We’re very excited to announce Xuropa’s entry into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) official Service Providers Directory.  We’re proud  to provide to our customers unique CRM and AWS provisioning and automation technology.

While the Xuropa Application is Cloud and Data Center agnostic, our preferred public cloud provider is Amazon.  Back in 2008, when we first started development on a public cloud solution to move away from dedicated co-location data centers, we reviewed pretty much every public cloud vendor on the market.  The flexibility, level of automation, and security made AWS stand head-and-shoulders above other vendors.

As our market continues to grow, we’re very happy to see Amazon’s product offering grow with us.

API

The sophistication of their API was the real deciding factor why we went with AWS from the beginning.  If server instances cannot be started and stopped via a command API, then your cloud provider is missing a key part of “the point” of cloud computing.  This has been available from AWS from the start.

Security

It was clear from the beginning that AWS hold security as high a priority as we do.  Not only do they offer state-of-the-art physical and logical protection, they do not compromise usability or automation.  Practical and secure - a pragmatists approach to the cloud.

Performance

The Xuropa Platform hosts some of the most demanding applications on the planet.  Not only do we need the highest available performance machines today, but our customers continue to push the boundaries in terms of CPU and memory requirements.

AWS promisese to catch up and keep pace with our most demanding customers.

Global Footprint

Our customers are using the Xuropa Application to penetrate and serve global markets, and to deliver the lowest latency performance possible means that we need to be able to instantiate servers within those regions served.  AWS provides this facility unlike any other.

We look forward to a very fruitful partnership between our two companies, and are happy to contribute our unique products and services to the Amazon Web Services ecosystem.

Are you using the Cloud?

We’d like to discuss your move to a cloud delivery model.  Our application enables a step-by-step approach as you migrate your products and your business to the next paradigm in computing architectures.

Software-as-a-Service Delivery

The Xuropa Platform was architected from the ground up to support cloud deployment and monetization.  It may be early days for your particular industry, but we’ve been in this space for three years already - and we’re ready to support you in the migration of your business.  Drop us a line at saas_at_xuropa_dot_com to discuss.

Online Evaluations

Using the Xuropa Platform, you can easily allocate to your prospects cloud computing resources hosting your software for a day, a week, a month, or for however long your customer needs.  The system removes all need for IT resources and your customers don’t need to worry about downloading and installing software.  Your prospects securely upload their data into the cloud and use your software to perform realistic yet hassle-free evaluations.  The platform is secure, and you monitor all activity so you can see the progress your customer makes in the evaluation process.

Hands-on Demonstrations

The Xuropa Platform, with its integrated Social CRM system, enables you to easily reach out to your market via online social and professional platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.  From just the click of a link, your prospects are brought into a secure collaboration area from where they can connect to your dedicated cloud servers hosting your software to start kicking the tires and educating themselves on your differentiating features and value proposition.

Hands-on Training and Workshops

Pre-sales or post-sales, training and workshops are a valuable tool in moving a sale forward and getting new customers up to speed on your software.  They are traditionally very expensive propositions usually involving shipping out hardware and technical experts for setup and delivery of the material.  Take all of the hassle and the cost of logistics out of the process by delivering your material from the cloud via the Xuropa Platform.  You’ll save money and the valuable time of your subject matter experts.  Your customers will also appreciate the ability to take classes from their own desk and revisit material later for a quick refresher - all with no downloads, no installation, and no license keys to worry about.

Let us know how we can help your company leverage Amazon Web Services in the comments below.  Or drop us a line at saas_at_xuropa_dot_com.

- James

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Posted under CRM, Xuropa, cloud

Great news from Amazon Web Services (AWS) yesterday - they’ve made it easier to get your data up into the cloud.  All you have to do is ship them the raw SATA drive and they’ll plug it in.  Easy!  And they’re now accepting capacities up to 4TB.

This is why we work with AWS - they’re constantly raising the bar higher and higher.  They take care of the infrastructure, and we deliver the Platform and Software layers to our Enterprise Software customers.

Anyone out there need more than 4TB?

This announcement got me thinking about the other direction of the data transfer that still hounds Enterprise Software vendors.  Most vendors still deliver most if not all of their products as client-side installs. 

With the goal of lowering the cost of sales, software and tools vendors enable customers to download from their website (the cloud) evaluation versions of their products.  This would be fine if these distributions hadn’t grown to be hundreds of megabytes themselves!  A very large semiconductor vendor told me that it takes a customer 3 1/2 hours to download their software over a T1 line in North America.  And of course, it takes many attempts for it to be successful.  Not a scalable model and one of the many reasons why we promote moving evaluations and pre-sales training to the Cloud using Xuropa.

The reality is, this problem is only going to get worse.   (Numbers provided by OECD.)

Although a full SaaS model would remove this problem.  There are many other obstacles and reasons why a complete move would not work for many of these software vendors.  However, moving the front end of the acquisition process (pre-sales training and evaluations) just makes sense.  Doesn’t it?

Posted under Xuropa, industry

There is of course still a lot of bluster surrounding Cloud Computing, and it will take some time before an agreed to set of definitions comes to light.  I particularly like the path that Phil Wainewright is charting though.  He’s been commentating on the space since the end of the 90’s and has a “no nonsense” approach I appreciate.

In an effort to simplify the discussion, a recent post of his, “When is a cloud not a cloud?“, begins to define different types of “Clouds” from the perspective of the original cloud - the internet.  He lists three different types - Captive Cloud, Public Cloud (AWS, the Xuropa Platform primary cloud provider), and Virtual Private Cloud (a “walled off” cloud within a Public Cloud, like AWS). 

The post is worth a read, but he starts to run aground on two points IMO.  Firstly, to isolate connectivity as the key defining characteristic is to emphasize what should be a “cost of entry” point, and glosses over real value differentiators (eg. resource management via API).  Secondly, he really does himself a disservice when he includes “Captive Clouds” as a type of cloud (even though he was trying to be ironic).  We already have a name for that - “datacenter”.  A collection of networked servers running something like VMWare behind a firewall is not a “cloud” of any description.  It is a datacenter with better hardware utilization than the datacenters of the 90’s.  That’s it.  To put the word “cloud” in the same sentence as “datacenter” reduces clarity rather than enhances it.

Posted under Xuropa, industry