NTT-IT and VRMeetings Launch MeetingPlaza as a SaaS Solution.

New Trend Technologies IT Services (NTT-IT) along with its partner, VRMeetings introduced MeetingPlaza, an advanced web and video conferencing solution as a SaaS. The service will be available for a low monthly or annual license fee on the Internet. “Our new MeetingPlaza SaaS is designed for small- and medium-sized companies to connect with customers, geographically disbursed stakeholders and multiple offices.”

AMI Vendor Study Looks At Six SaaS Vendors.

AMI partners released a report titled “Adding Fresh Value to the SaaS Equation: Six Vendors to Watch approaches that smaller, newer vendors are taking to help accelerate adoption of SaaS products in the small and medium business markets.” The report includes how Boomi, Dreamfactory, LucidEra, MyBizHomepage, Zoho and Zuora are adding value to SMBs by concentrating on making SaaS products more affordable, accessible and flexible. Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist, said for an application like Mail, “offline and mobile support are key. We wanted to offer these features right out of the gate."

Truist Opts for SaaS Partnership with Ping Identity.

A SaaS partnership agreement was announced between Truist and Ping Identity. The latter is famous in federated identity management. “Ping Identity’s ability to integrate with a wide array of commercial products and standards made PingFederate the clear choice for Truist,” said Michael Schreiber, President and COO of Truist.

PHASE 2 Selects IBM Technology to Help Grow Its Business, Phases Out Dell.

It was announced today that Phase 2 International, the famous SaaS provider has selected IBM Technology to help the company support more clients while lowering energy use by over 65%. "At the end of the day, PHASE 2 is selling service. The ability of our technology to scale along with the needs of our clients and provide them a good experience is directly tied to our success," said Kevin Doherty, CEO of PHASE 2 International.

Google Brings Premier Edition SLA to Calendar, Docs, Sites, Talk Apps.

According to recent news, Google has announced the extension of its GMail SLA for users of Google Apps Premier Edition to Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites & Google Talk. Glotzbach noted in a blog post Oct. 30 (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-we-learned-from-1-million.html): "We have been delivering high levels of reliability across all these products, so it makes sense to extend our guarantees to them."

bw.Connect for Salesforce CRM Ideas Now Available on the Force.com AppExchange from salesforce.com.

BlueWolf announced the availability of bw.Connect or Salesforce CRM Ideas on the Force.com AppExchange. It is a new solution that will enable organizations in better management of the information gathered using Salesforce CRM Ideas. "If your organization wants to implement Salesforce CRM Ideas, Bluewolf makes it easier and more impactful by linking the information gathered in Ideas back to your Salesforce CRM application," said Corinne Sklar, vice president of marketing for Bluewolf.

Storage startup offers a path to private cloud.

ParaScale, a cloud storage startup is offering a new software which it claims that it can turn a group of heterogeneous servers and storage arrays into a self-healing private cloud of storage. "Today, cloud storage means Amazon, Nirvanix, Google, Microsoft, maybe even Facebook, and it needs a large engineering team," said CEO Sajai Krishnan, CEO ParaScale. "We say, buy our software and put it on standard Linux servers -- you can even re-use old servers as storage nodes -- and you're a storage provider."

TSYS to Expand Global Payment Capabilities with Acquisition of Infonox.

TSYS announced today the acquisition of Infonox that is a privately owned California based technology firm with payments expertise, leading edge technology and a focused methodology to deliver market ready solutions. The deal is set to be completed by 3rd November, 2008.  “TSYS’ acquisition of Infonox will add a Silicon-valley innovation team to our arsenal,” said Philip W. Tomlinson, chief executive officer of TSYS. “It provides a host of tools and services that will be very attractive to clients of TSYS Acquiring Solutions and technologies we believe will add increased value to our clients across the TSYS enterprise.”

Sybase iAnywhere Enables Partners to Rapidly Develop Enterprise Applications for the BlackBerry Platform.

Sybase iAnywhere announced that its partners Appeon and Praxedo have successfully secured project wins by extending line of business applications to Blackberry Smart Phones using SQL Anywhere. “Sybase iAnywhere delivers a proven and open platform that enables organizations to build mobile applications that work across a broad spectrum of devices,” said Brian Vink, Vice President, database product marketing, Sybase iAnywhere.

Petra Financial Integrates Power Payment Technologies’ E&I Solution into its Clarion Solution.

The provider of payments data automation software, Petra Financial has announced integration with Power Payment Technologies’ (Luxembourg) Exceptions & Investigations solution into its financial reporting solution called Clarion. The new solution will be branded Clarion E&I and would be available either as an online service or SaaS.

Newest IBM Portal Accelerator Integrated with Workflow by Alphalogix.

Alphalogix announced today that their light weight electronic firms routing product, Tasica Forms Director has integrated with the IBM Business Process Accelerator. “Forms Director’s ability to allow users to create electronic workflows with no formal programming knowledge, allows many small to medium businesses that do not have the IT resources to handle a large business process management suite, to easily implement electronic forms routing in their customized portal environment.” said Bob McCandless, CEO of Alphalogix.