As more and more solution providers try to figure out where they fit in the cloud, key vendors are enabling them to build a business around it. Long Jump has been around for 7 years and in their own words "version 7 is all about collaboration". Collaboration with and between ISVs, solution providers, developers, tenant-to-tenant, Global platform users, and public web visitors.
So how does Long Jump enable these partners in the cloud? By providing them with licensing capabilities to basically build an application on an integrated end-to-end platform. These turnkey applications, for instance an event planning application, can be leveraged by clients and partners and constantly improved through product approval submissions to the developers. Partners can also create social networks within the platform. Can you say cloud and social?
While I'm not a developer, I can certainly see the value to partners of being able to create a product to call their own. But is this something partners want? Are they being forced out of their comfort zone by being expected to morph into manufacturers? Long Jump and others still provide their products for resale so it's not an all or nothing but what would solution providers prefer? Which SP's are comfortable with this and which want to go back to the days of selling really big hardware and on premise software?