Boomi Offers SMBs Hosted Integration For SaaS Apps
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TechWeb - Boomi On-Demand enables small and medium-sized businesses to connect back-office applications with software available as a service on the Web.
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SaaS (software as a service) platform vendor NetSuite&#160;has released SuiteBundler, a tool its partner ISVs and VARs can use to create reusable applications for verticals.&quot;It&#39;s more important for our partners than it is for NetSuite,&quot; NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson said of the release, which provides a wizard-like interface for combining assets built on the NetSuite platform. It also includes distribution and installation tools and access to a repository of these &quot;SuiteBundles.&quot;Software development firm EBS-RAD LLC, based in Tampa, Florida, created a custom NetSuite app, i-Seaports Management, for its customer, Harbour Mastery. That firm in turn will market the software to seaports and marinas around the world, said EBS-RAD CEO George Walters.&quot;We&#39;re effectively making it very easy for services companies to get into the software business,&quot; Nelson said.Bundles have been created for a number of other verticals, including agricultural equipment dealerships, retail point-of-sale, and wholesale electronics distribution, according to the company.NetSuite&#39;s announcement drew a cautious nod from one industry observer Wednesday. &quot;At a 60,000 foot view, it seems like a good thing,&quot; said Michael Speyer, a Forrester Research senior analyst covering SMB&#160;and IT distribution issues. &quot;Especially for the larger midmarket clients. They&#39;re going to resist adopting apps that aren&#39;t customizable to their own existing processes.&quot;That makes sense because NetSuite has specifically targeted such customers. &quot;We think the midmarket is the huge opportunity,&quot; Nelson said. &quot;We believe NetSuite will be the SAP of the midmarket.&quot;But Speyer sounded a note of skepticism against such a lofty goal. &quot;Well, SAP is pretty firmly in the midmarket now,&quot; he said, noting offerings like Business All-in-One and Business One. &quot;So they are running head-on into SAP.&quot;NetSuite&#39;s approach to extending its SaaS platform stands in contrast to competitor Salesforce.com, which has aggressively promoted its programming language and development platform for creating new enterprise apps.&quot;Our environment is all about extending our applications,&quot; Nelson said. &quot;The mid-market doesn&#39;t want to build applications. They want to run businesses. Enterprises? They&#39;ll build applications all day.&quot;Nelson said one possible enterprise use of SuiteBuilder lies in application testing. NetSuite customers could try out new custom combinations in sandboxes before deploying them, he said.NetSuite previously announced it intends to issue an IPO. Earlier this year, it provided access to its services through the Apple iPhone.
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Rackspace Managed Hosting&#8482;, a leading global  provider of managed hosting services, today announced enhancements to  its Partner Network for all industries including System Integrators,  Advertising and Media Agencies, Consulting Firms, and Web Developers and  Designers.
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Distribution system could help businesses manage software upgrades on wireless devices.
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Officials at Oracle (Quote, Chart) used its Open World show in London as a springboard to launch an application server offering for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB) Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM Corp. and Lawson Software Inc. are expanding their existing relationship to jointly target small and midsize business (SMB) users, initially in North America and three specific industries. All applications vendors, including Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG, see the SMB market as a huge source of future revenue and each company is coming up with ways to hone in on that sector which, unlike the enterprise applications space, lacks clear market leaders. Under an agreement announced Thursday, IBM will be able to resell Lawson's S3 and M3 applications in North America, and will be involved in the development of the software for users in the financial services, fashion and food and beverage industries. Lawson will collaborate with consultants from IBM Global Business Services and the vendor's hardware, software and sales staff to come up with ways to solve business and technology issues specific to those vertical sectors. The agreement builds on an existing relationship between the two firms centered around helping users adopt SOA (service-oriented architecture). "This has been a long time coming," said Harry Debes, president and CEO of Lawson. "We've been talking for IBM for almost a year." Despite adding additional sales staff at a rate of 50 to 60 hires planned for this year, Lawson found itself unable to go after as many SMB users as it would like. "The IBM relationship will dramatically increase our reach," he added. Like IBM, Lawson defines SMB users as companies with annual revenues of between US$100 million and several billion dollars. IBM has previously resold Lawson software outside North America, notably the M3 applications Lawson gained from its 2006 $480 million purchase of Intentia, but on a very ad hoc basis, according to Debes. "There was no formal agreement around it," he said. "We've crafted this agreement so it could become the basis of a global agreement." The plan is to see how the relationship with IBM works in North America over the course of the next 12 months and then determine whether to widen its scope to other countries and other industries. "We wanted to walk before we can run," Debes said. He reassured Lawson's resellers elsewhere in the world that any future moves within IBM would take place taking into account existing partnerships. "At the same time, we don't want to become overly dependent on one channel for revenue," he added. The other industry sectors Lawson focuses on are health care, retail, government and education, manufacturing, wholesale distribution and service and rental. IBM and Lawson already have around 3,000 joint customers, but Debes said, "There wasn't very much togetherness" about how those sales were achieved. He's hopeful the new formalized relationship will result in significant new business for Lawson. Debes isn't worried about the continued speculation that IBM might re-enter the applications market, which it quit in 1999. "It doesn't keep me up at night," he said. "I firmly believe they will be in the apps space. They're not pretending to be in the ERP space, they already are." He pointed to IBM Italy's recent acquisition of several ERP companies. "They're smack dab in the middle of the ERP market. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when," he added. "If theyâre wise, theyâll look to do partnerships with Lawson, if theyâre foolish, theyâll do SMB partnerships with SAP." Â
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Company looks to juice its application server business with a version tuned for smaller organizations.
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Small customers will soon get access to an online marketplace for "software as a service" applications.
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Once limited to Web content and images, content delivery network providers are shifting focus to tackle the on-demand delivery of distributed applications. To that end, Akamai Technologies this week plans to introduce four J2EE-based Web applications that enterprises can deploy quickly without purchasing any hardware or fixed assets. Meanwhile, Speedera Networks next week will launch its FlexComputing service for distributed application hosting and delivery.ADVERTISEMENTSBC Case Study: Crate & BarrelWhat sold them on improving their network? A system that could cut management costs from the get-go. Find out more.
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InfoWorld - Lawson Software continues to broaden its relationship with close partner IBM as the midmarket applications vendor Monday announced plans to enter the hosting market and use more of IBM&#39;s middleware.
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Want to use Google gadgets for work? Big Blue plans to let business users run the mini apps on its WebSphere Portal software.
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Customers will be able to develop and deploy a wide variety of applications including video, audio/video messaging and blogging, and more.
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Persistence is its saving grace Software as a Service (SaaS) is one of this year's biggest trends. It's one that's also moving away from simple applications to whole hosted development platforms.â¦
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Salesforce.com repackages Apex code as developer 'platform' Software as a Service (SaaS) isn't dead, but it could soon be overtaken by Platform as a Service (PaaS), according to SaaS pioneer Salesforce.com.â¦
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Company has started sharing some APIs with security vendors, in a bid to create better ways of securing virtual machines.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP AG will announce a partnership shortly to offer a hosted version of its Business One applications to small businesses in India, a spokesman for SAP India said on Monday. This will be the first time that Business One has been offered as a hosted service, according to the spokesman. The service will be rolled out elsewhere in the world if the offering in India is successful, he said. SAP expects to announce a partnership in two weeks with an undisclosed Indian mobile services operator who will offer the hosted service, the spokesman said. The service will be offered on a subscription basis, he added. Hosted services aim to help companies save on their IT infrastructure costs, and offering Business One in this way will allow SAP to reach small customers in rural parts of India so long as they have an Internet connection, the spokesman said. Business One is designed to be an integrated, affordable set of business management applications for small businesses. It is a single system for running business operations such as sales, finance, purchasing, inventory, and manufacturing. All the components of Business One will be available in the hosted version, the spokesman said. SAP is also working on a brand new suite of on-demand applications, code named A1S, that's due to be launched next year. That service will target the lower mid-market, while the hosted version of Business One is aimed at small businesses, the spokesman said.
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(InfoWorld) - The announcement last week from Lombardi Software that it will add a SaaS (software as a service) component dubbed Blueprint to its on-premises BPM suite highlights both the continuing growth of the hosted model and its limitations. In offering Blueprint, Lombardi becomes one of the first vendors to offer a SaaS solution for BPM. However, Blueprint is not Lombardi's entire BPM suite. Rather it is one component, covering the preliminary process discovery portion of BPM during which people-to-people collaboration is essential. An end-to-end SaaS solution for BPM may still be a way off. The hosted solution uses a shared workspace within the browser that non-technical users can use, but it also supports the Business Process Modeling Notation standard for business analysts comfortable working with a standard industry tool. The underlying data model for the on-premises and SaaS components are identical so that once the processes that need improvement are defined the data is sent back and forth to the hosted solution behind the firewall through a feed similar to RSS. According to Phil Gilbert, Lombardi CTO, SaaS is the right delivery mechanism to tap the many different players who only understand their piece of the workflow puzzle. "No one understands big processes from end to end," Gilbert said, adding that he believes in order to assemble a cross-functional team of players, especially when that team is in many cases global and on different systems, SaaS can be used to lower the barrier of participation. The biggest roadblock to the deployment of an end-to-end SaaS solution for BPM or for any other core enterprise application remains access to the data, he said. For example, to deploy a full BPM SaaS solution a company would have to send proprietary data outside the firewall. "We are a long way off before major companies are willing to transmit their mission critical data across the Web," Gilbert said.