Software Business
Executive Report

November 12, 2007

Using Outsourcing to Increase Revenue
By Theo Forbath, Chief Strategist & Practice Leader, and Peter Brooks, Senior Business Architect in Wipro’s Product Strategy & Architecture Practice

Theo Forbath is a Chief Strategist with Wipro Technologies and leads the company’s global Product Strategy and Architecture (PSA) Practice.  Theo launched the PSA practice in 2003, and has grown its revenue by over 100% per year since that time.  Theo has demonstrated the value of integrating Wipro’s on-shore and off-shore expertise to build a practice that delivers unique value to clients by leveraging on-shore consulting and technical capabilities with off-shore engineering  and customer knowledge. This has differentiated Wipro’s go-to-market strategy and message from both other Indian outsourcers and other North American consultancies.

Outsourcing is well known to lower costs, but today’s leading ISVs are now using global sourcing to produce new sources of revenue. What are they doing and how are they doing it?

Many ISVs are using outsourcers, typically to lower costs. In fact, over time most have achieved costs savings. But unless your efforts in outsourcing to lower costs are unusually good, you are not gaining a sustainable competitive advantage - your competitors are using outsourcers to achieve similar cost savings.

Leading ISVs using partners to increase top line growth by accelerating new product development design and architecture, shortening time-to-market, addressing new markets, and extending the life of older products. Using outsourcers to achieve top-line growth is the next wave of outsourcing.

The Next Wave in Outsourcing
For ISVs, the next wave of outsourcing is about leverage outsourcers’ capabilities, intellectual property, best practices, global infrastructure, or geographic presence to access resources around the globe in order to increase revenue. Outsourcers that provide this expanded set of services are now being called global service providers to emphasize the differentiation between these firms and outsourcers, the firms that provide only low cost staff augmentation services such as testing or maintenance.

There are three significant trends in this next wave of outsourcing:

1. Outsourcing product development to increase a company’s top line growth:
   
   - Generate revenue faster by accelerating new product development and shortening time-to-market
   - Generate net new revenue by using partner knowledge to enter new markets
   - Generate revenue from product that would otherwise be discontinued
   
2. Using intellectual property (IP) owned by outsourcing companies to create products that use knowledge unavailable within the ISV
   
3. Teaming with outsourcers to create new forms of value for their customers and sustainable competitive advantages for their businesses.

Several recent examples demonstrate how outsourcing is evolving and how major outsourcers are helping ISVs advance beyond the basic cost-saving benefits of global sourcing:

• One EU-based ISV used a global service provider to enter a new market. The ISV needed to have its product launched in

  Peter Brooks is a Senior Business Architect in Wipro’s Product Strategy and Architecture practice, where he leads organizations to develop innovative product strategies, create and exploit their product engineering assets, and quantify the business value of technology solutions. With more than 20 years of experience, Peter is a well-known author in the information management field, having written numerous articles and presented at industry conferences.

  Japan within six months. The ISV used an India-based global service provider who had localization expertise and Japanese knowledge to port the product to a new platform, convert the product to Japanese, and assist in the product launch.
• A global IP-PBX network equipment and solution provider filed a US patent for the innovation involved in a product that a global service provider designed and developed. The web-based software tool was delivered in 40% less time and at a 40% reduced cost than was originally estimated.
• For a key product of one worldwide ISV, a global service provider owned the entire code base and performed all software development activities - sustenance, development, integration, and system and performance testing. After development was complete, the provider performed significant customer-facing activities such as software build delivery to the customer and software enhancement of deployed products. The project involved 60+ people over 5 months.

years ago by providing lower value IT services have worked their way up the product development /manufacturing process to now provide higher value services such as outsourced R&D.

What Has Changed?

This new value of outsourcing is possible because global service providers have gained experience; outsourcers have developed industry-specific expertise and business processing outsourcing offerings after having worked in some industries for over 15 years.

Also, leading global service providers are expanding the geographic footprint of their development centers. Wipro has existing or announced centers in Canada, China, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, Mexico, and the US. Tata has thousands of workers in South America. Infosys and the other India-based service providers are following the same strategy. The strategic goal of this approach is for the global service providers to continue to provide a cost advantage while having a local presence. Off-site development is not just done in India anymore.

Finally, there is better technology to support product development around the globe. Countries such as India have high bandwidth network connections to Japan, North America, and Europe. Product development software vendors, noticing globalization trend and taking advantage of the high bandwidth, continue to enhance their products to support global, multi-location product development. Tying this all together, global service providers have made significant investments to develop state of the art technology infrastructure to support 24x7 product development.

Financial Benefits of the Next Wave of Outsourcing

ISVs are obtaining financial value from the new wave of outsourcing described above and beyond that achieved by the first wave of outsourcing. The major benefit of the first wave of outsourcing was lower costs, but the financial benefits of the next wave extend beyond only testing or QA:

1. Lower product development costs in areas such as design and architecture. A typical management goal for the outsourced projects is to lower relevant costs by a 20 – 40%. This goal is being achieved by numerous companies.
   
2. Shift of financial risk to outsourcing partners. The business model for many outsourcers is to be paid on an hourly basis for the work performed. This minimizes this risk to the partner but increases the risk to the ISVs. However, some global service providers are willing work on a fixed price basis or are willing to accept penalty and incentive clauses.
   Transferring even more risk from ISVs, for selected projects global service providers such as Wipro will negotiate lower offshore product development costs in return for receiving a percent of the product sales.
   
3. Use of IP available from global service providers. Global service providers have been building intellectual property portfolios in industries or technologies of expertise. Infosys labs filed for over 20 patents in 2005-2006. Wipro has over 100 patents, many in the areas of wireless technology and plug-and-play. ISVs are taking advantage of the global service providers’ patents to accelerate product development.

The Business Value Benefitsof the Next Wave

Compared to outsourcing where lower costs are often the only benefit, the new wave of global sourcing is providing significant non-financial business value:

1. Faster product development life cycles. Product development lifecycles are being compressed in many industries; what using to be 12 - 18 month product releases now are often yearly or 9 month releases with interim updates. This speed can cause stress in many development organizations. Global partners are a resource that can be used to support this speed, resulting in faster time to market. Companies are achieving time-to-market savings of 25 – 50%.
   In this case the global service providers provide architects and developers and who are responsible to create maintenance releases, work on new releases, or even perform R&D.
2. Ancillary / additional revenue streams. Companies are teaming with global partners to develop products specific to new markets. Rather than invest in time and effort to create a product for profitable but lower value markets, some companies are outsourcing the development or support for these lower value markets.
   One ISV was going to sunset its consumer product line, forgoing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in order to concentrate resources on its enterprise market opportunities, which were viewed as much more strategic and lucrative over the long term. Instead, the company negotiated with its global sourcing partner to create an innovative arrangement in which the partner took on primary responsibility for ongoing development of its consumer product lines for a portion of this otherwise lost revenue stream.
   
3. Other companies use the expertise of global partners to enter new geographies. Olympus wanted to open three sales offices in China to better address growing business. For Olympus’ Chinese subsidiaries, Wipro created the financial business process and technical infrastructure that allowed a sales and distribution network to be created across 3 provinces and 4 companies in 100 days. Addressing differing legal requirements in each province, creating multi-language documentation, and the use bi-lingual staff were critical to the successful rollout .

Challenges in Realizing the Benefits of Global Sourcing

This next wave of global sourcing is different than the first wave; increasing top-line growth requires a much closer working relationship between a company and its global partner(s).

As companies begin to rely on partners to take on significant responsibilities for business processes that directly touch core product development much more carefully synchronized coordination and governance is required. In many cases, companies are still hesitant to entrust a partner with the primary responsibility for processes and operations that are either core to their business or directly impact their top-line growth.

From an operational perspective, the best practices include putting in place weekly and monthly management reviews. Senior management should be involved in these reviews. Quantitative (how many tasks are complete vs. planned?) and qualitative (how confident does my team feel that the offshore team will succeed?) measures should be included.

Risk management is also important from numerous perspectives. For example, from a structural perspective, companies can either start small and gain experience in running and managing these projects or ensure that their partner has specific expertise in the industry and technology and being developed. From a financial perspective, risk management can include building in service levels, incentives, and penalties into the contract. A risk assessment and risk management plan should be created as part of an organization’s outsourcing strategy.

Outsourcing for Competitive Advantage

The strategic value of outsourcing is changing from cost reduction to revenue generation. Over time, this change will affect most industries. What should senior management do?

The most important action is to have a corporate global outsourcing strategy. Rather than simply look at outsourcing as a tactical approach to lowering costs, companies should look at how global partners can be used to achieve their NDP strategy, how its competition is approaching outsourcing, and what capabilities are or will be available from global service providers over the next 1-3 years that will complement the organizations plans and capabilities.

The benefits of partnering should be balanced against an organization’s risk tolerance for outsourcing and experience; a company with a lot of outsourcing experience should approach this new wave differently than a company with little experience.

Like the first wave of outsourcing, the next wave of outsourcing will become pervasive over time. Companies that start now to assess the opportunities, value, and risk of this next wave will have a reasoned strategy and be able to obtain the business value best suited to the company’s potential, risk profile, and overall business strategy.

Selling to Executives: Getting in and Earning the Keys to the Elevator

In selling to executives, it is about establishing relevancy, credibility, and trust…all of which lead to access to people and information within the organization…what I refer to as “earning the keys to the elevator.”

To be able to build a solid business case at the executive level, it is often necessary to get access to people within the organization who can give you the critical information you need to build a strong case that is relevant to the executive. Ideally, you are looking for the executive’s support, to move up and down the elevator to meet with people who have the information you need to refine the case that you will report back to that executive.

So how do you connect and get the keys to the elevator?

Consider that there are two agendas for the executive conversation - yours and the executive’s.

Your agenda includes three key objectives:

1. First you want to establish relevancy and be seen as a valued business resource.
   
2. With the relevancy connection, you want to test the executive’s beliefs about the absence of value, and if it matches, create and increase the sense of urgency around the issue.
   
3. Finally, you want to gain sponsorship for an extended diagnosis at lower levels in the organization and keep the executive involved in the progress.

The executive’s agenda includes:

1. getting ideas and resources to execute their strategy
   
2. getting help in aligning their internal resources with their strategy
   
3. getting help in improving a key performance indicator

The real key to creating executive relevancy is diligent preparation. Spontaneous relevancy is not an option. The effectiveness of your initial contact with the executive depends on the facts that you have developed in the Discover process. Think of yourself as an attorney preparing your opening statement. You are stating a hypothesis about the facts of the case and you are receiving the judge’s support to view the evidence that will support your case.

Discover conversations prepare your hypothesis. They are not about selling. They are designed to help you learn about the customer’s reality, identify physical evidence of the issues or challenges they are experiencing, and the potential consequences they are experiencing or exposed to. They will uncover fact-based evidence and the customer’s perspective on these consequences. You need to be focused on the existence of the physical symptoms that result from the absence of your value. Be open, honest and straightforward – Discover conversations are not covert missions. Like a doctor, you want to identify the symptoms and if they exist, develop a prognosis on the potential risk your prospect is experiencing without your solution.

These conversations are to be with those closest to the action, those who are working at the point where the absence of your solution’s value manifests itself. The specific individuals you interview are dependant on the various places where the physical evidence of the absence of your value can be observed. There are three resource pools in and around your customer’s company to draw from: their employees, their vendors, and their customers.

If you have found the symptoms, you have determined that there is a basis to initiate a conversation with the executive. The information gathered will provide the relevancy and credibility you will need to begin the conversation successfully. You will connect the symptoms with the executive’s job responsibilities and performance indicators on the executive’s dashboard.

Your goal is to create a hypothesis that will earn the “keys to the elevator;” that is, to achieve conceptual buy-in on the value you offer, gain the sponsorship of the executive for continued diagnosis, and receive access to individuals within the customer’s company who you will speak with to continue the process. The executive will value your input from the beginning and look forward to working with you on this and other projects. You will differentiate yourself early in the process by how you sell, more so than what you are selling.

Jeff Thull is a leading-edge strategist and valued advisor for executive teams of major companies worldwide. As President and CEO of Prime Resource Group, he has designed and implemented business transformation and professional development programs for companies like Shell Global Solutions, 3M, Microsoft, Siemens, Citicorp,

IBM, Raymond James, and Georgia-Pacific, as well as many fast track, start-up companies. He has gained the reputation for being a thought leader in the arena of sales and marketing strategies for companies involved in complex sales.

Thull is a compelling, entertaining and thought-provoking keynote speaker with a track record of over 2,500 speeches and seminars delivered to corporations and professional associations worldwide. He is the author of the best selling books Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High,The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale, and his latest release… Exceptional Selling: How the Best Connect and Win in High Stakes Sales. Thull is also a columnist with Inc.com and his articles are published in hundreds of business and trade publications.

Contact Prime Resource Group at support@primeresource.com, http://www.primeresource.com, 1.800.876.0378 or 763.473.7529, 3655 Plymouth Boulevard, Suite110, Minneapolis, MN 55446

Arxan Technologies, a leading provider of application hardening solutions designed to protect software IP from piracy and tampering, has entered  a strategic technology relationship with Microsoft to offer application protection with Microsoft's Software License and Protection Services (SLPS) for both native and managed applications. 

SLP Services is a new multi-product platform from Microsoft designed to help application developers protect their software intellectual property (IP), easily and flexibly create and license product versions, track product and feature usage, and integrate license management into back-end business processes. 

As a SLPS technology partner, Arxan Technologies has combined its award-winning software protection solution, GuardIT, with Microsoft SLP Services.  This combined solution leverages Microsoft’s flexible licensing capabilities with Arxan’s comprehensive protection suite to:

• Provide ISVs with a solution to license software to durably combat software piracy;
• Seamlessly secure software applications at the binary level, without disrupting the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and/or impacting application performance; and,
• Benefit from best-of-breed tamper proof capabilities that provide defense-in-depth.

Arxan Technologies is the only Microsoft collaborator to provide software protection solutions for native Windows 32 and 64-bit architecture, as well as the Microsoft .NET framework.

“We are extremely pleased to be working with Arxan in the software IP protection and licensing space,” said Thomas Lindeman, Director of Marketing for Microsoft SLP Services.  “The strength and flexibility of the Guard technologies, and the ability for developers to protect their IP in mixed mode environment and then use SLP Services for their licensing and activation scenarios is a big win for developers of all kinds.  This integrated approach will provide more IP protection options for the software development community.  Arxan’s dual-layer solution adds strong protection between license management and software algorithms as well as between native and managed code, and integrates seamlessly with SLP Services technologies.”

Today’s hackers are employing alarming attack techniques from the binary level up.  Rampant piracy Web sites containing thousands of cracked software products clearly suggest that combating software hackers requires broader and deeper fortification of software applications than is typically done today.  In response, customers are demanding durable software protection solutions that go beyond static obfuscation techniques, which are easily broken.  Arxan’s GuardIT family of products provides a new level of code hardening that addresses the full range of software protection needs, from desktop applications to high performance managed code.

Contact www.arxan.com
Contact www.microsoft.com/slps

NaviSite, Inc., a leading provider of application management and managed hosting solutions, hasbeen selected by Sapotek Inc. to enable delivery of its online desktop in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Sapotek is a member of the Sun Startup Essentials program (www.sun.com/startups), in which NaviSite has teamed with Sun Microsystems to give startup companies the ability to easily develop and deploy their software applications in an on-demand environment hosted and supported by NaviSite on Sun’s platform of products. For its online desktop offering, Sapotek has chosen NaviSite’s web hosting solution running on the Solaris™ Operating System (OS).

“As our company continued to grow, it became obvious that we needed the right help in scaling and managing our Software as a Service,” said Joshua D. Rand, CEO of Sapotek, based in New York. “NaviSite’s existing partnership with the Sun Startup Essentials program ensured that we truly had the best of both worlds—NaviSite’s competitive Managed Hosting experience backed by the proven performance engineering of Sun hardware and software available through the Sun Startup Essentials program.”

Sapotek was seeking a service provider that could support 10,000 to 20,000 users concurrently, and NaviSite will be providing SaaS Enablement services that can rapidly scale based on increasing global demand of Sapotek’s desktop software. In addition, with this solution, Sapotek will be able to better manage its costs, expand the service-level commitment to its end-users, and easily deploy additional solutions in the future.

Contact www.navisite.com 

NetSuite customers can now deploy Boomi On Demand over the Web to integrate NetSuite with other SaaS (software as a service) or on-premise applications quickly and affordably. The SuiteFlex Development platform allows third party applications to integrate rich transaction data – orders, inventory, invoices and shipments – with their applications, and enable customers and third-party developers to build new workflows and applications that look and operate as if NetSuite’s own developers wrote them.

Because NetSuite holds critical business data of a company – orders, invoices, Web site transactions, shipping records, time tracking and payroll data – the applications that are built on it using SuiteFlex are much more powerful and business critical. With Boomi On Demand, users can securely build, deploy and manage integrations to and from NetSuite directly from the Web using only a Web browser.

Integrations are built visually with familiar point-and-click, drag-and-drop ease. Once integration processes are built, they are deployed via a lightweight, dynamic runtime engine called an Atom. Built with patent-pending technology, Boomi Atoms contain all the components required to execute an integration process, including connectors, transformation rules, decision handling and processing logic. Atoms can be hosted for SaaS-to-SaaS integration or downloaded behind a customer’s firewall for on-premise integration.

SuiteFlex is an application development platform that enables the creation of third-party vertical applications within NetSuite, as well as business process customization for any end-user company. SuiteFlex includes several industry technology advances and innovations including additions to SuiteScript – which allows for on demand programming using only a Web browser on a device with Internet access. As a part of SuiteScript, NetSuite introduced Suitelets and SuiteScript UI Objects, allowing customers and third-party developers to build new workflows and applications that can look and operate as if NetSuite's own developers wrote them. In addition, SuiteFlex introduces a dramatic new concept for the Software as a Service market — "Service as Software," SuiteBundler — to deliver new integrated vertical solutions by packaging their Suitelets and other extensions with NetSuite's core ERP/CRM/Ecommerce application. SuiteBundler enables solution providers to embed their industry-best practices, knowledge and applications — traditionally delivered as one-off services — into the actual NetSuite application for verticals in a repeatable fashion.

Contact www.netsuite.com

BMC Software announced a strengthening of its three-year alliance with Tripwire, a global leader in data center compliance software and the first company in the industry to provide customers with full IT operational, regulatory and security compliance across heterogeneous environments.

Tripwire is a major supporter of the BMC Business Service Management and BMC Service Automation strategies, and the two companies will collaborate closely to advance Tripwire's compliance offering as a key part of BMC Service Automation.

"Tripwire sees BMC as the clear leader in Service Automation, both in terms of strategy and the current state of its solutions," said Dan Schoenbaum, Tripwire's senior vice president of marketing and corporate development. "BMC understands very clearly that one of the critical keys to successful Service Automation is a full understanding of the customer's IT environment so that you can help put it in a known and trusted state, keep it there, and prove its compliance. Tripwire is proud to be a fundamental component of the BMC Service Automation strategy and offering."

The Portland, Oregon-based company recently launched Tripwire Enterprise 7, which provides customers with an automated, continuous and data center-wide compliance solution that works hand in hand with BMC Service Automation solutions such as BMC Atrium 2.0. Acting as the "compliance solution" within BMC Service Automation, Tripwire Enterprise 7 works closely with BMC solutions to proactively assess configuration settings for infrastructure and leading applications, automate detection of unauthorized change across the service delivery stack, provide real-time and historical compliance reporting, and enable management to hold the entire organization accountable to all types of IT policies.

This unified approach provides the means for IT to use existing technology more efficiently and effectively while managing risk by providing continuous, automated compliance in any data center environment. In fact, Tripwire is the only solution to provide visibility to all change in the enterprise, spanning servers, network devices, databases, directory services and virtual environments. Coupled with BMC solutions, Tripwire Enterprise 7 helps IT achieve complete Service Automation, helping the enterprise achieve and maintain a known, trusted and compliant state.

"BMC Service Automation is a strategy that links people, process and technology to create a tightly integrated, automated service delivery capability," said Mary Morgan, Senior Program Executive, BMC. "This strategy ensures that each individual technology investment works in unison to help IT reach its long-term goals of complete Service Automation. One of BMC's closest partners, Tripwire is fundamental to a successful Service Automation strategy as it provides service-level compliance, allows IT to leverage ITIL v3 and other best practices to gain an understanding of the environment, and controls change with policy-based actions."

Contact www.bmc.com

Sales compensation has become more complex and critical to an organization's growth and success, and as such, a recent IDC report finds that the market for automated sales incentive compensation management applications has rebounded, and will continue to increase its profile and growth. IDC also believes that the market for sales incentive compensation solutions is now ripe for advancement, as companies of all sizes will be increasingly driven to accelerate their corporate performance and will require these tools to enable synchronization of selling strategies with execution.

"Sales incentive compensation is one of the many subtle areas of an organization's processes that has been overlooked in deference to more pressing automation requirements. However, as organizations' enterprise applications environments evolve and become more sophisticated, automating specific processes, such as sales incentive compensation, creates the vital link between an organization's internal processes and those of its front-office employees. This links an organization's operations with its call to action," said Mary Wardley, research vice president of CRM Applications at IDC.

IDC's Worldwide Sales Incentive Compensation Management Applications 2007 Vendor Profiles: State-of-the-Market Viewpoint and Future Market Predictions (IDC #209053) competitive analysis study provides an overview of the salesincentive compensation management applications market, including the key factors contributing to its rising importance and includes 13 in-depth profiles of both leading and emerging vendors, and identifies the characteristics that vendors will need to be successful in the future.

Additional aspects of this report include observations on:

• Strategies of new entrants, best-of-breed vendors, suite vendors, and vertical industry specialists who participate in the sales incentive compensation applications market
• Strategic value of automated sales incentive compensation solutions over paper-based (Excel) and homegrown systems, and their critical role in performance management measurement
• On-demand (SaaS) offerings for sales compensation management
• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance as a key market driver
• Increasing importance of integration of more sophisticated analytics tools and data management repositories, and mobile devices with sales compensation solutions

Contact www.idc.com

Kronos Incorporated has acquired Deploy Solutions Inc., a privately held company headquartered in Newton, Mass. Deploy delivers selection and hiring solutions that help organizations increase applicant flow, reduce costs, and improve quality of hires. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Kronos’ acquisition of Deploy marks yet another exciting advancement in our talent management strategy,” said Aron Ain, Kronos chief executive officer. “This acquisition fortifies our ability to help organizations hire the best people and maximize their performance.”

A successful software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider founded in 1997, Deploy processes a job candidate or employee request every 20 seconds. Deploy brings strengths in Kronos’ existing target markets such as retail and dining. As a result of the acquisition, Kronos expects to leverage Deploy’s expertise and technology to penetrate new markets. Deploy customers include The Home Depot, Securitas, and Wawa.

Former Deploy employees have joined Kronos’ Talent Management Division, a business unit which the company created upon completion of its 2006 acquisition of Unicru, Inc. The Talent Management Division is led by Peter George, Kronos chief technology officer.

“Our integration team is delighted with how well the Deploy platform complements Kronos’ existing field-based hiring offering,” said George. “And, without a doubt, our existing, industry-specific behavioral assessments and workforce analytics expertise will be of great value to Deploy’s customer base. There are many synergies between our platforms and our people.”

As a clear proof point of these synergies, Kronos is making an initial combined version of its Workforce Acquisition for Field Hiring and Deploy’s Enterprise Talent Suite available for immediate purchase. The combined solution — Workforce Acquisition Version 8 — capitalizes on the best capabilities of each platform.

Contact www.kronos.com.

Verio Inc., a leading provider of business solutions online, including hosting, applications and managed services, has launched its Verio Business Solutions suite. The on-demand software offerings allow companies of all sizes to take advantage of business-level applications to address the organization’s communications, productivity, security and customer relationship management needs.

Verio Business Solutions are designed to help small and mid-market enterprises overcome the time and cost barriers to efficiently manage business applications and technology solutions in-house, and improve their business, sales and technical operations.

The single, on-demand environment that Verio is offering allows businesses to use industry-leading business software applications, as well as experience all the associated benefits and results of those applications, without owning or making a major upfront investment in the applications. For a predictable monthly fee, Verio fully manages the web-based applications, including implementation of software updates and security patches, as well as automatic data backups and upgrades to the hardware running the applications. Customers will also benefit from Verio’s decade of experience and the company’s time-tested hosting infrastructure.

In its move toward offering these business solutions, Verio joins the progression toward more manageable, cost-effective application solutions and management for small and midsize businesses.

Verio’s new business solutions platform/services offer customers access to critical business applications, including:

Microsoft Exchange 2007. The industry-standard for email messaging and collaboration, Verio’s business solutions Exchange offering can be rapidly deployed, easily administered, and provides companies with a choice in how they manage their messaging infrastructure.

McAfee Total Protection for Small Business. As a leader in delivering Security-as-a-Service, McAfee Total Protection provides integrated security for SMB desktops and file servers, including anti-virus, anti-spyware and a personal firewall. And as part of the solution, users will be able to access the McAfee SecurityCenter, a single, online management console for easy remote monitoring and security reporting.

is easily adaptable to a range of business models. The application delivers a feature-rich set of business processes that drive sales, enhance marketing effectiveness, improve customer satisfaction and provide executive insight into business performance.

PC Data Backup. Delivered in partnership with Iron Mountain, the global leader in information protection and storage services, PC Data Backup is an online backup solution that is ideal for small businesses that need to safeguard customer information and other critical data from losses due to hard disk drive failure, data corruption, viruses or accidental deletion. A simple interface enables users to backup one or more PC laptops and/or desktops automatically and securely to Iron Mountain’s secure data centers.

Accrisoft Business Management and Productivity. These solutions include an online storefront application; customer billing and invoicing that includes Intuit QuickBooks Pro™ integration; email marketing and membership management.

Additionally, Verio’s hardened infrastructure also enables Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and other businesses to host their SaaS applications in a secure environment. Verio’s Virtual Private Server (VPS) also delivers a number of virtual applications, as well as the ability for customers, ISVs and SaaS providers to readily integrate their own applications and deploy them via the VPS, which delivers an ideal computing platform and fully managed solution.

“Businesses clearly have a need for easy to use, practical business solutions and reliable IT applications that they can launch quickly and which help them manage their data and operations more effectively,” said Kiyoshi Maeda, president and chief executive officer for Verio. “This model means companies can now have a fully managed solution with predictive monthly costs, no upfront investment, and no need to worry about upgrades or updates. Verio has long provided the infrastructure to enable application delivery, and we can now offer customers the business solutions to eliver improved productivity and data management.”

Verio will continue to enhance its Verio Business Solutions suite of offerings with the addition of new applications, as well as a unified management console and data integration among solutions. Additionally, Verio will seek to establish a partner marketplace that enables a go-to-market and distribution channel, and point of integration for prospective partner offerings.

Contact www.verio.com/saas

SLAM 2008: San Francisco
Sales, Licensing, Alliances & Marketing for Software and SaaS Companies
April 3-4, 2008 -- Sheraton Gateway San Francisco Airport

Call for papers will be open October 24-December 3. To be notified sign up for the Software Business e-Newsletter.

Go to www.SLAMConference.com for more details.

NOVEMBER

November 13-15 – BPM: Business Process Management Conference, San Diego, Calif. Contact www.sharedinsights.com

November 11-15 – Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco, Calif. Contact www.oracle.com
Software Business will have an editor at this event.

DECEMBER

December 3-6 – Agile Development Practices, Orlando, Fla. Contact www.rallydev.com

December 4-5 – Channel Cycle Sales Workshops, Los Angeles, Calif. Contact http://clac.integratedmar.com/workshop/home/index.html

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