The XML-based Jamcracker Integration Toolkit reduces the time it takes to flip the "SAAS switch."
With the growing interest in on-demand SAAS, and a continually increasing
number of software-as-a-service offerings available, vendors and users alike
are looking for better, easier ways to handle the provisioning.
On-demand services delivery company Jamcracker has been facilitating provisioning for
several years through its JSDN (Jamcracker Services Delivery Network), which
aggregates and distributes more than 100 on-demand business applications and
other services from dozens of vendors and ISVs.
"We let SMBs [small and midsize businesses] and large companies have a
single point of shopping, provisioning, administration and even end-user
support for on-demand services," said Steve Crawford, vice president of
marketing at Jamcracker. "For example, a midsized business can work
through one of our channel partners, through a single portal, and have complete
control over who has access to what application ... and also have the
traceability that public companies need for Sarbanes-Oxley audits. We're not an
applications platform, we're a 'giant provisioning switch' that connects
individual applications or platforms to channel partners."
However, for Jamcracker to add a new service to its offering would take up
to six weeks for the business and technical procedures.
Thanks to the company's new JIT (Jamcracker Integration Toolkit), announced
on April 9, ISVs can make their services available more quickly and easily to
the SAAS marketplace as applications available within JSDN. According to the
company, "JIT is an XML-based
do-it-yourself service integration framework that greatly simplifies the effort
required for publishing SAAS solutions to the JSDN Global Services
Catalog."
"We're seeing a rise of interest [from] companies of all sizes in the
use of software-as-a-service as an alternative to on-premises solutions,"
said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, managing director at strategic consultancy Thinkstrategies
and founder of the SaaS Showplace, an online directory of SAAS solutions and
best practices. "This lets resellers play and add value in the SAAS
market, instead of being disintermediated. And it means that customers can
still rely on their resellers and VARS, who have been their trusted suppliers,
to help them leverage and capitalize on this new generation of on-demand
services."
Smaller businesses are still wary of SAAS solutions. Click here for a slide show examining the obstacles in the road to SAAS.
Jamcracker's Crawford said, "In the past, our tech folks would develop
an adapter for each new partner's service—understand how it works, how users
interact, what the billing interface is, etc., and then build an adapter …
which would take about six weeks."
With the JIT, "We're opening up the platform—providing the specs, APIs
and certifications, so the provider, who understands their own platform better
than we would, can make the appropriate XML code that allows them to connect their platform to ours," Crawford
said. In beta tests with half a dozen new partners, the process took an average
of only six days, Crawford reported. "And this lets the process of
'onboarding' a new solution be pushed to the developers—we just do certification,
acceptance testing and training our L1/L2 support for the application."
The Jamcracker Integration Toolkit is available now, to
qualified software partners, at no charge. Companies that have already used the
tool kit to make their applications available via the JSDN include Averiware,
Brainshark, LongJump, RHUB Communications, Topia Technology and XOffice
International.
