Opening up an internal resource to outside developers, a la Amazon Web Services and Force.com, isn't just for the big guys anymore.
Smaller organizations with systems that may be aimed at narrow markets are also deciding to open up their platforms to third-party developers. They may do so as a way to create a new revenue stream or to make their own offerings more attractive.
Tickets.com is one such company that has opened its platform to third parties. The company, a subsidiary of MLB.com, provides the back-end ticketing engine for some Major League Baseball teams.
About four years ago, Tickets.com set out to revamp its platform, which at the time was composed of incompatible legacy systems. It decided to build an entirely new platform with a service-oriented architecture and a Web-based front end, said John Rizzi, senior vice president of product management and strategy at Tickets.com.
The decision to open that platform up to third parties came about by chance. "Somewhat by accident, we came to this spot," he said.
As it began building the new platform, Tickets.com hired technology experts to help with the process. "It took us bringing in people from outside the ticketing industry who were much more technology-centric to understand that we had a lot more in this platform than just something more modern and cheaper," Rizzi said.
Tickets.com isn't making its APIs available to just anyone, though. "It's not like we're going to say, 'here's the API, go develop and have fun.' Our clients aren't asking for that," he said. "They are asking for more flexibility and options, and we want to give them that."
Some third-party companies have already started offering services to Tickets.com customers using the new platform, and others are in the works.
Ballena is offering a product, built on Tickets.com's system, that lets online shoppers see in 3D the view from the seat they are considering buying. StubHub, the official secondary ticketing provider of the MLB, is also using the new platform. Its offering is integrated with Tickets.com, which ensures the tickets offered on StubHub are valid.
Tickets.com is also working with Qcue and Digonex, which offer dynamic pricing tools. Qcue, for example, feeds data, including sales inventory provided by Tickets.com and other data about the team's record, the weather and the game's pitching matchup, into its algorithms to recommend that baseball teams adjust ticket prices.
Developers may pay for access to Tickets.com in different ways, depending on how they operate. "My intent is, yes, to profit from this," Rizzi said. Qcue pays a subscription to receive the data feed. Stubhub shares revenue.
Rizzi's advice to other companies thinking of opening up their offerings in a similar way is to carefully think about the revenue model. "That's huge, because in the end, we could wind up opening our system and having a great system and making all the third parties really wealthy, and not participating in that. We don't want to do that," Rizzi said. "We want them to prosper... but I think having a plan in terms of how to monetize it before you implement is pretty important."
He also suggested that it's important to think about how to support the third-party developers. "Supporting an ecosystem of third parties is a lot different from supporting a client who is the end user of the system," he noted. He recommends that other companies make sure to consider those kinds of structural and business components and factor them into their revenue models.
At a recent cloud computing conference, Rizzi said one central theme was making the cloud about more than cost savings.
That's what Tickets.com and some of the pioneers in offering infrastructure or platforms as a service have done. Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com are among companies that have opened up their internal resources so third parties can develop on them.
For complete article: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=3235305
Source: Nancy Gohring, PC Advisor
Showing posts with label cloud computing platform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cloud computing platform. Show all posts
Friday, August 13, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
IDC/IDG Enterprise Cloud Leadership Forum Finalizes Agenda With Cloud Industry's Most Influential Vendor Executives and Senior IT Executives
Extending Your Business Into the Cloud
John Rizzi, Vice President of Product Management and Strategy, Tickets.com
Tickets.com isn't just considering how the cloud can augment its infrastructure - the company is becoming a cloud provider itself! By extending its rich ticket service capabilities into the cloud and creating an ecosystem for enhancement by a world of developers, Tickets.com is not only enriching its services and deepening customer ties, but attempting to move its business faster than traditional competitors. This eye-opening case study shows that the cloud isn't just about a new style of computing, but a whole new way to do business.
John Rizzi will be speaking at the conference on June 15.
John Rizzi, Vice President of Product Management and Strategy, Tickets.com
Tickets.com isn't just considering how the cloud can augment its infrastructure - the company is becoming a cloud provider itself! By extending its rich ticket service capabilities into the cloud and creating an ecosystem for enhancement by a world of developers, Tickets.com is not only enriching its services and deepening customer ties, but attempting to move its business faster than traditional competitors. This eye-opening case study shows that the cloud isn't just about a new style of computing, but a whole new way to do business.
John Rizzi will be speaking at the conference on June 15.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Extending Your Business Into the Cloud
Tickets.com isn't just considering how the cloud can augment its infrastructure - the company is becoming a cloud provider itself! By extending its rich ticket service capabilities into the cloud and creating an ecosystem for enhancement by a world of developers, Tickets.com is not only enriching its services and deepening customer ties, but attempting to move its business faster than traditional competitors. This eye-opening case study shows that the cloud isn't just about a new style of computing, but a whole new way to do business.
John Rizzi, Vice President of Product Management and Strategy, Tickets.com will be speaking at the upcoming Cloud Leadership Forum conference in Santa Clara, CA on June 15.
Learn more >
John Rizzi, Vice President of Product Management and Strategy, Tickets.com will be speaking at the upcoming Cloud Leadership Forum conference in Santa Clara, CA on June 15.
Learn more >
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tickets.com Selects 3PAR to Power the Ticketing Industry's Most Innovative Cloud Computing Platform
3PAR ® (NYSE: PAR), the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today that Tickets.com®, a leading provider of fully integrated event ticketing services for thousands of top arts, entertainment, and sports organizations worldwide, has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage as the foundation for its signature ProVenue® ticketing platform. The decision to deploy highly virtualized 3PAR Utility Storage has enabled Tickets.com to improve management efficiency by 10x and reduce the time to deployment window by 88% as compared to traditional storage arrays from other vendors. The event ticketing vendor has also reported up-front cost savings with 3PAR that total more than half a million dollars as compared to traditional arrays.
“Other storage vendors simply couldn’t offer us the cost advantages, functionality, scalability, and ease of management that 3PAR did,” said Brett Michalak, Chief Information Officer for Tickets.com. “With 3PAR, all the advanced features we needed were integrated into the system and provided at a cost well below that of the alternatives, and we didn’t need a dedicated SAN team or any additional people to manage it. With 3PAR, our systems were up and we were provisioning storage to our database servers within a day. That’s unheard of with other platforms,” said Michalak.
Powered by hyper-efficient and highly virtualized 3PAR InServ® Storage Servers and Oracle® Database Servers,the launch of the SaaS-based ProVenue®, the newest and most advanced ticketing system from Tickets.com, puts clients in control of their ticketing operation, from box office to phone sales to Internet transactions. With unsurpassed flexibility, open architecture, robust data management tools, and transaction speed, ProVenue® delivers industry leading technology to ticketing.
Through utilizing advanced 3PAR software offerings such as 3PAR Virtual Copy and 3PAR System Reporter, Tickets.com has reduced storage costs by maintaining a virtualized environment that enables them to do more with less—fewer disks, less power, less administration time—which has saved the company over a half a million dollars in up-front costs. The decision to build the ProVenue platform on top of a 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure has also given Tickets.com the flexibility to add new customers and services rapidly—decreasing the time to deployment window by 88%. The reliability and flexibility of the 3PAR Utility Storage platform are supplemented by robust monitoring tools that enable Tickets.com to automatically screen the health of their systems to ensure the best end-user experience for clients and their customers.
In addition, 3PAR Dynamic Optimization makes the event ticketing vendor’s 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure much easier to manage than traditional arrays, which has allowed Tickets.com to avoid adding headcount to administer their storage infrastructure. 3PAR Utility Storage has allowed costs to remain low through a pay-as-you-grow architecture that has enabled the ticketing vendor to maintain storage spend that is in line with sales growth.
“Many companies are looking to add SaaS or cloud-based applications to their product offerings as an innovative way to generate new streams of revenue and improve their reach,” said XYZ analyst. “3PAR Utility Storage is extremely well suited to providers looking to test these waters. With 3PAR, they can dip their toes into the SaaS pool with minimal up-front investment, then scale their storage infrastructure simply and painlessly as these new services gain traction and start to actually generate revenue.”
“The story that Tickets.com tells is one we hear time and time again,” said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. “Their traditional storage infrastructure was holding them back. It simply wasn’t designed for innovation. It was inflexible, complex to manage, and at the end of the day extremely expensive. Lean times call for smart storage, and 3PAR was able to deliver more for less—more automation, more advanced capabilities, more capacity headroom, and better visibility—for dramatically lower cost and administrative effort.”
“Other storage vendors simply couldn’t offer us the cost advantages, functionality, scalability, and ease of management that 3PAR did,” said Brett Michalak, Chief Information Officer for Tickets.com. “With 3PAR, all the advanced features we needed were integrated into the system and provided at a cost well below that of the alternatives, and we didn’t need a dedicated SAN team or any additional people to manage it. With 3PAR, our systems were up and we were provisioning storage to our database servers within a day. That’s unheard of with other platforms,” said Michalak.
Powered by hyper-efficient and highly virtualized 3PAR InServ® Storage Servers and Oracle® Database Servers,the launch of the SaaS-based ProVenue®, the newest and most advanced ticketing system from Tickets.com, puts clients in control of their ticketing operation, from box office to phone sales to Internet transactions. With unsurpassed flexibility, open architecture, robust data management tools, and transaction speed, ProVenue® delivers industry leading technology to ticketing.
Through utilizing advanced 3PAR software offerings such as 3PAR Virtual Copy and 3PAR System Reporter, Tickets.com has reduced storage costs by maintaining a virtualized environment that enables them to do more with less—fewer disks, less power, less administration time—which has saved the company over a half a million dollars in up-front costs. The decision to build the ProVenue platform on top of a 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure has also given Tickets.com the flexibility to add new customers and services rapidly—decreasing the time to deployment window by 88%. The reliability and flexibility of the 3PAR Utility Storage platform are supplemented by robust monitoring tools that enable Tickets.com to automatically screen the health of their systems to ensure the best end-user experience for clients and their customers.
In addition, 3PAR Dynamic Optimization makes the event ticketing vendor’s 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure much easier to manage than traditional arrays, which has allowed Tickets.com to avoid adding headcount to administer their storage infrastructure. 3PAR Utility Storage has allowed costs to remain low through a pay-as-you-grow architecture that has enabled the ticketing vendor to maintain storage spend that is in line with sales growth.
“Many companies are looking to add SaaS or cloud-based applications to their product offerings as an innovative way to generate new streams of revenue and improve their reach,” said XYZ analyst. “3PAR Utility Storage is extremely well suited to providers looking to test these waters. With 3PAR, they can dip their toes into the SaaS pool with minimal up-front investment, then scale their storage infrastructure simply and painlessly as these new services gain traction and start to actually generate revenue.”
“The story that Tickets.com tells is one we hear time and time again,” said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. “Their traditional storage infrastructure was holding them back. It simply wasn’t designed for innovation. It was inflexible, complex to manage, and at the end of the day extremely expensive. Lean times call for smart storage, and 3PAR was able to deliver more for less—more automation, more advanced capabilities, more capacity headroom, and better visibility—for dramatically lower cost and administrative effort.”
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Tickets.com In The News
Tickets.com Saves Half a Million Dollars with 3PAR Utility Storage
3PAR Powers the Ticketing Industry’s Most Innovative Cloud Computing Platform
Fremont, CA, March 17, 2009--3PAR® (NYSE: PAR), the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today that Tickets.com®, a leading provider of fully integrated event ticketing services for thousands of top arts, entertainment, and sports organizations worldwide, has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage as the foundation for its signature ProVenue® ticketing platform. The decision to deploy highly virtualized 3PAR Utility Storage has enabled Tickets.com to improve management efficiency by 10x and reduce the time to deployment window by 88% as compared to traditional storage arrays from other vendors. The event ticketing vendor has also reported up-front cost savings with 3PAR that total more than half a million dollars as compared to traditional arrays.
“Other storage vendors simply couldn’t offer us the cost advantages, functionality, scalability, and ease of management that 3PAR did,” said Brett Michalak, Chief Information Officer for Tickets.com. “With 3PAR, all the advanced features we needed were integrated into the system and provided at a cost well below that of the alternatives, and we didn’t need a dedicated SAN team or any additional people to manage it. With 3PAR, our systems were up and we were provisioning storage to our database servers within a day. That’s unheard of with other platforms,” said Michalak.
Powered by hyper-efficient and highly virtualized 3PAR InServ® Storage Servers and Oracle® Database Servers, the launch of the SaaS-based ProVenue®, the newest and most advanced ticketing system from Tickets.com, puts clients in control of their ticketing operation, from box office to phone sales to Internet transactions. With unsurpassed flexibility, open architecture, robust data management tools, and transaction speed, ProVenue® delivers industry leading technology to ticketing.
Through utilizing advanced 3PAR software offerings such as 3PAR Virtual Copy and 3PAR System Reporter, Tickets.com has reduced storage costs by maintaining a virtualized environment that enables them to do more with less—fewer disks, less power, less administration time—which has saved the company over a half a million dollars in up-front costs. The decision to build the ProVenue platform on top of a 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure has also given Tickets.com the flexibility to add new customers and services rapidly—decreasing the time to deployment window by 88%. The reliability and flexibility of the 3PAR Utility Storage platform are supplemented by robust monitoring tools that enable Tickets.com to automatically screen the health of their systems to ensure the best end-user experience for clients and their customers.
In addition, 3PAR Dynamic Optimization makes the event ticketing vendor’s 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure much easier to manage than traditional arrays, which has allowed Tickets.com to avoid adding headcount to administer their storage infrastructure. 3PAR Utility Storage has allowed costs to remain low through a pay-as-you-grow architecture that has enabled the ticketing vendor to maintain storage spend that is in line with sales growth.
“Many companies are looking to add SaaS or cloud-based applications to their product offerings as an innovative way to generate new streams of revenue and improve their reach,” said XYZ analyst. “3PAR Utility Storage is extremely well suited to providers looking to test these waters. With 3PAR, they can dip their toes into the SaaS pool with minimal up-front investment, then scale their storage infrastructure simply and painlessly as these new services gain traction and start to actually generate revenue.”
“The story that Tickets.com tells is one we hear time and time again,” said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. “Their traditional storage infrastructure was holding them back. It simply wasn’t designed for innovation. It was inflexible, complex to manage, and at the end of the day extremely expensive. Lean times call for smart storage, and 3PAR was able to deliver more for less—more automation, more advanced capabilities, more capacity headroom, and better visibility—for dramatically lower cost and administrative effort.”
3PAR Powers the Ticketing Industry’s Most Innovative Cloud Computing Platform
Fremont, CA, March 17, 2009--3PAR® (NYSE: PAR), the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today that Tickets.com®, a leading provider of fully integrated event ticketing services for thousands of top arts, entertainment, and sports organizations worldwide, has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage as the foundation for its signature ProVenue® ticketing platform. The decision to deploy highly virtualized 3PAR Utility Storage has enabled Tickets.com to improve management efficiency by 10x and reduce the time to deployment window by 88% as compared to traditional storage arrays from other vendors. The event ticketing vendor has also reported up-front cost savings with 3PAR that total more than half a million dollars as compared to traditional arrays.
“Other storage vendors simply couldn’t offer us the cost advantages, functionality, scalability, and ease of management that 3PAR did,” said Brett Michalak, Chief Information Officer for Tickets.com. “With 3PAR, all the advanced features we needed were integrated into the system and provided at a cost well below that of the alternatives, and we didn’t need a dedicated SAN team or any additional people to manage it. With 3PAR, our systems were up and we were provisioning storage to our database servers within a day. That’s unheard of with other platforms,” said Michalak.
Powered by hyper-efficient and highly virtualized 3PAR InServ® Storage Servers and Oracle® Database Servers, the launch of the SaaS-based ProVenue®, the newest and most advanced ticketing system from Tickets.com, puts clients in control of their ticketing operation, from box office to phone sales to Internet transactions. With unsurpassed flexibility, open architecture, robust data management tools, and transaction speed, ProVenue® delivers industry leading technology to ticketing.
Through utilizing advanced 3PAR software offerings such as 3PAR Virtual Copy and 3PAR System Reporter, Tickets.com has reduced storage costs by maintaining a virtualized environment that enables them to do more with less—fewer disks, less power, less administration time—which has saved the company over a half a million dollars in up-front costs. The decision to build the ProVenue platform on top of a 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure has also given Tickets.com the flexibility to add new customers and services rapidly—decreasing the time to deployment window by 88%. The reliability and flexibility of the 3PAR Utility Storage platform are supplemented by robust monitoring tools that enable Tickets.com to automatically screen the health of their systems to ensure the best end-user experience for clients and their customers.
In addition, 3PAR Dynamic Optimization makes the event ticketing vendor’s 3PAR Utility Storage infrastructure much easier to manage than traditional arrays, which has allowed Tickets.com to avoid adding headcount to administer their storage infrastructure. 3PAR Utility Storage has allowed costs to remain low through a pay-as-you-grow architecture that has enabled the ticketing vendor to maintain storage spend that is in line with sales growth.
“Many companies are looking to add SaaS or cloud-based applications to their product offerings as an innovative way to generate new streams of revenue and improve their reach,” said XYZ analyst. “3PAR Utility Storage is extremely well suited to providers looking to test these waters. With 3PAR, they can dip their toes into the SaaS pool with minimal up-front investment, then scale their storage infrastructure simply and painlessly as these new services gain traction and start to actually generate revenue.”
“The story that Tickets.com tells is one we hear time and time again,” said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. “Their traditional storage infrastructure was holding them back. It simply wasn’t designed for innovation. It was inflexible, complex to manage, and at the end of the day extremely expensive. Lean times call for smart storage, and 3PAR was able to deliver more for less—more automation, more advanced capabilities, more capacity headroom, and better visibility—for dramatically lower cost and administrative effort.”
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