GrapeCity, an award-winning software development firm, offers a variety of services to help its clients develop new products and achieve their business goals.  GrapeCity’s client list includes global brands such as Microsoft, Accenture, Sony, Procter & Gamble, Intel, Mitsubishi, AT&T and Johnson & Johnson.  

GrapeCity specializes in two kinds of projects. First, they work with companies that have ideas for new applications, but have not had a chance to thoroughly define their vision and requirements. Through GrapeCity’s standard processes and iterative development models, GrapeCity helps its clients develop new products that meet their vision.

Second, they proudly work with what they call “burn victims”, organizations that have experienced the pain of previous project failures.   And, can’t we all relate to that?

Usually these failures result from poor processes, a lack of understanding of the vision of the product, or too much emphasis placed on technical coding.  In these cases, GrapeCity reviews the status of projects, pinpoints the causes of failure, and provides remedies to rescue projects hanging on the edge and bring them to successful completion.

With offices around the world, GrapeCity chose Contour because it needed a powerful solution that was Web-based and easily adopted by team members working in different offices, time zones and countries.

GrapeCity now uses Contour to manage the requirements of all their development projects.   With Contour, the learning curve for new users is very fast – in just a few hours of training, they are ready to go.

“In today’s day and age, teams are geographically distributed all over the world. There is a clear need for a requirements management tool that has a rich yet lightweight client that users can use to collaborate. Jama clearly gets it. They understand how a requirements tool should work, ” says, Devinder Singh Josan, Vice President of Engineering at GrapeCity.  Learn more about GrapeCity’s products & services >

Want more info on Contour?

Watch the guided tour video to see how fast, easy and effective Web-based requirements management can be.

Here is a brief writeup on their product in Flying Magazine.

Sponsored events, email lists, online ads, paid search - early on, we invested in these standard channels, following the same marketing playbook as most vendors. No surprise, the bulk of our spend was going to Google Adwords, as high as 80% of our monthly spend.

Over time though, the costs increased as companies in our space competed over the top spots. This is great for Google, but it was crushing our performance metrics. Despite ongoing optimization efforts, the average cost-per-click and cost-per-lead metrics grew to be 2-3x our target range. We were investing a lot of money and questioning the real value it delivered back to our business.

We decided to do the unthinkable - we went cold turkey and deactivated our Google Adwords campaign - turning it off completely. Can you really drop Google ads and survive as a business - is that even legal?

We can laugh, but there’s this sense of obligation that as a business, you have to throw money into Google’s deep coffers, like it’s an online tax. We’re not bucking the Google bandwagon to just be different, we’re doing it because it simply wasn’t delivering the ROI we need to achieve our goals.

So, we had an idea. We had been sponsoring Kiva.org for the past few months as an organization we really admire and believe in - they’re the online micro-lending site that helps entrepreneurs in the developing world. And, we wanted to figure out a way to funnel the dollars we were sending to Google ads over to Kiva loans.

We realize we can’t give away money unless we make money. So, the experiment is to see if we can raise enough awareness and trials through this indirect pr channel to replace the paid search ads on Google - If we can, we’ll make it a permanent switch.

In other words, we’d much rather help a chicken farmer in Cambodia feed her village than fund a Google billionaire’s hobby of flying to space.

Here’s how it works:

We call it the “You try. We give.” program. The more people that learn about Jama Software and do a free trial of Contour, the more new customers we sign on. The more our business grows, the more loans we’re able to give to Kiva entrepreneurs.

The program relies on the power of social networking on the Web via blogs, news articles, people passing it along to friends and colleagues in email and word of mouth. So, we’re hitting the phones, sending emails and leveraging our online community to help us see if social marketing can truly outperform search marketing. We believe it can and we need your help to prove it.

“We’re thrilled when a company like Jama Software develops an innovative program that supports both our global mission at Kiva and their own goals.  It’s such a simple  concept, but that’s the  beauty of it,” said Jessica Jackley Flannery, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Kiva.org

If you like the idea, have a need for our product, then do a free trial and pass this blog post along to your social network. Thanks!

Stratos offers a full range of worldwide products and services from Inmarsat, Iridium and others; end-to-end microwave and VSAT solutions; as well as MarineSat/LandSat services to global organizations who need reliable voice, data and IP communications for mission-critical applications. Don’t know what that means? Either did I before I met the folks at Stratos. Think of it this way, whether you are surfing the web for updates on Hurricane Bertha from the 500 miles off the Florida Keys, or calling your family from the top of Everest, chances are you are using telecommunication products and services from Stratos Global.

With more than a century of service and over 20,000 customers, Stratos is doing things right. And we like partnering with customers that do things right.

Welcome Stratos Global!

Managing the complexity, keeping alignment and consistency, and delivering within scope are all things that demand a disciplined process……which demands a tool to manage that process.

I think this statement from Cadria says a mouthful: “Your customers have unprecedented control over how they receive and interact with information and ideas - which means if you give them what they’re looking for when they’re looking for it, you can build deeper, more lasting relationships with them. We understand that to break through the clutter and reach your audience, you need a clear strategy that unites business objectives with an engaging customer experience.” I was employed by WebTrends for 6 years which happens to be one of Cadria’s partners. So it’s not a surprise to me that Contour is a great fit for marketers that go through this process with their clients.

Welcome to our rapidly growing community Cadria!

Every day, organizations around the world are adopting new ways of working and learning together. Successful collaboration and learning requires clear communication of ideas, goals and strategies, whether to others in the same room or across distances. Tools that enable this kind of communication ultimately expand the potential of what students, business people and others can achieve.

SMART Technologies is both the industry pioneer and market-segment leader in easy-to-use interactive whiteboards and other group collaboration tools. Using SMART products, groups can access and share the information they need to meet, teach, train and present regardless of distance. 

Working with SMART Technologies is a perfect fit for Jama because they understand so well how powerful the marriage between innovation and collaboration is.  They are also huge believers in education and community.  Two things that are often undervalued in today’s world.  We are excited to have SMART join the Jama community and they will be a fun company to watch over time as they continue to deliver on their mission.

Here’s a warm Welcome SMART Technologies!

I’m sorry - but I felt the urge to salute our brothers to the north. I’m not certain what’s going on in Canada right now -perhaps the exchange rate - but Contour is striking a major chord up there. As Mike mentioned in previous blog entries, we have customers all around the globe now and its fitting that we are getting such traction up in Canada. We love those guys! I mean seriously - think of the nicest person you’ve ever met in your life and I bet that guy was a Canadian. I mean who doesn’t like the Canadians anyways? All right, I’m done with my rant.

I know a cool company up in British Columbia that thinks Contour is a pretty darn good fit for their development efforts. Bycast is the leading provider of grid powered storage management software that simplifies the management of massive fixed-content storage systems. Bycast software protects data and simplifies the toughest challenges associated with the management of storage systems. Bycast software enables organizations to optimize their storage infrastructure and ensures the integrity and availability of their valuable data assets. This also enables the formation of regional archives that can scale to petabytes of data across hundreds of sites.

We are happy to have Bycast join our rapidly growing community and look forward to a long, successful relationship. Eh!

The summit of Mauna Kea is home to the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes. Each stands EIGHT STORIES TALL and weighs 300 tons, yet operates with nanometer precision. At the heart of each Telescope is a revolutionary primary mirror. Ten meters in diameter, the mirror is composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work in concert as a single piece of reflective glass.

Made possible through grants totaling more than $140 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation, the Observatory is operated by the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA), whose Board of Directors includes representatives from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California. In 1996, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) joined as a partner in the Observatory. The Keck I telescope began science observations in May 1993; Keck II began in October 1996.

Its exciting for us a Jama to be connected to yet another great team with an incredible application - working in an incredible place. If you get a moment, you should visit www.keckobservatory.org and check out some breath taking images from the summit. Its really quite something.

As I look out my window on this dreary January day in Portland, I can only hope that my boss puts me on a plane to go visit our newest customer in paradise. Welcome W.M. Keck!

Since 1879 Blackwell has been supplying libraries with the finest books and most comprehensive bibliographic support. Now Blackwell serves libraries all over the world, with headquarters in the U.K., U.S. and Australia. Their mission says it all: Be the partner of choice in building great library collections. Provide innovative solutions to the challenges created by the rapidly changing ways information is published, distributed, and accessed.

Another fun group of people for us to share ideas with, get to know better, and provide a solution that’s inline with their big picture.

Welcome aboard Blackwell!

IceMedia is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dialog Information Technology. With 8 offices across Australia and one in the UK, IceMedia is uniquely positioned to extend their reach both nationally and internationally to provide their customers with world class service.

Welcome IceMedia!