Moving to hosted opportunities

When discussing new business opportunities with our partners, we found that the majority of them faces serious problem with their clients? demand. Unlike in the past, the potential prospects worry about any significant technology investments and rather postpone their new communication services deployment. The most pronounced argument is every present CAPEX world. The companies have learnt a lot from the impact of the crises that came by Lehman Brothes failure 3 years ago. How to run a new business under these unpleasant circumstances?

A nice recipe can be found under software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, which is a quite popular in USA and has been widely deployed since 2000. The idea comes from a general application service provider (ASP) strategy and is based on the sale of the service that is run on shared communications technology to multiple tenants. In the SaaS case the infrastructure software system usage is sold as a service to clients connected through internet. As the example there can be used shared multichannel contact center technology Hermes.Net by Vocalcom. The technology itself is located at provider?s data center to multiple clients that are leasing the monthly usage of agents and supervisor connections as well as external PSTN trunks capacity. From the client?s point of view they are using a virtual full-featured multichannel contact center technology and the fact that the real physical communication technology behind is shared across multiple clients is transparent for them.

Contrary to simple Net Centrex or IP Centrex services, SaaS solutions are not suitable only for SOHO/SME market clients as the OPEX based alternative to simple PBX. The quite complex systems as the mentioned fully-featured multichannel contact centers can be really attractive to even corporate clients in SaaS model because of TCO reasons. As there is almost zero CAPEX requirement, the overall communication service utilization is covered by OPEX. According to Yankee Group research, 5 years SaaS based solution TCO is around one third of premised based solution TCO. This is really boosting argument for clients to deploy new SaaS based communication services rather than preventing any new communication services introduction.

Considering the SaaS model charging potential, there are various approaches to be implemented for regular monthly service usage payments. The typical models include monthly rental or prepaid fees according to selected content, capacity or volumes. There is even possible to offer dynamical usage charging, which can be really attractive for clients with irregular seasonal service peaks. The minimum service usage can be negotiated. In the example of multichannel contact center environment case the service charge can be based on used agents and supervisors connection according to campaign requirements during the accounted period. Other charging options can be based on particular transaction, time metering or whatever KPIs, which are available.

SaaS model brings the potential of widespread related professional add-on services including the initial virtual system configuration and set-up, training, customization and changes or charges for the service scope changes. There are too many ways to get paid for services with SaaS. Even though the clients are not willing to invest to new technologies, they sure find SaaS as the costs effective and investment risks secure way to introduce the innovative communication services. Are you ready to cash this opportunity with your existing solution potential?

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