EXTRANET NEWS * Week of
Editors: Joel Orr and N'omi Orr
http://www.extranetnews.com
1. LOADSPRING: ONE YEAR LATER
2. THE LIST
3. TIDBITS
4. QUOTE OF THE WEEK
1. LOADSPRING: ONE YEAR LATER
Joel Orr
IN BRIEF: Loadspring lets you share applications and collaborate over the Web.
More detail: When we last spoke with Loadspring Solutions Inc. (EXTRANET NEWS/AEC 23 July 2001), the young company (founded at the end of 1999) emphasized several points:
* They used Citrix to allow users to share almost any application running on Loadspring's secure servers; the customer buys the licenses, and Loadspring hosts the applications.
* They served AEC, manufacturing, and other markets; "We are a 'process vertical,' not an 'industry vertical,'" said founder and CEO Eric Leighton.
* They offered a guaranteed level of service.
* They were "customer-funded," living off of revenues from the time the company was three months old; no outside investors.
Today, over a year--and an eon in Internet time--later, the story is much the same, said Eric Leighton. "We have about 12 employees, and we are on track to double our 2001 revenues by the end of this year."
The company has managed to acquire several Fortune 50 firms as customers. "Our main competition is in-house efforts, not other vendors. And interestingly, the IT people are often our biggest allies. They want to see technical software hosting outsourced. They want it to be easy for the users, and they don't want the headaches of supporting specialized packages."
"One of our biggest selling points to these customers is our security orientation. We underwent a security audit by a very large firm--they have a 170-person security department--and they told us, when they were done, that our security policies and practices were superior to their own."
"Everyone is thinking short-term, and everyone is very cost-conscious these days," he continued. "Our ease of use and maintenance, our level-of-service guarantee, our ease of upgrading, and the fact that we can start and stop quickly and easily result in very clear return on investment for large firms."
"For smaller firms, the intangibles, rather than cost savings, are more convincing. And we love the tough economy; it makes our story more attractive."
We asked Leighton what he meant by "level of service." "Our biggest vendor competitor, for example, is Webex. They get big bucks for guaranteeing four or five nines (ie, .99999) up-time. Our approach is to ask, 'What do you need?' Most customers only need, say, 8 am to 6 pm. We can easily guarantee that, and back it up by telling them they won't be charged for any month in which we fail to provide it--without investing in all the infrastructure required for near-100% level of service. That allows us to price our service much lower than anyone else's."
"We have," he added, "an exclusive arrangement with Primavera to host their client-server project management product, Expedition. We provide hosting for Framework Technologies as well."
The product's
Pricing is reasonable, and varies depending on specific applications and other conditions. $150-$200 per seat per month is common.
The CAM Console can also be installed behind the customer's firewall.
Pro's: Fully outsourced application management; fast, inexpensive ramp-up; well-defined maintenance and upgrading costs; guaranteed level of service; little or no local IT burden.
Con's: Performance may be limited by available bandwidth and speed of Citrix.
Our take: For large AEC and manufacturing firms--a no-brainer. For small to medium-size companies--worth considering.
2. THE LIST
Total companies: 257 (see who's on The List at http://www.extranetnews.com)
3. TIDBITS
* Excellent case study of InQuest extranet use by Staples in AEC Vision Web magazine: http://www.aecvision.com/vision.php?article=200208/case_study_1.html
* MPS User Conference 2002: Connecting with Customers
will be held September 18-20, in