We are the jedi warriors of ContainerX
We are working hard to ensure that containers don’t just stay as a development tool, but become a fundamental building block of the data centers of the future.
Of course, ContainerX isn’t the only company working in the field of enterprise software. As well as ContainerX there are plenty of competitors on the market that all offer similar software-as-a-service business models. These software companies may be worth watching as the market changes and adapts to the ever-changing world of technology. With newer and more diverse technology also comes more diverse competition between companies who all wish to sell their own versions of the latest trend-setting technology. Below are just a few companies that are focused on the software-service business model.
Coupa Software
A long-standing company that was founded all the way back in 2006, Coupa Software offers an open source e-procurement service via its self-titled “Coupa eProcurement Express”. This system is mainly geared towards use in midsize businesses. Coupa also intends to create a software-as-a-service model of this particular service and currently has an enterprise version that is still in beta. It is said that this enterprise version will cost between $50,000 and $60,000 for midsize companies of around 300-500 employees, making this a relatively affordable option depending on your businesses’ current budget and its need for a service like this one.
Coupa is being very closely watched by many in the industry as its founders, Dave Stephens and Noah Eisner, were heavily involved with the development of Oracle’s own procurement application. Stephens, the CEO of Coupa, spent close to a decade creating several high-end enterprise applications at Oracle and he is using his vast prior knowledge to create an open source tool that is easy to purchase and even easier to use. Coupa is creating an affordable open source solution to any software container need.
Kineticsware
Kineticsware primarily sells extensions to the already-popular and well-stablished Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Dynamics CRM program. Their main target demographic are companies who sell highly intensive, supply-chain-like high-tech consumer goods. Kineticsware’s software is used to collaborate and synchronize both customer and supplier details such as e-procurement, sales figures, operation plans, customer life-cycle management and many other aspects. This platform’s price ranges from very affordable to a little more on the expensive side depending on how large the business is and how many employees/customers it has, ranging from around $50,000 to $300,000. This is definitely a company worth keeping an eye on as Kineticsware was originally founded by Richard Barnett and Jeffrey Sampson who were the previous heads of Microsoft Dynamics. While working there they worked very closely with the products that they now develop and create such as platforms that collaborate financial information, CRM and supply chain information.
InvisibleCRM
InvisibleCRM offers add-on products for Amdocs and Salesforce.com as well as Documentum, which is part of EMC. These add-ons include such applications as SalesFolder, which works to map out a Salesforce document’s repositories and transfer them to the local desktop. They are then organised into folders that can then be accessed offline. Document sharing and delivery is then automated by the add-on. Another application that InvisibleCRM have developed is called Outlook Integration. Outlook Integration is mainly targeted for use with Amdocs. This application synchronizes any and all Amdocs data with Outlook so that scheduling functions and communications are streamlined, making customer service a lot easier in the process.
The InvisibleCRM product line greatly helps small to medium size businesses as their applications help to synchronize the information from Salesforce.com with their own Windows applications, making sure that all applications that are frequently used are automatically updated when required. Customer information is also stored and transferred with extreme ease between the desktop application and the CRM system. This business model may be a highly profitable one as it is very affordable and can be used widely by all companies who wish to streamline their customer information storage and movement.
LucidEra
Another software-as-a-service business practise, LucidEra provides midsize business firms with business intelligence. LucidEra allows its customers to outsource all of their business intelligence systems via the use of their application. Their application prides itself on being very simple to both set up and use, having a highly accessible user interface that is clear and well-thought out. LucidEra’s application is primarily devoted to collecting, storing and organizing market data and customer information as well as financial and sales information. This particular model goes for an affordable $3000 per customer, per month. This price covers the connectors that are used to connect the data sources to the billing software. This combines both the sales information and the financial data into one easy to locate and read space. The type of application that LucidEra have created continues to be a very sought-after service on the market for smaller to medium size businesses as it is an easy way to keep track of administrative data that could otherwise easily overwhelm businesses of this size if they are helmed by those less experienced.