www.autotask.com Profiessional services automation (PSA). Autotask Corporation provides an innovative, web-based business management solution to help IT Service Providers and other professional services businesses automate and manage people, projects, and processes more efficiently.
Project Management, Resource Allocation, Task Management, Help Desk and Request Management, Process Management, Timesheet and Time Tracking, Workflow Automation with Integrated Communication Tools, Timeline, Gantt, and Schedule Prediction, Cost control, Invoicing, and Revenue Projection Tools
While Autotask has been optimized for use by IT Service providers and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), it has been adopted by software companies as well as a wide array of Professional Services Organizations including architecture, engineering, construction, government contractor, accounting, advertising, design, marketing, public relations, law firms, manufacturers, resellers and telecom companies. In fact, any company that has to manage workforce resources efficiently and service customers will find that Autotask will help maximize ROI.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Cube Route - On demand logistics
www.cuberoute.com Cube Route is the leading provider of managed logistics services
that enable organizations to easily and cost effectively manage field operations, yield dramatic cost reductions and differentiate their service offering. Our service helps customers more effectively manage critical operations including: order management, planning and route/job optimization, dispatch management, order notification, real-time field data capture, tracking and visibility, customer service and business intelligence.
Cube Route enables businesses to dramatically reduce costs and improve customer service within weeks of subscribing. Typically, our solution reduces operating costs by up to 15% while improving service. With an investment of less than 1.5% of the cost of field operations, we can demonstrate a 5x to 10x annual return on investment (ROI) across our entire customer base.
Cube Route works with its customers to provide on going value within their day to day operations including:
1. Cost Reduction through better route economics (shorter drive times and fewer miles driven), service time consistency, visibility into slack times and waiting times and reduced manual data entry.
2. Improved Customer Service through improved on-time arrival, setting of customer delivery windows, and notification of order status.
3. Reduced Complexity through the automation of manual and labor intensive processes and more accurate data capture.
4. Continuous Improvement through a closed loop between planning, field execution and analytics.
The Cube Route managed logistics service was created in response to requirements specific to the transportation and field service industries. Adoption of state of the art logistics applications by these industries has been slow for a variety or reasons that include:
* Lack of familiarity with the software and its benefits
* High upfront costs required to execute the solution
* Difficulty with operationalizing complex software solutions
* Lack of trained personnel to install, integrate and maintain the applications
that enable organizations to easily and cost effectively manage field operations, yield dramatic cost reductions and differentiate their service offering. Our service helps customers more effectively manage critical operations including: order management, planning and route/job optimization, dispatch management, order notification, real-time field data capture, tracking and visibility, customer service and business intelligence.
Cube Route enables businesses to dramatically reduce costs and improve customer service within weeks of subscribing. Typically, our solution reduces operating costs by up to 15% while improving service. With an investment of less than 1.5% of the cost of field operations, we can demonstrate a 5x to 10x annual return on investment (ROI) across our entire customer base.
Cube Route works with its customers to provide on going value within their day to day operations including:
1. Cost Reduction through better route economics (shorter drive times and fewer miles driven), service time consistency, visibility into slack times and waiting times and reduced manual data entry.
2. Improved Customer Service through improved on-time arrival, setting of customer delivery windows, and notification of order status.
3. Reduced Complexity through the automation of manual and labor intensive processes and more accurate data capture.
4. Continuous Improvement through a closed loop between planning, field execution and analytics.
The Cube Route managed logistics service was created in response to requirements specific to the transportation and field service industries. Adoption of state of the art logistics applications by these industries has been slow for a variety or reasons that include:
* Lack of familiarity with the software and its benefits
* High upfront costs required to execute the solution
* Difficulty with operationalizing complex software solutions
* Lack of trained personnel to install, integrate and maintain the applications
Interweave - Integration Server for Salesforce.com
www.interweave.biz Integration Technologies, provider of "InterWeave", the industry's most comprehensive Information Integration Management (IIM) solution(s) for producing applications that integrate enterprise systems, legacy applications, databases, files, content, and web service, both within and across enterprises, today announced the availability of the InterWeave Platform and Integration Management Solutions for end-to-end consolidated integration management as a web service for Salesforce.com customers. Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM). The company's Salesforce suite of on-demand applications enables customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and partner information on-demand. AppExchange, salesforce.com's on-demand platform, allows customers and partners to build powerful new applications quickly and easily, customize and integrate the Salesforce suite to meet their unique business needs, and distribute and sell on-demand applications at appexchange.
"AppExchange offers an excellent platform for salesforce.com customers to expand their existing CRM capabilities. It provides an extensive library of on-demand solutions that can build upon the success they already are enjoying. We are excited to contribute our addition to the library," said Bruce Magown, Chairman of Integration Technologies. "By offering InterWeave as a web service on AppExchange saves our customers time, money and integrates customer, product, contact, lead and opportunity data, bi-directionally, in real-time. This provides our customers the most accurate, effective, and comprehensive integration solution available today in the on-demand world."
With AppExchange, salesforce.com customers now have access to new applications that bring the benefits of salesforce.com to an entire business, the company says, letting them manage and share all of their company information on-demand. Using AppExchange, companies can easily add any number of new on-demand applications to their existing Salesforce deployments, extending their success.
"The announcement of our Web services solution onAppExchange presents InterWeave not only as a traditional enterprise license for larger enterprise companies but now as a web service in a hosted environment. By providing this kind of flexibility in our offerings for our customers, we can tailor a pricing and delivery model that exactly fits their needs," said Bruce Magown. "And when you add the announcement of our new Interactive Development Environment (IDE) for fast integration development, and our new partnership with Opsource, Inc., the leading SaaS hosting ASP, you have unlimited options oh how you and InterWeave can do business."
"AppExchange offers an excellent platform for salesforce.com customers to expand their existing CRM capabilities. It provides an extensive library of on-demand solutions that can build upon the success they already are enjoying. We are excited to contribute our addition to the library," said Bruce Magown, Chairman of Integration Technologies. "By offering InterWeave as a web service on AppExchange saves our customers time, money and integrates customer, product, contact, lead and opportunity data, bi-directionally, in real-time. This provides our customers the most accurate, effective, and comprehensive integration solution available today in the on-demand world."
With AppExchange, salesforce.com customers now have access to new applications that bring the benefits of salesforce.com to an entire business, the company says, letting them manage and share all of their company information on-demand. Using AppExchange, companies can easily add any number of new on-demand applications to their existing Salesforce deployments, extending their success.
"The announcement of our Web services solution onAppExchange presents InterWeave not only as a traditional enterprise license for larger enterprise companies but now as a web service in a hosted environment. By providing this kind of flexibility in our offerings for our customers, we can tailor a pricing and delivery model that exactly fits their needs," said Bruce Magown. "And when you add the announcement of our new Interactive Development Environment (IDE) for fast integration development, and our new partnership with Opsource, Inc., the leading SaaS hosting ASP, you have unlimited options oh how you and InterWeave can do business."
GXS - Get more from integration
www.gxs.com GXS is a leading worldwide provider of business-to-business integration, synchronization and collaboration solutions. The company operates a highly-reliable, secure global network services platform enabling more than 30,000 businesses, including over half of the Fortune 500, to conduct business together in real time.
We offer an extensive range of solutions to help companies, both large and small, connect worldwide with their business partners, synchronize product and price information, optimize inventory levels and demand forecasts, and speed the overall execution of their global supply chains. With the broadest array of capabilities and an unsurpassed worldwide reach, GXS ensures No Trading Partner is Left Behind.
In June 2002, GXS was acquired by Francisco Partners from General Electric Company (GE) and now operates as an independent firm. GE retains a minority investment in GXS. Francisco Partners is one of the world's largest technology-focused buyout funds with over $2.5 billion of committed capital under management.
We offer an extensive range of solutions to help companies, both large and small, connect worldwide with their business partners, synchronize product and price information, optimize inventory levels and demand forecasts, and speed the overall execution of their global supply chains. With the broadest array of capabilities and an unsurpassed worldwide reach, GXS ensures No Trading Partner is Left Behind.
In June 2002, GXS was acquired by Francisco Partners from General Electric Company (GE) and now operates as an independent firm. GE retains a minority investment in GXS. Francisco Partners is one of the world's largest technology-focused buyout funds with over $2.5 billion of committed capital under management.
Solve360 - A Norada Corporation Service
pwww.norada.com Gather, organize, and follow-up on your contacts. Consolidate information, distribute workload, and automate activities.
* State-of-the-art Hosted Business Email
* Integrated CRM Contact Management
* Real-Time Shared & Group Calendaring
* One-click remote Access from anywhere
* Superior active spam and virus protection
* Mission critical data back-up service
* Access to email and application expertise
* Amazingly simple, running in minutes
* Incredible time and money saver
* State-of-the-art Hosted Business Email
* Integrated CRM Contact Management
* Real-Time Shared & Group Calendaring
* One-click remote Access from anywhere
* Superior active spam and virus protection
* Mission critical data back-up service
* Access to email and application expertise
* Amazingly simple, running in minutes
* Incredible time and money saver
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Gates on SaaS
Deemphasizing the differences between on-premise and off-premise solutions, Bill Gates was reported in News.Com as saying: "The ideal for the industry is going to be if we have one architecture that (allows) you to shift things back and forth between on-premise and off-premise very easily, because it doesn't take much in terms of these various factors to make you want to switch in one direction or the other."
"And in the history of software, people have been doing forms for that remote management stuff, you know, going back to before Microsoft even existed. Now, as we're making the software hostable, we're also saying even when you run it on-premise, if you give me permission and we have the right relationship, I can be examining the health of the thing and helping deal with certain types of issues that come up, even though it's your hardware, it's on-premise."
"So we're seeing that evolution of better software capability for letting the remote expertise be applied, no matter where the code is running. A lot of the automation of making operations simpler can be done for on-premise or off-premise."
"And in the history of software, people have been doing forms for that remote management stuff, you know, going back to before Microsoft even existed. Now, as we're making the software hostable, we're also saying even when you run it on-premise, if you give me permission and we have the right relationship, I can be examining the health of the thing and helping deal with certain types of issues that come up, even though it's your hardware, it's on-premise."
"So we're seeing that evolution of better software capability for letting the remote expertise be applied, no matter where the code is running. A lot of the automation of making operations simpler can be done for on-premise or off-premise."
Edge Dynamics - Channel Commerce Management
www.edgedynamics.com Edge Dynamics was founded in 2002 to bring to market a channel commerce management solution to help manufacturers get the most out of their channel relationships. Led by a management team with deep domain expertise in technology and across industries and supported by industry luminaries on the Board of Directors, Edge Dynamics has developed and deployed an enterprise software solution that helps pharmaceutical manufacturers more effectively address issues relating to channel control, regulatory compliance, and patient safety and ultimately increase channel revenues. Edge Dynamics uniquely provides a full range of hosted and on-premise solutions.
For the world's leading manufacturers, managing financial performance at the beginning of the order stream is not a new concept. What is new is the application of automation technologies to bring superior agility and greater intelligence to order stream management.
Prior to the release of Edge Dynamics Channel Commerce Management solution, simplistic technologies such as Excel spreadsheets, basic report solutions, and inadequate customizations of business intelligence (BI) and ERP applications were used to manage the order stream. As regulatory requirements, channel velocities, and price fluctuations increased, these piecemeal approaches failed to provide effective channel control at the point of decision. Using these tools, analysis revealed points of failure after the fact yet provided no means of applying corrections at the point of decision. None of these backward-looking solutions delivered results in real-time and in-line with the order management process.
Edge Dynamics realized the market potential for an enterprise class solution that could apply sophisticated and configurable business intelligence to of the processing of transactions, such as orders, in real-time. Specifically targeting the pharmaceutical industry, Edge Dynamics developed a solution that within weeks of initial deployment was recapturing tens of millions in revenue previously lost to the uncontrolled demand fluctuations of the distribution channel.
Today, leading industry analysts such as the Gartner Group and AMR Research have formally recognized the need for a demand-driven approach to managing supply chains. According to recent estimates from Gartner, 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies that do not have real-time, demand-driven SCM strategies by 2007 will fail in their initiatives. Edge Dynamics is uniquely positioned to enable this new paradigm for supply chain management with the leading channel commerce management solution that leverages automation technology to address key issues of channel control, regulatory compliance, and patient safety.
Current Customers
Already deployed at leading pharmaceutical manufacturers, Edge Dynamics' revolutionary Channel Commerce Management solutions now optimize more than $75 billion in annual revenues representing nearly 35% of all U.S. pharmaceutical channel volume.
For the world's leading manufacturers, managing financial performance at the beginning of the order stream is not a new concept. What is new is the application of automation technologies to bring superior agility and greater intelligence to order stream management.
Prior to the release of Edge Dynamics Channel Commerce Management solution, simplistic technologies such as Excel spreadsheets, basic report solutions, and inadequate customizations of business intelligence (BI) and ERP applications were used to manage the order stream. As regulatory requirements, channel velocities, and price fluctuations increased, these piecemeal approaches failed to provide effective channel control at the point of decision. Using these tools, analysis revealed points of failure after the fact yet provided no means of applying corrections at the point of decision. None of these backward-looking solutions delivered results in real-time and in-line with the order management process.
Edge Dynamics realized the market potential for an enterprise class solution that could apply sophisticated and configurable business intelligence to of the processing of transactions, such as orders, in real-time. Specifically targeting the pharmaceutical industry, Edge Dynamics developed a solution that within weeks of initial deployment was recapturing tens of millions in revenue previously lost to the uncontrolled demand fluctuations of the distribution channel.
Today, leading industry analysts such as the Gartner Group and AMR Research have formally recognized the need for a demand-driven approach to managing supply chains. According to recent estimates from Gartner, 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies that do not have real-time, demand-driven SCM strategies by 2007 will fail in their initiatives. Edge Dynamics is uniquely positioned to enable this new paradigm for supply chain management with the leading channel commerce management solution that leverages automation technology to address key issues of channel control, regulatory compliance, and patient safety.
Current Customers
Already deployed at leading pharmaceutical manufacturers, Edge Dynamics' revolutionary Channel Commerce Management solutions now optimize more than $75 billion in annual revenues representing nearly 35% of all U.S. pharmaceutical channel volume.
Tradecard - The hosted way to procure-to-pay
www.tradecard.com Optimizing payables and receivables to fit your schedule. TradeCard is a secure new way to manage procurement-to-payment worldwide: buyers, sellers and partners connect to a hosted, paperless platform. Processes are visible. Innovative financial services unlock savings. Cash flows improve. No capital expenditure required, creating near-term ROI. That is our mission. For members in approximately 40 countries, it's their reality.
With offices on 3 continents and partners in a dozen countries, TradeCard has refined the methodology for bringing on new member companies and their trading partners. TradeCard has offices and partners around the globe to accelerate the linking of your financial supply chain.
But even before you become a member, TradeCard invests to make sure you'll realize business success.
With offices on 3 continents and partners in a dozen countries, TradeCard has refined the methodology for bringing on new member companies and their trading partners. TradeCard has offices and partners around the globe to accelerate the linking of your financial supply chain.
But even before you become a member, TradeCard invests to make sure you'll realize business success.
e2open - Controlling complex supply chains
www.e2open.com 51 customer hubs = 12,666 trading partner connections = 45,410 users. E2open is the leading provider of software and services to manage inter-company processes such as inventory management, order management, demand/supply forecast synchronization, material composition declaration for WEEE/RoHS, and multi-tier visibility -- integrating trading partners across multiple tiers of distributed global supply and demand networks.
Over 12,000 companies worldwide currently use E2open for greater supply chain visibility and control through accurate, timely and cost-effective access to information. E2open offers the only solution to combine inter-company process management functionality, event management tools, performance management capabilities and an open system-to-system integration platform delivered in a software-as-a-service model, resulting in lower total cost of ownership and shorter deployment cycles.
A privately-held company, E2open's largest customers include Agere, Hitachi, IBM, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Seagate Technology, Solectron and Wistron.
E2open maintains locations in China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Over 12,000 companies worldwide currently use E2open for greater supply chain visibility and control through accurate, timely and cost-effective access to information. E2open offers the only solution to combine inter-company process management functionality, event management tools, performance management capabilities and an open system-to-system integration platform delivered in a software-as-a-service model, resulting in lower total cost of ownership and shorter deployment cycles.
A privately-held company, E2open's largest customers include Agere, Hitachi, IBM, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Seagate Technology, Solectron and Wistron.
E2open maintains locations in China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Amazon S3 - Simple Storage Service
aws.amazon.com/s3/ Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.
Amazon S3 Functionality
Amazon S3 is intentionally built with a minimal feature set.
* Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited.
* Each object is stored and retrieved via a unique, developer-assigned key.
* Authentication mechanisms are provided to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorized access. Objects can be made private or public, and rights can be granted to specific users.
* Uses standards-based REST and SOAP interfaces designed to work with any Internet-development toolkit.
* Built to be flexible so that protocol or functional layers can easily be added. Default download protocol is HTTP. A BitTorrent protocol interface is provided to lower costs for high-scale distribution. Additional interfaces will be added in the future.
Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.
Amazon S3 Functionality
Amazon S3 is intentionally built with a minimal feature set.
* Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited.
* Each object is stored and retrieved via a unique, developer-assigned key.
* Authentication mechanisms are provided to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorized access. Objects can be made private or public, and rights can be granted to specific users.
* Uses standards-based REST and SOAP interfaces designed to work with any Internet-development toolkit.
* Built to be flexible so that protocol or functional layers can easily be added. Default download protocol is HTTP. A BitTorrent protocol interface is provided to lower costs for high-scale distribution. Additional interfaces will be added in the future.
Gates Sounds Off On Software As A Service
"Software as a service is a very important trend and something we believe in a lot,” Gates told a few thousand Microsoft Business Solutions customers and partners at the Dallas event. “Software as a service is a change of relationship between us and our customers."
In fact, that’s what many solution providers and vendors worry about. They see SaaS as a trend that could upset the balance of power in account control.
Gates reiterated that the world will need on-premise and hosted software, and Microsoft aims to play a big role in both camps. "Our software will be available on both a server and service basis," he said.
In fact, that’s what many solution providers and vendors worry about. They see SaaS as a trend that could upset the balance of power in account control.
Gates reiterated that the world will need on-premise and hosted software, and Microsoft aims to play a big role in both camps. "Our software will be available on both a server and service basis," he said.
Zoho - Web services + Software = Engineering elegance
www.zoho.com An AdventNet service. Zoho is based on a rapidly growing set of interactive Web-based applications using a group of online tools collectively called AJAX -- for Asynchronous Java-Script and XML.
Founded in 1996, AdventNet has served a diverse range of enterprise IT, networking and telecom customers. We know our customers have a choice of many vendors, and we want to earn their business and their trust by working hard for it. And having earned their business, we want to keep them happy so they will choose to do business with us again. These simple ideas have served us well, during good times and bad. AdventNet has achieved impressive growth, and has emerged as a rock-solid supplier and partner, with sound financials.
Founded in 1996, AdventNet has served a diverse range of enterprise IT, networking and telecom customers. We know our customers have a choice of many vendors, and we want to earn their business and their trust by working hard for it. And having earned their business, we want to keep them happy so they will choose to do business with us again. These simple ideas have served us well, during good times and bad. AdventNet has achieved impressive growth, and has emerged as a rock-solid supplier and partner, with sound financials.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Will SaaS work?
"As some wiseguy once said, those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the seventh grade. Based on that principle, I think I have to nominate the entire IT punditocracy to do exactly that.
I'm departing from my normal Advice Line format because right now I Just Can't Stand It.
We're talking about a subject I covered a few weeks ago in Keep the Joint Running ("Trend, fad, or blah blah blah," 2/13/2006), but many of you don't subscribe to that, and it's something you should know about. Which is that a lot of the current gushing about Software as a Service (SaaS) makes me think our industry is doubling as a home for amnesiacs.
If you read an article on the subject at random these days, you'll read that It Must Be Real, because SAP is getting into the game. That's where the amnesia sets in: Not one of these geniuses remembers Pandesic - the ASP joint venture between SAP and Intel that launched with a splash a few years ago, and which both companies abandoned when it didn't pan out, leaving a bunch of customers in the lurch.
Sad to say, not one other commentator in the industry has connected the dots to ask the musical question, "Given its history, why does SAP's entry into the SaaS marketplace legitimize it?" Last time it abandoned its customers to a frog-march conversion. What about this time?
I'll leave it to you to decide whether there's enough difference between ASP and SaaS to be worth all the fuss. (No I won't - the difference is about as significant as what happens when you put different shade of lipstick on the same pig.)
This being Advice Line I ought to include some advice with the commentary, so here it is: If, for some reason, you decide to risk it anyway and use SAP's shiny new SaaS offering, negotiate the following terms into your contract: "Should SAP decide to close down this service, it will either (a) continue to provide it, with the regular upgrades promised in this contract, for a minimum of two years following the date on which it announces that it plans to terminate the service; or (b) it will provide funding, systems integration staff, project managers, and all hardware and software required to convert to an in-house-hosted alternative."
Think they'll go for it?"
I'm departing from my normal Advice Line format because right now I Just Can't Stand It.
We're talking about a subject I covered a few weeks ago in Keep the Joint Running ("Trend, fad, or blah blah blah," 2/13/2006), but many of you don't subscribe to that, and it's something you should know about. Which is that a lot of the current gushing about Software as a Service (SaaS) makes me think our industry is doubling as a home for amnesiacs.
If you read an article on the subject at random these days, you'll read that It Must Be Real, because SAP is getting into the game. That's where the amnesia sets in: Not one of these geniuses remembers Pandesic - the ASP joint venture between SAP and Intel that launched with a splash a few years ago, and which both companies abandoned when it didn't pan out, leaving a bunch of customers in the lurch.
Sad to say, not one other commentator in the industry has connected the dots to ask the musical question, "Given its history, why does SAP's entry into the SaaS marketplace legitimize it?" Last time it abandoned its customers to a frog-march conversion. What about this time?
I'll leave it to you to decide whether there's enough difference between ASP and SaaS to be worth all the fuss. (No I won't - the difference is about as significant as what happens when you put different shade of lipstick on the same pig.)
This being Advice Line I ought to include some advice with the commentary, so here it is: If, for some reason, you decide to risk it anyway and use SAP's shiny new SaaS offering, negotiate the following terms into your contract: "Should SAP decide to close down this service, it will either (a) continue to provide it, with the regular upgrades promised in this contract, for a minimum of two years following the date on which it announces that it plans to terminate the service; or (b) it will provide funding, systems integration staff, project managers, and all hardware and software required to convert to an in-house-hosted alternative."
Think they'll go for it?"
On-Premise vendors eye subscription licence model
"There are both advantages and drawbacks to a move to subscription licensing, Konary said. "Selling licenses via subscription increases the predictability of software revenue and makes it easier to demonstrate future health." At the same time, "moving to subscription revenue can have a negative impact on revenue and, ultimately, share price," she pointed out. "Unless a software vendor already sells via a subscription license, doing so will involve a transition to recognizing software license revenue ratably, over time."
Razorsight - Intelligent Data Capture Services
www.razorsight.com Founded in April of 2001, Razorsight provides financial executives with next-generation business intelligence software and services to process, manage, and analyze financial data -- from a single invoice to global expenditures. No other company offers a fully-automated software platform that scans and converts any paper or electronic invoice or financial document into actionable, structured data. This data is placed into a web portal, providing previously unavailable visibility and streamlined management of an organization’s finances.
Razorsight's Software as a Service (SaaS) has transformed the way that companies process invoices. Razorsight provides finance executives with detailed visibility into every line item on every expense, and seamlessly integrates with any financial system. Razorsight has delivered exceptional savings, and a return on investment (ROI) in 12 months or less to both Fortune 500 and mid-sized businesses. Our business intelligence, analytics, audit and reporting tools have been recognized as unique and best of breed.
Named as a finalist for the 2005 American Business Awards Best Product of the Year, Razorsight’s revolutionary software platform is dramatically transforming the way Fortune 500 companies process, manage, and realize significant value from their financial data. Razorsight has successfully implemented its managed service solution at several Fortune 100 corporations with documented savings in the millions and a return on investment in less than one year.
RazorFacts
Razorsight’s proprietary technology mechanizes the conversion of any paper or electronic invoice to an actionable database, including all invoices, contracts, purchase orders, and other financial documents thereby facilitating audit, analysis and review. This improves your finance team’s management of all corporate expenditures, while also enhancing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
Razorsight's Software as a Service (SaaS) has transformed the way that companies process invoices. Razorsight provides finance executives with detailed visibility into every line item on every expense, and seamlessly integrates with any financial system. Razorsight has delivered exceptional savings, and a return on investment (ROI) in 12 months or less to both Fortune 500 and mid-sized businesses. Our business intelligence, analytics, audit and reporting tools have been recognized as unique and best of breed.
Named as a finalist for the 2005 American Business Awards Best Product of the Year, Razorsight’s revolutionary software platform is dramatically transforming the way Fortune 500 companies process, manage, and realize significant value from their financial data. Razorsight has successfully implemented its managed service solution at several Fortune 100 corporations with documented savings in the millions and a return on investment in less than one year.
RazorFacts
Razorsight’s proprietary technology mechanizes the conversion of any paper or electronic invoice to an actionable database, including all invoices, contracts, purchase orders, and other financial documents thereby facilitating audit, analysis and review. This improves your finance team’s management of all corporate expenditures, while also enhancing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
SPARK Las Vega 2006
sparklasvegas.wordpress.com "We wrapped up the SPARK architecture workshop late yesterday afternoon here in sunny Las Vegas. This very intriguing event on the future of software architecture consisted of a two day conversation between some of the brightest people in software and try to figure out where it's all going. The trends that are generally associated with the concepts of Web 2.0 and Software as a Service (SaaS) are really reshaping views and expectations while the industry's experience with SOA has been mixed. Web 2.0 and SOA, and to a lesser extent SaaS, are first order collections of software architecture forces and contraints that overlap quite a bit. But there are clearly disjoint concepts like Web 2.0 social aspects and SOA's orchestration and its galaxy of obscure standards. The convergence of major visions of software architecture is a fascinating and vitally important topic, as I discussed in my cover article last last year in the SOA Web Services Journal on the subject, Web 2.0: The Global SOA."
IDC's SaaS Predictions 2006
IDC's top ten predictions for SaaS in 2006 are:
* Large ISVs Will Spin Off On-Demand Versions of Products
* Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Remain a "Tough Nut to Crack"
* Microsoft Strengthens SaaS Resolve
* Software on Demand Providers Focus on Partnering
* Mini-Ecosystems Emerge to Extend the Reach of Software on Demand
* SaaS Enablers Continue to Aid Availability of On-Demand Offerings
* Merger and Acquisition Activity Continues
* SaaS Providers Concentrate on Improving Offerings and Customer Experience
* Hosted AM Becomes a Stepping Stone Towards On-Demand Delivery
* SaaS Will Help Drive a Software Industry Transition to Subscription Licensing
* Large ISVs Will Spin Off On-Demand Versions of Products
* Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Remain a "Tough Nut to Crack"
* Microsoft Strengthens SaaS Resolve
* Software on Demand Providers Focus on Partnering
* Mini-Ecosystems Emerge to Extend the Reach of Software on Demand
* SaaS Enablers Continue to Aid Availability of On-Demand Offerings
* Merger and Acquisition Activity Continues
* SaaS Providers Concentrate on Improving Offerings and Customer Experience
* Hosted AM Becomes a Stepping Stone Towards On-Demand Delivery
* SaaS Will Help Drive a Software Industry Transition to Subscription Licensing
ThinMind - Smar products, smart business
www.thinmind.com
Shift Technologies, Inc. (STI) was founded in 1997 and is a privately held / funded corporation located in Charlotte, NC. Shift Technologies provides 100% web based workforce management solutions. The company’s flagship product suite ThinMind includes Timesheet Reporting, Expense Reporting, Issue Tracking, and Project Management.
Thousands of people worldwide use ThinMind web based solutions. The ThinMind suite is designed for small to large businesses and specifically for the professional services market including, the financial services, legal, and IT and business consulting industries.
The ThinMind suite of solutions is available on an application service provider (ASP) basis.
Our sole purpose is to provide powerful business tools to small, medium, and large companies without the headaches, costs, or risks associated with 'software implementations'.
Shift Technologies, Inc. (STI) was founded in 1997 and is a privately held / funded corporation located in Charlotte, NC. Shift Technologies provides 100% web based workforce management solutions. The company’s flagship product suite ThinMind includes Timesheet Reporting, Expense Reporting, Issue Tracking, and Project Management.
Thousands of people worldwide use ThinMind web based solutions. The ThinMind suite is designed for small to large businesses and specifically for the professional services market including, the financial services, legal, and IT and business consulting industries.
The ThinMind suite of solutions is available on an application service provider (ASP) basis.
Our sole purpose is to provide powerful business tools to small, medium, and large companies without the headaches, costs, or risks associated with 'software implementations'.
UltraDNS - Intelligent Scaleable Directory Services
www.ultradns.com UltraDNS Corporation, the world's leading provider of managed DNS services, today announced that salesforce.com, the technology and market leader in on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM), has selected its Managed DNS Service for enhanced network security, performance and reliability. Salesforce.com's hosted CRM solutions are powered by the UltraDNS Directory Services Platform and backed by its industry leading Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Saleforce.com is a leading innovator in the software as a service (SaaS) market, whereby business applications are utilized by customers via the Internet. According to a recent report from the market research firm IDC, SaaS will represent a $10.7 billion market by 2009.
"Given the critical nature of our service, our customers require outstanding reliability. To achieve this we need the very best network infrastructure of which DNS is a critical component," said Christopher Amen-Kroeger, Vice President of Service Delivery, salesforce.com. "We chose UltraDNS because its Managed DNS Service provides unparalleled security and performance and its platform allows us to scale seamlessly as our business grows."
Recently, UltraDNS announced the deployment of the DNS Shield(TM), a revolutionary extension of the Directory Services Platform. The DNS Shield involves the deployment of authoritative DNS servers within the heart of the networks of leading ISPs including Yahoo, Verio, Earthlink, and America Online, creating a hardened and secure DNS infrastructure providing unprecedented levels of Internet performance, and the most advanced protection available against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and pharming attacks.
"In the increasingly competitive 'software as a service' market, superior DNS security and performance is a key differentiator," said Ben Petro, president and CEO, UltraDNS. "We are delighted to partner with salesforce.com and to enhance the online experience for its impressive client list."
UltraDNS Corporation is the world's leading Managed DNS Service Provider, delivering superior security, reliability and performance to organizations that rely on DNS for their critical business processes, applications and services. With the growth in e-commerce and the emergence of advanced DNS-based communication and supply chain management services, organizations can no longer rely on traditional approaches to DNS. UltraDNS provides a range of global and local DNS solutions - both managed services and custom infrastructure - built on its unique Directory Services Platform and proprietary, patented technologies. Through its thousands of enterprise, service provider and TLD infrastructure customers, UltraDNS powers the resolution of over 15 million domains around the globe. UltraDNS has offices in California, Virginia, Arizona, Chicago and the UK.
Saleforce.com is a leading innovator in the software as a service (SaaS) market, whereby business applications are utilized by customers via the Internet. According to a recent report from the market research firm IDC, SaaS will represent a $10.7 billion market by 2009.
"Given the critical nature of our service, our customers require outstanding reliability. To achieve this we need the very best network infrastructure of which DNS is a critical component," said Christopher Amen-Kroeger, Vice President of Service Delivery, salesforce.com. "We chose UltraDNS because its Managed DNS Service provides unparalleled security and performance and its platform allows us to scale seamlessly as our business grows."
Recently, UltraDNS announced the deployment of the DNS Shield(TM), a revolutionary extension of the Directory Services Platform. The DNS Shield involves the deployment of authoritative DNS servers within the heart of the networks of leading ISPs including Yahoo, Verio, Earthlink, and America Online, creating a hardened and secure DNS infrastructure providing unprecedented levels of Internet performance, and the most advanced protection available against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and pharming attacks.
"In the increasingly competitive 'software as a service' market, superior DNS security and performance is a key differentiator," said Ben Petro, president and CEO, UltraDNS. "We are delighted to partner with salesforce.com and to enhance the online experience for its impressive client list."
UltraDNS Corporation is the world's leading Managed DNS Service Provider, delivering superior security, reliability and performance to organizations that rely on DNS for their critical business processes, applications and services. With the growth in e-commerce and the emergence of advanced DNS-based communication and supply chain management services, organizations can no longer rely on traditional approaches to DNS. UltraDNS provides a range of global and local DNS solutions - both managed services and custom infrastructure - built on its unique Directory Services Platform and proprietary, patented technologies. Through its thousands of enterprise, service provider and TLD infrastructure customers, UltraDNS powers the resolution of over 15 million domains around the globe. UltraDNS has offices in California, Virginia, Arizona, Chicago and the UK.
Empagio - Creating harmony in human resources
www.empagio.com We provide a solution covering all of your HR, payroll, and benefits administration needs.
Add employee self-service (ESS) and manager self-service (MSS) through the SymphonyHR Employee Portal and you have a complete solution. All at your fingertips, all with the click of a mouse. All through a single-source service over the Internet and at a price that any company can afford.
SymphonyHR is dedicated to those HR Professionals who never intended to become bureaucrats. This service is designed for companies serious about effectively managing their people processes and offering more service to the organization without increasing costs. This Web-based masterpiece calms and coordinates all your HR beasts - administration, payroll, benefits, and even open enrollment.
Add employee self-service (ESS) and manager self-service (MSS) through the SymphonyHR Employee Portal and you have a complete solution. All at your fingertips, all with the click of a mouse. All through a single-source service over the Internet and at a price that any company can afford.
SymphonyHR is dedicated to those HR Professionals who never intended to become bureaucrats. This service is designed for companies serious about effectively managing their people processes and offering more service to the organization without increasing costs. This Web-based masterpiece calms and coordinates all your HR beasts - administration, payroll, benefits, and even open enrollment.
Okere - Client Management Solutions
www.okere.com Salesforce.com consulting partner. Prediction: In 2005, vertical-industry-specific sales solutions will be used in 85 percent of active deployments in the automotive, pharmaceuticals, consumer products and financial services industries (0.8 probability) - Gartner - "CRM Predicts 2005: Sales Will Drive Revenue and Growth" December 2004
OKERE creates industry specific client management solutions for product vendors and individual companies. OKERE is focused on revolutionizing the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in financial services.
What is customer relationship management?
Customer Relationship Management was the term coined to define the business strategy companies employ to attract, gain, retain, and maximize the value of their customers. In the businesses that have generated success from CRM implementations there has been a focus on the customer experience, the employee experience and interaction between the business and the customer.
Industry Solutions
OKERE works with Fortune 500 companies to further help define and implement industry specific CRM go-to-market strategies through a mix of best of breed vendors and product development.
Services
Companies are challenged with developing and implementing growth strategies, identifying innovative ways to attract and retain their own customers, effectively transforming their business operations, and managing the impact that these changes will have on their organization. A clear strategy to address these issues provides the business perspective and insight to frame business decisions and projects. We offer advisory services to help analyze, improve and transform business operations and technology strategies. We leverage deep industry expertise and thought leadership to help our clients move quickly from vision to value and drive sustainable business advantage.
OKERE creates industry specific client management solutions for product vendors and individual companies. OKERE is focused on revolutionizing the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in financial services.
What is customer relationship management?
Customer Relationship Management was the term coined to define the business strategy companies employ to attract, gain, retain, and maximize the value of their customers. In the businesses that have generated success from CRM implementations there has been a focus on the customer experience, the employee experience and interaction between the business and the customer.
Industry Solutions
OKERE works with Fortune 500 companies to further help define and implement industry specific CRM go-to-market strategies through a mix of best of breed vendors and product development.
Services
Companies are challenged with developing and implementing growth strategies, identifying innovative ways to attract and retain their own customers, effectively transforming their business operations, and managing the impact that these changes will have on their organization. A clear strategy to address these issues provides the business perspective and insight to frame business decisions and projects. We offer advisory services to help analyze, improve and transform business operations and technology strategies. We leverage deep industry expertise and thought leadership to help our clients move quickly from vision to value and drive sustainable business advantage.
Sapien - On demand HRMS and HCM services
www.sapiensoftware.com Sapien is a market leader in HRMS and HCM software services, serving organizations with 1-100,000 employees. All Sapien services are 100% web native and offer integrated or modular functionality with cross platform reporting, query/search, workflow, setup/administration, and security/roles.
Based in Morristown, NJ in the same building as our Sapien.NET data center, Sapien’s mission statement is ‘to be the vendor of choice for organizations for HRMS and HCM. To be viewed as a strategic partner by all clients and earn the respect of each client partner.' With integrated HRMS, HCM, Payroll, Benefits, and other HR services, Sapien is emerging as a market leader in HR BPO. Sapien’s software development partner, and the author of the award winning HRM Connect platform on which Sapien's services are based, HRM Software Ltd. is located in London, England.
Based in Morristown, NJ in the same building as our Sapien.NET data center, Sapien’s mission statement is ‘to be the vendor of choice for organizations for HRMS and HCM. To be viewed as a strategic partner by all clients and earn the respect of each client partner.' With integrated HRMS, HCM, Payroll, Benefits, and other HR services, Sapien is emerging as a market leader in HR BPO. Sapien’s software development partner, and the author of the award winning HRM Connect platform on which Sapien's services are based, HRM Software Ltd. is located in London, England.
Friday, March 17, 2006
World's First SaaS Conference, Napa Valley, CA, March 2006
The world's first SaaS event, hosted by turnkey SaaS conversion and hosting provider, Opsource.Net, has released videos and presentations from the event.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Sant Corporation - Proposal and Sales Document Automation
www.santcorp.com The Sant Corporation, a world leader
in proposal and sales document automation software, today announces an on-
demand deployment option for Sant Suite. Sant Suite On-Demand provides
users the flexibility to create proposals, RFP responses, presentations, and
related sales documents directly via the Internet. It is designed for
companies of all sizes who choose not to utilize internal resources to host
and maintain Sant Suite.
"Companies are trending to Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions to
realize a lower total cost of ownership, faster deployment times, increased
user adoption, and decreased implementation complexity," said Sheryl
Kingstone, senior analyst with the Yankee Group. "Companies with IT resource
constraints should use a SaaS solution to speed time-to-market and minimize
ongoing maintenance requirements."
Sant's customers have the option to purchase an on-demand subscription or
perpetual license of Sant Suite. Both versions contain identical product
functionality; the only difference is the delivery model. Sant Suite On-
Demand is fully hosted by The Sant Corporation and provides the necessary
hardware, software, infrastructure, bandwidth, security, and other necessary
services. Sant Suite On-Demand is offered through a subscription-based
licensing model. Companies will pay as little as $59 per user per month to
use Sant Suite applications.
First Research Industry-Specific Content Included with ProposalMaster(R)
Sant has formed a strategic partnership with First Research, leading
provider of industry intelligence tools for sales professionals, to provide
industry-specific content for use in sales documents. Customers using
ProposalMaster can create persuasive, client-focused executive summaries by
including insight into their prospect's key business issues and outcomes.
Content is provided from 30 different industries and can be easily tailored by
the customer. Additionally, users can quickly generate "conversation
starters" containing industry-specific questions to ask throughout the sales
process. Research indicates that demonstrating an understanding of your
prospect's key business issues and industry significantly increases your win
rate.
Advanced Hosting Services Provided by The Planet
The Planet provides safe, secure, reliable, and highly-available hosting
services to Sant's on-demand customers. Sant has been using The Planet to
host Sant Suite for several customers since June 2005. Feedback from these
customers has been very positive. "We are very pleased with the accessibility
and performance of Sant Suite via The Planet," said Paige Harkins, CEO,
Enterject Inc. "We selected a hosted solution to allow our business units to
share information via one portal and increase deployment time. The software
is always available and upgrades are applied automatically."
in proposal and sales document automation software, today announces an on-
demand deployment option for Sant Suite. Sant Suite On-Demand provides
users the flexibility to create proposals, RFP responses, presentations, and
related sales documents directly via the Internet. It is designed for
companies of all sizes who choose not to utilize internal resources to host
and maintain Sant Suite.
"Companies are trending to Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions to
realize a lower total cost of ownership, faster deployment times, increased
user adoption, and decreased implementation complexity," said Sheryl
Kingstone, senior analyst with the Yankee Group. "Companies with IT resource
constraints should use a SaaS solution to speed time-to-market and minimize
ongoing maintenance requirements."
Sant's customers have the option to purchase an on-demand subscription or
perpetual license of Sant Suite. Both versions contain identical product
functionality; the only difference is the delivery model. Sant Suite On-
Demand is fully hosted by The Sant Corporation and provides the necessary
hardware, software, infrastructure, bandwidth, security, and other necessary
services. Sant Suite On-Demand is offered through a subscription-based
licensing model. Companies will pay as little as $59 per user per month to
use Sant Suite applications.
First Research Industry-Specific Content Included with ProposalMaster(R)
Sant has formed a strategic partnership with First Research, leading
provider of industry intelligence tools for sales professionals, to provide
industry-specific content for use in sales documents. Customers using
ProposalMaster can create persuasive, client-focused executive summaries by
including insight into their prospect's key business issues and outcomes.
Content is provided from 30 different industries and can be easily tailored by
the customer. Additionally, users can quickly generate "conversation
starters" containing industry-specific questions to ask throughout the sales
process. Research indicates that demonstrating an understanding of your
prospect's key business issues and industry significantly increases your win
rate.
Advanced Hosting Services Provided by The Planet
The Planet provides safe, secure, reliable, and highly-available hosting
services to Sant's on-demand customers. Sant has been using The Planet to
host Sant Suite for several customers since June 2005. Feedback from these
customers has been very positive. "We are very pleased with the accessibility
and performance of Sant Suite via The Planet," said Paige Harkins, CEO,
Enterject Inc. "We selected a hosted solution to allow our business units to
share information via one portal and increase deployment time. The software
is always available and upgrades are applied automatically."
Ideal Hire - Talent Acquisition
www.idealhire.com IdealHire Technologies, Inc. based in Phoenix, AZ, is dedicated to developing innovative technology solutions to improve recruitment efficiency. Patent protected web-based matching, ranking and rich media technologies enable recruiters, associations and employers to dramatically reduce the time and resources required for finding top talent. The result is better quality hires and more time for recruiters, HR professionals and hiring managers to focus on mission critical objectives, which translates to the bottom line in easily measurable ways.
IdealHire was founded by Bruce Culver, chairman and CEO, who has over 20 years of staffing industry and software experience. Mr. Culver recognized the need for resume management and accurate candidate identification as stacks of resumes piled high in recruiter’s in-boxes. The time spent by recruiters trying to understand resumes and varying jargon created bottlenecks that almost ensured the best candidate for a given job may not be found before a competitor filled a job order. Hiring managers had an equally difficult time deciphering massive amounts of resumes that often were completely incompatible with the advertised job. IdealHire Technologies was founded to develop unique process solutions to improve candidate identification and selection accuracy.
Intellectual Property
IdealHire is the owner of US patent number 5,592,375, issued in 1997, covering the matching & ranking of buyers to sellers based on specified criteria and rich media technology. The company utilizes this patent to match & rank job seekers to a company’s open job requisitions based on information contained in the candidates profile and the company’s job profiles. While IdealHire applies this patent to the Human Resources industry, there are several opportunities for the company to enter into licensing agreements for application of the patent to other non-competing industry segments.
IdealHire was founded by Bruce Culver, chairman and CEO, who has over 20 years of staffing industry and software experience. Mr. Culver recognized the need for resume management and accurate candidate identification as stacks of resumes piled high in recruiter’s in-boxes. The time spent by recruiters trying to understand resumes and varying jargon created bottlenecks that almost ensured the best candidate for a given job may not be found before a competitor filled a job order. Hiring managers had an equally difficult time deciphering massive amounts of resumes that often were completely incompatible with the advertised job. IdealHire Technologies was founded to develop unique process solutions to improve candidate identification and selection accuracy.
Intellectual Property
IdealHire is the owner of US patent number 5,592,375, issued in 1997, covering the matching & ranking of buyers to sellers based on specified criteria and rich media technology. The company utilizes this patent to match & rank job seekers to a company’s open job requisitions based on information contained in the candidates profile and the company’s job profiles. While IdealHire applies this patent to the Human Resources industry, there are several opportunities for the company to enter into licensing agreements for application of the patent to other non-competing industry segments.
Softrax - Complex Billing for SaaS and BPO
www.softrax.com/solutions/complex-billing/ Softrax Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise billing and revenue management solutions, today announced the immediate availability of a white paper entitled, "Billing Strategies for Innovative Business Models: How Boring Old Billing Could be the Competitive Advantage You Never Knew You Had." The paper examines the very complex billing requirements of a range of businesses -- including business process outsourcing (BPO), Software as a Service (SaaS), information providers, e-learning and research, e-commerce and Internet, high tech, telecom, utilities, and other business services.
"Companies that rely on business model innovation to drive growth have unique billing requirements," said Gottfried Sehringer, Softrax Vice President of Marketing. "Their billing systems must continually adapt to new ways of bundling, pricing, and charging. Companies that manage billing and related financial processes as an integrated strategic asset are able to go to market faster, increase market share, and outmaneuver their competition. This white paper discusses how to manage billing -- and the financial infrastructure -- as a strategic asset capable of continually delivering competitive advantage."
For companies with periodically recurring contracts, subscriptions and complex services, there are a number of mission-critical financial processes that must be optimized and integrated in order to produce a competitive billing system. These processes, which are examined in this paper, include:
* Contract Management
* Pricing
* Metering
* Billing
* Revenue Management
Checklists within each of these sections help readers rapidly access where to start, and how far they have to go in order to make billing a competitive asset. The paper is available for download free of charge from http://www.softrax.com/billing
Extract: The real key to implementing a sophisticated billing solution for SaaS is how tightly integrated it is with the current terms of your customer agreements. Contracts are the source for all the terms that govern how you bill your customers, track expenses and how you recognize the revenue you’ve earned. Softrax was specifically designed to seamlessly integrate robust billing functionality with Billing Strategies White Paper in-depth information about contracts and related records. This ensures your billing activity is always synchronized with the latest changes and amendments to a contract’s key elements. Softrax automatically generates billing schedules and manages transactions over the life of a customer relationship. Softrax also handles miscellaneous charges and contract changes that occur during a billing cycle with ease, and creates associated matching expenses, such as royalties, commissions, and unit costs to these items.
Solution highlights
Powerful and flexible functionality gives you total control over subscription, transaction and usage billing models
* Consolidate multiple charges into a single bill
* Manage simple and complex billing schedules
* Multiple, customizable formats for bill presentation
* Automatically split bills across multiple bill-to-addresses
* Distribute charges across multiple services
* Control discount activity on individual services
Manage Royalties, Commissions, and other additional expenses
* Create expenses based on percentages, fixed amounts, and unit rates
* Define the period over which an expense should be calculated
* Setup multiple expenses for each charge
* Automatically assign expenses to vendors, sales people, and products
Customize Billing to Your Customers’ Needs
* Easily manage prepayments:
o Ensure proper application of a prepayment against a contract
o Link prepayments to any associated services on the contract
o Create revenue schedules for prepayment
o Review, credit, and cancel prepayments
Revenue Accounting and Revenue Management
* Independently manage billing and revenue schedules
* Fully control revenue and expense general ledger account distribution at the time of contract creation
* Track unbilled and invoiced revenue and receivables activity
* Account for complex adjustments
* Automate journal entries for every billing and service activation event
* Simplify compliance with complex accounting standards
Sophisticated Pricing Models
* Easy rate table creation and ongoing modification
* Support for tiered volume discounts
* Easily implement variable pricing bands over the life of a contract
* Visibility into how time-dependent pricing affects future account profitability
"Companies that rely on business model innovation to drive growth have unique billing requirements," said Gottfried Sehringer, Softrax Vice President of Marketing. "Their billing systems must continually adapt to new ways of bundling, pricing, and charging. Companies that manage billing and related financial processes as an integrated strategic asset are able to go to market faster, increase market share, and outmaneuver their competition. This white paper discusses how to manage billing -- and the financial infrastructure -- as a strategic asset capable of continually delivering competitive advantage."
For companies with periodically recurring contracts, subscriptions and complex services, there are a number of mission-critical financial processes that must be optimized and integrated in order to produce a competitive billing system. These processes, which are examined in this paper, include:
* Contract Management
* Pricing
* Metering
* Billing
* Revenue Management
Checklists within each of these sections help readers rapidly access where to start, and how far they have to go in order to make billing a competitive asset. The paper is available for download free of charge from http://www.softrax.com/billing
Extract: The real key to implementing a sophisticated billing solution for SaaS is how tightly integrated it is with the current terms of your customer agreements. Contracts are the source for all the terms that govern how you bill your customers, track expenses and how you recognize the revenue you’ve earned. Softrax was specifically designed to seamlessly integrate robust billing functionality with Billing Strategies White Paper in-depth information about contracts and related records. This ensures your billing activity is always synchronized with the latest changes and amendments to a contract’s key elements. Softrax automatically generates billing schedules and manages transactions over the life of a customer relationship. Softrax also handles miscellaneous charges and contract changes that occur during a billing cycle with ease, and creates associated matching expenses, such as royalties, commissions, and unit costs to these items.
Solution highlights
Powerful and flexible functionality gives you total control over subscription, transaction and usage billing models
* Consolidate multiple charges into a single bill
* Manage simple and complex billing schedules
* Multiple, customizable formats for bill presentation
* Automatically split bills across multiple bill-to-addresses
* Distribute charges across multiple services
* Control discount activity on individual services
Manage Royalties, Commissions, and other additional expenses
* Create expenses based on percentages, fixed amounts, and unit rates
* Define the period over which an expense should be calculated
* Setup multiple expenses for each charge
* Automatically assign expenses to vendors, sales people, and products
Customize Billing to Your Customers’ Needs
* Easily manage prepayments:
o Ensure proper application of a prepayment against a contract
o Link prepayments to any associated services on the contract
o Create revenue schedules for prepayment
o Review, credit, and cancel prepayments
Revenue Accounting and Revenue Management
* Independently manage billing and revenue schedules
* Fully control revenue and expense general ledger account distribution at the time of contract creation
* Track unbilled and invoiced revenue and receivables activity
* Account for complex adjustments
* Automate journal entries for every billing and service activation event
* Simplify compliance with complex accounting standards
Sophisticated Pricing Models
* Easy rate table creation and ongoing modification
* Support for tiered volume discounts
* Easily implement variable pricing bands over the life of a contract
* Visibility into how time-dependent pricing affects future account profitability
Agile - SaaS PLM
sme.agile.com Today's small and medium enterprise (SME) is pressured as never before to preserve capital assets, maximize return on capital investment, and minimize costs. At the same time, these organizations face intense competitive pressures.
A powerful product lifecycle management (PLM) system can help level the playing field for an SME against larger competitors by speeding product innovation, cutting product costs, improving cycle times, increasing efficiencies, enhancing product quality, ensuring regulatory compliance, improving customer satisfaction, and driving overall profitability.
Agile Advantage, a world-class PLM solution from industry leader Agile Software, delivers the benefits of PLM quickly, with the flexibility, fast time to benefit, and low total cost of ownership that is crucial to small and medium enterprises. Our licensing options, including Agile On Demand and its rapid implementation, combine with services that are right-sized for SME needs to deliver the value SMEs seek.
Since its inception in 1995, Agile has been serving more than 1,200 customers successfully. We understand the business processes and challenges facing our customers and we've built our solutions to ensure that you can rapidly turn your products into profits.
Overview
Agile Software Corporation is an industry leader in product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions and provides Agile Advantage for small and medium enterprise (SME) customers. Agile Advantage is a comprehensive PLM suite that enables SMEs to drive profits, accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and ensure regulatory compliance throughout the product lifecycle. And, Agile Advantage was designed to offer the flexibility that SMEs require. Choose the product modules your organization needs, and be confident that at any time, as your needs change, fully integrated additional functionality is easy to add.
Agile Advantage delivers quick time to value. In fact, for those who choose the Agile On Demand model, the system can be implemented in one day, and customers begin to realize value on the second day—guaranteed! Additionally, Agile Advantage was designed to assure low total cost of ownership, with services, maintenance plans, and training options, all right-sized to meet the requirements of SME customers.
Agile customers include SMEs like Colubris Networks, Novoste, ONStor, Proxim, ReVera, Sonic Innovations, Visx. Agile’s enterprise solutions, developed to meet the requirements of large and global enterprise (LGE) customers, serve the needs of global enterprises such as Alcatel, Boeing, Dell, Flextronics International, Hitachi, Lockheed Martin, Logitech, Magna Steyr, Siemens, QUALCOMM and ZF. Our Agile solutions serve more than 1,200 customers in the automotive, aerospace and defense, consumer products, electronics, high tech, industrial products, and life sciences industries.
Agile Product Compliance Management is one of many new solutions added to Agile Advantage(TM) 2006, Agile's new and expanded, industry-leading PLM solution for SME customers. Agile Product Compliance Management enables SMEs to market their products and compete in global markets by tracking of material and substance information concurrently against multiple compliance directives and environmental regulations for each specific product. Today's SMEs face a growing amount of increasingly stringent environmental regulations around the world. Environmental mandates such as the European Union's Restrictions of the Use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) have proliferated worldwide as large corporations, the state of California, and even China implement similar standards. Product manufacturers who fail to comply must pay significant penalties or risk the loss of sales by exclusion from certain markets.
For SMEs, regulatory compliance management imposes a disproportionate burden. With smaller IT staffs and leaner budgets, SMEs cannot afford the additional burden of compliance management solutions. And while many SMEs contemplate manual solutions, such approaches are mistake-prone, slow the pace of innovation, and often fail to stand up to environmental audits.
"As an industry pioneer in the highly technical and rapidly advancing WiMAX market, tools such as Product Compliance Management enable us to design for compliance," explains Scott Woodworth, senior vice president of manufacturing and operations, SOMA Networks. "By incorporating environmental compliance at the design stage, we can ensure that our products meet the latest regulatory specifications, eliminating costly hardware re-spins, and accelerating our ability to respond rapidly to market demands for product innovation and enhancement. We work with a large supply chain, but compliance responsibility for all product content ultimately rests with us. Agile Product Compliance Management is an easy-to-manage solution that provides us with the necessary safeguards to ensure complete regulatory compliance."
As a fully integrated module of Agile Advantage 2006, Agile Product Compliance Management links all product content (design, manufacturing, and compliance) into a single system that provides visibility, enhances productivity, and facilitates audits. One of the most powerful advantages of Agile Product Compliance Management is its change-based logic. When an Agile Advantage user changes a Bill of Materials (BOM) or Approved Manufacturers List (AML), those changes are noted and checked against relevant regulations in the database. Such capability provides assurances that regulatory compliance management will not slow the pace of innovation, a vital competitive advantage for SMEs.
"With increasingly stringent environmental regulations and limited IT resources, small and medium enterprise customers face many great challenges managing regulatory compliance," said Craig Livingston, vice president of worldwide SME operations at Agile Software. "Recognizing these constraints and the serious business problems created by manual compliance methods -- lost efficiencies, the potential for human error, long investigations, the potential heavy fines, and even exclusion from lucrative markets -- Agile Product Compliance Management, with its ease of implementation and management, is designed specifically to help SME's meet today's regulatory management requirements."
A powerful product lifecycle management (PLM) system can help level the playing field for an SME against larger competitors by speeding product innovation, cutting product costs, improving cycle times, increasing efficiencies, enhancing product quality, ensuring regulatory compliance, improving customer satisfaction, and driving overall profitability.
Agile Advantage, a world-class PLM solution from industry leader Agile Software, delivers the benefits of PLM quickly, with the flexibility, fast time to benefit, and low total cost of ownership that is crucial to small and medium enterprises. Our licensing options, including Agile On Demand and its rapid implementation, combine with services that are right-sized for SME needs to deliver the value SMEs seek.
Since its inception in 1995, Agile has been serving more than 1,200 customers successfully. We understand the business processes and challenges facing our customers and we've built our solutions to ensure that you can rapidly turn your products into profits.
Overview
Agile Software Corporation is an industry leader in product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions and provides Agile Advantage for small and medium enterprise (SME) customers. Agile Advantage is a comprehensive PLM suite that enables SMEs to drive profits, accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and ensure regulatory compliance throughout the product lifecycle. And, Agile Advantage was designed to offer the flexibility that SMEs require. Choose the product modules your organization needs, and be confident that at any time, as your needs change, fully integrated additional functionality is easy to add.
Agile Advantage delivers quick time to value. In fact, for those who choose the Agile On Demand model, the system can be implemented in one day, and customers begin to realize value on the second day—guaranteed! Additionally, Agile Advantage was designed to assure low total cost of ownership, with services, maintenance plans, and training options, all right-sized to meet the requirements of SME customers.
Agile customers include SMEs like Colubris Networks, Novoste, ONStor, Proxim, ReVera, Sonic Innovations, Visx. Agile’s enterprise solutions, developed to meet the requirements of large and global enterprise (LGE) customers, serve the needs of global enterprises such as Alcatel, Boeing, Dell, Flextronics International, Hitachi, Lockheed Martin, Logitech, Magna Steyr, Siemens, QUALCOMM and ZF. Our Agile solutions serve more than 1,200 customers in the automotive, aerospace and defense, consumer products, electronics, high tech, industrial products, and life sciences industries.
Agile Product Compliance Management is one of many new solutions added to Agile Advantage(TM) 2006, Agile's new and expanded, industry-leading PLM solution for SME customers. Agile Product Compliance Management enables SMEs to market their products and compete in global markets by tracking of material and substance information concurrently against multiple compliance directives and environmental regulations for each specific product. Today's SMEs face a growing amount of increasingly stringent environmental regulations around the world. Environmental mandates such as the European Union's Restrictions of the Use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) have proliferated worldwide as large corporations, the state of California, and even China implement similar standards. Product manufacturers who fail to comply must pay significant penalties or risk the loss of sales by exclusion from certain markets.
For SMEs, regulatory compliance management imposes a disproportionate burden. With smaller IT staffs and leaner budgets, SMEs cannot afford the additional burden of compliance management solutions. And while many SMEs contemplate manual solutions, such approaches are mistake-prone, slow the pace of innovation, and often fail to stand up to environmental audits.
"As an industry pioneer in the highly technical and rapidly advancing WiMAX market, tools such as Product Compliance Management enable us to design for compliance," explains Scott Woodworth, senior vice president of manufacturing and operations, SOMA Networks. "By incorporating environmental compliance at the design stage, we can ensure that our products meet the latest regulatory specifications, eliminating costly hardware re-spins, and accelerating our ability to respond rapidly to market demands for product innovation and enhancement. We work with a large supply chain, but compliance responsibility for all product content ultimately rests with us. Agile Product Compliance Management is an easy-to-manage solution that provides us with the necessary safeguards to ensure complete regulatory compliance."
As a fully integrated module of Agile Advantage 2006, Agile Product Compliance Management links all product content (design, manufacturing, and compliance) into a single system that provides visibility, enhances productivity, and facilitates audits. One of the most powerful advantages of Agile Product Compliance Management is its change-based logic. When an Agile Advantage user changes a Bill of Materials (BOM) or Approved Manufacturers List (AML), those changes are noted and checked against relevant regulations in the database. Such capability provides assurances that regulatory compliance management will not slow the pace of innovation, a vital competitive advantage for SMEs.
"With increasingly stringent environmental regulations and limited IT resources, small and medium enterprise customers face many great challenges managing regulatory compliance," said Craig Livingston, vice president of worldwide SME operations at Agile Software. "Recognizing these constraints and the serious business problems created by manual compliance methods -- lost efficiencies, the potential for human error, long investigations, the potential heavy fines, and even exclusion from lucrative markets -- Agile Product Compliance Management, with its ease of implementation and management, is designed specifically to help SME's meet today's regulatory management requirements."
amdocs - Integrated Customer Management relevant to SaaS and BPO
www.amdocs.com Integrated customer management is the way forward for our customers to compete and win in their markets. The Amdocs value proposition of enabling integrated customer management is now being taken to the next level with the delivery of Amdocs 6, the next generation of our product portfolio.
Amdocs 6 is the most comprehensive portfolio of integrated, modular products designed to accelerate the delivery of integrated customer management. Bringing together our industry-leading: billing, CRM, self service, ordering, service fulfillment, mediation and content revenue management products to deliver comprehensive coverage of the customer lifecycle: target, sell, deliver, bill, support. This approach removes process barriers to delivering the customer experience you intend and results in creating stronger, more profitable customer relationships.
Building stronger, more profitable customer relationships
In the past, services companies were focused on achieving top-line growth through customer acquisition. Although growth is still very much a business priority, the focus on how this is achieved has evolved. To grow the business and remain competitive, companies are focusing on building stronger, more profitable customer relationships. This means understanding customer needs intimately, and efficiently delivering and supporting solutions that create and capture the most value. Today, customers have more choices than ever. But what they want in their relationships with their service providers is simplicity, convenience and value. Amdocs has envisioned a strategy for our customers' success. We call this strategy integrated customer management.
Amdocs is the leading industry expert and trusted advisor that enables and accelerates the journey to integrated customer management and the delivery of an intentional customer experience. Through the unique combination of comprehensive services, a portfolio of integrated, modular products, and unrivaled delivery skills and expertise, Amdocs transforms services companies into customer centric businesses and dynamic service providers. The benefits are increased customer loyalty, higher revenue, lower costs, and greater resulting shareholder value.
Our broad portfolio of integrated products spans the entire customer lifecycle, seamlessly linking key customer-facing business processes - targeting customers, selling services, managing customer orders, service delivery fulfillment, billing, and customer support. Our portfolio of industry leading products includes: billing, CRM, self service, order management, mediation, and content revenue management.
Over the last three years alone, Amdocs has invested more than $390 million in the development of our product portfolio. Our portfolio is built with a common vision and development roadmap ensuring reduced risk and lower cost of ownership for our customers. Although our products are part of an integrated portfolio approach, they remain modular ensuring a stepped and incremental approach to executing a comprehensive integrated customer management strategy. Our products are built with standards-based technology and open architecture to ensure they fit seamlessly into any environment.
We support our customers with a wide range of services, including consulting services, implementation and integration services, learning services, software support services, managed services and outsourcing. Our services are designed to provide each customer with the necessary strategy, guidance and execution required to achieve integrated customer management and deliver the intentional customer experience.
At Amdocs, we are committed to incorporating quality into every aspect of our work-ranging from software development and internal business processes, to the way we work with customers-and we invest considerable resources in company-wide quality programs to ensure this. One of our key quality programs is the ongoing assessment of all our development centers to achieve the prominent Level-3 rating of the Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM), developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).
Over the last 22 years, Amdocs has built a global customer base of industry leaders by developing lasting relationships and delivering real business results. Backed by deep industry experience and an unsurpassed track record of success, Amdocs continues to help enterprises all over the world plan and execute their business strategies with confidence.
Amdocs 6 is the most comprehensive portfolio of integrated, modular products designed to accelerate the delivery of integrated customer management. Bringing together our industry-leading: billing, CRM, self service, ordering, service fulfillment, mediation and content revenue management products to deliver comprehensive coverage of the customer lifecycle: target, sell, deliver, bill, support. This approach removes process barriers to delivering the customer experience you intend and results in creating stronger, more profitable customer relationships.
Building stronger, more profitable customer relationships
In the past, services companies were focused on achieving top-line growth through customer acquisition. Although growth is still very much a business priority, the focus on how this is achieved has evolved. To grow the business and remain competitive, companies are focusing on building stronger, more profitable customer relationships. This means understanding customer needs intimately, and efficiently delivering and supporting solutions that create and capture the most value. Today, customers have more choices than ever. But what they want in their relationships with their service providers is simplicity, convenience and value. Amdocs has envisioned a strategy for our customers' success. We call this strategy integrated customer management.
Amdocs is the leading industry expert and trusted advisor that enables and accelerates the journey to integrated customer management and the delivery of an intentional customer experience. Through the unique combination of comprehensive services, a portfolio of integrated, modular products, and unrivaled delivery skills and expertise, Amdocs transforms services companies into customer centric businesses and dynamic service providers. The benefits are increased customer loyalty, higher revenue, lower costs, and greater resulting shareholder value.
Our broad portfolio of integrated products spans the entire customer lifecycle, seamlessly linking key customer-facing business processes - targeting customers, selling services, managing customer orders, service delivery fulfillment, billing, and customer support. Our portfolio of industry leading products includes: billing, CRM, self service, order management, mediation, and content revenue management.
Over the last three years alone, Amdocs has invested more than $390 million in the development of our product portfolio. Our portfolio is built with a common vision and development roadmap ensuring reduced risk and lower cost of ownership for our customers. Although our products are part of an integrated portfolio approach, they remain modular ensuring a stepped and incremental approach to executing a comprehensive integrated customer management strategy. Our products are built with standards-based technology and open architecture to ensure they fit seamlessly into any environment.
We support our customers with a wide range of services, including consulting services, implementation and integration services, learning services, software support services, managed services and outsourcing. Our services are designed to provide each customer with the necessary strategy, guidance and execution required to achieve integrated customer management and deliver the intentional customer experience.
At Amdocs, we are committed to incorporating quality into every aspect of our work-ranging from software development and internal business processes, to the way we work with customers-and we invest considerable resources in company-wide quality programs to ensure this. One of our key quality programs is the ongoing assessment of all our development centers to achieve the prominent Level-3 rating of the Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM), developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).
Over the last 22 years, Amdocs has built a global customer base of industry leaders by developing lasting relationships and delivering real business results. Backed by deep industry experience and an unsurpassed track record of success, Amdocs continues to help enterprises all over the world plan and execute their business strategies with confidence.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
LightHouse1 - On Demand Benefits Administration Systems
www.lighthouse1.com At Lighthouse1, we believe in delivering endless possibilities for your success. Our vision, to provide the benefits administration industry with innovative technology solutions, has produced the premier hosted benefits administration solution, Lighthouse1 OnDemand. This powerful solution was developed to address challenges in the administration of Section 125, 105, 132 and other pre-tax spending programs in the employee benefits industry.
As an innovative, technology-driven organization, our team combines unsurpassed technical expertise, extensive benefits administration industry knowledge and unparalleled qualifications to make Ligthhouse1 the premier benefits administration software solution provider.
With innovative technology and vision, our solutions and services assist and support business administrators in the management of healthcare account services through their core business and infrastructure. Lighthouse1 OnDemand is a powerful, revolutionary software solution that is delivered over the Web making it accessible from a secure Internet browser. Customers can deploy Lighthouse1 OnDemand™ quickly, easily, and affordably.
As an innovative, technology-driven organization, our team combines unsurpassed technical expertise, extensive benefits administration industry knowledge and unparalleled qualifications to make Ligthhouse1 the premier benefits administration software solution provider.
With innovative technology and vision, our solutions and services assist and support business administrators in the management of healthcare account services through their core business and infrastructure. Lighthouse1 OnDemand is a powerful, revolutionary software solution that is delivered over the Web making it accessible from a secure Internet browser. Customers can deploy Lighthouse1 OnDemand™ quickly, easily, and affordably.
Monday, March 13, 2006
SaaS is Big, The Future is Bigger
"One of the misconceptions about software-as-a-service (SaaS) is that it’s all about software. Granted, on-demand online applications are the foundation of SaaS, but not all software is delivered equally.
A new generation of SaaS vendors has emerged, and its mission is much more ambitious than simply delivering software over the Internet. Instead, next-generation SaaS vendors seek to leverage their large customer base to create virtual global enterprises, making the efficiencies of scale available to their entire customer base.
The goal is to create an application ecosphere, one that links business applications with business processes. These business-automation SaaS providers offer more than software: They give startup, small and other businesses a set of automated processes that fundamentally change how common business problems are tackled."
A new generation of SaaS vendors has emerged, and its mission is much more ambitious than simply delivering software over the Internet. Instead, next-generation SaaS vendors seek to leverage their large customer base to create virtual global enterprises, making the efficiencies of scale available to their entire customer base.
The goal is to create an application ecosphere, one that links business applications with business processes. These business-automation SaaS providers offer more than software: They give startup, small and other businesses a set of automated processes that fundamentally change how common business problems are tackled."
Here comes HaaS
Nick Carr writes "There's been a ton of discussion about the delivery of software applications as subscription services over the internet. The software-as-a-service, or SaaS, model is pretty easy for people to understand - most everyone these days uses a browser to tap into web services of one sort or another - and the spread of the idea has benefited greatly from the charisma of promoters like Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff.
Much less discussed has been the idea of buying IT hardware - or even an entire data center - as a pay-as-you-go subscription service that scales up or down to meet your needs. But as a result of rapid advances in hardware virtualization, IT automation, and usage metering and pricing, I think the concept of hardware-as-a-service - let's call it HaaS - may at last be ready for prime time."
Much less discussed has been the idea of buying IT hardware - or even an entire data center - as a pay-as-you-go subscription service that scales up or down to meet your needs. But as a result of rapid advances in hardware virtualization, IT automation, and usage metering and pricing, I think the concept of hardware-as-a-service - let's call it HaaS - may at last be ready for prime time."
Friday, March 10, 2006
Unyte - Web Dialogs
www.unyte.net Unyte: a Webdialogs service. Share documents, presentations, application and your desktop in real time with anyone, anywhere, anytime.
WebDialogs has been delivering reliable, high quality web conferencing and collaboration services and software to leading service providers and equipment makers since 1999. We have over 60 distribution partners including several top 10 providers - you may even have used our software and not known it was us.
Our services save people money by reducing travel, increasing productivity and by bringing remote resources together.
Unyte is a plug-in to Skype. A plus version provides recording, annotation and remote PC access. A premuim service, Meeting Central, provides web and voice conferencing that support 5 to 5000 plus people and includes event management, polling, audiocasting and more.
WebDialogs has been delivering reliable, high quality web conferencing and collaboration services and software to leading service providers and equipment makers since 1999. We have over 60 distribution partners including several top 10 providers - you may even have used our software and not known it was us.
Our services save people money by reducing travel, increasing productivity and by bringing remote resources together.
Unyte is a plug-in to Skype. A plus version provides recording, annotation and remote PC access. A premuim service, Meeting Central, provides web and voice conferencing that support 5 to 5000 plus people and includes event management, polling, audiocasting and more.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
The Definitive Guide to On-Demand CRM
"My belief is that the vast majority of applications are going to be consumed in this on-demand model," said RightNow's Gianforte. "This on-premise model takes five times longer to get benefit and cost five times more to implement. It's outdated and it will go away. That's why this is so important. I was talking to a venture capitalist who said they won't even fund a company that develops on-premise software anymore. On-premise is over, done."
Progressive SMB Manufacturers offer SaaS
i-MARK, the leading provider of web-hosted eBusiness solutions for discrete product manufacturers, has witnessed a significant shift among the small-to-medium-size businesses (SMBs) in their utilization of the Internet. Looking beyond websites as just another vehicle to distribute their marketing message, SMB manufacturers now recognize their websites must satisfy the instantaneous search-to-acquire requirements of their primarily large OEM customers. "Large manufacturers have been our bread-and-butter since we first offered sales automation solutions in 1998. Now SMB manufacturers recognize they must add affordable self-service, search-to-acquire tools to their 'information-only' websites if they expect to compete effectively and grow globally", says Del Merenda, i-MARK's president. He added, "lamenting the low ROIs of traditional marketing, SMBs realize they must put their websites to work if they expect to recapture profitable growth."
Two leading SMB manufacturers, Nielsen / Sessions division of Actuant, and Morganite Molten Metals division of The Morgan Crucible Company plc, acquired i-MARK's 24/7 BUSINESS software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to better interact with customers and to identify valuable prospects. "Clearly, the Internet has become the information destination for buyers and specifying engineers and it's no surprise that SMBs are rushing to implement our 24/7 BUSINESS solutions", says Merenda.
Nielsen / Sessions chose 24/7 BUSINESS to transform their static website into a self-service business tool, addressing the real-time-response needs of OEM prospects and customers, and enabling buyers to transact on-line. Nielsen is long-reputed for being well out in front of customer demand for reliable information. They expect 24/7 BUSINESS to deliver mission-accomplished visitor' experiences and intuitive, self-service e-commerce.
Morganite Crucible chose 24/7 BUSINESS because they needed to consolidate products and supporting information from multiple websites into one easy to use web destination. Morganite was missing too many up-sell/cross-sell opportunities because inside sales did not know about all the products that Morganite offers worldwide. CSRs took too much time to lookup details, resulting in impatient buyers; unproductive call transfers to Morganite product managers; and ultimately, lost sales.
i-MARK offers self-service business solutions to manufacturers that increase the productivity of their engineering-oriented end-users.
Two leading SMB manufacturers, Nielsen / Sessions division of Actuant, and Morganite Molten Metals division of The Morgan Crucible Company plc, acquired i-MARK's 24/7 BUSINESS software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to better interact with customers and to identify valuable prospects. "Clearly, the Internet has become the information destination for buyers and specifying engineers and it's no surprise that SMBs are rushing to implement our 24/7 BUSINESS solutions", says Merenda.
Nielsen / Sessions chose 24/7 BUSINESS to transform their static website into a self-service business tool, addressing the real-time-response needs of OEM prospects and customers, and enabling buyers to transact on-line. Nielsen is long-reputed for being well out in front of customer demand for reliable information. They expect 24/7 BUSINESS to deliver mission-accomplished visitor' experiences and intuitive, self-service e-commerce.
Morganite Crucible chose 24/7 BUSINESS because they needed to consolidate products and supporting information from multiple websites into one easy to use web destination. Morganite was missing too many up-sell/cross-sell opportunities because inside sales did not know about all the products that Morganite offers worldwide. CSRs took too much time to lookup details, resulting in impatient buyers; unproductive call transfers to Morganite product managers; and ultimately, lost sales.
i-MARK offers self-service business solutions to manufacturers that increase the productivity of their engineering-oriented end-users.
i-MARK - Sales Process Automation
www.imark.com i-MARK is a Software and Professional Services Company that provides Sales Process Automation Solutions to Manufacturing Companies. For our manufacturer clients, we deploy internet-based, customer-facing Solutions that enable productivity gains, reduce operating costs, improve customer service, and grow profitable revenue.
i-MARK's Sales Process Automation Solutions can be highly customized to serve comprehensive needs of large manufacturers, and are also available in affordable packages that fall within the budgets of small and medium-sized businesses.
Our e-catalog software solutions enable product selection & configuration, order management, lead processing, and quotation generation, and are designed to be used by customers, prospects, sales resources and management. We assist our customers by helping them serve:
* OEM Product Engineers seeking to design-in an exact component using a product configurator
* Buyers wanting to conduct real-time collaborative design using 3D solids-based CAD views, downloads and markup tools
* Distributors placing on-line orders for re-supply or customer fulfillment
* MRO Buyers needing replacement parts for equipment maintenance and repair
* Marketing Management wishing to strengthen their marketing databases with contact information of buyers visiting their website
* Salespeople, Agents and Distributors requiring high-quality leads of serious buyers interested in the company's products
* Sales Channels needing to produce complex and elaborate quotations to win new business
i-MARK's Sales Process Automation Solutions can be highly customized to serve comprehensive needs of large manufacturers, and are also available in affordable packages that fall within the budgets of small and medium-sized businesses.
Our e-catalog software solutions enable product selection & configuration, order management, lead processing, and quotation generation, and are designed to be used by customers, prospects, sales resources and management. We assist our customers by helping them serve:
* OEM Product Engineers seeking to design-in an exact component using a product configurator
* Buyers wanting to conduct real-time collaborative design using 3D solids-based CAD views, downloads and markup tools
* Distributors placing on-line orders for re-supply or customer fulfillment
* MRO Buyers needing replacement parts for equipment maintenance and repair
* Marketing Management wishing to strengthen their marketing databases with contact information of buyers visiting their website
* Salespeople, Agents and Distributors requiring high-quality leads of serious buyers interested in the company's products
* Sales Channels needing to produce complex and elaborate quotations to win new business
USi ASP creates Security and Risk Management Practice
www.usi.net USinternetworking, a premier provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), today announced the launch of its Information Security and Risk Management Practice. USi already provides secure hosting services to more than 150 clients and millions of end-users within client organizations. Now, USi is expanding its offerings to provide secured hosting and consulting services beyond its own data centers and client infrastructure.
"USi has built its reputation by delivering secure, reliable, integrated
and continuously-supported services to our clients. We live and breathe
security 24/7," says Curtis Hampshire, USi, General Manager, eBusiness.
"Today -- more than ever -- responsible executives understand the true
importance of security to their organizations. USi's Information Security and
Risk Management Practice provides visibility into business, technical and
operational risk so managers can make informed decisions and cost effective
investments in information security and mitigation efforts."
By leveraging the combination of deep security and privacy expertise with
world-class, secure data center operations, USi enables enterprises to defend
against a variety of emerging threats to information security. These include
organized hacking and phishing attacks; ongoing proliferation of worms and
viruses; targeted attacks on wireless networks and the increasing legal
liability companies must take on for data protection.
Gartner's Hype Cycle for Information Security, 2005, (by Vic Wheatman, et
al., 5 July 2005) details many of the considerations enterprises face when
considering security technologies and investments. "Choosing and maintaining
security technologies continue to be top priorities for enterprise executives
and managers. Those same managers are under more pressure than ever to show
business value and cost-effectiveness for security measures. Security
spending is being driven by a variety of concerns, all of them pressing. Aside
from the age-old need to 'keep the bad guys out' and 'let the good guys in,'
compliance with new government regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,
are now playing a significant role in security spending decisions.
Furthermore, hackers continue to invent new ways to break into enterprise
files and steal valuable data. Private individuals are also under increased
threat of cybertheft, with schemes such as "phishing" putting more pressure on
financial service providers to protect customers' personal information."
USi's Information Security and Risk Management Services include a
multitude of offerings such as: Risk and Vulnerability Assessments to assist
enterprises with regulatory and privacy compliance; Identity Management
Services to ensure enterprises maintain complete control over user access;
Single-Sign On (SSO), Auditing and Access Controls; Vulnerability and Patch
Management; Incident Response and Forensics Services and Managed Security
Services delivered in partnership with Counterpane Internet Security to help
enterprises increase protection for critical assets with the benefit of a
reduced, predictable cost model.
Enterprises taking advantage of USi's security solutions facilitate their
own compliance with data privacy legislation, including Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley
Act (GLBA) and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), European EC
Directive and Safe Harbor among others. "By leveraging our experienced
information security staff and technology, we can meet our clients' regulatory
requirements and let them focus on core business and not maintenance tasks,"
adds Hampshire.
USi's services include assessing, planning, architecting, implementing and
operating secure environments, which evolve based on the client's business
needs. Clients gain the ability to detect attacks and suspicious activity in
real time; watch more points across the network and destination targets; enjoy
real-time correlation and response and gain immediate ROI.
"USi has built its reputation by delivering secure, reliable, integrated
and continuously-supported services to our clients. We live and breathe
security 24/7," says Curtis Hampshire, USi, General Manager, eBusiness.
"Today -- more than ever -- responsible executives understand the true
importance of security to their organizations. USi's Information Security and
Risk Management Practice provides visibility into business, technical and
operational risk so managers can make informed decisions and cost effective
investments in information security and mitigation efforts."
By leveraging the combination of deep security and privacy expertise with
world-class, secure data center operations, USi enables enterprises to defend
against a variety of emerging threats to information security. These include
organized hacking and phishing attacks; ongoing proliferation of worms and
viruses; targeted attacks on wireless networks and the increasing legal
liability companies must take on for data protection.
Gartner's Hype Cycle for Information Security, 2005, (by Vic Wheatman, et
al., 5 July 2005) details many of the considerations enterprises face when
considering security technologies and investments. "Choosing and maintaining
security technologies continue to be top priorities for enterprise executives
and managers. Those same managers are under more pressure than ever to show
business value and cost-effectiveness for security measures. Security
spending is being driven by a variety of concerns, all of them pressing. Aside
from the age-old need to 'keep the bad guys out' and 'let the good guys in,'
compliance with new government regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,
are now playing a significant role in security spending decisions.
Furthermore, hackers continue to invent new ways to break into enterprise
files and steal valuable data. Private individuals are also under increased
threat of cybertheft, with schemes such as "phishing" putting more pressure on
financial service providers to protect customers' personal information."
USi's Information Security and Risk Management Services include a
multitude of offerings such as: Risk and Vulnerability Assessments to assist
enterprises with regulatory and privacy compliance; Identity Management
Services to ensure enterprises maintain complete control over user access;
Single-Sign On (SSO), Auditing and Access Controls; Vulnerability and Patch
Management; Incident Response and Forensics Services and Managed Security
Services delivered in partnership with Counterpane Internet Security to help
enterprises increase protection for critical assets with the benefit of a
reduced, predictable cost model.
Enterprises taking advantage of USi's security solutions facilitate their
own compliance with data privacy legislation, including Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley
Act (GLBA) and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), European EC
Directive and Safe Harbor among others. "By leveraging our experienced
information security staff and technology, we can meet our clients' regulatory
requirements and let them focus on core business and not maintenance tasks,"
adds Hampshire.
USi's services include assessing, planning, architecting, implementing and
operating secure environments, which evolve based on the client's business
needs. Clients gain the ability to detect attacks and suspicious activity in
real time; watch more points across the network and destination targets; enjoy
real-time correlation and response and gain immediate ROI.
Wrapped Apps - Wrap - Host - Subscribe: Turnkey solution for SaaS
www.wrappedapps.com Wrapped Apps Corporation is a privately held Information Technology (IT) company that is poised to revolutionize the software industry. Founded as a research project in 1999, the company has recently commercialized its unique technology through a successful pilot deployment in the United States. With a key group of employees and operations in both Ottawa and Montreal, Wrapped Apps is leading the industry in producing best-of-breed SaaS solutions.
Wrapped Apps Corporation is leading the SaaS industry by producing best-of-breed solutions for enterprises, re-sellers and software companies. Our solution places applications centrally and deploys software using a “One to Many” delivery.
Corporate Vision: Defining the Delivery of Software as a Service
We will lead the world away from “shrink-wrap” software that is sold with perpetual licenses towards a subscription-based model that can deliver any software application in an on-demand mode, to any user, on any computer.
While other providers have produced individual enabling technologies that solve some industry challenges, we have developed an end-to-end solution that addresses all the needs of software manufacturers, retailers, business users and ultimately the end users. Using proprietary technology to produce world-class solutions, Wrapped Apps will quickly become the standard for SaaS deployments worldwide.
Wrapped Apps Corporation offers a complete range of Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) solutions for every aspect of the industry. Please choose the Solution that is designed for you!
* Software vendors
* Small businesses
* Enterprises
* ISPs and other Service Providers
Wrapped Apps Corporation’s highly skilled engineers will “wrap” (ASP-enable) your application, using our AppsOnDemand™ Application Wrapping Environment (AWE), which will enable you to rapidly move to a Software-as-a-Service application delivery model. In most cases, your application is wrapped (ASP-enabled) within 30 days or less and there is no requirement for code changes to your software application.
Once we have wrapped your software application, Wrapped Apps Professional Services group will help you install and configure the complete AppsOnDemand Software-as-a-Service application delivery and management platform at your hosted services provider location. We can do the installation for you or support you through the process. Either way we will ensure that your Software-as-a-Service application is rapidly available for delivery.
Wrapped Apps Corporation is leading the SaaS industry by producing best-of-breed solutions for enterprises, re-sellers and software companies. Our solution places applications centrally and deploys software using a “One to Many” delivery.
Corporate Vision: Defining the Delivery of Software as a Service
We will lead the world away from “shrink-wrap” software that is sold with perpetual licenses towards a subscription-based model that can deliver any software application in an on-demand mode, to any user, on any computer.
While other providers have produced individual enabling technologies that solve some industry challenges, we have developed an end-to-end solution that addresses all the needs of software manufacturers, retailers, business users and ultimately the end users. Using proprietary technology to produce world-class solutions, Wrapped Apps will quickly become the standard for SaaS deployments worldwide.
Wrapped Apps Corporation offers a complete range of Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) solutions for every aspect of the industry. Please choose the Solution that is designed for you!
* Software vendors
* Small businesses
* Enterprises
* ISPs and other Service Providers
Wrapped Apps Corporation’s highly skilled engineers will “wrap” (ASP-enable) your application, using our AppsOnDemand™ Application Wrapping Environment (AWE), which will enable you to rapidly move to a Software-as-a-Service application delivery model. In most cases, your application is wrapped (ASP-enabled) within 30 days or less and there is no requirement for code changes to your software application.
Once we have wrapped your software application, Wrapped Apps Professional Services group will help you install and configure the complete AppsOnDemand Software-as-a-Service application delivery and management platform at your hosted services provider location. We can do the installation for you or support you through the process. Either way we will ensure that your Software-as-a-Service application is rapidly available for delivery.
Why Microsoft is Peeing its Pants
"The trend appears to be unstoppable, but whether Microsoft will be able to pull the industry’s strings its way remains to be seen. Serious opposition will rise against SAAS. Retailers and supply-chain channels will find themselves cut out of the equation as their largest customer moves to deal with the end user directly. And they will not go down without a fight. Linux users are also watching closely. Evan Leibovitch, former president of the Linux Professional Institute, sees the move to SAAS as a windfall for the open-source community. He doesn’t believe Microsoft is really moving to cut costs for companies, but that SAAS will ultimately end up denting IT budgets even more." ...
Writely - The Web's collaborative Word Processor
www.writely.com Amazing what you can do with Web 2.0. This word processor is 100% online, and supports Wiki-style collaboration among team members working directly on the same document. Your workplace gives you insight into revisions made by others, and you only share what you want to share with who you want to share it. Folks can even subscribe to document updates via RSS feeds. Seems to me there will be a lot of "software" like this in the future.
Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time.
* Pick exactly who can access your documents.
* Edit your documents from anywhere.
* Nothing to download -- your browser is all you need.
* Store your documents securely online.
* Offsite storage plus data backup every 10 seconds.
* Easy to use.
* Clean, uncluttered screens with a familiar, desktop feel.
Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time.
* Pick exactly who can access your documents.
* Edit your documents from anywhere.
* Nothing to download -- your browser is all you need.
* Store your documents securely online.
* Offsite storage plus data backup every 10 seconds.
* Easy to use.
* Clean, uncluttered screens with a familiar, desktop feel.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
InfoStreet - The Browser is your Office
www.infostreet.com Founded in 1994 as one of the first companies focused solely on Internet services, InfoStreet, Inc. is widely recognized as a leading Internet Application Service Provider dedicated to developing and operating a fully managed, on-demand integrated suite of software providing IT, productivity and groupware oriented SaaS (Software As A Service) to tens of thousands of users.
Where on-demand might have been an afterthought for other software development companies, private-labeled, on-demand, scalable, friendly and reliable software has been the foundation of all InfoStreet solutions since its inception.
InfoStreet's flagship solution, StreetSmart, complete with functions such as Virus and SPAM Protected Mail, Calendar, Workflow, CRM, Knowledgebase, Portal, Web Site Publishing, Blogs, Mailing lists, Access Control and more, is highly customizable and integratable, enabling it to seamlessly blend with (or become) any organization's on-demand infrastructure.
The StreetSmart platform is designed to easily embed or be embedded in third party applications, making it a favorite of OEMs.
All usage and administration functions are web-based and automated, providing StreetSmart users with "Anytime, Anywhere, Access". Being highly scalable, StreetSmart is providing businesses of all sizes with solutions that reduce overhead costs, increase organization, and facilitate communication.
In 2001, Inc. Magazine, named InfoStreet as one of the United States' 500 fastest growing private companies. Also in 2001, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, named InfoStreet as the 8th fastest growing private company in San Fernando Valley. In 2003, for the second year in a row, InfoStreet was named in Deloitte & Touche’s Los Angeles Technology Fast 50.
Where on-demand might have been an afterthought for other software development companies, private-labeled, on-demand, scalable, friendly and reliable software has been the foundation of all InfoStreet solutions since its inception.
InfoStreet's flagship solution, StreetSmart, complete with functions such as Virus and SPAM Protected Mail, Calendar, Workflow, CRM, Knowledgebase, Portal, Web Site Publishing, Blogs, Mailing lists, Access Control and more, is highly customizable and integratable, enabling it to seamlessly blend with (or become) any organization's on-demand infrastructure.
The StreetSmart platform is designed to easily embed or be embedded in third party applications, making it a favorite of OEMs.
All usage and administration functions are web-based and automated, providing StreetSmart users with "Anytime, Anywhere, Access". Being highly scalable, StreetSmart is providing businesses of all sizes with solutions that reduce overhead costs, increase organization, and facilitate communication.
In 2001, Inc. Magazine, named InfoStreet as one of the United States' 500 fastest growing private companies. Also in 2001, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, named InfoStreet as the 8th fastest growing private company in San Fernando Valley. In 2003, for the second year in a row, InfoStreet was named in Deloitte & Touche’s Los Angeles Technology Fast 50.
Visitar - Telephony Application Integration
www.visitar.com Visitar provides innovative solutions that link rich telephony capabilities with business applications to improve efficiency and enhance customer and employee experience. Delivered as a service, the solutions are affordable for small and mid-sized businesses and do not introduce any IT management burden. They eliminate complexity by supporting any Web browser and telephone system while also simplifying ongoing management through a business-friendly, rules-driven configuration capability.
By leveraging open source technology, a Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, and experience gained implementing contact centers and trading systems for some of the largest companies in the world, Visitar is able to provide highly reliable, easily managed communications enabled business applications at a fraction of the cost of comparable alternatives that require products from multiple vendors, specialized on-premise equipment, extensive integration, and costly ongoing maintenance and support.
By leveraging open source technology, a Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, and experience gained implementing contact centers and trading systems for some of the largest companies in the world, Visitar is able to provide highly reliable, easily managed communications enabled business applications at a fraction of the cost of comparable alternatives that require products from multiple vendors, specialized on-premise equipment, extensive integration, and costly ongoing maintenance and support.
Salesforce ups prices for Fortune customers
Salesforce.com added a new Unlimited Edition monthly subscription that includes all the features of the Enterprise Edition and increases storage capacity and administrative help.
The move is the latest step toward delivering bundled services beyond customer relationship management (CRM ) applications. Analysts said it could help Salesforce.com compete against bigger rivals Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG by providing tools to make building out platforms and deploying applications less expensive.
Unlimited Edition sells for $195 per user, monthly, compared with $125 per user for the Enterprise Edition.
The bundled offerings and services follow Salesforce.com chairman and chief executive officer Marc Benioff's vision to build a "business Web" through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that enables companies to manage and share information as needed.
Today, a "handful" of customers run Unlimited Edition. Salesforce.com began marketing the application to customers in mid-February. The new suite aims to give customers who have been downloading some of the 188 available AppsExchange tools an outlet to integrate the proprietary applications into the Salesforce.com platform.
The move is the latest step toward delivering bundled services beyond customer relationship management (CRM ) applications. Analysts said it could help Salesforce.com compete against bigger rivals Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG by providing tools to make building out platforms and deploying applications less expensive.
Unlimited Edition sells for $195 per user, monthly, compared with $125 per user for the Enterprise Edition.
The bundled offerings and services follow Salesforce.com chairman and chief executive officer Marc Benioff's vision to build a "business Web" through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that enables companies to manage and share information as needed.
Today, a "handful" of customers run Unlimited Edition. Salesforce.com began marketing the application to customers in mid-February. The new suite aims to give customers who have been downloading some of the 188 available AppsExchange tools an outlet to integrate the proprietary applications into the Salesforce.com platform.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Host Analytics - Business Performance Management (BI not BPM)
www.hostanalytics.com By measuring and managing your business using Host Analytics suite of Business Performance Management applications, an organization can ensure rapid and effective implementation of strategy and facilitate organizational alignment and communication.
Host Analytics offers Forecasting, Budgeting, Financial Consolidation, Reporting, and Analysis applications for performance measurement, performance management and planning. Our applications manage the iterative budget and sales forecasting process and enable users to easily monitor the ongoing financial, sales, and profitability performance of the company.
These applications are specifically designed for the strategy-focused company that is looking for a tool to help develop accurate forecasts and performance metrics and an executive dashboard to monitor the performance of the company to strategic goals.
The advantage of Host Analytics is that all you need to use these great products is a browser to get on the Internet/Intranet. Additionally, we connect and pull actual data from your General Ledger and other operational applications so that you can analyze any variance from targeted and budgeted amounts over any historical or current period. We can get you up and running within as little as a few weeks and for a fraction of the costs of any of our competitors.
While Fortune reports that 9 out of 10 organizations fail to execute their strategies, Host Analytics’ users are not only successfully executing their strategies, but also are doing so rapidly, measurably, and knowledgeably.
Host Analytics provides a complete suite of analytical applications designed to enhance the business process of performance management. Each application is developed on industry standard OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) databases for extended reporting, analysis and modeling. Support of the application and data is provided on a 24/7 basis. Because of our innovative technology we are able to provide these solutions to you for a fraction of the cost of our competition.
Host Analytics offers Forecasting, Budgeting, Financial Consolidation, Reporting, and Analysis applications for performance measurement, performance management and planning. Our applications manage the iterative budget and sales forecasting process and enable users to easily monitor the ongoing financial, sales, and profitability performance of the company.
These applications are specifically designed for the strategy-focused company that is looking for a tool to help develop accurate forecasts and performance metrics and an executive dashboard to monitor the performance of the company to strategic goals.
The advantage of Host Analytics is that all you need to use these great products is a browser to get on the Internet/Intranet. Additionally, we connect and pull actual data from your General Ledger and other operational applications so that you can analyze any variance from targeted and budgeted amounts over any historical or current period. We can get you up and running within as little as a few weeks and for a fraction of the costs of any of our competitors.
While Fortune reports that 9 out of 10 organizations fail to execute their strategies, Host Analytics’ users are not only successfully executing their strategies, but also are doing so rapidly, measurably, and knowledgeably.
Host Analytics provides a complete suite of analytical applications designed to enhance the business process of performance management. Each application is developed on industry standard OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) databases for extended reporting, analysis and modeling. Support of the application and data is provided on a 24/7 basis. Because of our innovative technology we are able to provide these solutions to you for a fraction of the cost of our competition.
Oco - Hosted BI
www.oco-inc.com Never one to be shy .... "Oco Majik is a managed service solution that will help you grow your business by giving you the information on your product, sales, and customers that you only dreamed of having. Yes, we can really do it, and it is updated daily! We take all of your essential business information from any hardware and software source and integrate, cleanse, and normalize it faster than anyone in the world. In only six weeks you can look at all of your up-to-date information in easy to use reports. Today's winners in business have daily, accurate access to information. Just ask our clients. Oco Majik is Fast, Accurate, and Guaranteed. Check it out..."
eBay developers create huge SaaS community
Mpire will launch in March a mobile search application to help sellers determine the correct day, time and price to sell their products on eBay. With a similar tool introduced in January from Mpire, the eBay community gained Mpulse, a resource to monitor up-to-the-minute listing trends for items from Apple iPods to Microsoft Xboxes. About 10,000 users tap into the service. Now the provider of Web-based services will offer the application on mobile devices.
EBay has created the largest software as a service (SaaS) community by providing developers tools. The application programming interface (API) allows Mpire to send information to communication with eBay and Paypal platforms.
As of December 2005, for example, the eBay Developers Program had more than 25,000 members who created 1,900 live applications.
EBay has created the largest software as a service (SaaS) community by providing developers tools. The application programming interface (API) allows Mpire to send information to communication with eBay and Paypal platforms.
As of December 2005, for example, the eBay Developers Program had more than 25,000 members who created 1,900 live applications.
Saas is OK, but Not Yet SassY
"While software delivered over the Internet has been hyped in recent months as an alternative to its packaged counterparts, there remain hurdles ahead as companies jump from the old model to the new one.
That was the impression coming out of the SaaS Summit in California’s Napa Valley on Thursday. The conference is one of the first to focus on the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model, which has been glorified by the likes of Salesforce.com and NetSuite during the last few years.
Some 200 attendees showed up to learn how to switch over to the software “on demand” model.
Internet-delivered software has been used by consumers for a few years. But online software for businesses is still growing in popularity as customers learn the benefits of the new model, including on-demand delivery, low up-front cost, and faster and easier upgrades.
However, a big issue faced by customers is how to integrate their older packaged software systems with the new ones. That is the biggest pain point for James Woolwine, CIO of San Francisco-based Majestic Insurance."
That was the impression coming out of the SaaS Summit in California’s Napa Valley on Thursday. The conference is one of the first to focus on the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model, which has been glorified by the likes of Salesforce.com and NetSuite during the last few years.
Some 200 attendees showed up to learn how to switch over to the software “on demand” model.
Internet-delivered software has been used by consumers for a few years. But online software for businesses is still growing in popularity as customers learn the benefits of the new model, including on-demand delivery, low up-front cost, and faster and easier upgrades.
However, a big issue faced by customers is how to integrate their older packaged software systems with the new ones. That is the biggest pain point for James Woolwine, CIO of San Francisco-based Majestic Insurance."
Sun Patch Management
www.sun.com Sun Microsystems recently announced plans to acquire patch management specialists Aduva Inc. Sun plans to purchase the Sunnyvale, Calif.,-based startup to extend its patch management services to include Linux.
A patch is a piece of code that is a quick fix for a software flaw. Patch management software is designed to help IT shops get out from under the burden of collecting, validating, testing and distributing patches across the data center.
For more information:
Patching the patch process
Sun's patch management software, Sun Update Connection, is delivered in software as a service (SaaS) model or as an in-house application.
Researchers at Sun determined that IT shops spend five hours per server per month on patch configuration. Sun claims its patch update service cuts that time down to 15 minutes per server per month for $120 a year.
Sun services move towards SaaS
This acquisition is part of a larger services strategy for Sun. The company plans to focus on delivering more new tools in a SaaS model. New programs in production include a security management service and power management software, both delivered over the network.
According to Harding, these new offerings allow Sun to focus on technology-based services. The company has jabbed at competing IBM Global Services (IGS) in the past, charging that IBM customers have to rely on IGS administrators to implement IBM technologies.
"IGS mobilizes an army of people -- which is a business model that has worked for them. Sun is mobilizing IP [intellectual property] that will help people be more self-sufficient," Harding said. "This marks a major step in the progression toward network services orchestration -- an inherently multiplatform space. Aduva, combined with Sun Update Connection and the N1 management tools, will enable Sun to define and lead in this emerging business."
A patch is a piece of code that is a quick fix for a software flaw. Patch management software is designed to help IT shops get out from under the burden of collecting, validating, testing and distributing patches across the data center.
For more information:
Patching the patch process
Sun's patch management software, Sun Update Connection, is delivered in software as a service (SaaS) model or as an in-house application.
Researchers at Sun determined that IT shops spend five hours per server per month on patch configuration. Sun claims its patch update service cuts that time down to 15 minutes per server per month for $120 a year.
Sun services move towards SaaS
This acquisition is part of a larger services strategy for Sun. The company plans to focus on delivering more new tools in a SaaS model. New programs in production include a security management service and power management software, both delivered over the network.
According to Harding, these new offerings allow Sun to focus on technology-based services. The company has jabbed at competing IBM Global Services (IGS) in the past, charging that IBM customers have to rely on IGS administrators to implement IBM technologies.
"IGS mobilizes an army of people -- which is a business model that has worked for them. Sun is mobilizing IP [intellectual property] that will help people be more self-sufficient," Harding said. "This marks a major step in the progression toward network services orchestration -- an inherently multiplatform space. Aduva, combined with Sun Update Connection and the N1 management tools, will enable Sun to define and lead in this emerging business."
Halogen Software - Employee Performance Management
www.halogensoftware.com With over 400 customers, Halogen Software Inc. has established itself as the leading provider of employee performance management (EPM) solutions. Founded in 2001 as a subsidiary of a successful consulting company, Halogen offers powerful, easy-to-use, and affordable Web-based software that dramatically improves HR and line-manager productivity. The company's flagship product, Halogen eAppraisal, automates and simplifies time-consuming employee appraisals. Halogen eAppraisal Healthcare, created specifically for the healthcare industry, helps to simplify the task of performing appraisals and meeting accreditation criteria. Halogen e360 automates and simplifies formal 360-degree feedback procedures and offers sophisticated performance reporting. Halogen eCompensation automates the entire compensation adjustment process including budget distribution and approval.
Halogen Software today announced the availability of a subscription license model, catering to customer needs for a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) licensing alternative. This model provides customers with broader options for purchasing Halogen's award-winning Web- based EPM Suite, which includes their flagship product Halogen eAppraisal(TM), Halogen eAppraisal(TM) Healthcare, Halogen eCompensation(TM) and Halogen e360(TM).
SaaS involves the rental of software licenses versus the outright purchase. It's a model that does not suit every organization's needs, but that has been growing in popularity over the past year and has captured much media attention.
In response to market demand and customer expectations, Halogen now provides several licensing options for its' popular on-premise and hosted offerings, including perpetual and subscription licensing. "Our aim is to make it extremely simple for customers to implement effective employee performance management solutions within their organization," said Paul Loucks, President of Halogen Software. "We are proud to offer flexible licensing options to meet our customers varied needs and expectations."
Unlike some of its competitors, Halogen does not focus solely on a SaaS offering. Over 50% of Halogen's 400+ customers have purchased the software for use on-premise. "While demand for perpetual licensing remains high, interest in the SaaS licensing alternative has gained interest amongst EPM software buyers," said Dawn MacKay, Halogen Software's Director of Product Management. "Our goal is to put the customer in the driver's seat as much as possible. Many of our competitors only offer a single licensing option. We have recognized that one option is not appropriate for all organizations and our customers really value having a choice now - and in the future - it reduces their risk. For instance, with Halogen, customers who start off with a hosted solution always have the option of bringing their environment on-premise in the future should the situation warrant it."
Halogen Software today announced the availability of a subscription license model, catering to customer needs for a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) licensing alternative. This model provides customers with broader options for purchasing Halogen's award-winning Web- based EPM Suite, which includes their flagship product Halogen eAppraisal(TM), Halogen eAppraisal(TM) Healthcare, Halogen eCompensation(TM) and Halogen e360(TM).
SaaS involves the rental of software licenses versus the outright purchase. It's a model that does not suit every organization's needs, but that has been growing in popularity over the past year and has captured much media attention.
In response to market demand and customer expectations, Halogen now provides several licensing options for its' popular on-premise and hosted offerings, including perpetual and subscription licensing. "Our aim is to make it extremely simple for customers to implement effective employee performance management solutions within their organization," said Paul Loucks, President of Halogen Software. "We are proud to offer flexible licensing options to meet our customers varied needs and expectations."
Unlike some of its competitors, Halogen does not focus solely on a SaaS offering. Over 50% of Halogen's 400+ customers have purchased the software for use on-premise. "While demand for perpetual licensing remains high, interest in the SaaS licensing alternative has gained interest amongst EPM software buyers," said Dawn MacKay, Halogen Software's Director of Product Management. "Our goal is to put the customer in the driver's seat as much as possible. Many of our competitors only offer a single licensing option. We have recognized that one option is not appropriate for all organizations and our customers really value having a choice now - and in the future - it reduces their risk. For instance, with Halogen, customers who start off with a hosted solution always have the option of bringing their environment on-premise in the future should the situation warrant it."
South49 - Navigating the way
www.south49.com South49 Solutions specializes in bringing together phone, fax and Web tools offering innovative on-demand business solutions.
SpringCM - Content Management on Demand
www.springcm.com SpringCM is the first of its kind on-demand content management company.
In an age when businesses have learned to tolerate the inefficiencies and risks of unmanaged content, SpringCM shows there is a better way.
Today, 94% of business content is unmanaged. In the future, it will all be managed, or even better, self-managing.
SpringCM's customers, which range from service and manufacturing businesses to government agencies and non-profits, use SpringCM's unique application to reinvent the way they share and manage important information, such as documents, images and multi-media files, both inside and outside their organizations.
Our integrated subscription solution incorporates enterprise search, remote storage, collaboration and content distribution technologies completely on demand. SpringCM combines mature technologies with innovations from our R&D lab to offer applications designed to serve people, so that people don't end up serving the technology. We make our products easy to use, easy to procure, and easy to manage- and hide the technical complexity in a clean, simple experience.
SpringCM is also committed to removing the barriers to purchase and adoption that go hand in hand with old-school software projects. The company is committed to solve business challenges at an affordable price. By combining software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies with this complete and integrated solution, SpringCM provides any business with an affordable and practical alternative to installed client server solutions. With SaaS, customers can easily create an online account with SpringCM and begin using the site within minutes, since there is no need to install or download the software.
SpringCM also enhances value for its customers and partners through its ongoing commitment to web services and simplified integration.
SpringCM was formed by executives from Adexs, Inc. in 2005. Adexs has deep experience in serving niche content needs, serving more than 3,500 customers. Its extensive experience has created distinct infrastructure, customer service and development advantages.
In an age when businesses have learned to tolerate the inefficiencies and risks of unmanaged content, SpringCM shows there is a better way.
Today, 94% of business content is unmanaged. In the future, it will all be managed, or even better, self-managing.
SpringCM's customers, which range from service and manufacturing businesses to government agencies and non-profits, use SpringCM's unique application to reinvent the way they share and manage important information, such as documents, images and multi-media files, both inside and outside their organizations.
Our integrated subscription solution incorporates enterprise search, remote storage, collaboration and content distribution technologies completely on demand. SpringCM combines mature technologies with innovations from our R&D lab to offer applications designed to serve people, so that people don't end up serving the technology. We make our products easy to use, easy to procure, and easy to manage- and hide the technical complexity in a clean, simple experience.
SpringCM is also committed to removing the barriers to purchase and adoption that go hand in hand with old-school software projects. The company is committed to solve business challenges at an affordable price. By combining software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies with this complete and integrated solution, SpringCM provides any business with an affordable and practical alternative to installed client server solutions. With SaaS, customers can easily create an online account with SpringCM and begin using the site within minutes, since there is no need to install or download the software.
SpringCM also enhances value for its customers and partners through its ongoing commitment to web services and simplified integration.
SpringCM was formed by executives from Adexs, Inc. in 2005. Adexs has deep experience in serving niche content needs, serving more than 3,500 customers. Its extensive experience has created distinct infrastructure, customer service and development advantages.
Edge Dynamics - Channel Commerce Management
www.edgedynamics.com Edge Dynamics, the leading provider of channel commerce management (CCM) solutions, announced new
hosted delivery offerings with IBM as its premier hosting partner. Edge
Dynamics is the life sciences industry's first solution provider to offer
hosted, on-premise, and hybrid deployment options to its customers. Developed
to help life sciences manufacturers address issues related to channel control,
regulatory compliance, and patient safety, the Edge Dynamics solutions
currently optimize more than $75 billion in annual U.S. channel revenues for
leading pharmaceutical manufacturers such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Purdue
Pharma, King Pharmaceuticals, and Sankyo Pharma, among many others.
"Edge Dynamics was a pioneer in helping life science manufacturers more
effectively manage their channel," said Bruce Cleveland, Siebel Systems'
senior vice president and GM, Products and CRM OnDemand, as well as an Edge
Dynamics board member. "By offering its CCM solutions as hosted services,
Edge Dynamics is once again leading the way -- providing powerful CCM
solutions to companies of all sizes through any deployment option:
on-premise, on-demand or a hybrid of the two. Edge Dynamics' management team
has extensive experience with hosted applications and is therefore uniquely
qualified to deliver CCM solutions as an on-demand service with
enterprise-class security, performance, reliability, and scalability."
"We're charting the course for how life sciences manufacturers gain
greater control and visibility into their channel, and this launch underscores
our commitment to raise the bar for the industry," added John McGrory, Edge
Dynamics president and CEO. "So whether this means offering customers
packaged offerings with different levels of capabilities or a flexible range
of deployment options, to us it is all about providing options to enable
customer success."
By collaborating with IBM as its hosting provider, Edge Dynamics delivers
its CCM customers the industry's most reliable application hosting services
and the benefits of IBM's long-time leadership in application hosting. IBM
will provide secure, highly-available hosting services powered by IBM's
Applications On Demand Platform, which automates application hosting and
management to provide a scalable and efficient platform for running business
applications.
Designed to meet growing market demands for fast, easy, and affordable
solutions, Edge Dynamics' hosted services deliver industry-leading
capabilities and built-in channel management best practices to life sciences
manufacturers. The new hosted services are built on the same proven
technology platform as Edge Dynamics' on-premise solutions, but the hosted
services are delivered as a private Internet utility that can be deployed
rapidly with no upfront investments in hardware or software. Edge customers
will benefit from the strategic flexibility to start with a hosted service and
migrate to an on-premise solution as needs change, or customers can leverage
both deployment options in a hybrid solution.
"Edge Dynamics is taking the right approach to delivering its hosted
offerings. Similar to leading vendors like Siebel, and most recently SAP,
Edge Dynamics is taking a delivery-agnostic approach that is focused on
providing the full range of options to enable customer success. Edge's vision
is also unique in that not only do they provide the needed functionality to
manage the channel, but also they have integrated the ability to access
multiple data sources directly into their hosted offerings," said Joshua
Greenbaum, principal analyst with Enterprise Applications Consulting.
"The adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) as a delivery model is
accelerating, and the next wave of hosted offerings will focus on vertical
markets and the unique business requirements within them," said John
Fontanella, senior vice president and research director of supply chain
services at Aberdeen Research. "With the business model that Edge Dynamics
has, the ability to scale communications to any size partner in the supply
chain is critical."
With this announcement, Edge Dynamics is providing the same
industry-leading functional capabilities to help manufacturers address their
channel management needs, but in the form of an additional hosted deployment
option that provides customers the benefits of rapid deployment, no upfront
investment, and ease of use. Edge Dynamics now uniquely provides customers a
full range of solutions to address customer preference for different levels of
solution, data and IT control. The four available solutions are:
-- New: Edge CCM Essentials OnDemand - Starter solution designed to
monitor and manage core channel commerce management policies, delivered
as a hosted service with direct receipt of channel EDI data.
-- New: Edge CCM Enterprise OnDemand - Complete CCM solution that enables
full management and enforcement of channel commerce management
policies, delivered as a hosted service with comprehensive integration
capabilities.
-- Edge CCM Essentials on-premise software solution - Existing CCM
Essentials solution that is delivered as an on-premise offering for
greater data and IT control.
-- Edge CCM Enterprise on-premise software solution - Existing CCM
Enterprise solution that is delivered as an on-premise offering for
greater data and IT control.
"As one of Edge Dynamics' customers, we are excited about the deployment
flexibility this new offering provides. As opposed to the typical role of
hosted offerings as interim solutions, Edge Dynamics' approach of enabling
hybrid deployments and providing a long-term migration path to on-premise
solutions ensures that Edge will be a strategic solution for manufacturers
regardless of what deployment option is implemented initially," said Steve
Seid, executive director of National Accounts and Trade Relations at Purdue
Pharma L.P.
"This new offering represents the third generation of hosted services,"
said Rob Chen, vice president of marketing and business development at Edge
Dynamics who has launched several leading hosted solutions. "Edge Dynamics'
hosted service not only reduces IT demands and provides an affordable
solution, but also offers customers a high availability private utility with
pre-built channel data integration and support for multiple delivery options."
hosted delivery offerings with IBM as its premier hosting partner. Edge
Dynamics is the life sciences industry's first solution provider to offer
hosted, on-premise, and hybrid deployment options to its customers. Developed
to help life sciences manufacturers address issues related to channel control,
regulatory compliance, and patient safety, the Edge Dynamics solutions
currently optimize more than $75 billion in annual U.S. channel revenues for
leading pharmaceutical manufacturers such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Purdue
Pharma, King Pharmaceuticals, and Sankyo Pharma, among many others.
"Edge Dynamics was a pioneer in helping life science manufacturers more
effectively manage their channel," said Bruce Cleveland, Siebel Systems'
senior vice president and GM, Products and CRM OnDemand, as well as an Edge
Dynamics board member. "By offering its CCM solutions as hosted services,
Edge Dynamics is once again leading the way -- providing powerful CCM
solutions to companies of all sizes through any deployment option:
on-premise, on-demand or a hybrid of the two. Edge Dynamics' management team
has extensive experience with hosted applications and is therefore uniquely
qualified to deliver CCM solutions as an on-demand service with
enterprise-class security, performance, reliability, and scalability."
"We're charting the course for how life sciences manufacturers gain
greater control and visibility into their channel, and this launch underscores
our commitment to raise the bar for the industry," added John McGrory, Edge
Dynamics president and CEO. "So whether this means offering customers
packaged offerings with different levels of capabilities or a flexible range
of deployment options, to us it is all about providing options to enable
customer success."
By collaborating with IBM as its hosting provider, Edge Dynamics delivers
its CCM customers the industry's most reliable application hosting services
and the benefits of IBM's long-time leadership in application hosting. IBM
will provide secure, highly-available hosting services powered by IBM's
Applications On Demand Platform, which automates application hosting and
management to provide a scalable and efficient platform for running business
applications.
Designed to meet growing market demands for fast, easy, and affordable
solutions, Edge Dynamics' hosted services deliver industry-leading
capabilities and built-in channel management best practices to life sciences
manufacturers. The new hosted services are built on the same proven
technology platform as Edge Dynamics' on-premise solutions, but the hosted
services are delivered as a private Internet utility that can be deployed
rapidly with no upfront investments in hardware or software. Edge customers
will benefit from the strategic flexibility to start with a hosted service and
migrate to an on-premise solution as needs change, or customers can leverage
both deployment options in a hybrid solution.
"Edge Dynamics is taking the right approach to delivering its hosted
offerings. Similar to leading vendors like Siebel, and most recently SAP,
Edge Dynamics is taking a delivery-agnostic approach that is focused on
providing the full range of options to enable customer success. Edge's vision
is also unique in that not only do they provide the needed functionality to
manage the channel, but also they have integrated the ability to access
multiple data sources directly into their hosted offerings," said Joshua
Greenbaum, principal analyst with Enterprise Applications Consulting.
"The adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) as a delivery model is
accelerating, and the next wave of hosted offerings will focus on vertical
markets and the unique business requirements within them," said John
Fontanella, senior vice president and research director of supply chain
services at Aberdeen Research. "With the business model that Edge Dynamics
has, the ability to scale communications to any size partner in the supply
chain is critical."
With this announcement, Edge Dynamics is providing the same
industry-leading functional capabilities to help manufacturers address their
channel management needs, but in the form of an additional hosted deployment
option that provides customers the benefits of rapid deployment, no upfront
investment, and ease of use. Edge Dynamics now uniquely provides customers a
full range of solutions to address customer preference for different levels of
solution, data and IT control. The four available solutions are:
-- New: Edge CCM Essentials OnDemand - Starter solution designed to
monitor and manage core channel commerce management policies, delivered
as a hosted service with direct receipt of channel EDI data.
-- New: Edge CCM Enterprise OnDemand - Complete CCM solution that enables
full management and enforcement of channel commerce management
policies, delivered as a hosted service with comprehensive integration
capabilities.
-- Edge CCM Essentials on-premise software solution - Existing CCM
Essentials solution that is delivered as an on-premise offering for
greater data and IT control.
-- Edge CCM Enterprise on-premise software solution - Existing CCM
Enterprise solution that is delivered as an on-premise offering for
greater data and IT control.
"As one of Edge Dynamics' customers, we are excited about the deployment
flexibility this new offering provides. As opposed to the typical role of
hosted offerings as interim solutions, Edge Dynamics' approach of enabling
hybrid deployments and providing a long-term migration path to on-premise
solutions ensures that Edge will be a strategic solution for manufacturers
regardless of what deployment option is implemented initially," said Steve
Seid, executive director of National Accounts and Trade Relations at Purdue
Pharma L.P.
"This new offering represents the third generation of hosted services,"
said Rob Chen, vice president of marketing and business development at Edge
Dynamics who has launched several leading hosted solutions. "Edge Dynamics'
hosted service not only reduces IT demands and provides an affordable
solution, but also offers customers a high availability private utility with
pre-built channel data integration and support for multiple delivery options."
Descartes - Helping customers deliver
www.descartes.com The Descartes Systems Group Inc. is a leading provider of on-demand, software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery management solutions for transportation, logistics, manufacturing, retail, distribution and service provider enterprises. Descartes delivers trading partner connectivity and document exchange, route planning, wireless dispatch, rate management, inventory and asset visibility, transportation management and warehouse optimization solutions for industries such as retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, transportation, distribution and third-party logistics. Descartes offers solutions that can be deployed as traditional applications or as a service to help customers optimize and gain real-time control of their inventory, logistics assets and mobile workforce. Descartes solutions are used by more than 2,500 customers in over 60 countries.
HALO Technology Holdings
www.haloholdings.com HALO Technology Holdings, Inc. is a global provider of a diversified range of standards-based enterprise software applications and on-demand solutions. HALO’s strategy is to acquire and operate both private and public enterprise software companies for sustainable and profitable growth. HALO provides its portfolio companies the resources and flexibility to focus primarily on customer service and product quality. At the same time, HALO seeks to add companies with an established customer base and technologies that can be leveraged across the organization. Everyday, leading corporations across a wide array of industries, including Fortune 1000 corporations, rely on HALO’s portfolio companies to deliver high quality, enterprise class software and services on a global basis.
The company announced plans to merge its Tesseract and ECI subsidiaries
into Empagio, HALO's premier human resources solutions provider. The closing
of the ECI acquisition is scheduled for February 28, 2006. The combination of
the subsidiaries will create a leader in the Human Resources Management
Solutions (HRMS) industry, boasting an impressive roster of Fortune 1000
enterprise customers and more than two million lives under management. The
merged company will be called Empagio and will be headquartered in Atlanta,
Georgia.
The planned merger ushers in the second phase of HALO's overall strategy,
which is to combine strong on-premises software solutions that serve an
established customer base with a modern software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution.
By offering on-premises and SaaS solutions under the same brand, Empagio is
uniquely positioned to deliver long term support to existing customers while
simultaneously providing a migration path to a best-of-breed SaaS solution.
Specifically, Empagio is initiating HALO's "lift and shift" strategy,
providing on-premises customers with a clear path to the SaaS model, which
will result in lower cost, higher quality, and flexible HR solutions for
companies of all sizes. The addition of ECI provides a true Human Resources
Outsourcing (HRO) solution to existing customers.
"The merger of Tesseract, a well respected, world class HRMS provider, and
Empagio, a business service centric hosted solution, provides customers with a
seamless alternative to the complex and expensive offerings of some larger
vendors," said Charles W. Stevenson, HALO's chief technology officer. "It
further reinforces the second stage of our strategy of acquiring proven and
reliable mission-critical business solutions used by Fortune 1000
organizations and combining them to create a synergistic offering. As our
critical first step into the software-as-a-service market, we're using Web
Services and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to combine world-class
solutions and provision them as SaaS, making them available not only to the
enterprise, but also to mid-tier markets that previously could not afford
solutions of this caliber."
"A lot of people have the idea of developing SaaS-type companies in a
variety of enterprise software categories," said Ron Bienvenu, HALO's CEO.
"The barrier to entry here is not the ability to write hosted software, but
rather, getting people to trust you with mission critical applications. Our
unique lift-and-shift strategy underscores our belief that long term customer
relationships based on trust are more valuable than the ability to develop
cool software. We see ourselves as partners with our customers and look to
help them manage the transition to more modern technology platforms at a time
and pace that is appropriate for their business model, not ours."
"The Tesseract software is an amazingly robust, reliable payroll engine,"
said Randy Cooper, CEO of Empagio. "From customers as large as Home Depot
down to customers with less than a thousand employees, the Tesseract software
continues to deliver accurate and timely payroll processing for many on-
premises enterprise customers. With Empagio's SaaS delivery model, web-centric
architecture, and HRO delivery capabilities, these same customers can now
select from a variety of delivery models to find the one that best meets their
corporate objectives and, through a single trusted vendor, can implement their
desired transition strategy in a measured and timely manner."
The company announced plans to merge its Tesseract and ECI subsidiaries
into Empagio, HALO's premier human resources solutions provider. The closing
of the ECI acquisition is scheduled for February 28, 2006. The combination of
the subsidiaries will create a leader in the Human Resources Management
Solutions (HRMS) industry, boasting an impressive roster of Fortune 1000
enterprise customers and more than two million lives under management. The
merged company will be called Empagio and will be headquartered in Atlanta,
Georgia.
The planned merger ushers in the second phase of HALO's overall strategy,
which is to combine strong on-premises software solutions that serve an
established customer base with a modern software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution.
By offering on-premises and SaaS solutions under the same brand, Empagio is
uniquely positioned to deliver long term support to existing customers while
simultaneously providing a migration path to a best-of-breed SaaS solution.
Specifically, Empagio is initiating HALO's "lift and shift" strategy,
providing on-premises customers with a clear path to the SaaS model, which
will result in lower cost, higher quality, and flexible HR solutions for
companies of all sizes. The addition of ECI provides a true Human Resources
Outsourcing (HRO) solution to existing customers.
"The merger of Tesseract, a well respected, world class HRMS provider, and
Empagio, a business service centric hosted solution, provides customers with a
seamless alternative to the complex and expensive offerings of some larger
vendors," said Charles W. Stevenson, HALO's chief technology officer. "It
further reinforces the second stage of our strategy of acquiring proven and
reliable mission-critical business solutions used by Fortune 1000
organizations and combining them to create a synergistic offering. As our
critical first step into the software-as-a-service market, we're using Web
Services and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to combine world-class
solutions and provision them as SaaS, making them available not only to the
enterprise, but also to mid-tier markets that previously could not afford
solutions of this caliber."
"A lot of people have the idea of developing SaaS-type companies in a
variety of enterprise software categories," said Ron Bienvenu, HALO's CEO.
"The barrier to entry here is not the ability to write hosted software, but
rather, getting people to trust you with mission critical applications. Our
unique lift-and-shift strategy underscores our belief that long term customer
relationships based on trust are more valuable than the ability to develop
cool software. We see ourselves as partners with our customers and look to
help them manage the transition to more modern technology platforms at a time
and pace that is appropriate for their business model, not ours."
"The Tesseract software is an amazingly robust, reliable payroll engine,"
said Randy Cooper, CEO of Empagio. "From customers as large as Home Depot
down to customers with less than a thousand employees, the Tesseract software
continues to deliver accurate and timely payroll processing for many on-
premises enterprise customers. With Empagio's SaaS delivery model, web-centric
architecture, and HRO delivery capabilities, these same customers can now
select from a variety of delivery models to find the one that best meets their
corporate objectives and, through a single trusted vendor, can implement their
desired transition strategy in a measured and timely manner."
ToolsGroup - DPM on Demand
www.toolsgroup.com ToolsGroup today announced its new DPM on Demand multi-echelon inventory optimization software at the SAP Logistics and Supply Chain Management Conference, the premiere event for logistics, manufacturing and supply chain management executives.
Like ToolsGroup's flagship DPM product, DPM on Demand optimizes user inventories, but its subscription-based approach allows clients to minimize the impact on IT resources and other strategic projects. ToolsGroup manages the DPM on Demand software in a world-class data center to provide access for clients, creating an automatic and sustainable inventory planning process. DPM on Demand is Powered by SAP NetWeaver.
DPM on Demand is an example of Software as a Service (SaaS), where software is leased rather than purchased outright by the user. ARC Advisory Group is projecting fast growth for this model.
"Traditional software markets sell software licenses," says Steve Banker, the service director for supply-chain management at ARC. "However, in the inventory optimization market, knowledge-based outsourcing and software as a service will be key growth drivers."
The new product was announced today to more than 1400 projected executive attendees at the annual SAP Logistics and Supply Chain Management Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. ToolsGroup is exhibiting at the conference and ToolsGroup's customer, Delphi, will make a presentation on its successful use of the DPM product.
"DPM on Demand offers reliable, easy-to-deploy software that provides a high return on investment for our customers," said Joseph Shamir, CEO of ToolsGroup. "This solution is a perfect fit for organizations who want to reduce up-front expenses and accelerate time to benefit."
About ToolsGroup
ToolsGroup optimizes inventory in the finished goods supply chain. Its powerful solutions optimize multi-echelon distribution chain inventory, from finished goods assembly to the end consumer, and from strategic network design to daily operations. Recognized by ARC Advisory group as the top inventory optimization firm, ToolsGroup allows supply chain managers to meet demanding service levels, while reducing inventory and operating costs. With more than 100 customers in 29 countries, it is the most experienced inventory optimization software provider worldwide.
Like ToolsGroup's flagship DPM product, DPM on Demand optimizes user inventories, but its subscription-based approach allows clients to minimize the impact on IT resources and other strategic projects. ToolsGroup manages the DPM on Demand software in a world-class data center to provide access for clients, creating an automatic and sustainable inventory planning process. DPM on Demand is Powered by SAP NetWeaver.
DPM on Demand is an example of Software as a Service (SaaS), where software is leased rather than purchased outright by the user. ARC Advisory Group is projecting fast growth for this model.
"Traditional software markets sell software licenses," says Steve Banker, the service director for supply-chain management at ARC. "However, in the inventory optimization market, knowledge-based outsourcing and software as a service will be key growth drivers."
The new product was announced today to more than 1400 projected executive attendees at the annual SAP Logistics and Supply Chain Management Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. ToolsGroup is exhibiting at the conference and ToolsGroup's customer, Delphi, will make a presentation on its successful use of the DPM product.
"DPM on Demand offers reliable, easy-to-deploy software that provides a high return on investment for our customers," said Joseph Shamir, CEO of ToolsGroup. "This solution is a perfect fit for organizations who want to reduce up-front expenses and accelerate time to benefit."
About ToolsGroup
ToolsGroup optimizes inventory in the finished goods supply chain. Its powerful solutions optimize multi-echelon distribution chain inventory, from finished goods assembly to the end consumer, and from strategic network design to daily operations. Recognized by ARC Advisory group as the top inventory optimization firm, ToolsGroup allows supply chain managers to meet demanding service levels, while reducing inventory and operating costs. With more than 100 customers in 29 countries, it is the most experienced inventory optimization software provider worldwide.
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