ChannelWeb has named our CEO Pankaj Malviya one of the top 25 Technology Thought Leaders. Specifically, editors were most impressed that:

“Malviya is breaking new ground in the cloud computing market with LongJump, an innovative software company with an end-to-end cloud platform. The LongJump offering is winning raves from solution providers for its flexibility and firepower. It’s also garnered a number of awards including Everything Channel’s XChange Tech Innovator’s Xcellence award and a place in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.”

Says Pankaj:

“I’m honored to be selected as a thought leader with the likes of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Ray Ozzie and Donald Ferguson. It is a testament to the eventual tide-shift that has emerged through cloud computing technologies for enterprises of all sizes and their critical relationship with channel solution providers and ISVs.”

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, everythingchannel, gartner, magic quadrant, pankaj malviya, xchange

Steven Burke of ChannelWeb summarized the major topic at this year’s XChange Tech Innovators conference in Las Vegas. Can you guess? Cloud. Specifically how can the solution provider channel leverage the Cloud as part of their suite of product and service offerings.

Says Burke:

“It’s not too early to call 2010 as the year of the cloud for the channel. Solution providers, from the smallest to the biggest players, were getting their hands around the cloud and planning their 2010 cloud sales strategy.”

With more and more solution providers, VARs and MSPs seeing a compression of their revenue and margins, the Cloud can seem like an additional threat because the first instinct is to associate the Cloud with purely virtualization of services with no delivery or implementation requirements. They might be true for some services that are fairly turnkey like email hosting or antivirus, but for other applications, particularly verticalized applications or departmental management applications like CRM or HR, there is a wealth of possibility in providing implementation, process consulting, etc. And some vendors, like LongJump, even offer the ability to whitelabel a SaaS application (or the entire multitenant platform), allow VAR/MSP partners to state their own pricing, resell prove applications, and maintain the relationship with the customer rather than hand it over to a vendor.

Burke also mentions that LongJump won the Most Innovative Technology award at the event for its ability to enable solution providers to deliver SaaS solutions to their customers.

Technorati Tags: channelweb, cloud computing, crn, everythingchannel, msp, saas, Sales and CRM, steven burke, var, xchange

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