SaaS News Desk

A start-up called Zonbu started peddling a small router-size Gentoo Linux-based consumer PC pre-loaded with a swat of free or open source applications and games, stuff like the OpenOffice suite, the Firefox web browser, Skype's VoIP and the Acrobat Reader. Users can't install any applications on the thing - well, there's no drive - but besides what Zobu provides - which pretty much covers all the bases - they can use other people's web-based applications. What we're talking about here is Evolution e-mail and calendaring; Pidgin instant messaging; a couple of P2P clients that support BitTorrent, eDonkey and eMule protocols; the Banshee music library; Mplayer media player; F-Spit photo organizer; Scribus desktop publishing; GimpShop image workshop; Nvu web page editor as ... (more)

Israeli SaaS Start-up Closes Down So Founders Can Go Work for Google

Money-starved Israeli start-up iROWS, a browser-based spreadsheet that kicked off in January, is going to shut down on December 31 because Google has sucked up its two founders to beef up the internally developed Spreadsheets widgetry that Google is using to frighten Microsoft. iROWS is no longer accepting user registrations and is advising its patrons to move their spreadsheets to Google ... (more)

Lumen Software Launches Commercial Open Source SaaS Portal

KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Lumen Software, a leading provider of commercial open source Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and portal solutions, today announced its flagship platform, Lumenation, and the Lumenation Software Development Kit (SDK), are available immediately for free download. The products give PHP and AJAX developers a way to rapidly build, deploy, manage, and sel... (more)

SaaS Provider QED Connect Partners With Kaspersky Lab

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider QED Connect  today announced a reseller partnership with Kaspersky Lab, a leading provider of Internet threat management solutions that protect against viruses, spyware, hackers and spam. QED Connect has joined Kaspersky's channel partner program and will offer its full line of award-winning network security products and solutions in the U.S. The par... (more)

A Match Made in Heaven: SaaS and OSS

The two most powerful forces shaping enterprise software today are software as a service (SaaS) and open source software (OSS). Previously separate, they are now converging into a powerful "SaaS + OSS" model destined to become the dominant business model for enterprise software. Using case studies, the session will review how vendors can use this model to scale rapidly, use capital effic... (more)