Additional note on AppSpace changes

Earlier this week, we sent out an email announcement with changes in the AppSpace service offerings. I would like to clarify what this means to you.

Your AppSpace service will continue uninterrupted and unchanged for at least 12 months and, at your preference, you can transition to our newer offerings at the same price for another 12 months. This includes unlimited new and current paid AppSpaces, and up to 3 free ones per account. As part of our early adopters, we value the trust you gave us, and we are committed to ensure that we provide the service that would be satisfactory for you. If you have a free account and would like to continue using it, please upgrade to a paid account.

As we are in the process of rolling out our new offerings, we have temporarily shut down new sign ups for the old service. This allows us to focus on the new service release and minimize disruptions.

Since we rolled out the AppCloud beta, we have gotten great feedback. We are excited about AppCloud's ability to provide significant flexibility for applications intended for Cloud Deployment. Our product development team is aggressively working to deliver the service as quickly as we can. Rest assured that you will continue to receive the service and commitment that our company has been known for in the past years.

If you have any concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me directly. I can be reached at guy [at] g2ix dot com.

Looking forward to more years working with you!

Guy Naor
CTO, VP Product Development

Updates: New Java Error Logs

Just released! We now show the stderr and jetty logs in the CP. This will help the users debug start up issues and will be a great help for pinpointing application errors. The new logs show up in the Logs tab in the control panel.

CRM and the Business Survival Imperative

There appears no end in sight for major businesses and even small firms woes. Still in spite of the economic malaise, a handful of companies are growing. Upon closer analysis of their performance, one will notice that customer relations is vital more than ever. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is your approach and strategy for finding, captivating and keeping customers warmly tucked-in to your base.

Can't afford CRM? You can't afford losing your business!
A well executed CRM can pay for itself faster than the time you spent exploring which one to adopt. In a tough economic environment, companies who have not implemented one CRM solution for all departments are missing lots of opportunities. Producing the right buying experience through better marketing, sales and service efforts will drive revenues. With CRM, you can create highly targeted marketing communications and offers to drive traffic to your products and services showroom. Indeed, this will be one of the big differences between those that survive and those that don’t.

Better yet, think cloud and go on-demand.

If you think that CRM is still quite costly at this point because of infrastructure and required maintenance costs, you're in for a treat - a CRM that resides in the cloud. From a user's perspective, a cloud is a virtual utility company for software. Minimizing infrastructure, the need for on-site software and worries about backup and security is every chief technical officer's dream. With on-demand, you can commit more resources to your core or real business – which is most probably not building, maintaining and running an IT environment.

The Bottom Line

Without CRM, you will lose customers and business faster than the effects of a tough economic condition. Keeping customer's loyally tucked to your base through deeper engagement and differentiated experiences will continue as critical priorities. Let CRM be that tool to make it all happen now more than ever.

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Thinking of implementing a Customer Relationship Management system to streamline sales and marketing coordination? Already using a CRM for managing customer interactions? On April 22nd, get the exclusive story and kick-off your way to becoming more agile in today's highly competitive economy.


Join us for our LIVE Webinar, entitled Turbocharge your CRM, Mark Maglana, Product Manager for Morph eXchange, will answer the question: how is it possible for sales and marketing teams to sustain agility in today's economy?

Reserve your Webinar seat now:
Wednesday, April 22 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM PDT Session
Tuesday, April 21 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM CST Session

Rails 2.3

Quick update for Rails developers: The Rails 2.3 gems are now available in Morph Labs' system. For more information about this latest version, kindly see this post from the Rails blog.

Memory Upgrade for Java AppSpaces

We're happy to announce to all Java AppSpace subscribers that we've just finished rolling out a 33% memory upgrade. That means each Java cube will now get a full 256MB of RAM at no extra cost. Developers need to re-deploy Java apps that have been running prior to the upgrade for the changes to take effect.

For any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to file a ticket via the Morph Control Panel or visit forums.mor.ph.

Morph’s Products

Many of you may have been following this blog since we opened shop last January 2008 and have observed several changes along the way. We started with a combined (SaaS + PaaS) offering through Morph eXchange which we later broke off, separating the PaaS component and moving it to www.mor.ph. We then delivered Morph AppSpace and Morph AppCloud within that year. Now we’re in 2009 and we're, once again, drumming up attention with our SaaS offering through our on-demand CRM service available at Morph eXchange. With all these changes over the past 14 or so months, it’s easy for an outsider to wonder if there’s a central theme to all of this.

The short answer is yes and it’s called the Morph Application Platform (we like to call it the MAP). Here’s the story: anyone who has ever tried deploying a production application on their own infrastructure will attest to the “blood, sweat, and tears” that have to be shed to get the whole thing running AND stay running. Our experience prior to Morph can easily validate that and this is why we came up with the MAP.

As you all know, Amazon Web Services came out a couple years back and it changed how people provisioned servers in a way that would make you go “that’s crazy impossible!” before it. AWS is an excellent service and, during its early days, we wanted to bring its paradigm shift a step higher: whereas AWS greatly simplified the process of deploying and managing servers, we wanted that same simplification applied to the process of deploying and managing web applications. Drawing on our combined experience in building IT infrastructure of over fifty years and leveraging on the new capabilities afforded by AWS, we built the MAP.

You might be wondering how Morph AppSpace, Morph AppCloud, and Morph eXchange fit into the picture. Let’s use an analogy for this: think of the MAP as a blueprint for a commercial building. In 2008 we created the first “building” based on that blueprint and each unit of that building was then sold as an AppSpace. In the middle of 2008 we created a tool that would allow everyone else outside of Morph to quickly create their own customized buildings based on the MAP blueprint and we called this tool Morph AppCloud. Each building that was built with this tool is dedicated to the customer who created the building and, just like the first building we built, these customized ones can also be provisioned for one or more web applications.

For Morph eXchange, we wanted to extend the value provided by the MAP beyond web developers and ISVs. With Morph eXchange, we are still offering our high-performance, high-availability platform, but this time, it's targetted to end-users. By pre-configuring open-source enterprise-grade applications to run on top of the MAP, customers can focus on running their business, not managing infrastructure. We started with an on-demand CRM that’s based on a popular open source CRM. Expect more to come in the next few months.

You, Me, and CRM

Ah, customer relationships. No doubt, they are important, and many companies work very hard to cultivate them. And in today's cold economic climate, it seems to me that CRM is as much about the technology as the people and processes behind it.

Really now? Let me give you two reasons:

Think automation. CRM solutions were built to help "automate" tasks such as reporting, forecasting, lead management, etc. etc. However, take a look closely at your CRM and ask yourself this: is it really helping you automate business processes?

In my previous employment, I introduced the concept of utilizing a CRM to help us collaborate more effectively and share information easily within the organization. I found out about SugarCRM software, which is an open-source based CRM tool that was gaining popularity at that time. We had a small team and we didn't really have an IT team -- better yet, an IT person, who could help me with the task of installing the software. That's why I took the liberty of installing it and administering the software. We started using it and eventually, things started to flow much more smoothly. It made me happy that our CEO could see the bird's eye view of our weekly opportunities, freeing me of "collating" time. However, a new task suddenly was shoved onto me: managing the application and making sure it was running.

Let me give you a scenario that happened at least more than once after I had installed the software. BUT before that, just so you know, the application was installed on a Windows machine, that was a shared resource and a part-time workstation. The triggers to the scenario: a virus attack, computer crash for some unknown reason, or in some cases the user turns off the machine.

The last trigger is forgivable. It just delays collaboration, but still it wastes precious time. A virus attack and a crash can lead to a more problematic plot wherein I would have to re-install and re-input pertinent data. (And I'm not an IT person -- I didn't know of automatic or routine backup procedures. I just know that it's important.) Imagine that! I would probably spend at least 1 day managing those unwanted chores and the remaining 4 days of work -- doing my real job.

Cost savings. Are you spending more for your CRM app than closing more deals? Then it's high time that you look for something else. Try open source solutions. Better yet, go for the on-demand substitute. Really, it'll just cost you LESS. It requires no capital and there's absolutely nothing for you to manage at the application-level and at the back-end.

Dimdim was cited as a classic SaaS story with a twist. The proposition: it just costs less. "It is the same pitch that Zoho is making. Take a basic software service which we all need, such as CRM, and offer something that is comparable to the market leader at a fraction of the price." More about the cheap decade.

This is exactly the model of application delivery through Morph eXchange, a portal that offers on-demand applications. Open source applications delivered via subscription model are perfectly positioned for the so-called cheap decade.

There are a couple more reasons, which I'd leave for now for you to find out.

I'd like to end this post with a brief mention of our announcement.

TODAY marks a very special day at Morph Labs. Today, we give you the opportunity to take advantage of opportunities. To help you become agile, to help you become more competitive.

Today, we are launching (in beta) an on-demand CRM at Morph eXchange. The CRM is based on an award-winning open source CRM app that we combined with our fully managed solution, the Morph Application Platform.

We've been talking a lot about SaaS and open source and during these times when the economy is in turmoil, we really and absolutely believe that these models offer the more practical choice. And with the focus in all businesses of all sizes to bring in the money -- there is a tremendous reason to implement a CRM solution that will help teams become more agile, and ultimately productive. That's the reason we are launching this product -- an on-demand CRM solution based on open source and delivered on-demand via our platform.

Interested? Click here.