THINKstrategies announced today that Accept Corporation 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.

Accept Corporation’s SaaS-based Accept 360 Innovation Management solution empowers product teams to more quickly develop compelling products that generate greater revenues, because they’re better aligned with the market and company strategy.

Click here to read more about the measurable business benefits which earned Accept Corporation the latest BoSS Award.

Click here to learn more about the BoSS Award program or to apply for an Award.

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies … Read More »

My past fews weeks have been consumed with weekly visits to the Bay Area to speak at SaaScon, moderate tracks at Under the Radar and co-host the AlwaysOn OnDemand conference, as well as numerous on-site client meetings. In between, I also had the privilege of presenting a kickoff keynote presentation at a VIP dinner for the State of the Cloud conference in Boston.

My hectic travel schedule has given me little time to comment on a variety of industry announcements which have occurred during this period. So, here’s my ‘lightening round’ assessment of some of the more significant events worth noting,

Cloud Conference Observations

SaaScon: When was the last time you heard CIOs talk about being heroes in their organizations? Well, the CIOs who spoke at SaaScon repeatedly described how the SaaS solutions which they’re implementing in their organizations are generating an overwhelmingly positive response from their end-users and corporate executives. … 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 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 »

One of the knocks against Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the broader cloud computing movement is that these web-based, on-demand services can’t be customized to cater to the complex requirements of specific enterprises.

While SaaS solutions have increasingly included a growing array of user configuration capabilities to respond to the individual needs of various organizations, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions have emerged over the past couple of years to permit end-users and third-party developers to build their own apps to meet their unique requirements.

The latest indication of the escalating power of these PaaS tools is today’s announcement unveiling Salesforce.com’s new Force.com Visual Process Manager. This new feature will allow users to design and build business process-oriented applications quickly so they can automate them across corporate departments.

Although the new Force.com Visual Process Manager won’t be generally available until later this year, it is the latest sign that cloud computing alternatives … Read More »

This week’s announcement that Microsoft and Intuit are linking their respective Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities has attracted lots of attention and generated plenty of speculation. It is also the latest escalation of the PaaS wars I predicted would take center-stage this year.

Although Salesforce.com’s Force.com PaaS has gained the lion’s share of industry attention because of the company’s unparalleled marketing machine, I’ve felt that Intuit’s Partner Platform (IPP) represented a dark-horse in the PaaS race because of the vast installed base of small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) using Intuit’s QuickBooks and QuickBase, along with its powerful channel relationships.

I’ve also believed that Microsoft would make considerable progress in penetrating the cloud computing market this year, not because of the technical capabilities of its Azure PaaS, but because of its historical prowess in building a vast partner network of ISVs and developers.

With those thoughts in mind, here’s … Read More »

In the ongoing tug-of-war between on-premise and on-demand vendors, much was made of Steve Lucas’ jump from the SaaS unit of SAP’s Business Objects to Salesforce.com to lead its new Force.com Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) initiative a little over a year ago.

With far less fanfare, Lucas returned to SAP last month as its new SVP of Business User Sales for North America. Since Steve is a friend, and SAP and Salesforce.com are also clients, I won’t share any confidential information or insight. However, his move does raise a series of interesting questions about Salesforce.com’s Force.com initiative and SAP’s plans.

Given Salesforce.com’s rapid growth despite the macro-economic slowdown and the major push the company is giving Force.com, it is surprising to see Steve return to SAP which is still struggling to define its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)/cloud computing strategies and solutions.

While SAP’s struggles have been well documented, … Read More »

I had the privilege of attending a local forum at Bentley University hosted by Intuit this past week entitled “Startups and the Cloud: Entrepreneurship in the Age of Cloud Computing”. 

The size of the turnout for this event was another indication of the growing level of interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the broader cloud computing phenomenon. It may also be an early indicator of the potential power of Intuit as a key player in this rapidly evolving marketplace.

In a previous blog post, I suggested that two of the most important competitive advantages which leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) must display are,

Sustainability in today’s tough economic climate to ensure they are viewed as solid, long-term suppliers of SaaS development and delivery capabilities.
An attractive customer base which can make the PaaS vendor a viable channel to market for developers leveraging its toolkit.

Intuit easily qualifies as a potentially powerful PaaS … Read More »

Phil Wainwright has posted a terrific blog entry regarding the ‘green crystals’ that power Salesforce.com’s multi-tenant platform.

The concept of multi-tenancy has been a cornerstone of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement and a key element of the rapidly evolving cloud computing environment as well.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term ‘multi-tenancy’, it is borrowed from the housing market and aims to compare today’s leading SaaS/cloud computing vendors to condominium owners who can obtain more luxurious living quarters without the hassles of owning a single-family home by sharing a common infrastructure and operational services.

While this arrangement offers plenty of conveniences, it also requires some sacrifices when it comes to how far you can customize your particular unit, or version of software in the case of SaaS.

While the value proposition of multi-tenancy is easy to understand, it is hard to get a lot of details … Read More »

The proliferation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing platform players continues to accelerate despite the failure of some early entrants and likelihood of more Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) casualties to come.

This past week, three more companies announced new platform strategies and solutions — Jaspersoft, ExpenseWatch.com, LongJump.

Open-source business intelligence (BI) vendor Jaspersoft unveiled its v3.5 integrated analysis capabilities as part of what it calls the industry’s first SaaS-enabled BI platform. The new platform promises easy-to-use integrated analysis that doesn’t require a data warehouse or OLAP server. It also includes new in-memory analysis capabilities that enables the delivery of customizable SaaS and Cloud-based BI applications which can be integrated into reports and dashboards.

ExpenseWatch.com announced an open expense control platform which will permit small and midsized businesses (SMBs) to integrate their expense management data with a variety of business application. The new “non-proprietary approach” promises to allow SMBs … Read More »