Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Wolf Cloud PaaS - Cent Based Pricing Model

When the pricing of a service comes down from dollar to cent, you can safely conclude that the competition is heating up. A leading Cloud PaaS provider from India - WOLF Frameworks is in the news for their Cent Based Pricing Model. Wannabe entrepreneurs and smart developers have one more affordable option -  to quickly build and monetize SaaS or to make a move from On-Premise to the Cloud/SaaS.

Founded in 2006, WOLF Frameworks has introduced a path breaking platform which allows business users to design & deliver all sorts of business applications over the internet without writing a single line of technical code. Offered over the web, this framework fundamentally revolutionizes the way companies can access Business software's OnDemand, manage change, lower cost, unlock their intellectual potential by rapidly transforming ideas as deployed applications & in turn increase Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption worldwide.

Wolf PaaS Salient Features

  • Prebuilt SaaS Architecture that handles multi-tenancy, scalability, provisioning, etc.
  • Out-of-the-box Code-Free Design Framework that enables rapid delivery of applications.

Recently Wolf has Introduced a Cent Based Pricing Model

  • Cent based pricing model – Not $ 20/ per user.
  • Pay-as-you-GROW Pricing model where customer is relieved of the constant increase in his operational costs and can now focus more on growing his business.
  • WOLF Pricing Highlights:
    • Standard Business Plan of USD $ 50/-per month gets you 50 users instead of 5 (as per older plan)
    • Per user cost is less than 0.80 cents (INR 35/-)
    • Online Payments, no more wire transfer and bank checks
    • Make your own Pricing for unlimited users with Organization Business Plan

In my opinion, the pricing sounds good with a not so significant rider – Data Storage Limit of 15MB – for USD $ 50/-per month plan – should be increased. Anyways, I hope as the Cloud/SaaS adoption grows – economies of scale will further bring down the prices.

For details check Wolf Pricing

Related Articles

OrangeScape Launches into US Market with Persistent Systems Partnership

Last year I had identified OrangeScape in the Techno-Pulse List of India’s leading Cloud Service Providers. For the starters, Chennai based OrangeScape is  a rare breed of technology platform company founded in 2003 with a vision of simplifying business application development.

OrangeScape provides a Visual Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to build domain rich solutions, in the easiest and the fastest manner and can be deployed on any cloud. It’s in the Gartner’s Global Top 10 list of PaaS competitive Landscape and also has been featured in all the PaaS reports of Forrester.

OrangeScape became the first Indian company to be backed By The One Million by One Million (1M/1M) - Persistent Systems Partnership.

1M/1M - Founded in 2010 by Sramana Mitra, the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative is an educational and business development program that aims to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs.

Persistent SystemsA global brand, established in 1990,  (BSE & NSE: PERSISTENT) is recognized as an award-winning technology company specializing in software product development services.

What does this Mean for a Smart Developer?

One more proven platform. More Opportunities. More number of apps with less efforts. Why? Because the partnership of this kind obviously means – everything’s going right with OrangeScape PaaS – a validation from industry’s who’s who.

As a developer, I still remember my classic ASP days at the beginning of my career. At least a 100 lines of code to display a simple set of data in tabular format! Another 100 lines to achieve sorting & paging. Indeed a nightmare for beginners! Dot Net came as a savior and was a gentle breeze for those migrating from classic ASP. Dot Net though made the coding simple, yet has a lot of challenges for the developers as the customer’s expectation grew with it. I guess open source technologies (viz. JSP) still lacks the drag & drop features and the developer has to code almost everything.

The Bottom-line: With the existing development platforms/models, a smart developer (or a small team) can never think of developing an application alone – for various reasons:

  • A lot of mundane/repetitive work.
  • Software licenses – too expensive for most of us.
  • Even for a simple app the investment in Time & Effort required is practically too high to reach an early break-even point (if you sell your app).

With the evolution of next-gen Cloud based PaaS viz. OrangeScape – the developer needs to worry only about - the domain knowledge  and the application workflow. With a little effort a developer (or a small team) can unleash the hidden entrepreneur in her/him to quickly build and market a SaaS on OrangeScape’s fast, collaborative, modeling driven, visual platform (PaaS)

Millions of small businesses (SMEs/SMBs) around the world are waiting for affordable apps broadband & smart-phones are no longer luxury and about to reach the tipping point even in developing countries. Think about it.

What does this Mean for a Wannabe Entrepreneur?

There’s a new trend – Cloud/SaaS – the signals are too strong to ignore. Catch it before the opportunity zooms past you…

What does this Mean for an Entrepreneur?

You might need to find out more about 1M/M and leverage its strength to reach out to the new markets.

Essence of the Press Release (on February 18)

  • OrangeScape enters the US Market.
  • Competition heating-up in North American PaaS landscape.  
  • Persistent Systems will be selling and providing implementation services for OrangeScape.
  • Persistent Systems will take OrangeScape to their existing customers
  • Persistent Systems will target two markets 
    • Enterprises - to position a App Platform in the Cloud
    • ISVs - PaaS to build SaaS
  • Sramana Mitra will help OrangeScape in such strategic moves in the days to come.

What do They Think About the Partnership?

This deal with Persistent Systems will bring OrangeScape a cost-effective go-to-market solution through their global sales team and offshore backed enterprise implementation support through technology experts in Persistent’s Cloud Practice.

---Suresh Sambandam - Founder & CEO OrangeScape

We at Persistent are very excited to work with 1M/1M in helping entrepreneurs succeed by bringing new technologies to market, … We have been proactively investing in Cloud Computing, and believe that OrangeScape’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) product will nicely supplement our portfolio of cloud technologies to provide large enterprises an app platform in the Cloud and use PaaS for ISVs migrating to SaaS. OrangeScape, when sold through right channels, can have a significant impact in the market.

---Dr. Anand Deshpande - Chairman and Managing Director, Persistent Systems

The 1M/1M philosophy is to focus our entrepreneurs on customer acquisition and revenue without burning through a huge amount of cash in building expensive channels, … Our partnership with Persistent Systems is focused on taking promising small companies to market, efficiently. OrangeScape is one of the most promising Indian product companies we have seen so far, and we see an exciting opportunity for them to enhance the capabilities of Google’s App Engine in long tail enterprise apps. Over time, we foresee OrangeScape becoming a leader in the A-PaaS (Application PaaS) space and also a cornerstone of the Google enterprise solution portfolio.

---Sramana Mitra, founder of 1M/1M

For the press release & other details check - OrangeScape First Indian Company Backed By The 1M/1M - Persistent Systems Partnership

 

Monday, February 21, 2011

Free Webinar - Sales Strategies for Start-ups

Choosing the right go-to-market sales strategy for your Startup can be a make or break decision. What do you do when you are just starting a business and need to build a customer base? This is the situation thousands of new entrepreneurs find themselves in. You’ve got a great idea and all you need is sales and customers. The question that you agonize over is how to reach those customers and get them to use your great service / product.

You can join a special free webinar on Sales Strategies for Start-Ups and learn how you can tackle these challenges. Understand the issues that are critical in getting your first few customers. See how you can make your early adopters become your best reference sellers.

This Webinar will provide insights on Sales Strategies for your Start-Up through discussion of the following topics.

  • Learning to sell the NEW
  • Building up Sales Team for Start-Ups
  • Aim your Sales Efforts
Date Wednesday, 23rd Feb 2011 at 12:00 PM IST
Duration

45 mins

Speaker Mr. Narasimhan Kishore Mandyam
Who should Attend?

Start-Up Owners, Entrepreneurs, CXO’s of Sales/Marketing and people looking to start businesses of their own in the near future.

Technical Requirements

Internet connection and computer speakers/microphone

Click here to Register  for the FREE Webinar

About the Speaker: Mr. Narasimhan (Kishore) Mandyam is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur with decades of experience in founding, growing and exiting high technology enterprises. Mr. Mandyam is the CEO of PK4 Software. He’s a regular speaker in the areas of Cloud Computing, SaaS, CRM, Emerging Businesses at various forums such as NASSCOM, TiE, etc. He has over 24 years of experience managing technology product and service companies. He founded and manages PK4 Software. He is involved in the strategy and direction for PK4’s Impel CRM product line.

Let the knowledge flow…uninterrupted.

Friday, February 11, 2011

15 Memorable Cloud Computing Quotes

In the who’s who of the technology arena, Cloud Computing has indeed generated a huge round of applause and a few brickbats too. The brickbats were hurled because Cloud Computing dared to challenge the fundamental software delivery model. In coming years, maybe there will be fewer multi-billion dollar, multi-year contracts than in the past. In the short run, it threatens to dent the profit margin of a few billion dollar IT behemoths. In the long run, cloud has indeed sent them a very strong signal  – innovate or become extinct.

Popular Cloud Quotes Following are my collection of the most memorable cloud computing quotes which I came across. Some of them are insightful and helped us to understand cloud in a refreshingly new way. Some were driven solely by competition – Corporate ShowdownsOracle vs. SalesForce, Siebel vs. SalesForce and recently, Microsoft vs. SalesForce.

I’ve tried to balance the list by adding some new quotes apart from the famous and funny Cloud Computing Quotes. Please contribute your favorite Cloud quotes in the comment section.

S.No.

Cloud Computing Quote

Year, By Whom

1.

There’s no way that company exists in a year.

[That company is none other than SalesForce.com. Siebel doesn’t exist as a company anymore. In September 2005 it was bought by Oracle Corporation and now it is a brand name owned by Oracle Corporation]

2001

Tom Siebel

Founder - Siebel CRM Systems.

2.

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop? We'll make cloud computing announcements. I'm not going to fight this thing. But I don't understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud.

[Outburst or puzzled…]

2008

Larry Ellison

CEO - Oracle Corporation

3.

We think everyone on the planet deserves to have their own virtual data center in the cloud. What a developer gets when they have an account with the Sun Cloud is their own virtual data center.

 

2009

Lew Tucker

CTO - Sun Cloud Group.

4.

Cloud computing is really a no-brainer for any start-up because it allows you to test your business plan very quickly for little money. Every start-up, or even a division within a company that has an idea for something new, should be figuring out how to use cloud computing in its plan.

 

2009

Brad Jefferson

CEO - Animoto.

5. With AWS a new server can be up and running in three minutes (it used to take Eli Lilly seven and a half weeks to deploy a server internally) and a 64-node Linux cluster can be online in five minutes (compared with three months internally)…The deployment time is really what impressed us.

2009

Dave Powers

Associate Information Consultant - Eli Lilly and Company.

6.

The cloud services companies of all sizes…The cloud is for everyone. The cloud is a democracy.

---

*Why are we buying more boxes? Why do we need more software for cloud computing? …...The cloud is not a box. It just isn't. There are no apps marketplaces if your cloud is a box.

[*After the launch of Oracle’s Private Cloud in a Box]

……

*Be ware of false cloud.

[*On Twitter after the launch of Oracle’s Cloud in a box]

 

2010

Marc Benioff

CEO - Salesforce.com

 

7. There was a time when every household, town, farm or village had its own water well. Today, shared public utilities give us access to clean water by simply turning on the tap; cloud computing works in a similar fashion. Just like water from the tap in your kitchen, cloud computing services can be turned on or off quickly as needed. Like at the water company, there is a team of dedicated professionals making sure the service provided is safe, secure and available on a 24/7 basis. When the tap isn't on, not only are you saving water, but you aren't paying for resources you don't currently need.

[The most simple definition of cloud computing]

2010

Vivek Kundra

Federal CIO, United States Government.

8.

In the pre-cloud ERA, the cost of building software was so high that we often have to define a scope and leave out functionality which we feel doesn't fetch the ROI for automation. Cloud makes whatever that was previously left out of scope as candidate for automation now! Thanks to simplification, access and affordability brought by IaaS and PaaS.

 

2010

Suresh Sambandam

Founder & CEO OrangeScape

9.

The end of ‘Fashion-IT’ – customers will only pay for value and not technology.

With the advent of Web 3.0 or Cloud Computing or platforms such as WOLF, what we are witnessing is that everyone can innovate. So yes, Cloud computing will turn the tables and fire up innovation and consumerism to the scale never seen before…

 

2010

Sunny Ghosh

Director - Wolf Frameworks.

10.

Cloud computing is empowering, as anyone in any part of world with internet connection and a credit card can run and manage applications in the state of the art global datacenters; companies leveraging cloud will be able to innovate cheaper and faster.

 

2010

Jamal Mazhar

Founder and CEO - Kaavo

11.

But we very quickly learned that most Indian buyers fall into one of two categories - they either know enough to trust SaaS or they don't care.

---

It's like buying a Tata Magic and that magically turning into a Globus as your business grows - now, that's something you just can't beat!

 

2010

Narasimhan (Kishore) Mandyam

CEO - PK4.

12. Small businesses will now have the ability to use the same tools and techniques that larger companies enjoyed for years. They can leverage Web 2.0/ Social Media tools to connect with prospects / customers, build their brand, and use Enterprise 2.0 tools to automate systems within their workplace using free, inexpensive and simple tools.

2010

Sahil Parikh
CEO - Synage

13. If you want to be a viable cloud vendor selling products, you have no choice – your product must be multitenant in order to survive in the cloud world.

2010
Alok Misra

Cofounder & Principal - Navatar Group

14.

Our industry is going through quite a wave of innovation and it's being powered by a phenomenon which is referred to as the cloud.

India will not only see a surge in cloud computing services but companies all over the world will look to India to support their transition to cloud computing.

 

2010
Steve Ballmer

CEO - Microsoft

15. With the cloud, individuals and small businesses can snap their fingers and instantly set up enterprise-class services.

2011
Roy Stephan

Director of IT architecture and engineering - Intelligent Decisions

Some of the most popular technology quotes…

S.No.

Quote

Year, By Whom

1 The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad

1903,
The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co.

2. Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons

1949,
Popular Mechanics.
3. There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home

1977

Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in .

 

4. The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.

Bill Gates.
5. Smartphone makers who use Android are like boys from Finland who "pee in their pants" to keep warm in winter. It may feel good at first, but then things gets worse

[Obviously very few can withstand a 600% growth of Android in 2010… Anssi Vanjoki resigned from Nokia in September 2010]

2010. Anssi Vanjoki - [Outgoing] Head of Nokia’s smartphone division. 

[source via Financial Times of London]

Did I miss any famous or funny Quote on Cloud Computing? Please let me know through comment section. Also, if you like this article please spread the word about it: +1, Tweet or Like it :-)

Cloud Computing Cartoons

References [Cloud Quotes S.No. wise]

  1. Forbes India – Dec – 17 | Page No – 55 [Print Ed.]
  2. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-1005218880.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
  3. eweek.com
  4. http://www.itworld.com/saas/68088/cloud-computing-pros-and-cons?page=0%252C1
  5. http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/blog/archives/2009/01/whats_next_in_t.html
  6. http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/228600160/salesforces-benioff-tells-dreamforce-crowd-beware-of-false-cloud.htm?pgno=2
  7. http://www.cio.gov/pages.cfm/page/Vivek-Kundra-Testimony-on-Cloud-Computing
  8. http://www.techno-pulse.com/2010/03/develop-saas-orangescape-paas-cloud.html
  9. http://www.techno-pulse.com/2010/04/develop-cloud-saas-apps-wolf-platform.html
  10. http://www.techno-pulse.com/2010/05/kaavo-cloud-computing-security.html
  11. http://www.techno-pulse.com/2010/04/cloud-ondemand-saas-impel-crm-india.html
  12. http://www.techno-pulse.com/2010/03/cloud-project-collaboration-deskaway.html
  13. http://www.techno-pulse.com/2010/12/multi-tenancy-essential-attribute-cloud.html
  14. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/software/India-to-lead-world-in-cloud-computing-Ballmer/articleshow/5983079.cms