Leading PaaS Provider OrangeScape Awarded Patent for Rules Engine

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued patent number 8,055,995 to Suresh Sambandam, Mani Doraisamy, Dinesh Varadharajan, & Prasanna Jaganathan from OrangeScape for an invention in the area of “Rule Engine”. The Patent is called “System and method of defining a hierarchical data model and related computation and instruction rules using spreadsheet like user interface”. 

The invention is particularly aimed at simplifying business application development by taking rule based programming to masses (citizen developers) - the underlying premise of founding OrangeScape. There has always been a need for a system that would solve the existing problem of semantic gap by adopting a rule engine approach. However, unlike other business rule engines that force users to understand their own proprietary rule definition environment, OrangeScape adopted a novel approach of exploiting the all pervasive spreadsheet knowledge leading to a non-intrusive, low learning curve based method for expressing business rules.

While business users and process owners exploit spreadsheets for all sorts of application needs it was very limiting to build enterprise class applications. This has been a key bottleneck in consolidation of long-tail applications. OrangeScape combined the simplicity of spreadsheet based programming with the ability to define data model so that serious application can be built by process owners.

OrangeScape has moved further along, leveraging cloud computing technologies to take its vision to broaden the reach in global markets. OrangeScape also added other core capabilities like visual workflow designer, form designer and more for building comprehensive business applications while the rules engine and hierarchical data models are the underlying foundation of its meta-data based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering.

These capabilities allow OrangeScape to provide an ideal alternative for migrating away from legacy platforms such as Lotus Notes. The Visual approach to workflow and rules definition provides the required ease and abstraction for citizen developers who have leveraged Lotus Notes or MS Access in past.

On this important milestone, Mani Doraisamy, co-founder and CTO of OrangeScape, said -

"This patent is as simple as it can get: Applying the simplicity of spreadsheet to enterprise data model. That’s why it is so powerful, especially for a platform product targeted for citizen developers. This represents 7 years of research and legitimizes our differentiator - the core value proposition of our product."

OrangeScape is one of the leading PaaS vendors globally with recognition from Gartner Research (in their 2011 Global PaaS Competitive Landscape report featuring 10 companies) and Forrester Research (in their 2011 Wave Report on PaaS).

Through this Patent, OrangeScape reaffirms the strong technology foundation that is critical for a platform vendor in cloud space for the customers to put the trust and show confidence. While analysts claim that PaaS would be the next biggest technological disruption in the Enterprise Applications space, OrangeScape is poised to take the Applications Platforms space to the next level of “democratization of business application development”, thereby empowering IT leaders to leverage professional developers as well as citizen developers.

CloudStory congratulates our Guest Author Suresh Sambandam and the OrangeScape team on this achievement and wish them Good Luck!