processes
• Custom component definitions provide the ability to define reusable components
• Custom Java class definitions enable defining and reusing classes across the platform
• Custom page definitions make completely unique UI experiences available to use within internal web tabs and via custom actions

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and RESTful Web Services

• APIs support both SOAP message responses over HTTP/HTTPS and custom Java-bean scripting
• APIs can trigger workflow processes using SOAP and RESTful web services
• Inbound and outbound SOAP messaging support to connect to external systems
• Update of existing RESTful web services API for data integration with external systems

Free to Existing Customers / Free Trial Usage Available

The LongJump Development Suite is available immediately and is a free upgrade for existing users of the platform. LongJump is currently offering a free 30-day evaluation here: www.longjump.com/devsuite.

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 150 enterprise companies. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog of highly customizable, business applications help companies reduces 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. For more information, visit www.longjump.com or call 800.886.9028.

Editor’s Note: The 451 Group’s report, “Built to order: what’s next for the platform-as-a-service market?” referenced above, is an independently-produced report that was neither sponsored by nor otherwise funded directly by LongJump. The report and its contents are the sole property of The 451 Group, copyright 2008, and are reproduced here by permission. The report is available at www.the451group.com.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, developers, eclipse plug-in, java, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, rest, soap, the 451 group

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

At the conference, LongJump CEO, Pankaj Malviya, will be participating in the Platform as a Service Panel on Sept 4, 2:15 – 3:00pm. Other panel participants include Rob Bernshteyn (SuccessFactors), Anshu Sharma (Salesforce.com), Raju Vegesna (Zoho). Hear them discuss how vendors are addressing the needs of developers, covering technical architectures, development methodologies, and best practices. If you’re planning to attend the conference, make sure not to miss this panel discussion.

Technorati Tags: Applications, best practice, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

We sat down with Sheela Sarva who works with the LongJump Support Team to talk about building applications on LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution, and what are some of the challenges for businesses before they jump in.

Q. Hi, Sheela. Can you tell us what you do at LongJump?
A. I work on the support team, primarily focused helping customers with new application development. It’s a very interesting position because we learn about a lot of the different challenges business users and IT departments have and how they are trying to solve them on the LongJump platform.

Q. So what kind of applications are customers trying to build on LongJump?
A. Well, the best applications LongJump can support involve information management, passing information from one user to another, or pulling information from a lot of different people and sources to build some analysis or to trigger some actions around that data. It sounds simple, but when you factor in all the IT infrastructure that needs to go into these applications, LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service solution really removes the IT management issues and gets to the heart of the business problem.

Q. How do these businesses usually handle these issues?
A. Most organizations don’t have time to think about their problems in a structured way. We see many of our customers going right to their Excel spreadsheet, rather than trying to model their situation in a relational way. Databases can be hard to use, especially when you start sharing information or trying to build reports. And with all the IT staff usually taxed with mission critical problems, a lot of the smaller, but still complex issues don’t get the time of day they need.

Q. And that’s the advantage LongJump provides…
A. Yeah. Definitely. Spreadsheets are great because they’re fast. But spreadsheets can become monsterous if you have a lot of related information. What’s nice is that the time it would take you to model the information in LongJump is about as fast as building a spreadsheet but you get the benefits of that relational data. Then you do all of your reporting or create actions on top of the data (like triggering an email or running a JumpScript), and you’re 80 – 90% finished with the application in most cases.

Q. So what’s the first thing someone should think about before they start creating an application on LongJump?
A. You have to start with the data, or even more basic, what’s the business problem you’re trying to solve. We had a business that was trying to essentially do a very specialized form of licensing and contract management. They have third party vendors, contracts, international use rights, and each of their products had different software and different distributors. They were managing the whole thing on a 1,000 column x 1,000 row spreadsheet with multiple worksheets. It was amazing. Completely color coded and everything.

Their problem was that they needed to make sure that their product managers could go into a geographic market and verify that a specific device, loaded with a specific software, sold by a specific distributor in that specific country met the licensing rights they had with their third party vendor contracts. If it didn’t, they were at a compliance risk and would have to either negotiate new contracts or pay a penalty. It would take them a couple of weeks to fully analyze the information when the dreaded compliance questions came up.

Q. How did they break down their monster spreadsheet into LongJump?
A. The first thing we asked them to do was individualize the different “players” in this problem. So a vendor became an object in LongJump, the device became another object, distributors another object and so on, until the all physical aspects of the problem were represented as data objects that could now be related.

Q. How long did that take?
A. Well, given that they didn’t spend their entire workday on it, it probably took them a couple of hours to think about how to break down the information in a relational way. That also included what field information to map out as part of that object.

Once that basic object data model was identified, building it in LongJump took minutes. Then we ran a few test records to it based on some of the data from their spreadsheet, just to make sure that information was completely linked. When we verified that the data pretty much looked like what it needed to, we started importing their data which took less than half-an-hour.

Q. But that’s just modeling and importing the data.
A. Right, but that’s the hardest part for most people — to learn to think relationally. But once the application is modeled and the data is imported, you can sort of let users ride the application on their own by adding reports and putting dashboards on their home tab to monitor information. They also added alerts to information themselves, so if a contract was coming due or someone added a new license, their core team would get an email alerting them using our Data Policies of the details. Plus, their product managers could get their own view into the data, see the products they were responsible for, and track and add their own information as well. That’s all stuff, if you have to create your own application platform from scratch, you’d have to compensate for.

Q. So that’s a basic application anyone can build.
A. Yes, basic, but still very complex. It just took a little forethought as to how information should be treated as relational objects. But once it’s done, you can’t imagine the time savings. They can now react to problems they know they need to act on, they can quickly look at just the information they need, and they can move on to other more important areas of the business instead of spending time combing and analyzing their data. And they have a single point of truth for their entire team to work from.

Technorati Tags: application development, enterprise applications, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, spreadsheets

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