Caspio Bridge – a fast yet safe route over troubled waters
It's been too long since we've talked here - but luckily it has been a busy time at Caspio and that's kept me away from the blog. As I read through the entries again I was hit by how often I've talked about speed.
And I started to think about the paradox of speed - how necessary it is in business and how dangerous it can be. After all, moving fast can be the difference between an opportunity realized and one that is lost. But I also was struck by the difference between being fast and being recklessly hasty. You must move quickly, yet out-of-control speed can kill, whether it is on the highway or in the board room.
Some companies - in an effort to get speed from overworked IT departments - are tempted to trust the success of their idea to applications rushed to development with inadequate time for thinking. That often means a hurried up specification process. Here's more about that danger.
You don't have to be a software genius to know the most important part of creating an application is carefully working out just what it should do and how it'll do it. Yet, in a job rushed through IT, that dangerous corner is sometimes cut.
Blitz development is ripe with the opportunity for error or a poorly conceived application. At best, it can amount to an expensive way to do things. At worst? You spend time and money on an application that is doomed from the start.
In an effort to go to market fast organizations can put their projects in a downward spiral that amounts to no more than a major sinkhole for time and money. It's interesting isn't it? You have to go fast to take advantage of a tiny window of opportunity. Yet, if you ignore safety in the rush you can crash and burn.
Luckily, there's an art to moving fast safely.
Caspio Bridge provides that elegant solution. Its inherent advantage of safe speed means - even on the tightest of schedules - that there's plenty of time for the specification process. But that's just the start of what it offers.
Since Caspio Bridge creates a prototype fast you have the luxury of using it as a real world test bed to fine tune even the best thought out ideas with a tiny investment of time and money. The prototype can be changed with a few clicks of the mouse making it is easy to test various approaches. Ordinary users, without help from IT, can try out ways to make it even better with no risk and little investment. If a new idea works, that's great. If not, you can move quickly to the next approach without spending a lot of time and money.
The amazing fact is that your prototype is actually the final product and is good for production. You can roll it out to all your users instantly.
The need for speed is greater than ever. But so is the need to spend your development time and money wisely. Caspio Bridge can be a bridge over troubled waters - giving you a proven platform that lets you move quickly and safely to grab an opportunity before it vanishes.
Standing the Test of Time
Building a profitable Web 2.0 company is a rarity. Caspio has been able to do this without raising a dime from the Venture Capital community, which is another rarity. We were delighted to see Bernard Lunn interested in Caspio's unique story. Read the story here.
Speed as a key Differentiator
Recently I met Michael Becker, an Executive VP at iLoop
His point was simple and is applicable universally to business of all sizes. Your customer has more choices than ever and market opportunities that exist today may not be available tomorrow. Your ability to fulfill demands fast can be your key differentiator and propel your business forward. You need tools and services that help you execute fast and Caspio's solutions are proven to enable businesses to do just that.
Speed of execution is a guiding light for Caspio. This is why I invite you to find out for yourself how Caspio can help your business bring ideas to market today, instead of tomorrow.
Google AdWords Advertisers Maximize Results with Fine-Tuned Action Forms and Lead Management
As online advertising costs and demand for high quality keywords increases smart advertisers seek to get the most from their budget by:
- improving ads to get more qualified clicks, and
- improving conversions once visitors reach their site
Improving your conversion rate is a process. You need to study best practices, look at other successful sites, but above all do a lot of AB testing. This includes AB testing your landing pages, call to action, and even your forms.
With Caspio Bridge creating and tweaking web forms is simple. You can try different ideas with forms and play with wording of labels and questions, form length, colors, layout, styles, buttons and graphics.
Next is managing your leads but you don't need to invest large amounts on a fancy CRM systems. While I cannot divulge names, a Fortune-500 company has recently dropped the leading on-demand CRM provider in favor of a custom Caspio-powered solution primarily because they found that the dizzying array of tabs, links and buttons in that CRM system were distracting their sales staff. Now all the clutter is eliminated in a custom solution built with Caspio. And since Caspio pricing is not based on seats, the saving is very attractive.
Every Caspio Bridge account comes pre-loaded with a basic lead generation form and management app. While it is for demonstration purposes only, many use it as the foundation of their own custom CRM solution.
Don't forget that Caspio's Solution Advisors are at hand to consult with you and help you get the most out of your advertising and IT budget.
One week with Caspio
Nothing gets me more excited than seeing a customer succeed with Caspio Bridge beyond their wildest dreams. Fortunately, we run across such moments very often. Here's a great example:
"One week ago we held our first "get acquainted meeting" with Caspio and came away impressed with the ease of service and terrific content possibilities. We then went through two training sessions and began gathering data. Today, one week later, we launched the wltx.com Data Center with 11 Caspio-powered searchable databases. The response from the public has been overwhelming and we can't wait to build out more. Thanks to the entire Caspio team for making this seemingly overwhelming task, a piece of cake."
Rich O'Dell
President & General Manger
WLTX-TV CBS Channel 19
Columbia, South Carolina
http://www.wltx.com/news/datacenter/
Caspio Bridge on Mac
The most frequently requested "feature" our customers have been asking us since Caspio Bridge went live years ago, was the ability to run it on Mac. The administrative interface was only compatible with Internet Explorer 6 and 7 which are only available on Windows. Of course the deployed DataPages were compatible with all major browsers all along.
Those days are over now. The Caspio team is thrilled to release the latest version of Bridge which is fully compatible with Firefox on Windows, Mac and Linux and if it wasn't for the shifting sands that the current Safari beta is, Caspio Bridge would have been compatible with Safari as well.
The Caspio Bridge administrative interface is decidedly one of the most sophisticated AJAX applications ever built and making it compatible across all major browsers required significant determination. We hope you enjoy this new flexibility as much as we do.
Thanks for a Strong 2007
Last week we held our annual company meeting. This is the time when as a company we reflect on our past year, celebrate our accomplishments, review our mistakes, and set the tone for the next year. Our customers may be interested in a brief report.
In 2007 we made three major releases. Each release was packed with much new functionality. Among them was the concept of parameters which glue Caspio Bridge apps together or connect Caspio Bridge apps with other apps. Parameters provided many new possibilities for our users. Instant app localization and extensive data formatting plus new data presentation options were other highlights of these releases. We also developed and implemented innovative back-end infrastructure technology that allows us to scale Caspio Bridge enormously. It enables us operate a distributed grid of Caspio Bridge nodes. We are very excited about the potentials of this new infrastructure.
Almost all of our production servers were replaced with new and we upgraded our databases to Microsoft SQL Server 2005. In the future releases we begin utilizing some of the enhancements provided in SQL Sever 2005.
Early in 2007 we formed a new business unit to focus entirely on the needs of the online media organization, primarily newspaper and TV web sites. A year later, Caspio has become the de facto standard in this industry and we now serve hundreds of leading newspaper and TV web sites. We will continue to invest in innovations and solutions that will make our online media customers more successful.
Our revenues grew by over 130%. We expanded our team and moved to new headquarters in Mountain View, California.
We also learned valuable lessons from the decisions that didn't quite work out the way we intended them. For example the idea of opening a support center in Scottsdale, Arizona seemed to be a good one, however challenges in managing the remote office turned out to outweigh most of its benefits. After about eight months we shut down the office and stopped the distraction.
In future posts I will share with you our plans for 2008. I can say this now that we are preparing for large scale growth. We have already prepared additional office space for housing new team members. We are also working on some fantastic new features that are bound to get you excited. The Caspio team is just warming up!
ABC News “20/20″ Selects Caspio to Power Online Database
ABC News "20/20" today launched a Caspio-powered interactive database that allows you to see just how much stuff goes missing every year from luggage at your local airport. The special interactive, "Lost & Looted from Luggage," chronicles the tens of thousands of passenger belongings that have been looted and lost from luggage using data obtained from the federal Transportation Security Administration. The database is available online and will be featured in the special ABC News "20/20" segment, "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity about Travel," that airs tonight (December 14, 2007) at 10 p.m..
If you missed it on TV, check it out here.
Migrating Microsoft Access Programs to Web
Many companies have aging internal applications that are built on Microsoft Access. There is tremendous appeal in making these applications web-based so they can be accessed from outside the office.
Caspio provides the fastest and easiest way to transform Access applications into web-based applications:
- The Caspio Bridge user interface is designed to be familiar to Access users.
- Access data can be imported directly into Caspio Bridge.
- Caspio’s wizards for creating DataPages (i.e. web forms, searchable databases and other components for web sites) are designed to be easy to follow and intuitive.
- Caspio’s plugin for Microsoft Office can keep a local Access database in synch with your online Caspio account.
Most importantly, Caspio’s Solution Advisors are very familiar with Access-to-web migrations and are ready to provide assistance and consultation.
Consultants specialized in Microsoft Access solutions find Caspio a powerful complementary addition to their toolbox.
The 100% AJAX web-based user interface of Caspio Bridge is designed to be intuitive for Microsoft Access users.
IT Consultants Expand Their Business with Caspio
Caspio has proven to be a good source of revenues and new opportunities for IT consulting firms. About 25% of Caspio's new accounts are created by firms who value-add their own services to the Caspio platform. These professionals fall into two categories, creative firms and developers:
Graphic designers, advertising agencies and public relations firms use Caspio solutions to provide value-added services to their clients and complement their core services. Caspio gives them the simplicity and cost-effectiveness that was never available. Typical scenarios include:
- Bid on entire projects rather than just the design aspects.
- Enhance core offering such as ad agencies who now bundle lead generation into creative design services.
- Profit from signing large and complex projects and outsourcing them to Caspio's quick and cost-effective Professional Services.
Developers on the other hand have realized that with Caspio they can expand their business without adding new headcounts or incur additional costs. They benefit from their relationship with Caspio in several ways:
- As a new tool in their toolbox that is applied to relevant projects.
- An easy way to increase business volume by building apps faster than before.
- Deploy Caspio's ready-made solutions to their clients to generate recurring revenues.
- Create "application templates" that can be easily customized and deployed again and again for new customers.
We are expanding our programs for consultants in the coming months with services designed to help them succeed with less effort. However, the time to expand your consulting business with Caspio is now. Information about Caspio's current programs can be found at http://www.caspio.com/partners/.