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Company: Magic Software Enterprises Americas
Started: 1990
Located: Or Yehuda, Israel
Geography: Global
Market: Multiple-mode application platform and business process integration solutions
Key Customers: Adecco, Adidas Canada, Allstate, BNP Paribas, CBIA, Clinical Financial Services, Club Med, DHL, Manpower, Praxair and Vodafone
Website: Magic Software Website
Blog: Magic Software Blog
Twitter: @MagicSoftware
Recent News:
Magic Software to Partner with Astadia
Magic Software Sells Company Office Building for about $5.2 million in Cash
I asked Regev Yativ, CEO and president of Magic Software Enterprises Americas a few questions about his business and his view of the SaaS market in 2010.
Did you start out as a Software-as-a-Service company?
No we are a mix of SaaS, Cloud and On-premise solutions. Our company is almost 25 years old, and has been public (NASDAQ: MGIC) since 1991, with millions of users, 2,500 partners, 12 physical offices worldwide in 50 countries and through our distributors and partners.
Magic Software is everywhere, our headquarters is in Israel but most of the company is outside of Israel. In the United States alone we have 400 active partners and a large customer community.
Why do your customers buy from Magic Software?
Magic Software’s products can help our technology customers, if their client starts with client/server technologies; Magic gives them multiple product options including solutions for the Cloud. Magic is not a Force.com-type of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, but we offer various development and deployment environments because customers are looking for a single, integrated way to manage all of their environments.
We offer two main technology platforms uniPaaS (formerly eDeveloper), which is a business application platform that provides a multi-development language environment. Our customers like uniPaaS because it offers the power of choice by allowing them to re-use all different types of their software, no matter what language it was written in. This means that their software can always be relevant, because Magic offers complete backward compatibility.
Our second platform is iBOLT, and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Business Process Management System (BPMS) platform, which allows customers to connect everything to everything including popular systems from Salesforce.com, SAP, Oracle and Siebel, for instance. We are finding more integration projects are moving to the Cloud, so our iBOLT, allows for a simpler way of connecting systems. iBOLT is fully integrated with the Cloud. SAP uses Magic iBOLT with their Business One application, Quest and IBM uses the platform to connect to JD Edwards products, even those running on S/400 hardware.
Customers see the clear value of Magic Software’s products for re-using or modernizing old products that have been written in ancient languages like COBOL and being able to move it to the Cloud.
At recent Cloud Computing tradeshow in San Jose, Yahoo! released a new Cloud Computing protocol. Their customers were concerned about having to rewrite their applications but Magic was working on a transparent OEM deal including bundling a full Business Intelligence capability embedded into the platform. This way Yahoo’s customers could leverage the new protocol while harvesting customer information by using the included BI capability, that’s value.
One of our insurance customers told me that by using Magic Software, they no longer feel that their vendors can force them into technology dead ends. It will keep their software investments relevant for longer periods of time, which is key to their company’s success. We believe that co-existence is the right business model, which means that our customers can use either SaaS, the Cloud or On-premise, and it is still their choice.
What do you see as the key trend emerging in the SaaS industry?
I see three trends that everyone is talking about. The first one is Cloud Computing and there is a lot of hype around all the players, languages and environments. The second one we see is Software-as-a-Service and all of the new applications emerging. The third one is Co-existence, which allows customers to have the environment they need for their business and they can have a spectrum of solutions including SaaS.
What is your outlook for 2010?
2009 was a year that we are glad to get behind us, even through we were profitable, and we still had to be very cautious with expenses.
We are now starting to see customers and partners are waking up. Things are getting a little bit better and we are looking to the middle of 2010 for the real recovery.
Crisis and the eventual recovery are good for companies like Magic because we deliver robust technology for innovation and improved business efficiency. Customers are looking for products that help them innovate and we provide products that help to open up new business opportunities, like our new products for the mobile market.
At Magic Software, our company spirit and mentality puts our customers first and in tough times this re-enforces our commitment to our customers.
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