News

Adesso To Launch Partner Program

• By Ed Scannell
• July 10, 2006

The AppsNow Partner Program, which comes a month after the company launched its Web-based AppsNow development platform, has three levels of membership. Those levels are distinguished by the level of commitment a business partner is willing to make to marketing and selling the company's development platform and not the volume of product they sell, according to company officials.

"This program is less about volume and more about a partner's business commitment. Commitment not in the sense of dollars but to the amount of resources they apply and the level of training and certification levels they want to achieve," said John Van Siclen, who was appointed CEO of Adesso late last month. "We envision this program will be the cornerstone of our business model going forward," Van Siclen said.

Adesso will not focus on partners who specialize in any one particular vertical market given the AppsNow development environment can be used to customize applications for virtually any market, Van Siclen said. Adesso hopes to sign up "hundreds of partners" over the next six to 12 months, he said.

"We have four constituent audiences, ISVs, systems integrators, enterprise class developers and entrepreneurs," Van Siclen said.

The three levels of the new program are called Now.Registered, Now.Partner and Now.Gold Partner. All three entitle developers to receive free development software, free marketplace access for beta testing and feedback, free developer support, and free access to the company's NowForums.

The Now.Registered program has a low barrier to entry, according to Van Siclen, and is intended for those developers who primarily want to simply investigate and evaluate the technology to see is they might be interested in making a more serious commitment.

The Now.Partner level is the first "business level" where developers create applications using the company's development environment with Adesso supplying the hosting for and marketing and selling of those applications. Adesso charges a fee to host the applications and takes a cut of the net revenues from the sales of the applications.

The Now.Gold Partner program gives partners preferential treatment involving a number of different marketing opportunities such as preferred positioning in catalogs and access to on-premise solutions.

"It will take more certification and support requirements [to qualify for Now.Gold Partner status] but it offers added flexibility to their business models," Van Siclen said.

Now.Partner and Now.Gold Partner members are also given access to Adesso's AppsNOW Marketplace, a new hosted, software-as-a-service platform designed to accelerate a partner's "time to revenue," while helping them maintain control over sales, marketing and support. Members pay a monthly hosting fee, as well as a portion of net revenue proceeds they derive from their applications, to Adesso. Adesso handles all the hosting, analysis and billing, so partners can focus more on development efforts.

Adesso will not sell the development environment direct and will depend solely on partners for sales. The company will be out pitching users on the products but all leads will be turned over to partners, company officials said.

"It is similar to the (Lotus) Notes business model in that there will be demand stimulation on our part but that demand will all be fulfilled by a partner. Once we introduce the partner it is their ball to pick up and run with," said John Landry, chairman and founder of Adesso, and former CTO of Lotus Development Corp.