KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Lumen Software, a leading provider of commercial open source Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and portal solutions, today announced its flagship platform, Lumenation, and the Lumenation Software Development Kit (SDK), are available immediately for free download. The products give PHP and AJAX developers a way to rapidly build, deploy, manage, and sell SaaS applications.

Lumen's SaaS platform is in use by more than 200 commercial customers with over 150,000 users of on-demand applications. Lumen's focus on the world's 5 million PHP developers validates the work of industry pioneers SugarCRM, developers of a large CRM application written in PHP, and Zend, creators of the world's most popular PHP application platform. Lumenation is the industry's first PHP platform to focus on SaaS developers, making PHP an effective alternative to proprietary SaaS development platforms such as Saleforce's AppSpace and Microsoft's Live Core.

"Lumenation is a superior alternative to proprietary SaaS development languages because the product's flexibility and openness make development of web-based on-demand applications quick and inexpensive," said Doug Clark, Managing Partner at RDClark Associates, a Kansas City based independent systems integrator. "Lumenation is easy to customize for people with very basic programming skills. I can easily make a profit for my business by selling commercial Lumenation applications and customization services to smaller sized companies or workgroups within larger organizations."

In March, market analyst firm IDC released a survey of over 1,000 small- to medium-sized businesses, in which between five and 15 percent said they were considering adopting a SaaS solution in the next 12 months.

But Jeff Kaplan, managing director at THINKstrategies, a SaaS consultancy that looks at the level of interest in SaaS among organizations of all sizes, said his research indicated much higher levels of interest. "The SaaS market for SMBs is huge," said Kaplan. "Our surveys show more than 40 percent of small and medium businesses are looking into their SaaS options. From small business owners' point of view, faster time-to-deployment and lower infrastructure costs are driving SaaS adoption," Kaplan added. "For these reasons, many businesses and programmers will find the low cost and agility of open development platforms, like the Lumenation environment, to be preferable to expensive, proprietary alternatives."

"Due to the cost-effective open source infrastructure of Lumenation, a new group of smaller businesses can now get customized SaaS and web-portal applications quickly and at a reasonable cost," said Tad Gordon, CEO of Lumen Software. "Unlike Salesforce.com and other big vendors that are pushing vendor-specific languages and charging both vendors and customers upfront and recurring fees, Lumen is offering businesses and developers a straightforward and practical alternative: use Lumenation, get the benefits of PHP, Linux, Apache, and pay for commercial SaaS applications only when you need them."

The Lumenation portal is based on the familiar "desktop" metaphor, and the Lumenation SDK empowers developers of all levels, from expert to novice, to quickly create and deploy new enterprise-class applications according to their business needs.

Key features and functionality include: -- Automated installer for Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and PHP infrastructure stack; -- Freely available and fully functional Lumenation SaaS application server and Lumenation SDK; -- Advanced managed web-desktop metaphor with graphical drag and drop, click and launch, functionality for any application or file; -- Available as a software application that runs in the datacenter or as a hosted SaaS portal.

Hundreds of commercial applications are already available for the Lumenation portal. Examples include:

-- Small Business Retail Management Suite; -- Help Desk Management System; -- Content Management System; -- Student Information Management System; -- Enterprise Portal; -- Online File Management System. Pricing and Availability

Lumenation and the Lumenation SDK are immediately available for free download at http://www.lumensoftware.com/. Support and professional service contracts are available directly from Lumen Software. Commercial applications can be purchased based either on a perpetual license or a monthly subscription.

About Lumen Software

Lumen Software develops and sells open source and commercial SaaS and web portal software. With over 150,000 installed users and an active community, Lumen's flagship product Lumenation is leading the way for 5 million PHP developers to rapidly deploy SaaS and portal applications. Built on top of Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and PHP (LAPP), Lumenation is freely available for download and unlimited use. Commercial modules are also available for sale to small and medium sized businesses as well as ISP's and ASP's that want to further reduce development and deployment time. Founded in 1999, Lumen Software is headquartered in Kansas City and is online at http://www.lumensoftware.com/.

CONTACT: Jesse Casman of Page One PR, +1-415-321-2347, or
jesse@pageonepr.com, for Lumen Software

Web site: http://www.lumensoftware.com/