Phil Wainewright at ZDNet makes a wonderful case for multi-tenancy when it comes to modern SaaS applications.

The strength of multi-tenancy is that each of its multitude of individual tenants keeps it constantly evolving. This is in direct contrast to single tenancy, the whole point of which is to limit evolution only to those changes that are perceived to directly benefit the individual tenant. Thus single tenancy misses out on innovations and other advances that are being adopted by competitors, partners and third-party services.

He makes a great case especially in the collaborative aspects of the cloud. But not all multi-tenant architectures are the same.

One reason why single-tenancies still exist is that they are inherently more open to a wide range of users and they can all operate under a single configuration. This is ideal for collaboration. But that can be taken to its own limitations especially in regards to security, specialized processes and workflows, and unique information management.

As we see more business apps evolving into more social components, cloud application platforms are going to need to not only be multi-tenant, but also feature community tenancies.

You still want to maintain segmentation between companies (i.e. tenancies), but you also want to be able to leverage the greater user community as a whole.

Let’s take the federal government as an example. They might have a private cloud in which each department has their own focused tenant. This lets them keep their apps specialized for their own tasks, while also leverages a common architecture and any core apps. But they would also benefit from a bit of cross pollination. Exchanging ideas, working with partners, even internal workforce crowdsourcing. A community tenancy with those kind of applications in mind would be necessary.

So rather than use yet another platform for community apps, your cloud app platform should be ready to support both multi-tenant as well as community tenancies.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, multitenancy, private cloud, saas, software-as-a-service

The Inc. magazine has ranked LongJump as one of their Inc.5000 of fastest growing private companies. LongJump and its leading cloud application platform is positioned at #1090 overall including #74 of software companies and #23 in the San Jose Metro Area.

Says Inc. president Bob LaPointe:

“The leaders of the companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 have figured out how to grow their businesses during the longest recession since the Great Depression. The 2010 Inc. 5000 showcases a particularly hardy group of entrepreneurs.”

According to Inc.500, the 2010 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2006 to 2009.

 

Technorati Tags: bob lapointe, inc 500, inc magazine, PaaS, Sales and CRM

For enterprises and ISVs, it has become more important than ever to support a global workforce. In fact, according to AnythingResearch.com, the translation and interpretation services industry is a $2.7 billion market that has grown an average of 22 percent a year since 2004. The main thrust is the need for U.S. military and businesses expanding overseas as well as the healthcare industry.

Whether you need an application to deliver software solutions in Portuguese, French, or Klingon, chances are the challenge is not so much in software development or even the translation but in having a multi-tenant SaaS platform that can support translation of enterprise-class, web-based applications. In fact, a PaaS architecture is ideal for such requirements.

With LongJump, each individual user can access the platform user interface in their own language, and language definitions are defined at the tenant level. Through the Translation Workbench, you can define new languages and replace all UI labels and alerts based on the selected language.

LongJump’s Bulk Translation and Localization Process

If you’re creating an entire tenant from scratch and want to include support for multiple languages, LongJump provides a fast way to perform bulk translation.

1. LongJump exports all existing UI labels to a CSV file
2. The Enterprise or ISV can then translate the entire contents of the file themselves or take it to a translation firm for interpretation
3. With the new labels, you upload the file back in and choose a name for the language
4. That language then becomes available to the tenant and each individual user can choose it

When you need to update through the bulk process, the new entries will simply overwrite the existing ones. LongJump also provides support for plurals.

Incremental Translation Process

As changes occur to the platform, you might add a new object, process or field for example. Rather than performing a bulk translation process, you can dive into the Translation Workbench and choose the element and then the specific term. We’ve organized the application model into elements for easier reference.

Developer Controls for Translation

One last aspect to LongJump’s Translation Workbench capabilities is allowing the code developer to access the translated elements. The Ajax API, Java API and REST API all support the ability to retrieve the localized message labels. While coding still occurs in the native English, all the presentation results can be displayed based on the language you want.

Technorati Tags: application development, localization tools, PaaS, saas, software localization, software translation, software translation tools

While we don’t usually review books on this blog, the Manga Guide to Databases deserves some serious attention for LongJump users. Those who are just getting started with relational database design and data modeling will find this guide to be entertaining and extremely comprehensive. And even the most seasoned DB gurus can appreciate just how accessible this guide is. Some of our LongJump engineers are already looking to buy copies for their kids.

Of course this book focuses on very bare bones database development, covering everything from entity-relationship diagramming to database security to data sharing and scalability issues (much of which LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service handles natively without having to write SQL or having to architect a database infrastructure). Still, the courseware provides real “fantasy” world examples complete with theory and exercises, and it does so with humor and clarity.

In fact, this unique approach to learning definitely puts the fun back in the fundamentals. Here’s hoping they develop a Manga Guide to REST Web Services!

Technorati Tags: database, manga, rdbms, relational data, sql