LongJump Releases Standards-Based Developer Suite

Rapidly Design, Develop and Deploy Custom Enterprise Applications, Lower Development Costs and Accelerate Time-to-Value

Sunnyvale, CA, Monday, September 22, 2008 – LongJump, a leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, today unveiled its LongJump Development Suite for developers eager to exploit the business opportunities and advantages of Internet-based application development and delivery. LongJump’s developer suite reflects the growing interest in cloud computing, which Gartner named one of the top ten strategic technologies for 2008, noting that web platforms are emerging to provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through cloud computing environments. Merrill Lynch predicts that within the next five years, the annual global market for cloud computing will swell to $95 billion.

While LongJump has already enabled businesses to harness a feature-rich platform to rapidly prototype and run multiple new applications without coding, this new offering provides advanced capabilities for developers with a Java-based set of tools to develop applications at the code level, allowing almost limitless enhancements and extensibility -- all within a PaaS environment.

“Platform-as-a-Service is not only real; it is inevitable. For LongJump, capturing the hearts of developers and businesses alike means incorporating industry standard tools, building a full-featured enterprise-level platform, and reducing the time it takes to complete application projects,” stated Pankaj Malviya, LongJump’s founder and CEO. “LongJump’s PaaS offering brings a unique approach to eliminating the costs, complexity and repetition inherent in developing and deploying business applications.”

Platform-as-a-Service Emerging as Cost-Effective Cloud Computing
Traditionally, businesses that needed flexible applications would need to buy, build, and maintain a complex architecture of servers, databases, application frameworks and solution design. The PaaS model provides developers and enterprise IT teams with a more cost-effective way to extend or build custom applications. With LongJump, businesses can benefit from significant “time-to-value” and ongoing adaptability since they can bypass the need to recreate common business data models, processes and functions. That, coupled with an on-demand, web-based platform, makes PaaS the ideal platform for a range of business critical applications and situational applications that often exceed the budgets and commitment businesses can provide.

Standards-Based Approach Shortens Time to Market
Unlike most PaaS providers offering platforms that rely on proprietary code and languages to build hosted applications in the cloud, LongJump has opted for a standards-based approach by leveraging a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), used by 69% of Java developers, according to BZ Research.

“Many have tried to distill the definition of PaaS to its most essential elements, but nearly everyone emphasizes flexibility and customizability relative to SaaS and ease of deployment relative to custom-built software. End-users prize SaaS applications for their universal accessibility, high degree of reliability and convenient pricing. These applications, however, are still packaged functions at their core and cannot always be fully customized for an enterprise's internal purposes. PaaS products attempt to win on customizability by providing users with a hosted palette of components that can be assembled as needed into business applications.” noted enterprise software analyst Vishwanath Venugopalan, of The 451 Group, a technology industry analyst firm, in a recent report. “Relative to custom software built and deployed in-house, PaaS offerings attract user interest for ease of deployment and reduced time to market.”

LongJump's PaaS offering enables the use of customizable, reusable application “Building Blocks” including objects, scripts, component extensions, business logic, data policies, and workflows that greatly improve the speed of application development and sharing of data across applications. Once data models and processes are created by either clicking or coding, these building blocks can be reused across the platform to serve a variety of business needs. For example, a single contract object and its records can be created and reused by business teams such as sales, business development, compliance, legal, and finance by simply modifying data policies and workflows.

The new LongJump Development Suite includes a visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling as well as advanced coding and scripting features for developers who are familiar with Java, so they can enhance and extend applications or completely create new data models and processes from scratch. Additionally, LongJump provides a set of web service integration points using SOAP and RESTful APIs to seamlessly connect to external systems or platforms. When LongJump Objects are extended, those fields are immediately available for integration with SOAP and REST APIs, workflow processes, and the built-in report creation wizard.

Key features in LongJump’s Development Suite include:
• Industry Standard Tools and Plug-Ins
➢ All coding is done in Java, JSP and HTML-based code
➢ AJAX library and data model definitions and usage enable developers to reuse existing LongJump functions and UI
➢ Plug-in available for Eclipse IDE

• Extensive Customization to Business Building Blocks
➢ Custom actionable data definitions provide the ability to manipulate data as needed or launch custom processes
➢ Custom component definitions provide the ability to define reusable components
➢ Custom Java class definitions enable defining and reusing classes across the platform
➢ Custom page definitions make completely unique UI experiences available to use within internal web tabs and via custom actions

• Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and RESTful Web Services
➢ APIs support both SOAP message responses over HTTP/HTTPS and custom Java-bean scripting
➢ APIs can trigger workflow processes using SOAP and RESTful web services
➢ Inbound and outbound SOAP messaging support to connect to external systems
➢ Update of existing RESTful web services API for data integration with external systems

Free to Existing Customers / Free Trial Usage Available
The LongJump Development Suite is available immediately and is a free upgrade for existing users of the platform. LongJump is currently offering a free 30-day evaluation here: www.longjump.com/devsuite.

About LongJump
Based in Sunnyvale, California, LongJump is a service of Relationals Inc., a privately-held, proven provider of on-demand CRM and SFA business applications to more than 150 enterprise companies. LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and catalog of highly customizable, business applications help companies reduces the time and cost of developing and delivering data-driven applications. Its business building blocks let developers and corporate IT teams gain significant time-to-value, since they can bypass the need to repeatedly recreate common business processes and functions. LongJump is the first platform-as-a-service provider to bring robust customization, integration, and powerful functionality to businesses of all sizes, enabling them to quickly design, implement and do further customization in an easy, affordable way. For more information, visit www.longjump.com or call 800.886.9028.

Editor’s Note: The 451 Group’s report, “Built to order: what's next for the platform-as-a-service market?” referenced above, is an independently-produced report that was neither sponsored by nor otherwise funded directly by LongJump. The report and its contents are the sole property of The 451 Group, copyright 2008, and are reproduced here by permission. The report is available at www.the451group.com.

# # #
Press Contact:
Carmen Hughes
Ignite P.R.
W: 650-592-1768
carmen@ignitepr.com

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