Software AG has picked up cloud PaaS (platform-as-a-service) vendor LongJump in a bid to give small and medium-sized companies a way to rapidly develop applications with less involvement from IT. Terms of the deal, which was announced Thursday, were not disclosed.

• The acquisition of LongJump will allow Software AG customers to rapidly build flexible situational and process-driven applications in the cloud and with minimal development times
• LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service capabilities allows applications to be deployed in public or private clouds, on-premise or to any mobile device
• End-user, self-service application development and Platform-as-a-Service capabilities are key to efficiently managing and driving the digital enterprise

LongJump’s platform gives users a set of models and templates for building applications, with no need to code, according to Software AG’s announcement. Applications can be deployed on public and private cloud services, as well as on premises and through mobile devices.

LongJump uses open-source components such as the MySQL database and Tomcat application server under the hood, according to its website. It offers customers a hosted version through servers at Rackspace, but also provides the ability to self-host in the data center or cloud service of their choosing.

Software AG today announced the acquisition of the Cloud Platform vendor LongJump, based in Santa Clara, CA. The acquisition allows Software AG to extend its customer offerings to address departmental and Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) projects through end-user, self-service application development. This gives enterprises the agility and responsiveness needed by customers to address continuously changing business demands. Software AG will also continue to develop and extend LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service products for fast and flexible cloud based development and deployment of situational and case management applications.

  

“The digital enterprise is all about real-time business insights driving fast decisions and faster reactions,” said Wolfram Jost, CTO at Software AG. “With this latest acquisition we have taken a major step in optimizing both the business knowledge and IT skills needed to develop flexible, business process driven, situational applications and deploy them rapidly wherever they are needed.”

Key benefits of LongJump include: 

• End-User Development: Self-service development is key to overcoming the resource constraints that IT groups are facing as they digitize their enterprise.

• Cloud: Deployment of solutions on the public or private cloud, on-premise or within hybrid environments offers unmatched flexibility when choosing the development, deployment and production environments.

• Flexible Process based Applications: Application development is based on a flexible Process approach utilizing models and templates (metadata). No coding is necessary.

• Mobile: Deployment to any mobile device is supported with utmost ease, since applications are automatically mobile-ready with built in security and access based on enterprise authentication policies

“More people across the organization can now participate in processes of innovation and differentiation,” says Pankaj Malviya, CEO and Founder of LongJump.  “LongJump can now leverage Software AG’s strength in enterprise connectivity and business process to provide business users and IT departments with more agility to respond to changing business requirements, automate their situational processes, improve team data sharing and integrate with systems of record.”

Software AG believes that the IT industry is going through a game changing revolution driven by Big Data, Cloud, Mobile and Social Collaboration technologies. These four forces are having a profound impact on how enterprises operate and engage with customers, partners and employees. Enterprises must have a unique digital strategy if they are to successfully compete in this new era. Future competitive advantage will be driven by real-time market information, collaborative and rapid business decisions, the ability to respond through agile business applications and processes and by utilizing digital channels to serve customers faster.

LongJump’s technology is fully complementary to Software AG’s ARIS, Terracotta and webMethods, product suites extending the company’s business value both within existing enterprise customers and to SMEs. A full roadmap of the integration of LongJump with Software AG’s integration, process and Big Data offerings will be issued in due course.

Customers are also able to “white-label” the LongJump platform, applying their own branding and design to the core components, according to the site.

One notable LongJump user is AT&T, which rolled out a LongJump-powered PaaS service in 2011. Other LongJump customers include Nielsen, Gannett, and Cisco.

Software AG will reveal details of how LongJump’s technology will be woven into its middleware portfolio “in due course,” according to Thursday’s announcement.

The deal comes in the same week as the high-profile launch of EMC and VMware’s Pivotal, a PaaS venture aimed at enterprises.