SaaS Week

OpSource has announced a new product at its annual OpSource SaaS Summit today called OpSource Connect. Below is a 9:38 minute podcast about the product.

If you're interested in this news, be sure to sign up for ebizQ's SOA and Web 2.0 roundtable discussion on March 19.

Listen to the entire podcast Download file

I'm ebizQ's Krissi Danielsson. Santa Clara, Calif.-based OpSource is a company that specializes in operational infrastructure and application services products that facilitate delivery of on-demand and software as a service applications. Today, February 29 2008, at its annual OpSource SaaS Summit, OpSource has announced a new product called OpSource Connect that will facilitate behind-the-scenes SaaS integration.

Joining us today to talk about OpSource Connect is OpSource CEO Treb Ryan. Now Treb, can I start by asking about the rationale behind the decision to create OpSource Connect and what problem it will solve in the marketplace?

TR: OpSource Connect is a direct response to requests that have come from our customers. I mean their businesses have grown. More and more of the rationale or the implementation of Software-as-a-Service applications have grown beyond just siloed applications used by individual users or organizations. What they now need to integrate with a wide variety of other Software-as-a-Service applications as well as behind the firewall legacy applications for the enterprises they’re installing into.

OpSource Connect allows our customers to use the OpSource Services Bus, the same multi-tenant enterprise services both have OpSource uses to provide a variety of Web services to its customers, to provide their own application as a Web service, and to integrate with a wide variety of other OpSource Service Bus applications, other OpSource applications, third-party Web services such as Salesforce and NetSuite and behind the firewall applications such as QuickBook -- QuickBooks, SAP, and Sage.

KD: Okay. Previous to the release of OpSource Connect, how would companies typically have had to handle these integration challenges?

TR: Each company would need to do this on their own, become their own Web services platform for making this happen. So each company would go out and create its own Web services API and then integrate one one-to-one to each other application they were looking to integrate to.

So a company would have to go out and -- and -- and take the time to create its own Web services API to setup all of the elements necessary to make that happen and then do a point-to-point integration for each separate application they wanted to integrate with whether it was OpSource application such as Analytics or Billing, another third-party Web service application such as Salesforce, or for behind the firewall they would need to integrate with individual applications behind the firewall.

KD: Do you have any kind of figures about what kind of savings and ROI companies might be able to expect from using this versus doing it the old way?

TR: Obviously, the write once integrate many times, the OpSource Connect allows our customers -- saves on each additional integration. But that’s really not the focus of why companies are looking to implement these types of integration capabilities and Web service capabilities back into their applications. The focus on more than savings is really revenue.

KD: Okay.

TR: The customer base today and -- and -- and our, you know, our research -- what we’re hearing back from our customers and what we’re hearing out in the market is integration has largely surpassed security as the number one concern for large enterprises when implementing Software-as-a-Service from the IT perspective.

The applications have great user adoption and IT have become comfortable with the security level of these applications, especially, with all the recent compliance measures that these types of applications have taken. But now, they’re wondering how they integrated back into the rest of their enterprise. And -- and not having a -- a compelling answer for -- for these enterprises has really become a -- a sales stumbling block many Software-as-a-Service companies.

KD: Okay. So if a company were interested in implementing OpSource Connect, what does the implementation look like in time and effort that is required to get it up and running?

TR: Well, OpSource Connect will require the company to be able to expose their application as a Web service for the integration onto the OpSource Services Bus. The process of exposing that application as a Web service depends on how the application was originally architected. Many of our customers already have that capability right out of the gate. Companies like Ribit and [inaudible] designed with Web services in mind and it can be -- be immediately integrated onto the OpSource Services Bus with very little effort.

For those companies who need to take the time to add a new code into their application and scale their application to actually implement a Web Services API effectively, we are going to be offering in the Spring the Web Services Enablement Program where an OpSource person or our partners will work with our customers in order to do the necessary coding and programming to make sure their API works in -- in a general Web services environment.

KD: So is there anything else that you think that listeners should know about OpSource Connect at this time?

TR: Well, the industry is definitely moving towards these types of corporate Mashups or composite applications where data from multiple locations and interfaces from multiple locations come into play in a single application environment for a customer. We seen this out in the consumer world already with Mashups that include Google Maps or F8 doing, you know, Facebook applications.

But up to now, those environments haven’t really been suitable for an enterprise type integration. Besides the tools necessary to bring in corporate applications, those environments haven’t put all the appropriate pieces in place that are -- that we expect from enterprise level fast. With OpSource Services Bus and OpSource Connect, you’re getting many of the best benefits of OpSource in that type of environment, meaning that it’s an open platform, it’s based on SOAP and REST protocols, it’s completely scalable.

We’re already able to handle millions of transactions over -- over the OpSource Services Bus with OpSource Connect. It’s reliable. You get the same SOA type of guarantee you get with any OpSource application which is a 100 percent application availability, and it’s secure and compliant. All OpSource Connect applications and OpSource Services receive the same compliance that any OpSource application, meaning that it’s SAS 70 Type II certified, its PCI Level I, meaning you can put financial and credit card data over these Web services transactions.

It’s European Safe Harbor for our customers who are doing business in Europe. It can HIPPA for customers who have medical -- medical applications. Finally, with OpSource Billing, you’re going to actually bill and meter for those transactions and turn these into the businesses. It’s a real opportunity right out of the gate. So we think the OpSource Connect is the first Web services integration environment that not only provides the tools necessary to make this happen but does it in a way that’s sufficient for the enterprise and can really be put into corporate environments.

KD: All right. That sounds good and should give people a good preview of what to expect. Do you have any general thoughts about key Software-as-a-Service trends over the coming year or two?

TR: Obviously, we see -- obviously, we see Software-as-a-Service uptake and continuing at a accelerating pace. The next generation of users coming into the enterprise are very, very Web-centric and they’re going to expect that the applications they use at work are like the applications they’ve used growing up, Web-based collaborative, interactive applications that often bring in data and information from multiple sources and locations.

That said, what’s really driving this market then is -- is less the individual applications now and their ability to work with each other. Our SaaS Summit is occurring as we speak, it’s about platforms and integration and Web services; these are the elements that companies are going to be addressing as they scale their business.

The opportunities are fantastic because good Web service platforms can not only add more functionality into the application and reduce the integration headache for their customers; they open new -- new channels through Web-based system integrators who can Mashup multiple Web applications and corporate applications for the enterprise customer.

This is really going to speed the adoption of Software-as-a-Service as it works well with not only other Web applications, but now will work well with corporations existing, in-house applications and third-party client server applications to really get a consistent hold for those organizations and this is really going to allow Software-as-a-Service to sell even bigger deals for bigger types of companies.

KD: All right. We've been talking with OpSource CEO Treb Ryan about OpSource Connect, a newly announced integration product for SaaS providers. Remember, for more on Web 2.0, SaaS, SOA and other enterprise technologies, you can visit www.ebizq.net. Thanks for listening and have a great day!