Software AG is augmenting its on-premise portfolio with the introduction of its Cloud-based suite, Software AG Live.
Software AG Asia Pacific and Japan senior vice president, Steve Keys, said the vendor has been focused on helping customers harness the “four forces” of IT, namely Cloud, social, mobile and big data, and this announcement is an extension of that approach.
“Software AG Live is designed to help customers leverage the Cloud in terms of the way they deploy our services and technologies,” he said.
Software AG Live is the vendor’s first Cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) suite, as its solutions have been typically sold as on-premise products.
Because of this arrangement, Keys said some customers began to explore the use of taking mirror images of Software AG’s applications and putting them into private Clouds.
However, Keys said that is “not the same as saying it is a PaaS.”
“That may mean it is certified to work in a private Cloud environment, but it is a very different consumption and deployment model,” he said.
In that sense, Software AG Live is a “true” PaaS offering.
“We have developed a set of capabilities native to the Cloud, to be consumed and sold in a Cloud environment,” Keys said.
Software AG Live is positioned as a complete suite built on an integrated platform comprising collaborative business process modelling capabilities, agile application development and underlying integration capabilities.
Keys said the benefit for a digital organisation, one which does not and does not want to own its own IT infrastructure, is that the vendor can offer its full range of capabilities in a Cloud enabled environment.
“We provide that capability via a subscription model using the Cloud,” he said.
Best of both worlds
While Software AG has been in the business of providing enterprise-level capability for a number of years, Keys said PaaS will act as a “natural extension” to the vendor’s enterprise class solutions.
According to Keys, that creates a “good deal of flexibility” in the way the software is deployed.
“At one end of the spectrum, there is an organisation that does not own its own infrastructure can consume the capability in a Cloud environment,” he said.
“At the other end of the spectrum, for reasons of performance, governance or security, those who prefer to have one hundred per cent on-premise solutions can do so with our existing products.”
There is also the option of using both sets of tools in an integrated and interoperable manner to support hybrid environments.
“That kind of flexibility is what we believe will be kind of important for both existing and future potential customers,” Keys said.
Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.
