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Consona Solutions Take To The Cloud

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor

Consona Corporation's CRM and ERP software have taken flight to the cloud a.k.a. software as a service across all of its CRM software applications on a hosted basis, following a flight plan announced in October 2009. Yet for customers who prefer to have their CRM and ERP operate on the ground, with on-premise licenses and installations, Consona continues to make them happen in those environments.

Consona has partnered with Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) (AWS), leveraging its server infrastructure and platform to offer all its software solutions, ranging from point solutions to integrated suites, as a service. The Consona Cloud is a full-service, end-to-end solution. It includes infrastructure services such as network security, virus protection, and disaster recovery and application services: platinum support, customization support, annual health checks, and administration services.

'We recognize that cloud computing and SaaS are revolutionizing the way software is being delivered and maintained," said Tim Hines, vice president of product management for Consona's (News - Alert) CRM products. "Partnering with Amazon allowed us to deliver all the benefits of SaaS and hosting to our customers as fast as possible, including flexible pricing options, a faster time to market on upgrades or implementations of critical functionality and, of course, significantly reduced infrastructure and IT costs."

The Consona Cloud is built on what it says Gartner (News - Alert) refers to as a Server/OS virtualization platform, utilizing multi-tenancy at the server and operating system level. This is opposed to at the application level, which Hines refers to as traditional SaaS (News - Alert).

"There are advantages to both approaches to SaaS," he said, "but one of the things we like best about the way we've offered our products on the cloud is that each customer deployment in an isolated instance on a single Amazon account. This makes for better system and data portability, improved data integrity and security, as well as the ability to do deep, code-level customizations."

Hines added that he is thrilled about the performance and security improvements customers will see as a result of Consona's partnership with Amazon. "There are always concerns around deploying in a public cloud, but I believe the Amazon infrastructure and platform is inherently more secure than the most well-intentioned internal on-premise deployment," said Hines. "It comes down to the sheer scale of Amazon and what they can provide."

According to Tom Millay, general manager of Consona's CRM products, the general availability of his products on the cloud comes down to one thing: choice. As part of its Consona Cloud launch, Consona now offers three software licensing options, including perpetual, subscription, and consumption, and two deployment options, including on-premise and cloud.

"Customers are going to respond positively when you offer them flexibility and choice," said Millay. "And they have. We have multiple customers already live on the Consona Cloud and an active pipeline of interest. It's extremely satisfying to be able to help these companies save money and to make price much less of a factor in the extremely important process of building out the business system required to support a visionary customer experience."