Appirio | FAQ

FAQ

What does it mean to Accelerate On-Demand™?

Appirio delivers services and products that help companies more successfully adopt on-demand software (sometimes known as "Software as a Service"). Our services and products target the more complex environments of medium and large enterprises (although, of course, our free downloads are great for everyone).

More information on Appirio's offerings

Why is Appirio focused on delivering both products and services?

As on-demand becomes the predominant model for delivering enterprise software, the separation between firms providing software and services will blur, and in many cases, disappear completely. Market-leading companies such salesforce.com and Google provide robust on-demand platforms that are highly extensible, and make it optimal for companies like Appirio to deliver both services and value-added solutions that are also delivered on demand.

For the customer, on demand has refocused their efforts on solving the overall business problem. Consequently, the ideal partner is the one that can help them fulfill the same objective. Appirio believes a partner who understands and harnesses the synergy between solving each customer's individual problems while addressing and overall market need provides them more pragmatic insight.

Also, customers expect solution providers working with on-demand platforms to create products faster and more frequently. Unlike with on premise software, engineering teams can no longer simply collect customer requirements, disappear for months or years, and deliver a solution. For both the customer and the vendor, this environment requires a strong synergy between services and software that results in a constant cycle of service productization.

What kind of services do you provide?

Appirio delivers a full range of services, including strategy, implementation, and education. However, we differentiate ourselves in the areas of application development and integration. We have particular experience in these areas, and believe they are critical to accelerating the adoption of on-demand solutions in medium and large enterprises.

What kind of products do you provide?

Appirio delivers three categories of products:

User Experience	Products that increase the adoption of on-demand solutions with executives or other targeted users.
Business Extensions	Focused on-demand applications that leverage our expertise in Sales, Marketing, Business Operations, and Service & Support. These applications will be created exclusively on salesforce.com's AppExchange and the Google Enterprise Solutions Gallery.
Integrations	Products that help connect on-demand solutions to one another and to legacy (on-premise) software.

Appirio creates products that stand on their own. Furthermore, we're committed to ensuring these solutions are integrated into your business, for maximum impact.

What differentiates Appirio from other companies?

Deep and real world experience in complex integrations and large scale enterprise deployments, such as webMethods, SAP, Verisign, Borland, and Accenture
Proven ability to create enterprise applications that fit into an on-demand platform
Exclusive focus on on-demand enablement
The ability to understand and balance the requirements of both “the business” and IT - our consultants have spent their careers on working on each side of the fence

Do you practice what you preach - does Appirio run on an on-demand platform?

Appirio uses salesforce.com and Google for all business operations, along with several custom applications developed on AppExchange. Appirio runs exclusively on an integrated set of on-demand applications. In fact, Appirio has vowed to never own a server, leading the way to the “serverless enterprise.”

Who is Appirio?

The founders of Appirio built our careers creating and deploying application and infrastructure software to medium and large enterprises. Through these experiences, we have come to recognize some flaws in the "on-premise" software model:

Vendors' operations focus on large one-time transactions, rather than sustained delivery of customer value.
Products development organizations are unable to regularly deliver new and innovative features, because an increasing proportion of effort is spent developing migration and upgrade capabilities for customers who must maintain their own software.
Service & support organizations are overburdened with the challenge of supporting a wide number of product versions and customer-authored customizations that run in a virtually infinite variety of environments.

Appirio's founders have also held roles where they have led the adoption of on-demand applications for internal use. These efforts reinforced the inherent strengths of a model that better balances the obligations of software vendors and customers. The founders of Appirio strongly believe that on-demand software allows customers to focus more on applications that benefit their business, rather than developing, administering and operating software and hardware.

We are excited and committed to deliver solutions we believe are inherently more sustainable, balance the customer-vendor relationship, and provide more value than on-premise enterprise software.