IBM announced its intention to acquire Cast Iron Systems today, bringing to an end the long-standing parlor game of which integration tool vendor would be the next to be acquired after Workday grabbed Cape Clear in 2008.

This is an important endorsement of the importance of the integration tools market in general, and Cast Iron Systems in particular.

Integration is often listed as one of the top three concerns among IT and business decision-makers who are thinking about migrating to the ‘cloud’, along with security and reliability.

According to IBM’s software head, Steve Mills, Cast Iron Systems fit IBM’s acquisition criteria by offering “Adjacency” and “Synergy” that can enhance IBM’s capabilities and revenue opportunities in the following areas,

Websphere middleware
Process management services
Professional and hosting services
Cloud enablement solutions

The integration tools sector has been very competitive with Boomi, Hubspan, Informatica and Pervasive Software recognized as the other leaders.

Cast Iron Systems has differentiated … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Cast Iron Systems has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards program was announced in January 2009 by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

Cast Iron provides integration solutions and Integration-as-a-Service which allows providers and consumers of SaaS and cloud computing solutions to more quickly and economically connect their on-demand and on-premise applications and systems. Cast Iron offers its customers unmatched deployment flexibility – they can choose a completely cloud-based integration service called Cast Iron Cloud or on-premise integration appliances (physical or virtual) … Read More »

I moderated a panel at OpSource’s SaaS Summit this week entitled “Selling SaaS to the Enterprise” which included representatives from Cast Iron Systems, Oracle and the Business Objects unit of SAP, as well as the Manager of Global Operations Business Technology at Pfizer.

They all agreed that SaaS and cloud computing are making serious inroads into the enterprise but still face significant challenges, including scalability, security and flexibility issues.

In response to the flexibility topic, there was general consensus among the panelists that customers want a choice of on-premise and on-demand alternatives to serve various corporate requirements.

Although I’m very proud to have correctly predicted many of the major trends which have shaped the SaaS market evolution, I’ve never believed that the world would move entirely to an all on-demand environment for a variety of customer and vendor-driven reasons. Therefore, I’ve always expected … Read More »