'Net Features : SaaS

Social Media Solution Uses Twitter to Drive Traffic to Partner Channels

Michael Garrity — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:15:00 GMT

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company TIE Kinetix has added a new social element to its Content Syndication Platform with the launch of the Social Media Syndication Solution that is designed to make delivering dynamic marketing messages to a partner community on Twitter more accurate and effective.

This solution was created to allow vendors that sell through partners to connect their Twitter messages with the “right” content and lead capturing tools that will use syndication to drive conversions on their partners’ websites, and when that happens, it boosts sales and benefits both parties.

“Twitter is an extremely powerful tool in today’s business world,” said TIE Kinetix CEO Jan Sundelin. “We’re excited to be offering our customers a unique solution that enhances their marketing efforts and helps them better utilize these key social avenues.”

So, companies leveraging Twitter in their sales cycles can use the Social Media Syndication Solution to send messages from multiple partner Twitter handles, and users will not be able to detect the involvement of the original company at all. Plus, since it’s integrated into the Content Syndication Platform, when tweets include a PDF attachment, it will automatically be co-branded for each partner, and other links in tweets will direct traffic to the website of the partner that originally posted the message.

“This solution allows companies to not only tap into their own Twitter base, but also effectively access their partners’ Twitter followers,” explained Sundelin, “Which increases the number of eyeballs on their marketing material exponentially, in turn boosting sales and revenue for all.”

The first company to utilize this new solution is the longtime TIE Kinetix customer Siemens Enterprise Communications, which partners with a number of small resellers that have few marketing resources. Through the Social Media Syndication Solution, however, Siemens is able to help its partners cultivate their Twitter presence by automatically posting its own content to its partners’ followers, which helps them “find, engage and nurture new potential sales opportunities.”

Look to the Cloud for X-Cart’s NEXT Service

Allison Howen — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:35:00 GMT

E-commerce software provider X-Cart has launched its newest service in the cloud.

The company’s first cloud-hosted platform, which has been dubbed as NEXT, brings X-Cart’s functionality to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. Basic features of the NEXT platform include multiple product type options, social media integration, social login, automatic tax calculation, real-time shipping rate calculation, store statistics and analytics, SEO-friendly URLs, meta tags, mobile compatibility and promotional tools.

Moreover, X-Cart is offering NEXT source code to certified developers, which provides them with the opportunity to design new features and customer options. Any extensions or upgrades created by developers will be made available to X-Cart’s partner community via the X-Cart NEXT Marketplace.

“Besides making X-Cart NEXT easy to install, use, scale and upgrade, we’ve erased one of the biggest objections to SaaS e-commerce platforms – the inability to alter the source code for a specific hosted storefront,” says Maxim Vydrin, CEO of X-Cart, adding, “Now our certified developers can take advantage of the benefits of a hosted platform, but with the flexibility of a downloaded software package. We’ve also made this process much easier to implement.”

X-Cart Next is available in four different plans – Starter, Advanced, Business and an Enterprise. That said, the company is also offering a 30-day free trial of the platform. Previous versions of X-Cart’s downloadable e-commerce packages will remain supported and continue to receive upgrades, however, the company is also offering a migration service to current X-Cart merchants that want to adopt NEXT.

Furthermore, merchants looking to leverage the Enterprise plan should know that it can integrate with popular content management system (CMS) Drupal, which means that developers will be able to use existing Drupal extensions to add customization options. It is also important to note that certified developers can earn a 15 to 25 percent recurring commission on new platform sales with X-Cart NEXT’s affiliate program. Since the platform allows certified developers to customize a SaaS store for customers at the source code level, developers will also have a specific Web address to manage those customers, download stores for development and maintenance as well as upload custom modules. Additionally, developers can earn 75 percent for every add-on extension or theme they create, which can be sold in the X-Cart NEXT Marketplace.

Manage Purchase Orders from Anywhere at Anytime

Michael Garrity — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:50:00 GMT

Supply chain management software provider HighJump Software is making it easier for users of the Sage 100 ERP business management software to utilize its electronic data interchange (EDI) by integrating it as a Web-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

The TrueCommerce Transaction Manager – HighJump’s EDI solution – can be added to the Sage 100 system for enterprise resource planning, and will offer users the exact same features and functionality provided by the on-premises version. It supports Sage 100 ERP’s sales order and purchase order modules, which include purchase orders, advance ship notices, invoices, goods transactions receipts, and warehouse/third-party logistics.

This integration can help systems streamline the fulfillment process to improve accuracy and meet the EDI requirements of a business’s customers, and offers the most complete, easy-to-use, and affordable EDI integration for Sage 100 ERP. Through the use of built-in process controls, users can validate purchase orders and invoices for accuracy, reduced errors, and chargebacks. They can also use the TrueCommerce Scheduler to automate and schedule a range of everyday sales and purchasing tasks, including sending, receiving, importing, and exporting EDI transactions.

Having a Web-based EDI solution allows ERP users to access the system at anytime and from anywhere without requiring additional maintenance, backup, or updates; it also saves them from having to buy extra hardware or software.

Customer Intelligence at Bazaarvoice

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Social commerce solution Bazaarvoice just released a customer intelligence tool, an offering which aims to reveal insights from customer conversations (and customer sentiment) to drive decision making across the enterprise including for including sales, marketing, customer service, merchandising and product teams.

"To succeed, companies must get to ground truth about how products are perceived by different customer segments. Now they finally can," said Brett Hurt, Founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. "For the first time in history, word of mouth is a structured, digitally archived medium that can be sliced, diced, integrated, and analyzed to deliver actionable insights that were never possible before. This is a tremendous opportunity, and it will change the way marketing and merchandising is done forever.”

The solution enables users to identify top promoters and detractors through "advocacy" and "influencer" ratings, and integrates with internal business data and CRM systems.

"Bazaarvoice Customer Intelligence allows 3M to proactively surface the customer motivations that drive our online community engagements, product by product, segment by segment," said Raj Rao, Global Director of Digital Marketing & eCommerce at 3M. "It is a tremendous asset across multiple brands and market channels, and we are learning new ways to connect with our customers."

Kwanzoo Launches SaaS Platform

Allison Howen — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:45:00 GMT

Kwanzoo has launched an Saas-based marketing platform that is targeting mid- to large-sized businesses.

The new platform connects prospects across email, websites, social, display, re-targeting and mobile channels. It allows marketers to build and run multi-channel marketing campaigns in order to drive more leads, increase a brand’s word-of-mouth mentions and improve sales.

Kwanzoo’s cloud-based suite of Smart Marketing Units can be integrated with existing enterprise marketing systems, and is certified on all major ad networks, re-targeting platforms and available for use on platforms from Email Service Providers (ESPs). Additionally, the solution includes polls, surveys, social promotions and opt-in lead forms, as well as provides real-time metrics, analytics and instant campaign modifications.

"In today's marketplace customers are everywhere and you have to catch them and get their attention where they are," says Mani Iyer, chief executive officer of Kwanzoo, Inc. "We see marketers across industries re-tooling their traditional marketing campaigns for an increasingly social and real-time world, while seeking to engage, qualify and convert prospects regardless of their platform or location. Kwanzoo provides robust, scalable and proven engagement marketing solutions for global enterprises."

Optimizer for Twitter Launched by Terametric

Michael Garrity — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Today sees the release of Optimizer for Twitter by marketing analytics company Terametric.

Optimizer for Twitter is a brand new SaaS platform that makes leveraging the reach and growth of Twitter to engage more customers and drive more conversions a much easier task for both product and corporate marketers.

The platform works by predicting and measuring the activities that have the highest impact and then delivers the user real-time actionable recommendations, which makes it possible for everyone from novice to expert social media marketers to measure and improve their contribution to marketing performance. This is the first and only social media marketing platform to integrate real-time analysis with support on what and when to tweet and which users to target.

A unique competitive benchmarking engine drives Optimizer for Twitter, which, in addtion to real-time predictions and recommendations, also helps to compose and schedule tweets for directing the right message at the right time. In this sense, it's sort of like a Hoot Suite that gives you advice, the Alfred to your Batman, if you will.

Optimizer for Twitter also aids marketers by watching their stream and pointing out the most influential and highest-trending tweets with which to engage. All of this allows marketers to drive, measure and improve their Twitter campaigns in a single management platform.

A 30-day free trial of Optimizer for Twitter is available (for qualified marketing organizations) by clicking here.

GlobalSign Rolls Out MSSL v2

Michael Garrity — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:00:00 GMT

GlobalSign, the Certification Authority and specialist in SSL Certificate security, announced last week the launch of MSSL v2, the new version of their Managed SSL platform.

The company has found success in the certification field by offering publicly-trusted SSL Certificates, EV SSL, Managed SSL services and Code Signing for use on all platforms, including mobile. The first version of MSSL was GlobalSign's unique SaaS platform, and their upgrades have come as a response to both direct user feedback and the changing requirements of enterprise security.

The new version will provide user-friendly and highly-scalable methods for managing mulitple SSL Certificates for everything from the simplest to the most complex and distributed of organizations.

Among the new updates to MSSL are:

- Support for group companies/distributed entities: Now, a single umbrella entity can register all of its companies, branches and departments and have them easily centralized for management and billing purposes.

- Intuitive user interface: They've created a much simpler layout that is easy to use and lets the users quickly access functions and reports. Also, crucial information like pre-vetted domain pools and Certificates nearing expiration are clearly presented on the homepage. These changes are all based on direct user feedback.

- Expanded public ordering pages: With optional password protection and Pay-As-You-Go support, even heavily-distributed organizations can centralize Certificate applications by using these new pages, which allow anyone within the group to apply for a Certificate.

- Granular user rights: Permissions for users are now able to be assigned at the domain and company levels, allowing control over which staff members can apply for, approve, renew and revoke Certificates.

- Exportable audit logs: Any and all user activity will now be logged and exportable, which is a necessity when it comes to meeting increasingly rigorous compliance requirements.

As a service to customers and prospects, GlobalSign recently hosted a special webinar that included a virtual tour of the new features and functions of MSSL v2. To view the webinar, or just get more information on the Managed SSL platform's upgrades, simply click here.

MediaCore Gives Small Businesses Their Own YouTube

Michael Garrity — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 21:30:00 GMT

After running an open source version of their SaaS video publishing platform for a year, MediaCore officially launched to the public yesterday.

Developed by Damien Tanner (creator of Pusher) and Stuart Bowness, MediaCore provides small businesses with the ability to manage what is essentially their own, private version of YouTube. This video streaming site will allow the owners to control the entire experience from end-to-end and allows them to post videos without fear of their content getting lost in shuffle over at YouTube, which has hundreds of millions (if not more) of videos on the site.

The real hook for MediaCore that sets them apart from other video site creators, however, is the interface. MediaCore is all about vanity, which is great for those business owners who may not be the most tech savvy.

Tanner and Bowness have said that their decided to create MediaCore because all of the other video platforms tend to pay little attention to design, and that didn't always work out the best for users. So, they surmised that it may be a good idea to start with design and then build an easy-to-use service from there.

The premise is simple, customers will simply upload their content into the platform's cloud-based framework and the videos will stream through MediaCore's exclusive player, which has the ability to automatically determine which brower the user or viewer is connecting with and then sort out whether the video is being shown in Flash or HTML5 (although the player will use HTML5 whenever possible). This is all part of the design to make the platform as simple for business owners as possible.

But as I said, MediaCore looks good, too, and that is key to keeping consumers on your site and looking at videos. Visitors to a site can browse through video collections using a visual guide, and the platform allows the site's owners to organize their videos by category , or tag, and it will automatically sort content by both relevance and popularity.

Site creators can also add logos and backgrounds and customize the site using CSS. Plus, MediaCore allows you to add your own domain and utilize podcasting, as well as including some other specialized tools. It almost makes creating a full-service video website look easy.

In order to get the platform off the ground, the MediaCore folk are busy trying to close a seed round of angel funding from MetaLab founder and CEO Andrew Wilkinson.

Currently, MediaCore is being offered with a 15-day free trial followed by plans that start at $99 a month and include custom domains, a white label player, custom branding, automated encoding, social video embedding and more. Oh yeah, and every account comes with Android and iOS apps.

So far, just the beta version has drawn in over 1100 companies such as London University, Mentor Graphics, TechVibes, Indiana University and a number of Fortune 500 companies.

SaaS Call Analytics at adTrax

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Phone call and conversion analytics provider KeyMetric today released adTrax, a software-as-a-service call analytics tool that enables users to manage and administer their own phone numbers, campaigns, conversions, and account details. Being able to integrate...(read more)

IT Jobs at Risk; Blame the Cloud

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:00:00 GMT

Cloud computing (including services such as SaaS and managed IT services) is certainly making it easier for small business to compete - thanks in part to lower cost. The downside of the savings however is that nearly 200,000 IT jobs may be lost in the next ten years according to AMI Partners' recent Cloud Computing Research studies. Not great news if you're in IT.

“The great recession of the last year and a half has significantly increased SMBs’ interest in adopting various cloud-based services as they look for ways to meet their IT needs while keeping costs under control,” says Anil Miglani, SVP of IT Infrastructure Research at AMI-Partners. In response to this interest, local channel partners have started to rapidly expand their cloud-based solutions for SMBs. “However, cloud computing cuts two ways for small SMB channel partners. It allows them to offer new kinds of services and solutions to their SMB customers without having to incur high initial capital expenditures. But automated service delivery via the cloud will also reduce the need for internal IT staff.”

AMI expects a net reduction of 200,000 - 250,000 jobs over the next decade, out of the over 1.3 million people currently employed by U.S. SMB channel partners.

E-mail Alert: Campaigner Releases New, User-friendly Version for Business Owners

Linc Wonham — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:38:00 GMT

E-mail marketing service Campaigner has announced several new features to its existing set of tools designed to help smaller businesses effectively and efficiently meet their marketing needs. In addition to a new user interface and upgrades to numerous editing, formatting and list-management tools, the company—a division of Protus—is offering other incentives to attract new customers.

Campaigner is part of Protus’ Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) business communications range of services that also includes Internet fax service and virtual business phone service. Campaigner focuses on E-mail marketing services and provides its customers—mostly small to medium-sized businesses—alternatives to staffing their own marketing departments or hiring outside consulting firms.

“Small business owners often start a business because they’re good at something or have a passion for it,” said Steve Adams, vice president of marketing for Protus. “When they try to market that business, though, they may find the tools that are available assume a level of experience or expertise they don’t have. We asked our customers how we could make it easier for them to create effective sales-generating and loyalty-building campaigns. We then designed the new Campaigner to address those needs.”

Campaigner believes its new user interface to be much easier for its customers to utilize as they create and track their E-mail marketing campaigns. The redesigned E-mail editor now resembles a Microsoft Word interface, and the upgraded formatting functions include the ability to paste from Word more seamlessly than before. Users will now also be able to import their contacts directly from Microsoft Excel, and Campaigner has added an integrated image library, a new spell-check function, and an array of online help options and tutorials.

To promote the changes, Campaigner is offering new customers free templates that will include the customer’s business colors, logo, fonts and contact information, and a 30-day free trial for services. Small businesses can subscribe to the service for $10 per month.

KEMP Technologies New Load Balancing Act

Mike Phillips — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:34:00 GMT

What do service providers need to stay relevant with their clients? More and better services, of course.

KEMP Technologies has released a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) product to further enhance managed service providers' and managed hosting providers' offerings, and help website owners gain peace of mind. KEMP's Virtual LoadMaster (VLM) is focused on load balancing technology, where user requests from websites and Web apps are directed to the appropriate server based on availability and the type of request - be it delivering a SSL, caching, compression and more. In other words, the VLM acts as a traffic cop between end user requests and load balancing.

As websites look to deliver a more robust experience to end users - often through new Web apps - they need to ensure that requests are handled properly to prevent an problems. This is load balancing and, in the past, a very expensive proposition involing the purchasing of servers and other hardware. The key is KEMP's virtualization of this effort. In the past, the hardware required to accomplish load balancing would cost tens of thousands of dollars. But now, companies can offer this service for as little as $99 per client, and the charge is only levied for active user accounts. So, re-sellers can offer their clients a way to enhance user experience and prevent downtime by providing inexpensive load balancing through the Sevice Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA).

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Open PaaS from Sullivan Systems

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:53:00 GMT

Sullivan Software Systems has launched an Open Platform as a Service (also known as OPaaS or Open PaaS), which aims to correct the shortcomings of the traditional Platform as a Service (PaaS) model and take the market to the next level with a more logical application ecosystem.

Developers can now use any programming language, any operating system, any development tools, any database, any infrastructure, (e.g., private server, the OPaaS server, Amazon Web Services, Google, or any other cloud) to develop and deliver applications and systems. Developers are no longer limited to creating closed, proprietary applications for a particular limited platform or "walled-garden" as is the case with current Platform as a Service offerings such as Force.com, Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, etc.

From the release: "Open Platform as a Service brings all the pieces together seamlessly for programmers and users in a self-sustaining ecosystem. Also, because Open Platform as a Service works over standard HTTP, developers can easily incorporate existing scripts, applications, web services etc. There are no longer limits on application creation. If it can be imagined, it can be created and delivered instantly on a scalable platform."

"We've come so far on the Internet, but yet have taken a great leap backwards in terms of Platforms as a Service offerings which, thus far, have been very limited" said Kwok Lo, lead developer at Sullivan Software Systems. "Under any other circumstances, nobody in their right mind would pick a platform where the vendor dictates the single or proprietary programming language, the operating system, the server, the database and limited proprietary application programming interface (API) and sets the price as well as the rules and can change them at any point and put you out of business after or even before they go out of business."

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Google Apps Reseller Program Unveiled

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:42:00 GMT

Google announced the launch of an authorized reseller program for Google Apps.

While some might see this as a direct attack on Microsoft's core product line (which it very well may be), Web hosting companies should really be the entities worrying. If web hosting resellers shift from promoting entire Web business configurations over to Google Apps, small hosting companies could end up all but obsolete. For this to happen though, Google will surely need to beef up its own services. But the threat is certainly there.

For those unfamiliar with Google Apps, it is a SaaS package of business applications such as email, calendar, group site creation, and document collaboration (watch a video on Google Apps here). Over 1 million companies already use the product, and some 3,000 new businesses sign up each and every day.

The challenge, however, for Google is that many of the businesses right for Google Apps don't have the expertise or resources to implement it correctly and integrate it into their existing business processes. That's where authorized resellers come in. Google is aiming to steal away some market share from hosting companies by training affiliates to resell its application bundle.

The Google Apps Authorized Reseller program gives affiliates the opportunity to earn product and service revenue (20% on each $50 per user/per year price) from their new and existing customers by deploying Google Apps. Google provides resellers with the standard marketing collateral (sales tools and technical training) and management accounts (console to create and manage customer accounts).