Preserv8 Limited., developers of the Preserv8™ Unified Mail Communication (UMC) platform - the only email archiving Software plus Services Microsoft certified solution, suggest the Software as a Service (SaaS) channel to market offers enormous potential for business and is rapidly increasing in popularity as a catalyst for the introduction of a secondary revenue stream for operators in the market.
Represented a recent presentation to an audience of resellers, ISPs and independent solution developers, hosted by Microsoft South Africa, Deon Robertson, CEO at Preserv8 Ltd., said the company’s partner opportunity adds value through the introduction of an additional revenue stream on top of the partner’s current market offering.
“There are various types of Microsoft partners that have different competencies and posses niche skills. What we present in our offering is the opportunity to expand the partners’ value through software as a service. The platform facilitates low barriers to entry to new customers, allowing the partner to offer additional, high demand services,” says Robertson. “The UMC solution instantly aligns the end user from a regulatory and compliance aspect and simultaneously provides patented Active-EdgeTM perimeter security, business continuity and disaster recovery in the same equation.”
“The exciting SaaS value proposition means that customers no longer have to invest in additional hardware or software. As far as the partner channel is concerned, affiliation to the partner programme is not resource or administratively intensive. Being a service provider in the software as a services space means that the entire process of customer sales engagement through customer provisioning is procured through the Preserv8 Partner Portal,” adds Robertson.
David Ives, head of the developer and platform team at Microsoft South Africa, describes software plus services as a key strategy and investment area for the software giant globally.
“Globally we are able to deliver a flexible way to purchase and deploy Microsoft software through our partners. Microsoft has a deliberate dependence on the partners to take our key offerings, innovate and extend them to deliver this innovation to our customers. We see Preserv8 as a partner that has done exactly this, an offering which takes our core platform and extends the solution to address the requirements in the market,” says Ives.
According to Robertson the SaaS space is expanding at an exponential rate and is positively fueled by the worldwide economic slowdown, the desire by decision makers to secure a return on investment by extracting the maximum benefit from experienced outsourced service providers and the elimination of cost, pressure on time and human resources by investing in the automation and convenience of SaaS solutions and support.
