In the past few years a rush of software vendors have latched onto the software-as-a-service bandwagon, converting packaged software offerings for use in the Web-hosted model. Now, one longtime SaaS vendor is doing the opposite, after finding that numerous enterprises are not comfortable running applications outside their firewalls.
"Some companies had issues with putting information out on the cloud, because of security and compliance concerns," says Rick McEachern, co-founder and chairman of Relational Networks, maker of the LongJump application-building platform.
Relational Networks, Sunnyvale, Calif., was founded in 2003 to provide Web-based CRM to the media industry. In 2006, the company used the same Web application platform that drives its CRM business to introduce LongJump, a cloud service that lets enterprises and ISVs build and deliver their own SaaS applications.
But "there's a category of customers who just won't be putting their information out on a Salesforce.com or Amazon EC2. They just won't for compliance reasons," he says. "For those customers we see an opportunity to run the same capabilities they like and run it on premises as a private cloud."
Relational Networks says it has developed a packaged software version of LongJump that can be deployed by enterprises within their own firewalls, eliminating many of the compliance, security and confidentiality concerns related to placing applications over the internet.
Source: CIO