Promoting Software as a Service SaaS business application to millions of SMBs worldwide just became easier and more cost effective. Silicon Valley based, SaaS Markets has launched the SaaS Commerce Network™ (SCN), the largest global business network for Software-as-a-Service web applications.

The announcement of the SaaS Commerce Network (SCN) will allow SaaS application developers’ greater opportunity to distribute their SaaS based apps worldwide to an audience of over 71 million businesses through the network.

By participating in the SaaS Commerce Network (SCN), the application provider immediately gains exposure in 32 stores around the world, in 23 different countries (with significant targeted growth plans for 2012 to 100+ Stores). With hundreds of new SaaS apps being added on a monthly basis, businesses can quickly discover the latest app to streamline any process. While, SaaS providers can effortlessly promote their SaaS app to a global business network.

With Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) fundamentally transforming the way businesses of all sizes operate, and forecasts for the global market in cloud computing expected to grow from $40.7 billion to more than $241 billion in 2020, no longer will enterprises be subjugated to purchasing costly systems and software that require time-consuming installation, significant customization and maintenance. The internet is making it easier to utilize nimble point solutions in a way that’s more efficient, cost-effective and virtually maintenance free.

“I’ve spoken before about bringing ‘SaaS to the Masses,’” said Ferdi Roberts, CEO of SaaS Markets, “but this is greater than that. With the SaaS Commerce Network, we are building the platform that we believe will be the number one source of software sales globally. Every single software company on the planet needs to have a SaaS offering and there are hundreds of new SaaS Companies being born every year. The SaaS Commerce Network gives these new and established software businesses an instant route to market through our global network of stores”. “That,” he added “is a game-changer for the software industry”.

For buyers, stores in the SaaS Commerce Network (SCN) offers small and medium sized businesses the opportunity to browse, trial, and buy over 1,200 unique Software-as-a-Service solutions.

Source:http://www.businessreviewcanada.ca/press_releases/the-future-of-the-software-business—the-saas-commerce-network

Are you faced with the need to do a software portfolio analysis but find the prospect daunting given the scattered nature of your operation? A new SaaS-based offering from Cast might fit the bill.

Cast, which specializes in software analysis and measurement, today announced Rapid Portfolio Analysis, a cloud-based tool that complements the company’s Application Intelligence Platform (AIP), which is an enterprise software analysis measurement tool.

“RPA is a cloud-based offering designed to do the same kind of things that AIP does, but instead of looking at one application in great detail and monitoring that detail over time, it looks across many apps in a portfolio and provides a high-level assessment of where the risks exist,” says Cast Managing Director of Portfolio Analysis Solutions Peter Pizzutillo.

Like AIP, the SaaS offering is powered by a rules engine that assesses the state of your programs by taking into account software complexity and industry best practices, but it uses a smaller subset of those rules, Pizzutillo says, 14 versus 28.

Even though these tools almost always pay dividends, traditionally companies have been “more willing to pay someone to sit in the corner and flip through printouts than they have been to buy tools for this type of analysis,” says Jim Duggan, VP of research in Gartner’s Application Strategy & Governance group. “It’s one of those paradoxes.

“This new cloud offering gives people a way to get started without having to make a big capital investment. It puts a wading pool in place so people can get started without being heavily committed.”

Pizzutillo admits as much. “RPA will make it easier for us to get started with customers,” he says. “They have a notional, subjective belief in where their risks lie or where the bad apples may be, so we’re able to, in a week’s time, evaluate all their systems and build a smart, risks-based approach to how to apply software analysis and measurement to the handful of apps that are driving the risk, driving the maintenance costs in their organization.”

In use, Cast’s code analyzers — which have business rules built in — are sent to crawl through the customer’s source code counting violations against the rule set, looking for things that should be happening that aren’t and vice versa. The results are sent back to the cloud where they are aggregated into different dimensions. The client’s code never leaves their facilities.

Because it is cloud-based, the tool makes it easier to analyze programs that are either scattered across locations or even hosted by third parties.

When do companies typically realize it is time for code analysis? Pizzutillo says there are a handful of common scenarios, one being mergers and acquisitions that result in a mishmash of IT systems, some of them redundant, that introduce new risks that are hard to ascertain.

When it comes time to rationalize that portfolio, you want objective analysis about which programs are more complex, which ones are harder to maintain, which applications are easier to enhance, he says. RPA makes it easy to get going.

Another typical usage is in the planning and budgeting process. Companies that are looking to get a better view of their maintenance costs, for example, can use the analysis to gauge the maintainability of these systems.

The beauty of RPA versus other tools or consulting services is speed and price. “We’re doing 100 apps in a week, where it would take months” with other methods, Pizzutillo says. “We’re reducing the time to value to get analysis done quicker, we’re adding an objective, automated process to assess the technical risk, and at a lower price point.”

A one-time assessment using RPA costs $1,000 per application. “We just did 3 million lines of code for a client and charged $1,000 for that analysis,” Pizzutillo says.

Gartner’s Duggan says that “once you know you need to do a migration or a consolidation, or need to improve the quality of a piece of code, this kind of offering yields some pretty strong positives. I don’t know of anyone that has gotten into these tools and didn’t get value out of it.”

Although Gartner doesn’t do a Magic Quadrant for this market, Duggan says Cast is a “very consistent provider, with very sound technology that has been thoroughly vetted. They deliver what they say they’re going to deliver and are realistic about what they say they are going to do.”

RPA has been in beta since the end of last year, was soft-launched in Europe and enters GA this month. Pizzutillo says the company has a dozen clients using it and many more in the proof-of-concept phase.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/050312-saas-cast-258944.html

Virtuon announced today it has expanded its virtual application service to support MAC, iPad and Android devices. The software distribution platform allows software publishers to put their applications immediately in the cloud as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering with no development or rewrite effort.

Virtuon’s service platform expedites the porting process for developers, as all they have to do is load their application in Virtuon’s service. “This is the fast-track to supporting the iPad and other contemporary devices,” said Forrest Blair, CEO of Virtuon. “Porting and conversion costs have been eliminated, and at the same time the entire software distribution and support system is streamlined.” SaaS applications offer tight control over which version of an application users have access to, as well as user activity and product performance are very visible. Installation and support issues are significantly reduced.

The number of software applications available from the cloud is growing at a significant pace. Traditionally, software developers have had to rewrite the framework of their application for it to function in a SaaS cloud or portal. SaaS conversion costs and time consuming efforts have been road blocks for many developers wanting to make the journey to the cloud.

Older 32-bit Windows applications loaded on Virtuon’s Virtual Application service are fully functional for users with 64-bit Windows, MAC and iPad devices. “Many developers are struggling over the thought of abandoning older applications that are no longer supported on the newer platforms. Our virtual application platform gives new life to old apps and expensive certification fees are eliminated,” said Blair.

Virtuon has built its software-as-a-service platform on state-of-the-art virtualization technology, and the offering comes from work at Virtuon’s cloud computing and virtualization center.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/software-developers-get-saas-y-with-expanded-software-as-a-service-platform-2012-02-09