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March - 2009 - issue > Top 10 Internet companies
WOLF Frameworks Eyeing to be a Wolf in the SaaS Market
ST Team
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Software as a service (SaaS) is gaining traction in the Indian market and more players are switching to SaaS to combat the current economic downturn. Sunny Ghosh, Cofounder and CEO, Wolf Frameworks foresaw a huge potential market. According to Mckinsey, the total opportunity in SaaS platforms will grow from $5 billion to $11 billion by 2012 and about $1.5 billion to $3 billion will be in database, development, and integration layers where Wolf plans to make more direct offerings and play a substantial role. Founded in 2006 by Ralph Vaz and Sunny Ghosh, the Bangalore based Wolf Frameworks is offering a 100 percent browser based Web application design and development Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for creating Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) type business applications on the Internet. It allows business analysts, domain experts, and software solution providers to develop and deliver business applications from just a browser interface without writing technical code.

Prior to founding WOLF, while Ghosh was working with partners and customers across Asia and the Americas as the President of EPiServer CMS, he recognized the growing need for an Internet based Web 2.0 platform that could develop and deliver complete functional software 70 percent faster and could dramatically lower the cost to meet the growing needs of small and medium businesses to use customized software with limited budgets.

"Most Internet based platforms help economize creating, utilizing, and maintaining software for customers, but unfortunately they enforce strict proprietary programming languages, fixed cloud based data storage, and lack interoperability – bringing up portability, migration path issues, and locking fears for large enterprises - contrary to the basic principles of the Internet," says Ghosh. These key challenges triggered the entrepreneur in him to offer the Wolf platform in a hybrid model for SMB enterprises and ISVs.

Currently, Wolf's on-demand model offers more than 25 ready-to-use business applications such as Wolf Inventory Management, Fleet Mgmt, Helpdesk, and CRM and Project Management for SMBs and the company plans to bring partners-driven customer centric SaaS applications to the market. The Wolf applications are services paid by the user on a monthly basis, which has a one-time signup charge (Rs. 5,000 for most apps) and recurring per user subscription charge of Rs. 500. Anybody who develops applications on the Wolf Platform is free to submit the application to Wolf Solutions Gallery and in turn earn revenue on them. The Wolf delivery includes all infrastructure charges.

For enterprises, the platform enables partners to design serious applications, save their data in their own preferred private server, and even allow extraction of business design in XML format at the click of a mouse. "Users can also request wolf to transform their business design XML in their preferred XML schemata that can then be exported into other platforms, unlocking customer fears of being locked inside an Internet based platform," explains Ghosh.

Ideal for database centric transactional and analytical application scenarios, the framework allows developers to work with data across different sources and with existing software systems, benefiting from their existing systems.

Currently the company has about 800 people building applications, and has 250 applications in its portfolio. Ghosh says that the applications, which vary from functional web widgets to enterprise solutions, are bundled with other products and are taken to the market as independent products. Some partners have turned their ideas into products within weeks, which are used by closed customer groups before they are offered in the market.

"Right now, we are operating on a smart cloud computing infrastructure in the U.S., which gives us the ability to add bandwidth and space. We therefore are able to provide users a significant cost benefit by letting them pay for the usage and not separately for hosting or software until they start earning money," Ghosh says.

WOLF's vision to save 70 percent time in creating new business software by automating the development, testing, and deployment steps can certainly help many enterprises rapidly manage and embed technology in their business processes; and help the eight million small and medium businesses in India to consume IT and improve their efficiency in conducting business. Currently, Wolf Frameworks is in the growth trajectory grabbing this opportunity and is in the race to lead the SaaS platform market worldwide.

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