As part of its move to help ISVs sell more of their wares—and, in turn, more IBM hardware, storage, middleware and services—IBM announced this week new resources to develop software delivered as a service.
The initiative is part of IBMs ISV support program, which the company bolstered with an additional $100 million investment earlier this year.
“The key is, were taking the work weve been doing and using the intellectual capital and business design in our work with clients and applying that to ISVs,” said Dave Mitchell, director for software services strategy at IBM, in Armonk, N.Y.
IBMs Software as a Service, or SaaS, Partner Council is working to develop and deploy a model that lets users install preconfigured, preintegrated software components that cover a broad range of functionality, from ERP (enterprise resource planning) to CRM (customer relationship management).
“The ultimate vision is a single log-in, single invoice, with the ability for people to select best of breed,” said Jason Jacobs, CEO of CoreSense Inc., in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., a SaaS Showcase premier partner and a member of the council.
One of the initial SaaS ISVs involved in the council, Intacct Corp., is building on IBMs model by enabling the delivery of business processes as a service.
Next month, Intacct, in Los Gatos, Calif., will release three new products, including an integration service, ConnectERP, that automatically updates the customer record in Salesforce.com Inc.s CRM software and the inventory list in SAP AGs Warehouse Management System.
User-defined rules allow users to set up unique workflows across applications to deliver business processes as a service.
A new CustomERP tool lets users customize applications with so-called Smart Links that point Intacct pages to data in external systems.
A ManageERP Web portal tool lets users deploy and manage applications, customizations and integrations across sites.