Laszlo announced today that Laszlo Webtop passes the number of 7 million paying subscribers by now. Verizon Wireless was the first customer for Webtop in 2007 . Verizon deployed Webtop to more than 1 million customers at that time. Since then Laszlo has been working hard on the vision of a unified portal which enables companies to integrate applications – built by different vendors – through drag & drop concepts and interfaces for importing and exporting data. Including digital lifestyle applications like voice- and videomail, chat and softphone integration.
Laszlo Webtop demo at GoWebtop.com
What are some of the ideas behind Webtop?
Webtop is a sophisticated platform that unifies access to an expanding suite of Rich Internet Applications. Webtop Connectors allow easy integration with existing back-end systems. Webtop Smart Objects allow effortless integration between different applications enabling drag and drop, inline display/playback, and standards-based import/export.
I was attracted to Laszlo and the OpenLaszlo project when I was looking for a promising technology which could be used to create complex user-interfaces for the web, kiosk systems, branded applications running on TV screens – which can be used by anyone with even little computer experience. Laszlo shares that vision as well:
With OpenLaszlo’s run-time and device independence our applications can extend from the desktop to mobile as well as to TV and DVR solutions.
And as George Shahid – CEO and President of Laszlo puts it:
“We are excited to see the increase in adoption of our open source as well as our commercial offerings on an international basis. We have always believed that creative, intuitive user interfaces are essential to the popular appeal of web-based applications”
At CES 2009 Yahoo! and Intel presented the Yahoo! Connected TV widget platform, and Intel is working with Adobe on porting Flash technology to TVs and consumer electronic devices. Compare the functionality of Yahoo! Connected TV – simple widgets displaying information from different sources on the web – with the powerful integration which can be achieved through Laszlo Webtop. Envision Webtop running on your TV, with mail, chat, videomessaging – next to the TV channel running in a Webtop window!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You made it sound like 7M people/companies had bought laszlo webtop, are the sales that bad???
Laszlo Webtop has a per-active-user license model, meaning: if you deploy Webtop to your customers, you pay a license fee for every customer logging into the system on a regular basis. 7 million is good number in my opinion. The web mail and communication portal market has many competitors, like gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and the many others.
Based on what I know customers like Verizon Wireless offers Laszlo Webtop only as an extra service to their premium customers. Which means – lthough Verizon has more 65 million customers – only a fraction of those will be able to use Webtop.
2009 will add a significant number of new customers to the Laszlo Webtop customer base. Alcatel-Lucent announced a global OEM agreement with Laszlo Systems, and they already have 2 new customers for their 5155 Rich Communications Manager: Telefonica/O2 in the Czech Republic, and a customer in the US that hasn’t officially been announced.