Give up being disorganised and stressed for Lent with GTD™ based SaaS

RapidSwitch, a leading European supplier of self-managed dedicated server solutions, is hosting Plancake, an award-winning SaaS that helps people organise their lives better.

Plancake is a new task management software solution based on the organisational methodology GTD (Getting Things Done)™ popularised by the American productivity consultant Daniel Allen. Created by London-based software developer Daniele Occhipinti from technology start-up Danyuki Software Limited, it consists of a calendar, inbox, lists and tasks which allow you to tag and manage all your to dos, ideas and appointments in a quick and easy way. Plancake has been in beta for the last few months and has just been launched to market.

Daniele, who rather appropriately describes himself as ‘chief baker’ on his website, explains: “What’s different about Plancake is that unlike other task management software it works across all computers, tablets and smartphones regardless of which operating system they are using and whether they have an internet connection or not. It’s fun, easy to use and integrates with both Google Calendar and Gmail.”

RapidSwitch provides Plancake with a dedicated hosting platform in its Maidenhead data centre which supports the software’s use of the new HTML5 allowing it to be delivered on any mobile platform.

Daniele, who’s an electronic engineering graduate from Genoa in Italy, says: “RapidSwitch has been one of the key ingredients in Plancake’s early success. I have a very powerful platform that can keep up with spikes in traffic which is important as we had an initial rush of 5000 users registering in just a couple of days when we launched it recently. Data integrity and speed are also very important and RapidSwitch’s infrastructure and support helps us a lot.”

RapidSwitch servers are connected to a network that has been independently rated as being one of the fastest in the UK.  The data centre is staffed 24/7 and a client portal allows customers to control all aspects of their service online.

Sarah Haran, managing director of RapidSwitch, says: “The SaaS market is a competitive one so Plancake needs to deliver its exciting new software at minimum cost but with the capacity to add substantial numbers of users as it grows. A dedicated platform suits its purposes perfectly.”

Plancake has already received a number of awards including a Shell LiveWire Grand Ideas Award and was described by leading online community Lifehacker as having ‘all the great tools’ for task management and data portability when it was in beta.

Plus the tech start-up is already ‘baking’ its next product.

Daniele explains: "After helping individuals, we are now developing software that we think we can help businesses get more organised and therefore be more productive. We are aiming big - we want to set up ourselves as competitors of products like Podio or Asana, which is why we need to look for our first round of investment. I think it’s a great time for investors to be looking at the IT sector in the UK."

As for the name Plancake, Daniele explains: “We were trying to think of a name to suggest that by using our software you’d have more time to enjoy the fun things in life, like eating cake. You never know we might just have to rename Pancake Day ‘Plancake Day’ if our business takes off!” 

RapidSwitch is a subsidiary of iomart Group plc which was named Scottish Digital IT Company of the Year 2011, and was recently named one of the best web hosting companies by HostReview.