Software Business - White Papers

Softrax Increases Staff Efficiency by Improving Problem Resolution with BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System
From Softrax Corporation

Softrax uses BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System to accelerate and improve problem resolution throughout product lifecycles, enabling development, testing, and support teams to support business growth, improve product quality, and enhance product content — all
without runaway head count.

Softrax, a leading provider of enterprise revenue management and billing software solutions, was looking for a way to enable its development and testing teams to expand and enhance the company’s product line; empower its support organization to handle the rapid growth of its customer base;
and optimize workflow among stateside and offshore teams.

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An ISV’s Guide to Achieving Business Advantage Through Faster Application Program Resolution - From BMC Software

There’s no debate that software errors, or “bugs,” are costly; we’ve all seen reports about how much
money is lost each hour that a critical banking or retail application goes offline. And, when software
is your business, the impact of application problems can be devastating — one seemingly small issue
can have a ripple effect:

BMC Software

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Metrics that Matter: Measuring Professional Services Business
- by Thomas E. Lah, author of Mastering Professional Services

There are easily over fifty meaningful metrics a management team could use to assess their professional services business. The issue is determining what specific metrics provide the greatest insight. Unfortunately, revenue and profitability are not the beginning and ending of your measurement process. These two metrics provide very limited insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your PS business. In this article, we will introduce a practical framework managers can use when selecting the appropriate metrics for their PS organization. Future articles will discuss types of metrics in more detail and discuss the process of defining and deploying a metric strategy.

QuickArrow

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Is RSS Ready for the Enterprise?
The Challenges of Secure and Scalable RSS

Introduction
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) was designed as a way to syndicate news and content from
public Web sites such as news outlets, community sites, and Weblogs. Over the last year, RSS
has become extremely popular; almost all news outlets today provide RSS update feeds.
The RSS wave has not escaped the corporate world. Companies now routinely use RSS to
inform customers about new offerings and products. It is easy to see how organizations could
benefit from providing employees with enterprise application data updates using RSS, as well. In
fact, generating RSS feeds from enterprise application data is quite simple. However, since RSS
was designed as a syndication mechanism for publicly-available information, organizations need
to think twice before adopting it "as is."
The main challenges of "enterprise RSS" include data security, scalability, IT policy compliance,
and support and maintenance overhead. In reality, delivering secure RSS is a challenge fraught
with many dangers and pitfalls.
This white paper examines the challenges of delivering enterprise data to information workers
and consumers using secure RSS.

Worklight

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Introduction
Over the past several years, maintenance revenues have grown to now represent the lion’s share of operating profits for many software vendors. Multiple market forces are aligning to threaten this industry cash cow.
If these threats are not addressed, leading software vendors stand to lose $billions of high margin maintenance revenue which will erode company profits.
The following discussion outlines the magnitude of this threat and proposes a solution for software vendors, which is to redirect operational investments towards services that elevate Effective User Adoption™ practices.
Neochange

Overview

Copy protection is vital for any software development company that wants to preserve its investment. With industry statistics stating that 36% of all software in use is illegitimate, the stakes are high, and companies that fail to mitigate these losses risk losing valuable R&D funds that could hinder their chances to compete in the future. Yet copy protection tools are not all created equal.

Finding a tool that balances ease of deployment, ease of customer use and adequate security can be difficult. Issues such as reliability, support, ease of deployment and ease of use loom large, and any company not considering these factors when purchasing copy protection for their products risks more than ineffective copy protection. Disgruntled customers, high support overheads and irrevocable damage to their corporate image could result.

When considering the ROI on any copy protection tool, purchase cost is therefore not the only figure that should be included in the calculation. These other issues must also be weighed up. Tangible costs such as postdeployment support can be mitigated by choosing the right tools, but there are other, imponderable costs. Using inadequate tools that degrade the customer experience by erasing licenses unnecessarily can damage a company's image and generate bad feeling. The effect of inadequate copy protection tools on ongoing sales can only be estimated in broad terms.
Nalpeiron

Best Practices for Application Security: Prevent the New Breed of Attacks and Comply with Regulatory Security Requirements

Many organizations—including organizations that have already invested considerable resources to safeguard system security—are unprotected against a new breed of security attacks. Security measures such as implementing firewalls, authentication and access control systems, network intrusion detection/prevention systems, anti-virus solutions, anti-spyware solutions, and Secure Sockets Layer are indeed critical. Yet, these safeguards alone are no longer sufficient. Attackers now expect these basic security safeguards to be in place, and attack the system in a new way: via internally-developed custom applications.
Parasoft Corporation

A Killer App. for the Makers of Killer Apps.: Why Faster Problem Resolution is Key To Your Software Business

A change in the application support paradigm for ISVs is long over due. This paper examines the challenges of application problem resolution and support and suggests a new approach that accelerates resolution cycles, while reducing support costs and enhancing customer service levels.
Identify Software

The Fine Art of Lead Qualification

This white paper is based on IT buyer research conducted by
KnowledgeStorm and The Artemis Group. It discusses an optimal online/ offline approach for generating, qualifying and closing leads. Based on the research, our key findings are that personal contact and timeliness are the most important elements of an effective online/offline sales model, and that IT sales and marketing professionals would do well to not rely on automated or predictive lead qualification systems.
KnowledgeStorm

Requirements Traceability for Quality Management

With the demands and expectations placed on software development organizations, IT managers need to find ways to reduce overall life-cycle costs, while delivering reliable, quality products. This is particularly true today. More and more projects have fewer staff resources, higher quality expectations and shorter development timelines. Requirements traceability offers a viable solution.
Compuware Corporation

Why Sell Your Portfolio

There's only one thing that's certain about today's regulatory environment - change is constant. Many manufacturers and software developers are wondering if starting or maintaining a finance arm is really as profitable as it once seemed. Point-of-sale financing programs provide an essential way to move product to market by making the customer's question of how to pay for the acquisition much easier. However, the financial costs and resource strain of running a captive finance organization in today's increasingly difficult regulatory climate can cripple even the most successful companies. Find out about the dollars and other costs associated with starting and maintaining such an operation and where to seek help.
Key Equipment Finance

The Revenue Compliant Enterprise Part 1: Achieving Accurate Revenue Accounting, Reporting, and Forecasting
Revenue compliance must become a core competency of every finance department to ensure proper reporting, to produce optimal performance, and to mitigate risk. The benefits of achieving the revenue compliant enterprise are wide ranging: The availability, reliability, and usability of key business performance information improve tremendously. Compliance processes are easier to manage. Tedious mandatory tasks such as closing the books and supporting audit processes become far more efficient allowing more time for proactive analysis. Executives are better informed about key revenue drivers, enabling issues to be identified and acted upon with greater immediacy. This white paper describes the key success factors for achieving the Revenue Compliant Enterprise. http://www.softrax.com/mk/get/revenuepart1swbus

The Revenue Compliant Enterprise Part 2: Managing Multiple Business Models
This second part of The Revenue Compliant Enterprise series outlines key operational elements that can impact the implementation of a revenue compliant enterprise. It provides an overview of the most common enterprise issues, business models, accounting complexities and other components that need to be considered for such a solution. Customers are demanding easier ways to acquire, finance, and manage capital investments of all kinds, this white paper is a must read for finance departments under pressure to get new models to market with the same efficiencies and compliance standards that have been applied to traditional revenue streams. http://www.softrax.com/mk/get/revenuepart2swbus