THINKstrategies announced today that New Relic 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 is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

New Relic RPM is a SaaS, on-demand performance management solution for web applications developed in Ruby, Java or JRuby. New Relic RPM can be fully implemented in minutes and provides deep, 24×7 visibility and code-level diagnostics for web applications deployed on traditional, dedicated infrastructures, private and public clouds, or any combination thereof. RPM’s real-time metrics enable application owners, developers and operations teams to quickly and cost-effectively monitor, troubleshoot, … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that AccelOps 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 is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

AccelOps allows organizations to better leverage virtualization technologies and cloud computing by providing end-to-end visibility across performance, availability, security and change management while linking the physical and virtual infrastructure to business and business services. AccelOps integrated and service-oriented platform automates the collection, monitoring, analysis and detailed reporting on all performance and IT/event log data with a single pane of glass that cuts through networks, systems, applications, virtualization and technology … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Vivantio 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 to bring attention to SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

Vivantio provides a suite of easy-to-deploy SaaS-based service management tools which enable customer service and support teams to increase productivity and save money. The flexibility and scalability of Vivantio’s solutions are reflected in its diverse customer base which includes public sector organizations, corporate customers and small service companies.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits Vivantio’s customers have gained from its SaaS solutions that earned … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced yesterday that Caspio, Inc. has been named the first winner of the new Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s cloud computing solutions.

The CCBV Awards program was announced in January 2010 to recognize Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers delivering tangible business benefits to specific user organizations. These benefits include lower costs, faster deployment times, greater profitability, etc.

The Award program builds on the success of THINKstrategies’ Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program which was initiated in 2009.

Caspio provides an on-demand, do-it-yourself, web application creation PaaS which replaces coding with intuitive point-and-click wizards, enabling users to rapidly produce web database components for capturing, publishing, and managing data online. Caspio’s customers range from one-person entrepreneurs to Fortune-500 corporations, digital media giants, government agencies, and educational institutions.

Click … Read More »

This week’s NCAA college basketball championship between Duke and Butler University offered plenty of life lessons for everyone, including the software and technology industry.

I took particular interest in the game because my oldest son is a sophomore at Butler which became the center of attention because of the ‘feel-good’ story surrounding the school. For anyone who isn’t aware of the dynamics that made the Duke-Butler championship special and didn’t see the game, it was a classic Cinderella and ‘David and Goliath’ story wrapped into one.

Duke is a pre-eminent basketball power with a long history of success on the national stage that has enabled the school to spend lavishly to attract elite ballplayers for decades. Butler is a respectable but little known ‘mid-major’ program which most people viewed as an unlikely challenger because the college is a fraction of the size of the top basketball institutions, spends less than 1/15 as much on its … Read More »

Earlier this month, THINKstrategies and Datamation teamed up to conduct a quick survey to get a reality check regarding current Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) adoption, satisfaction and expectations.

The results are in. Click here to read about our findings.

As you’ll see, our quick survey has found that SaaS acceptance, deployment and utilization are rising. It also confirmed that most SaaS users are satisfied with the benefits of these solutions.

However, the handful who are not pleased with their SaaS experiences raise important issues which every IT and business decision-maker needs to keep in mind.

Fortunately, the overall SaaS industry is doing a good job satisfying the expectations and needs of customers. As a result, our survey suggests continued growth for the SaaS market, and broader cloud computing services industry.

THINKstrategies announced today that Rosslyn Analytics 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 as an initiative aimed at bringing greater attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

Rosslyn Analytics’ pre-built applications run on Rapidintel, a web-based automated spend analytics (SaaS) platform that aggregates data from multiple sources, such as accounts payable, procurement, travel and procurement cards, into a single online view of all organizational spending activity. Rapidintel automates the collection, categorization, reporting and monitoring of enterprise-wide spend data.

Click here to read about … Read More »

There are many myths that are propagated by legacy software vendors to discredit the insurgent Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing movements. But, the SaaS industry has also harbored its own myths for many years as well.

For instance, many SaaS vendors aren’t truly ‘on-demand’. You can’t acquire and utilize their web-based applications instantaneously because they lack the automated provisioning capabilities. And, in many cases they don’t want you to use their online applications ‘by the drink’ because it undercuts the predictable revenue stream which is essential to the SaaS model.

The second and related myth is that most SaaS solutions are not ‘pay-as-you-go’. Instead, you are often asked to pay for a one-year agreement up front before you can utilize the SaaS app.

Despite these limitations, SaaS solutions have flourished because they are still far more flexible and more cost-effective than their legacy … Read More »

Despite the down economy which has decimated the traditional conference business, escalating interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing continues to fuel the growth of forums focused on these trends.

THINKstrategies is supporting the following upcoming events,

Xchange Service Provider, March 8-11, Los Angeles, CA.
SaaScon, April 6-7, San Jose, CA.
Under the Radar – ‘Commercializing the Cloud’, April 16, Mountain View, CA. (Friends of THINKstrategies get $100 off their conference registration by clicking here.)
AlwaysOn ‘OnDemand’ Conference, April 19-21, Palo Alto, CA. (Friends of THINKstrategies receive a special 50% discount on a conference registration by clicking here.)
CloudSlam’10, April 19-23.
SaaS University, hosted by SoftLetter, April 20-22, Washington, DC.
Telecomms Cloud Services Summit, April 22-23, London, UK.
All About the Cloud, SIIA Conference, May 10-12, San Francisco, CA. (Use promo code PRMTHINK to get $100 off the SIIA non-member regisration rate. Discount does not apply to current registrants.)
Gluecon, May 26-27, Denver, CO.
2nd Annual … Read More »

My travels this week have taken me from Miami to San Francisco, for Parallels Summit and Pacific Crest Securities’ Emerging Technology Summit to hear and see the latest developments in the ‘clouds’.

In Miami, I witnessed the emergence of a key new player in the rapidly evolving cloud computing industry. Parallels is not a new company, but it has recently realigned its various corporate capabilities into a singular focus on cloud computing enablement.

The company is specifically targeting the vast community of service providers — hosting companies, VARs and telcos — that are supporting the IT needs of small businesses with limited or no IT staff.

In short, Parallels is seeking to help these service providers replicate the success of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the mainstream small business marketplace.

Although AWS has found a very receptive audience among start-ups and enterprise developers, it hasn’t generated much interest with mainstream small businesses which lack … Read More »