Ping Identity Launches SaaS Partner Directory

Ping Identity, which provides secure Internet single sign-on solutions for over 300 enterprise customers, government agencies, and service providers worldwide, has launched an SaaS (News - Alert) Partner Directory.

Company officials say the directory, which is an element of the company's SaaS Partner Program, is a resource to help customers easily find and connect with SaaS vendors whose offerings support standards-based Internet Single Sign-On and automated user provisioning.

"With the rapid growth of cloud computing, identity integration has become an imperative," said Mike Desai, director of SaaS and BPO business development, Ping Identity in a statement.

Desai said that recognizing this, the company is working closely with the cloud community to provide identity federation solutions that meet their customer requirements. The SaaS partner directory takes this one step further, by making it easier for enterprise customers to find SaaS vendors who are equipped to meet their identity integration requirements.

Officials said that the SaaS Partner Directory, which is accessible through Ping Identity's Website, provides business profiles, links to additional information and contact details for the members of Ping Identity's SaaS Partner Program.

David Ritter, CTO of InnoCentive, said that Ping Identity's SaaS Partner Program is the perfect complement to InnoCentive@Work, the company's enterprise solution for open innovation.

Ritter said that InnoCentive@Work allows all of a company's employees to work together to solve critical business and technical challenges, so it's essential that the users have seamless access.

"The Partner Program allows us to lower barriers to use of the application while maintaining strict security. Program extras like the SaaS Partner Directory help us reach more potential customers," he said.

Founded in 2001, InnoCentive built the first global web community for open innovation, enabling scientists, engineers, professionals and entrepreneurs to collaborate to deliver breakthrough solutions for R&D-driven organizations.

Microsoft rolls out Windows in the cloud

Microsoft Canada is rolling out its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), part of Microsoft Online Services, which is a suite of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft. It's now available for trial to Canadian businesses, with general availability slated for April 13. The idea is to give small businesses flexibility to decide which services to keep on premise and which to have hosted by Microsoft, so they can extend new capabilities without straining IT resources (since there's no additional hardware to provision).

Although Canadian businesses understand technology is a key business driver, 41 per cent of survey respondents said their priority to upgrade or invest in new technology has shifted due to the economic downturn and 30 per cent are putting fewer resources into technology. Despite this, almost half of respondents said they're still looking at new technology to help them strengthen their business.

And half of those willing to invest in technology are looking at software as a service to deliver that, said Bryan Rusche, senior product manager of unified communications and collaboration with Microsoft Canada  Co. So Microsoft is accelerating momentum in this area with a set of announcements around its platform in the cloud (which means software is hosted as a service by Microsoft).

Microsoft BPOS consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Live Meeting. Microsoft is also releasing Office Communications Online for instant messaging and presence and the Business Productivity Online Deskless Worker Suite for economical e-mail, calendaring and collaboration service for the occasional user.

No industry, customer segment or region is unaffected by changes happening right now in the economy, said Phil Sorgen, president of Microsoft Canada Co. But disruptive forces can create an opportunity for change. "In times of disruptive forces in the market, the best companies, large and small, were those who made smart investments so they could respond to changing market opportunities or exploit new opportunities."

Microsoft's software-plus-services strategy is designed to bring technology used by Fortune 100 companies down to smaller businesses with as few as five employees - to help an SMB look like a large business. It could also be used by businesses that have a requirement to collaborate with third parties.

"Technology spending is more concentrated on saving money," said Warren Shiau, technology analyst and senior associate with the Strategic Counsel. "Areas where we do see strength are around efficiencies." These areas include virtualization, reporting tools and collaboration or worker productivity tools. Cost pressures will also change how businesses look at software as a service.

SMBs don't typically roll out new technology or upgrade older technology on regular cycles, so the challenge is simply getting technology to them. That's where SaaS makes sense, said Shiau, because it delivers technology, along with efficiencies and opportunities for growth. "This is where we have an opportunity to deliver technology in a different way," he said. One of the biggest barriers, however, is trust, and how much those businesses trust the provider of hosted solutions. "Add a trusted name and the proclivity to say yes jumps up."

There's more focus these days on investing to improve operational efficiencies and reduce risk, and also to maximize revenue from existing customers, said Darren Meister, associate professor of information systems with the Richard Ivey School of Business. With SMBs, typically one or two people make decisions about technology - they have to see a benefit that makes sense for their business with a level of risk they're willing to take.

"Cloud makes sense in these economic conditions," said Meister. Businesses are not likely to invest six figures for benefits they won't see for at least a year down the line. "Online reduces time to money," he said. "Costs are in sync with usage levels, and benefits accrue right away." SMBs can also try hosted services and then grow them out, which reduces the risk factor.

Doing more with less is not a tagline, it's a reality, said Andy Papadopoulos, president of Microsoft partner Legendcorp. But to be accepted, it must be low risk, implemented quickly, with immediate ROI. SaaS reduces costs but also fixes those costs, so they're more predictable. "It's easier to justify ROI based on regular payments with a monthly result or cost reduction," he said. "That ROI factor is an easy conversation."

Google pours Java on code cloud - App Engine freed from Python

Google has added the Java runtime to its App Engine, that (semi-)free service that lets you build and host web apps on Google's very own cloud distributed infrastructure.

When App Engine was first introduced, almost a year ago to the day, it stuck with Python, a favorite among code-happy Google Oompa Loompas. But after countless request from developers outside the Mountain View Chocolate Factory, the platform has now embraced Java as well.

"We wanted to give developers something that they could be ecstatic about, but we knew we would have to marry the simplicity of Google App Engine with the power and flexibility of the Java platform," Google engineers Don Schwarz and Toby Reyelts wrote in this evening's post to the official App Engine Blog. "We also wanted to leverage the App Engine infrastructure - and by extension Google's infrastructure - as much as possible, without giving up compatibility with existing Java standards and tools.

"And so that's what we did. App Engine now supports the standards that make Java tooling great."

According to Cnet, the service's new incarnation runs version 1.6 of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). So, in theory, it can also handle code written in such languages as Ruby on Rails and JavaScript.

Where appropriate, Google has wrapped its App Engine APIs in such standards as the Java Servlet API, JDO and JPA, javax.cache, and javax.mail. And there's a secure sandbox "that's powerful enough to run your code safely on Google's servers, while being flexible enough for you to break abstractions at will."

But the company acknowledges that existing code may not run straightaway. "There is a vast amount of Java code out there, much of it written without consideration of sandboxing, and we can't test it all. We know that there will be some rough edges when it comes to compatibility, but we're looking forward to working with you to smooth those out."

Meanwhile, Google has made a few other tweaks to its year-old service. You can now grant access to data behind your firewall. You can set up so-called "cron jobs," tasks scheduled to operate at particular times. And you can import data from an existing database.

At the moment, there's only room for 10,000 eager Java heads on the new service.

Even when Google expands the new App Engine to world+dog, it will be free. Up to a point. Google charges when you exceed certain resource thresholds. ®

Start-up Aims to Challenge Microsoft, Skype, Google

Dutch start-up Perzonae Unified Communications is working on a service that will combine e-mail, instant messaging and, later, calls and teleconferencing on PCs and mobile phones. The first public beta is now available, it announced on Wednesday.

By combining all these methods of communicating, users will eventually no longer need existing tools and software such as Outlook, Thunderbird, MSN, Hotmail, Skype or Gmail, according to Chris Troost, marketing manager at Perzonae.

At the same the company is very much aware of the fact that it's just a small network, so it is looking to integrate with all the major networks for e-mail and instant messaging, according to Troost. Universal chat client Pidgin has been a big inspiration, he said.

What Perzonae hopes will set it apart from the competition is the ability to communicate more efficiently using a concept it calls zones. Users can, for example, create different zones for business or private communications. If users don't want to be disturbed by private messages or calls during work, they can shut off that zone and view the messages later on, according to Troost.

The public beta, version 0.6, will at first support just e-mail. Support for instant messaging will be added in about two weeks, Troost said. Perzonae will also support geolocation, so that contacts, with the user's permission, will be able to see where they are.

The company is planning to put out the first stable release, version 1.0, in approximately six months. It will include IP telephony, video and audio conferencing as well as desktop sharing, according to Perzonae's roll-out plan.

Support for unified communication integrating all three main means of communication, telephony, e-mail and instant messaging, is still uncommon in Internet based services, which leaves an opening for Perzonae if it can get there first. The enterprise space, on the other hand, is a virtual hornets nest with companies like Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent competing for corporate dollars.

Currently, the Perzonae client runs on Windows XP. Soon there will be a version for Mac OS X, and there are also plans for Linux and Windows Vista clients.

By the time the first stable release comes to market, Perzonae also hopes to have a client ready for phones running Windows Mobile. It is also looking into support for other mobile platforms, including the iPhone, Symbian and Android.

With the arrival of the first stable release, Perzonae plans to start charging for its service. A basic subscription will cost about US$40 per year, and include e-mail and instant messaging. A professional subscription will cost from US$40, and then users will have to pay more as they add, for example, telephony, according to Troost.

Boomi touts cloud integration service

The application integration provider is aiming the newest version of its AtomSphere platform at enterprises.

 

Hoping to move up the enterprise ladder, SaaS-style application integration provider Boomi detailed on Tuesday a new version of its service, replete with features targeted specifically at large enterprises.

"We have built a cloud-based platform that integrates any SaaS or on-premise applications. There's no software to install, no appliance," explained Boomi CEO Bob Moul.

Boomi added the Professional and Enterprise Editions to its existing Base Edition of AtomSphere, a platform that enables IT shops to integrate SaaS or cloud-based applications into their infrastructures. The new versions bring what Boomi calls "Molecules," or enterprise-grade editions of Boomi Atoms, which are runtime engines capable of enterprise-class functions, such as scalability, high-availability, fault-tolerance, and load-balancing, Moul said.

Change management is another new function. As such, AtomSphere supports development lifecycle processes, namely testing and productions, promotion between environments, revision histories, audit trail, and rollbacks, the company said.

The final new pieces for enterprise customers are tools for centralized management, single sign-on, monitoring, and multi-site integration.

"In the old world, companies would have had to install integration at each site," said Boomi CTO Rick Nucci. "Now, because we have all the integration in our cloud, these Molecules can back each other up even if they live in datacenters on the West coast and East coast."

Dennis Callaghan, an analyst at The 451 Group, points out that "any time a company outsources to a SaaS provider, it needs some sort of integration."

Even the SaaS providers already use these types of services, Callaghan continued, be that from Boomi, Cast Iron, Informatica, iWay, or Pervasive.

"Customers otherwise have to build connectors to specific apps themselves," Callaghan said. "So this is a fairly compelling offering."

Boomi lately has been picking up some enterprise steam and now counts Siemens, BB&T, and BNP Paribas among its subscribers.

 

Aptana Journal Launched on Ulitzer

Aptana Journal launched today on Ulitzer. Aptana Studio is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services that help you and your team do more, at www.aptana.com.

The editor of Aptana Journal, Kevin Hakman is Director of Evangelism for Aptana, Inc., makers of the popular Aptana Studio web development suite. As early as 2001 Kevin was pioneering AJAX web applications via General Interface, a full AJAX development and GUI toolkit which he co-founded, and later sold to TIBCO Software in 2004. Kevin is a contributor to AJAXWorld Magazine, and has spoken at numerous AJAX industry events.

About Ulitzer.com
Initiating content coverage on any topic or launching a magazine at Ulitzer.com  is designed to be as easy as boiling an egg and doesn't take much longer. To become a Ulitzer author, anyone can fill out a simple author profile and submit for editorial review and approval. Once you've been handed the keys, you will be able to associate your future Web presence to whichever topic or topics suit you best.

The full list of topics and magazines being brought on stream via Ulitzer, and a list of more than 6,000 Ulitzer published authors at beta launch can be viewed at www.ulitzer.com.

Within the next five years, TIME Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American, Condé Nast Traveler, and Wikipedia will be replaced by Ulitzer.

Ulitzer authors can add their Google AdSense account numbers to their profile pages to start earning 100% AdSense cash immediately. Topic editors should obtain a new AdSense account from Google to be used strictly on their Ulitzer story pages. Ulitzer will match their AdSense revenues 100% and payment will be made to their PayPal accounts.

 

What is Ulitzer?
Ulitzer is a brand new way of creating, delivering, and consuming content on the Web. Anyone can create topics, magazines, and subject-based portals on Ulitzer, pre-populate them with over one million articles available, and launch a new Ulitzer topic in minutes.

Can Anyone Apply To Become a Ulitzer Author?
Yes, it's for anyone who wants to have a personal presence on the Web, and who wishes to take advantage of Ulitzer's revolutionary content delivery functionality, coupled with unmatched syndication and exposure capabilities.

What Kind of Topics Can I Start?
You may start a new topic on any subject or write a story and post to any existing topic. Trademarked topic names can be launched by trademark owners or Ulitzer editors as sponsored sites only. If you would like to start a sponsored topic, the Ulitzer sales team will contact you with sponsorship opportunities.

Is It Free?
Yes. Bona fide individuals/professionals - subject to approval, confirmation of ID, etc. - pay nothing. Ulitzer also offers sponsored programs for corporate customers, through which they can create completely customizable company and product portals and enjoy the entire rich Ulitzer feature set at highly competitive rates.

Do I Get Paid As a Ulitzer Author, Topic Editor, and Founder?
Yes. You earn 100% of the Google AdSense revenue as a Ulitzer author and blogger on all Google ads placed on your article and blog pages and syndicated through Ulitzer.

Ulitzer authors can add their Google AdSense account numbers to their profile pages to start earning 100% AdSense cash immediately. Topic editors should obtain a new AdSense account from Google to be used strictly on their Ulitzer story pages. Ulitzer will match their AdSense revenues 100% and payment will be made to their PayPal accounts.

Can I Earn 100% Revenue with Ulitzer If I Blog Elsewhere?
Yes. If you maintain a blog elsewhere, you simply create your Ulitzer author profile page, link it to your existing blog with a simple RSS or Atom feed link and you are good to go. Ulitzer will act as your syndication and distribution agent and you will get paid 100% of the Google AdSense revenue on all your stories.

What Steps Do I Need to Take to Get Started?

1) Create your author profile page by filling out all fields and submit it for approval.

2) Once you receive your author approval notification, create a number of topics you are interested in writing on and submit them for approval.

3) Submit the stories to be published on each of your topics and other relevant Ulitzer topics.

The Key to Ulitzer: Your Author Site
The first step is to create your author site. Once you have an author site, you will be able to create and manage topic sites, write articles, and manage your author site. Your author site must have your name, professional bio, 100x100 headshot, and a slogan otherwise it will not be approved. Do not use your company as the name of the site or the domain name. You can insert your company name in the company field on your site as well as your company URL. Once you have created your author site and it has been approved, you can then create topic sites that pertain to your company.

How Do I Publish My Article To a Specific Ulitzer Magazine or Topic Site?
Every Ulitzer author has a Ulitzer Dashboard, which appears when you sign in. To give yourself the ability to assign articles to appear at Ulitzer.com at other places than just your own Author page, you need to go to Author Site on your dashboard and use the Topics tab. Here, as you will see, you can assign up to six Topics within Ulitzer to which you wish to be able to assign your articles, news items, book reviews, interviews, press releases, blog posts, etc.

Once assigned, these Topics will always be available to you. Every time you complete a new item, just return to the Topics tab and click on which of the six Topic sites (including all of them) you want the items to appear on. Requests are subject to approval but you do not usually have to wait more than a couple of hours, tops.

Yahoo's plan: create community from isolated sites

Like nearly 200 million other people around the world, Yahoo Inc co-founder David Filo has a Facebook account.

But if Filo and new CEO Carol Bartz have their way, the kinds of social networking features available on Facebook will become part of many Yahoo websites and allow their users to network with each other without using Facebook. The company hopes the strategy will help link its disparate properties, bringing more advertising dollars and growth.

Yahoo is turning up the volume on many of its communications and community features and building bridges between the collection of Yahoo sites that have at times operated like virtual islands.

"You start to introduce Yahoo users to other parts of Yahoo," said Filo.

Whether users warm to Yahoo's vision of the social Internet with the same zeal they have for social stalwarts like Facebook and News Corp's MySpace remains to be seen. But if Yahoo's social networking features catch on, advertisers will take note.

"People are spending time on Twitter and Facebook, but advertisers don't want to be there right now. That's the big issue," said JMP Securities analyst Sameet Sinha. "But Yahoo advertisers are already there."

LOTS OF PLACES TO GO

While Yahoo has scores of online properties ranging from fantasy sports services to celebrity gossip and financial sites, more than half of Yahoo users only use a handful of Yahoo's sites, the company says.

In the next several months Yahoo will begin rolling out new versions of its most popular products, from Yahoo Mail to the Yahoo home page. A thread of social media features, including a common user profile, list of friends and regular updates about friends, will tie the family of Yahoo properties together.

When an individual recommends a news story from the Yahoo homepage, uploads a photograph on Flickr or makes a trade on a fantasy baseball team from Yahoo sports, Yahoo will send an alert to a network of friends or contacts.

Yahoo is developing technology to broadcast roughly 100 types of such posts and actions.

Many of Yahoo's properties rank among the most popular on the Internet. Yahoo's homepage had 329 million unique visitors in February, according to research company comScore; Yahoo Mail had 282 million unique visitors in February, second to Microsoft HotMail.

And with Yahoo a distant No. 2 to Google Inc in Internet search and its revenue growth stalled, infusing its online content assets with social elements could provide a new path to growth.

Online content is more compelling with social media elements, says Allen Weiner, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner. Such content is better suited for advertising than traditional social networking sites, he says, where communications between users are the main event.

YAHOO -- SEARCH OR SOCIAL?

Yahoo has a lot of balls in the air -- and hungry rivals.

Its efforts come as social networking is increasingly getting noticed by established Internet and media companies. Last week, media reports whipped up speculation that Google was in talks to acquire microblogging service Twitter, though neither company has confirmed the reports.

While Yahoo's plan to become more social predates Bartz' arrival in January, people at the company say she has fast-tracked the initiative.

"She really instilled a sense of urgency that this is critical to our success going forward," said Neal Sample, Yahoo's Vice President of Social Platforms.

The scope of products to be included in the project has been broadened by Bartz, and Sample's team has been given extra resources as Bartz has shuttered underperforming Yahoo properties.

Yahoo expects the stream of news updates will also increasingly feature events that occur at outside Web sites that partner with Yahoo. And a forthcoming version of Yahoo mail, currently in beta testing, will be opened to outside software applications that use a contact list to create social capabilities beyond simple news updates.

Developing the social transformation on a large scale won't be easy, particularly given Yahoo's spotty product development track record in recent years, analysts say, though Bartz's recent internal management reorganization should help.

Yahoo still needs to figure out how to turn on the new social features without triggering an avalanche of information onto its users, many of whom already receive frequent updates about their friends' activities on services like Facebook and Twitter and may not necessarily want another such feed.

The company is taking a deliberate approach, said Filo

E-Mail May Be 'Old,' But The Workhorse Still Worthy Ad Agent

Facebook, Twitter and cell phone messaging might have stolen all the glitter, but the Internet's original killer app, e-mail, continues to outshine those glamour technologies in the marketing game.

In a survey of 3,000 U.S. marketing executives late last year, 58.5% said they planned to increase their spending on e-mail marketing this year, says Datran Media, an online ad services firm.

Meanwhile, the Direct Marketing Association, an industry group, late last year forecast that the amount of money spent on U.S. e-mail marketing will jump 20.7% this year to $700 million -- bigger percentage growth than any other direct marketing channel.

For the most part, marketers are referring to "opt-in" e-mail marketing, where users have chosen to get e-mails sent by the advertiser. The other types of e-mail marketing are ads on e-mail sites, such as Yahoo Mail or Hotmail. A third type -- unsolicited e-mails -- is better known as spam, a whole different category.

In the recession, where retaining customers is crucial, many advertisers consider opt-in e-mail a better investment than other types of online ads, says Chad White, research director for Smith-Harmon, an e-mail services company.

"It's definitely because of the recession," he said. "Right now businesses are extremely concerned about retaining customers," where opt-in e-mail campaigns can shine.

Razorfish, an online-marketing services firm, says nearly 99% of its clients use e-mail marketing. It's a staple in this economy, says David Baker, a vice president of electronic customer relationship management services for Razorfish.

"A lot of businesses in a down economy look at retention as a vehicle, because retaining your customers is much more economical than acquiring new ones," he said.

Surveys of about 600 U.S. customers of travel, retail and packaged goods companies found roughly 55% saying they were more likely to buy as a result of opt-in e-mail marketing pitches, says Epsilon, an e-mail marketing services firm that conducted the surveys late last year and released the data in March.

Consumers who request information via e-mail are great for advertisers that offer short-time deals, says Kevin Mabley, senior vice president for strategic services at Epsilon.

"Deals can expire very quickly," he said.

E-mail campaigns that give users the ability to print a coupon and take it to a store also are popular, Mabley says.

E-mail marketing accounted for just 2% of U.S. online ad spending last year, says eMarketer, but it's expected to rise to $630 million in 2013 from $472 million last year.

One reason e-mail marketing spending ranks low is simply that such advertising, all things considered, usually costs less than search ads, display ads and other types of online advertising, say people in the ad game.

But cost doesn't always equate to effectiveness.

A Forrester Research survey last year of 286 U.S. marketers found that two-thirds said e-mail is the most cost-effective marketing.

And in two separate Forrester surveys of consumers last year, 42% and 44% of respondents said an e-mail had prompted them to make at least one purchase in the previous 12 months.

E-mail is a consistent hitter, even in a recession, says Forrester analyst David Daniels. "The channel is resilient to economic downturn, in part because it is so cost-effective," he said. "It continues to inspire consumer purchases."

But e-mail marketing isn't always a winner.

In a February survey of 220 people ages 18 to 24, only 28% said they receive relevant e-mails from advertisers, says the Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University's Lubin School of Business.

The headache, says Michael Della Penna, president of marketing firm AiTi Solutions and co-founder of PMN, is that many advertisers believe more is always better.

"The volumes of e-mails have been going up, especially in retail where the mentality is 'to sell more you have to send more,'" he said. "But brands have to be very careful not to give their customers an e-migraine."

Google updates Gmail, Google Calendar for iPhone and Android

On Tuesday Google gave the iPhone—as well as its own Android phone operating system—a great big bear hug by rolling out new mobile versions of Google Mobile Web Calendar and Gmail that are specifically optimized for the WebKit-based web browsers used by the two phone platforms.

In two postings to the Google Mobile Blog, Google product managers detailed the updates to the products. Mobile Web Calendar now supports editing events on devices, including modification of attendance status and adding or removing guests for an event. To set up the calendar, point your iPhone's Safari browse to google.com/calendar/gp (users of Google Apps for Domains should use /google.com/m/a/yourdomain and then click on Calendar).

Of course, if you're really addicted to Google Calendar, you could also try to use Google's previously-announced Google Sync for Google Calendar, which syncs your iPhone with Google's servers for calendar and contacts via Microsoft Exchange's ActiveSync protocol.

Likewise, users of Google's Gmail service have always been able to use the iPhone's native Mail client to check their mail. But if you prefer a lightweight Web interface or simply don't want to add your Gmail account information to the particular iPhone or iPod touch you've been using, the new Gmail web interface might be more your style. The new interface, which requires iPhone/iPod Touch OS version 2.2.1, works "with aggressive caching and by leveraging new browser technologies," according to Google Mobile engineer Joanne McKinley.

Google says this new Web interface lets you quickly select and manage messages, offers an improved look and feel for messages, and improves the display of labels. iPhone Gmail users can access the new features from Safari simply by going to gmail.com; users of Google Apps for Domains should visit mail.google.com/a/yourdomain .