Fort Lauderdale-based Runaware, which sells software marketing, says the company is jumping into Software as a Service with its recently-announced updated TestDrive platform. 

With the launch of the company’s updated online demo service, Runaware wants to sell cloud computing services to other software companies. Their TestDrive platform is geared for the Platform as a Service market. 

Gartner (News - Alert) estimated that the SaaS marketing represented $6.9 billion in revenue in 2006 and projected that the industry would grow by more than 21 percent by 2011, so obviously Runaware sees considerable potential here.

 

In fact consumers are checking out hosted software, and some companies looking for resources to devote to continuing product development are finding the SaaS (News - Alert) model to work for them.

“It has always been my goal to make sure Runaware is on the forefront of software hosting technology," said Tim Keyes, Runaware CEO, adding that "we haven’t positioned ourselves this way in the past."

 

Keyes said the company would target "clients who want to get their software up in the cloud, but may not have the development funds or resources to convert traditional installed software to one that is considered SaaS... TestDrive has always been a PaaS-capable system, we just haven’t taken it out of the demo space."

The TestDrive PaaS offering can host "all types of software," and deliver it over the Internet without the need for download or installation of the software. The system delivers full functionality of the software through a web browser while all of the processing power is handled by Runaware’s servers located in data centers on two continents.

Early last year TMC reported that TestDrive was launched by Runaware. The product "lets software vendors offer trials of CDs, downloads and hosted interactive online demos. Once a potential user tries the online demo, his profile is sent to the sales force through the CRM system. This gives a vendor a chance to see who is testing their software," TMC wrote at the time.

 

 

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