Jamcracker At Your Service

Jamcracker said its new services delivery network, launching Monday, will help channel partners ensure their value-added role in the emerging software-as-a-service universe.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company’s technology enables even client/ server software to be more automatically ordered, provisioned and meted to customers on an as-needed basis. The new Jamcracker Service Delivery Network will provide training and certification to solution providers and advertise their qualifications in a services catalog, said Brent Arslaner, vice president of marketing at Jamcracker.

“The biggest void in software as a service is there’s no channel strategy today. The notion is to make it easy to participate in on-demand delivery,” he said.

Jamcracker, started six years ago by Exodus Communications co-founder K.B. Chandrasekhar, began as an ASP aggregator offering some 30 applications for SMBs. Now, it is trying to embrace an army of solution providers addressing that market. Some want to host applications themselves, some want to provide customer support, some want to hand-tailor existing applications to fit a customer’s exact needs. There are many potential roles, Arslaner said.

Jamcracker said there are about 20 charter members of the network, including Aztec Software, Intellireach, Navisite, Progress Software, Salesnet and Spikesource. ISVs wanting to participate have to build an adapter for their software. “Once they have that they can take advantage of single sign-on, provisioning and other back-end functions necessary for the secure and efficient delivery of applications on demand,” he said.

“I firmly believe there needs to be a platform that would standardize the way technology is deployed whether it’s via a co-location model, managed services, whatever. There needs to be a common platform to bring all these tools together,” said Mark Clayman, senior vice president of hosting at Navisite, Andover, Mass.

In some respects, Jamcracker’s platform competes with IBM technology and Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. But mostly it vies with home-grown provisioning and management solutions from managed service and hosting providers. Microsoft also has strongly signaled it wants to get in the game of providing a more robust infrastructure for managed services and hosted apps.