Jamcracker telco-SaaS platform ‘opens up’

Jamcracker, which helps telcos deliver software-as-a-service (SaaS), released a new XML-based toolkit this week to make it easier to add new software to its application catalog and delivery network.

It’s been a big week for SaaS and so-called “cloud computing,” with Google debuting its AppEngine platform earlier in the week. While Jamcracker’s Service Delivery Network will inevitably be compared to AppEngine, the two platforms are substantially different.

AppEngine is basically a “platform-as-a-service,” enabling Web-focused developers to build and host their applications online. Jamcracker is a more traditional ASP/SaaS business, with the twist that its platform focus is on enabling telcos to deliver and manage a portfolio of SaaS applications.

“The rest of the industry, like [Salesforce.com’s] AppExchange and Google and Amazon, are very much focused on taking their infrastructure and exposing it as a platform soup-to-nuts for developers to develop on,” said Steve Crawford, Jamcracker vice president of marketing. “We’re not in that game. We’re not a development platform; [rather] we connect to development platforms and to ‘shrink-wrapped’ SaaS apps and deliver them via our network.”

Jamcracker’s platform is more than 10 years old now, dating back to the early days of the ASP market. It has evolved – and survived – in large part by focusing on telcos as a key channel for delivering SaaS applications to end users. It counts XO Communications and Telus among its carrier partners and Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, McAfee, Motorola, Blackberry and others among its SaaS ISV providers.

The newly released Jamcracker Integration Toolkit is an XML-based, do-it-yourself service integration framework that makes it easier for companies providing SaaS applications to make their apps available it Jamcracker’s global catalog. It includes interface specifications and support and certification services that gives solution partners everything they need to hook into the Jamcracker ecosystem, Crawford said.

Using the XML toolkit, SaaS providers can add their apps as well as leverage Jamcracker’s e-commerce, billing, provisioning, customer support and other services to help manage the delivery of their services.

In addition, telco customers can take their own SaaS services and publish them to the catalog and have other carrier users of the Jamcracker platform offer their apps to their customers – creating a marketplace effect.

That’s a much different approach to SaaS or cloud computing than the Web guys are taking, probably wisely so. The cloud infrastructure market is “a double-edged sword that telcos have to be careful about,” Crawford claimed. “It’s great making it easier for people with innovative ideas to start companies and services on your infrastructure. And it’s a great opportunity for telcos, if they can control that and offer value-added services to developers focused on their core service offerings.

“The flip side,” Crawford continued, “is that it’s a market that hasn’t totally been vetted out yet. [Telcos] are going to make sure [a cloud infrastructure offering] is something they can put their brand behind.”