With the evolutionary changes in the cloud market, the path to SaaS has become multi-fold. It is vital for software providers to understand the SaaS development and infrastructure eco-system.

Join us for this live-webinar presented by Janaki Jayachandran, Head of ‘Aspire Systems’ SaaS Center of Excellence, as he lay out the ways of going on-demand. Some of the topics being discussed in this session:

- Different approaches available in building your SaaS solution

- Various factors influencing each SaaS adoption path

- Relate their relevance to your business and product requirements

Date: Feb 18th, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM ET/ 08:00 AM PT/ 04:00 PM BST/ 09:30 IST

Registration is Free!

Click here to register

Aspire together with our customer, Biz-LX™ is organizing an informative webinar where we discuss the journey of building a software solution using Web 2.0 tools such as RIA and mashups, and demonstrate the benefits of such an exercise with a real-time case study.

In this webinar you’ll learn:

- Techniques used to design software solutions to allow better usability
- How to evaluate and select Web 2.0 techologies suitable for your software?
- The business benefits and implications of applying Web 2.0 designs to your software solution

Date: Thursday, Nov 19, 2009
Time: 11:00 AM ET/04:00 PM BST/ 09:30 PM IST

Regsitration is FREE!

Click here to register:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/587477833

Panelists:

Dave Strite
Chief Information Officer, Biz-LX™

Elango Kanakaraji
Head – Web 2.0 Specialization, Aspire Systems

Image credit: liftarn

The Panel discussion hosted by Aspire Systems on “Bootstrapping a Technology start-up” evoked a very good response from software startups across the globe and a few consultants/ecosystem partners as well. We had 3 eminent panelists participating (Prakash Narayan, co-founder and CTO of MiCello; Ted Finch, Owner and CEO of Chanimal and R S Ramkumar, Managing Director and founder of MangoDVM) and Bhoovarahan Thirumalai, Board member and co-founder of Aspire Systems, moderated the panel.

It was an interesting & lively session – we had four broad themes, around which each of the panelists shared their views.

Perfect Vs Quick and Dirty Product

The first theme was on the conundrum of getting a perfect product out Vs a quick and dirty product. One view was that if you’re an engineer, you want a perfect product but from a marketing perspective, you want to show something to your customers as soon as possible. As users are much more ready to give you feedback nowadays, you need to get your product to the market as soon as possible.

The importance of iterating early and iterating often was also stressed upon. Another good point brought up was the use of analytics – measuring how your customers are using your product, which part of your product they are using the most etc.

On the question of who is your first best customer – one of the panelists mentioned that if you are a startup, and if you have a customer, you should embrace that customer – whether it’s a marquee customer or someone (who may not be big) but believes in your product. The point was that when you do approach professional investors, they certainly want to know who believes in the product apart from you & it adds a lot of value to have a MoU with a company willing to use your product.

Another panelist was of the view that a customer who requests your product to be custom-built is your first best customer, as your product is paid for. While this product may not meet all the market needs, it could possibly meet 70% of the needs and can get you started.

Time, Budget and Scope

The question of where does one start when developing the product idea evoked different responses from each of the panelists. Prakash’s view was that it was a good thing to have some protection (read: patent) around your core idea and to use existing frameworks and tools to reduce the time-to-market. Making crucial decisions in terms of the trade-off between features and time/budget are also extremely important.

Read the full summary here or register to view the Recorded Version of the Panel Discussion

- What kind of business changes/adaptations are needed in a SaaS model?
- Should we sunset on-premise product (or) keep it and offer hybrid solutions?
- Technically, is SaaS a feasible model for my product?
- What should be the SaaS development strategy – in-house development or cloud computing strategies?

Join Aspire and our partner Calia Consulting for an illuminating session on September 24th at 9 AM Pacific time, as they share and discuss the key considerations in making a SaaS transition.

Registration is FREE!

Click here to Regsiter:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/736707585

Panelists:

Dani Shomron
SaaS Expert – Calia Consulting

Janaki Jayachandran
Business Unit Manager – SaaS Specialization, Aspire Systems

Aspire Systems is organizing a webinar with noted speakers Euan Semple – Director of Euansemple.com and Alan Moore – Founder, SMLXL, who will discuss and share their views on Web 2.0 for the enterprise.

Some of the topics that will be discussed during this 1 hour session, to be conducted in a short while, include:

- Real value of Web 2.0 for Business
- Challenges and essential baby steps in Enterprise 2.0 adoption
- Social Media Marketing

Date : September 3, 2009
Time : 11.00 AM ET/ 08.00 AM PT/ 04:00 PM BST/08:30 PM IST

Click here to Register:
http://www.aspiresys.com/events/current-events/web2.0_for_the_enterprise.html

There was a good response from Technology heads and Product Managers from companies already having SaaS as a delivery model and those looking to transition. The presentation can be found here upon registering, and answers to the questions discussed during the webinar can be downloaded here.

Alexey started the discussion with a hypothetical business case of a medical company offering a SaaS solution. The company had security challenges and he discussed the steps taken by their CEO, Bob to resolve these challenges. He talked about addressing security not just at the application level, but holistically at all levels in an organization. He discussed how Bob started looking at the product development and QA function and one by one looked at all the functions such as customer service, data center operations, internal network support, sales, HR, etc. Alexey emphasized how security should be addressed at a cultural level in an organization.

Jothi took the session forward covering in depth the key areas in application security which seems to be the major security challenge faced by any SaaS provider. She discussed Data Security, Access Control Security and Security in the Cloud.

Some key takeaways from the session were:

- Factors & Goals to be considered in Security
- Security as a Culture in a corporate setting
- Data Security: Storage Architecture, Design Schemas and Audit Trials
- Access Control Security: Authentication and Authorization
- Cloud Security: considerations in moving to a public cloud

If you’d like to know more about this webinar, or have any feedback, please feel free to contact jothi.rengarajan@aspiresys.com

Moving beyond bugs: Testing solutions for optimizing product quality

Changing business environments need mature testing processes & practices that can guarantee success rather than just cut costs. While Testing has traditionally been regarded as a curative solution, the reality is that it is a preventive medicine that can enhance product capabilities and help meet business objectives.

Join us for a webinar to know how Aspire can help you:

-> Handle quality challenges at every stage of the SDLC using our IQA approach

-> Optimize testing process and accelerate releases leveraging our Test Automation Framework – PropelQ

-> Transform QA processes to plan your budgets effectively

-> Identify appropriate processes and tools

-> Gain an insight to our expertise through our success stories

Presenter:

Ananth Krishnamoorthy
Head – Independent Verification & Validation Services at Aspire Systems

Date : Thursday, August 27, 2009
Time : 11:00 AM EST

Register now

For those of you who can’t make it but want to attend, I will put up a link to the recorded webinar here later.

- What is your Security policy? How secure is my data? Who can access my data in your company?
- How separated is my data from your other customers?
- How does your solution address authorization and encryption need?
- What kind of physical security measures are being followed?

Join Aspire for an hour long discussion with trusted experts, Alexey Lef, Chief Technical Architect – SciQuest and Jothi Rengarajan, Senior Technical Architect – Aspire Systems, as they share and discuss various “How To’s” of providing a secure SaaS solution.

Date : Thursday, August 13, 2009
Time : 11:00 AM ET/ 08:00 AM PT/ 04:00 PM BST/ 08:30 PM IST

Click here to register:
http://www.aspiresys.com/events/current-events/managing-security-threat-in-saas-essential-how-tos.html

Aspire Systems hosted a webinar recently, where Amy Wohl of Wohl Associates and Alex Ginger, Director of Active Operations Management International, a SaaS provider, discussed the two business models, in light of the current economic situation.

Some key take-aways from this session:

• How SaaS is redefining the software market
• Difference between on-premise and on-demand models: a)Differences in software development – when building a new SaaS product, migrating an existing product to SaaS, or supporting both the traditional and on-demand models.
  b) Differences in operations – maintenance, support and on-going relationship with customers
  c) Differences in sales & marketing – various channels and costs associated with it
• Need for the SaaS Business Model
• Case study of a successful SaaS solution – Workware™
• Managing SaaS profitability – key factors influencing cost and revenue, that contribute to profitability

Click here to view the recorded webinar or here to view the presentation.

Frameworks help maintain developer discipline, limit unnecessary re-invention of the wheel and provide features that are almost universal requirements. Enterprise product frameworks go one step further by providing a pre-built product architecture layer with many cross-concerns and design decisions addressed. This helps development teams focus on solving business issues and reduces development time by more than 30%.

“Propel” is Aspire Systems’ enterprise product framework, that reduces the time and cost to develop a software product by about 30%. It comes with a pre-built, tested product architecture layer and can help developers focus on solving business issues, instead of worrying about basic design decisions and other cross-concerns.

Aspire Systems hosted a webinar on the importance of Enterprise Product Frameworks this month.

Some other key take-aways from this session:

• How product frameworks can be leveraged to your advantage.
• The quality and other indirect benefits of using frameworks.
• How Propel can reduce your development time and costs by 30%.
• Real-life experience of Ajuba Solutions on how they use Propel to develop their solutions rapidly.

The recorded webinar can be viewed by registering here