Blue Martini Software Chooses OpSource to Deliver Blue On-Demand

2005-03-02 - Santa Clara, CA, USA: Blue Martini Software (NASDAQ: BLUE) has selected OpSource, Inc. as its partner for delivering "Blue On-Demand" to its customers. The deal marks Blue Martini's move into the on-demand sales optimization market. Blue Martini say that, by leveraging OpSource's Optimal On-Demand(sm), they can deliver solutions in a hosted model or software-as-a-service model to the market quickly, while minimizing its investment and risk. OpSource is described as a complete, turnkey, scalable service delivery solution that is cost-effective and offers a 100% availability guarantee. OpSource focuses on enabling Independent Software Vendors to transform their traditional delivery models to selling Software as a Service (SaaS), while significantly reducing their operational costs.

"With OpSource as our partner, we can focus on our core business of developing and selling industry leading sales optimization software to multi-channel retailers," said Monte Zweben, Chairman and CEO of Blue Martini Software. "We chose OpSource as a partner because of their significant experience in enabling software as a service. Their knowledge in the areas of security, support, disaster recovery, application management services and other key administrative and operational requirements will allow us to meet the specific needs of customers that demand alternative software delivery models."

Partnership Mirrors Industry Trends

"From the vendor perspective, selling licenses via subscription increases the predictability of software revenue and makes it easier to demonstrate future health," said Amy Konary, Program Director of Software Pricing, Licensing, and Delivery at IDC. "Customers like the low up-front cost of the subscription model as well as the enhanced ability to build an ongoing relationship with the software provider that they pay on an ongoing basis."

"Software companies recognize that successfully transitioning to a SaaS model requires strong partnerships with SaaS enablers like OpSource," explained Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource. "We can help solve model issues such as pricing, SLA and sales, code issues such as single instance versus multi instance or multi tenancy, and operational issues - what it takes to deliver on-demand software. End users are demanding software as a service, and our clients are reaping the benefits. Our clients are the forward-looking software companies that have improved their time to market for SaaS offerings, delivered higher quality of service for on-demand software and minimized their investment risk. Interestingly, our clients have also substantially reduced the sales cycle because our expertise allows the software company to quickly handle any objections that customers have around security, support, disaster recovery and other administrative and operational issues."

To support Blue Martini's applications, OpSource provides 24x7 systems management and monitoring in a fully redundant infrastructure hosted in a Tier 1 data center facility, in addition to on-site support. OpSource supplies security services, including redundant firewalls configured with session-based failover and a managed firewall. To ensure maximum scalability, OpSource delivers a utility computing architecture that encompasses business continuity services such as regular backups and disaster recovery. OpSource manages Blue Martini's escalation and support, change management and integrated application, network, and system monitoring. OpSource has also consulted on the technical and business elements of Blue Martini's service delivery model.