Announces New Cross-Cloud Solutions for Sales, Marketing and HR Built on Appirio CloudWorks
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., September 15, 2010 (Appirio Cloud Leadership Summit)—Today Appirio introduced the first cloud broker technology to help enterprises unleash information from SaaS silos, solving a growing problem faced by enterprises who are moving multiple applications to the cloud. Appirio CloudWorks enables companies to build solutions that connect SaaS applications from leaders like Google, salesforce.com, Workday and their ecosystem partners twice as fast, at one-third the cost of alternative approaches. The resulting cross-cloud solutions serve businesses by increasing productivity and improving data quality and compliance. CloudWorks also makes it easier for IT to manage data, users and processes across SaaS applications, and provide better access to SaaS information on mobile devices.
Appirio also announced three types of cross-cloud solutions built on CloudWorks: packaged Appirio solutions for sales and HR (SalesWorks and PeopleWorks); custom solutions that can be created for a specific enterprise need (CustomWorks); and partner solutions that leverage the CloudWorks foundation.
“Part of the reason we’re seeing such significant growth in cloud computing is because it drastically improves the way business and IT work - and how they work together,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and fellow at Gartner. “Yet most IT departments are still working with the cloud in a 20th century way. Cloud Service Brokerages and brokerage enabling technology can help IT get greater leverage from the cloud-model, and navigate an increasingly complex cloud ecosystem.”
CloudWorks: Creating a Foundation for a Cloud-Powered Business
Appirio CloudWorks gives enterprise IT departments a customizable cloud-optimized architecture, so they can focus less on plumbing and more on achieving business goals. To make development, integration and delivery of cross-cloud solutions easier and more cost effective, CloudWorks provides these components:
- Unified identity, security and data
- Context and aggregation services
- Common business object definitions
- Delivered as a service, with no hardware or software required
According to data from Appirio’s soon-to-be-released survey of 150 cloud adopters, cloud applications will play an increasingly important role in enterprise IT. Forty-five percent of cloud adopters say they plan to have the majority of their IT in the cloud within one year, and 68 percent say this will happen in three years. And while more than 70 percent of cloud adopters said reducing SaaS silos is a priority to increase value and impact of their cloud applications, only four percent had fully integrated them. Forty percent cite existing technology limitations as a reason.
“Information silos cost organizations millions of dollars in waste every year and our industry billions,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “Our experience with nearly 200 enterprises across more than 700 cloud projects has shown us and our customers that cloud applications are a giant step beyond traditional business applications. Yet silos still exist -- mainly because integration, until now, has been point-to-point and focused only on the data, not the user. We developed CloudWorks so enterprises can finally unlock the full potential of the cloud.”
Cross-Cloud Solutions: Increasing the Value of SaaS Investments
Cross-cloud solutions built on Appirio’s cloud broker technology, CloudWorks, bring together data among applications such as Google Apps, salesforce.com, Workday and their ecosystem partners. The solutions proactively present contextually relevant information inside the tools and applications that employees and managers use every day -- their email, calendar, start page or mobile devices -- so they have the information they need, when they need it, wherever they are, to help make better decisions. The solutions not only surface information, they also allow users to update or act on information immediately. This improves productivity, increases data quality across systems, and takes greater advantage of existing SaaS applications.
CloudWorks-based solutions announced today include:
- SalesWorks: A packaged solution that drives results by giving sales teams better, more accurate information from across their business. SalesWorks delivers relevant customer-related data to sales teams in their email, calendar or to their mobile device -- adding context to customer interactions using valuable information that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. See separate press release on SalesWorks for more details. SalesWorks is now available for Salesforce CRM customers.
- PeopleWorks: A packaged solution that securely delivers context-sensitive HR-related information inside a manager’s inbox so they can more efficiently manage employees without the risk of exposing data to insecure environments. PeopleWorks is available in mid-October for Workday customers.
- CustomWorks: Custom solutions created by Appirio’s experienced services professionals for a specific business need using CloudWorks as a foundation. CustomWorks is now available.
- CloudWorks extensions from other SaaS providers: Partner solutions from other SaaS providers that tap into the CloudWorks platform to extend the value of their own solutions. Today Appirio introduces three extensions from D&B, Marketo and Xactly that bring additional financial information, marketing insight and sales compensation data into SalesWorks. SaaS providers interested in creating solutions that use CloudWorks can sign up to join Appirio’s forthcoming CloudWorks Solution Partner Program at http://www.appirio.com/partner.
For more information on CloudWorks, and Appirio’s cross-cloud solutions built on CloudWorks, please visit http://www.appirio.com/products/CloudWorks.php.
Useful Links:
- CloudWorks demo
- CloudWorks data sheet
- CloudWorks introduction video
- SalesWorks demo
- SalesWorks screenshots
- SalesWorks data sheet
About Appirio
Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider offering products and professional services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of cloud applications and platforms. Appirio's innovation and expertise has been recognized by Businessweek as one of America's Most Promising Startups and by AlwaysOn as On-Demand Company of the Year. Appirio has helped more than 180 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon. We are proud to serve a wide range of customers such as Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware, as well as the 5,000 companies that use Appirio's products to connect and extend cloud platforms. Founded in 2006, Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.
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