UCAAS portals make or buy

© Copyright 2014 Kurmi Software S.A.S.

UCAAS MANAGEMENT PORTAL: BUILD OR BUY?

Abdel Kander, CEO Kurmi SOftware

WARNING

• You may be right in thinking that this is a rhetorical exercise coming from Kurmi Software since we make a living out of selling UCAAS Management Portals therefore we should be deemed ill-placed to make the case for the « Buy » option but we hope you’ll detect at least some traces of intellectual honesty!

THE PORTAL IS THE FACE OF UCAAS

• Attraction• Retention• Upselling

“BUILD”, A TANGIBLE POSSIBILITY

• The basics are available– Interfaces – Web frameworks – Developers

• Only needs to look good to customers– “We’ll do the back office manually to start with”

• You probably have the functional expertise– You know your stuff better than anyone else!

“BUILD”, THE ECONOMICS LOOK GOOD!?

• Available R&D staff providers– Good mix of on/off-shore– Market is competitive enough to force bidding war

• Or maybe internal developers – With 0 incremental cost – Plus you gotta keep the guys busy, right?!

• Part of the project setup – Then no ongoing cost

• Built to own specifications– No customization costs

ARE YOU SURE?!

« I DID SOMETHING FOR THE WORST POSSIBLE REASON -- JUST BECAUSE I COULD »

Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinski affair, June 20, 2004, CBS 60 Minutes

SOME FUNDAMENTAL FACTORS

• UCAAS, unlike PAAS is a user-centric service– Not an ICT play– No matter how sophisticated is the Data Center, if the

phones don’t ring it’s bad!

• A good portal is the difference between making and loosing money– Delegation reduces costs and increases customer

satisfaction and retention

SOME FUNDAMENTAL FACTORS

• It’s a moving target…– Customer/user expectations evolve– New usage habits spawn new needs

• On shifting grounds– Ecosystem vendors upgrade versions potentially triggering

new unscheduled developments for you– Competitive landscape impose fast reaction– “Nice to have” features become “Must have”

WHAT MAKES A ROBUST ARCHITECTURE?

• Four layers– Connectivity– Persistence– Business Logic– Rendering

ON CONNECTIVITY

• Ability to interact with underlying systems– Query and modify every object and attribute– While maintaining a coherent state at all time– With roll-back capabilities– Manage concurrent data access– Throttling to avoid overload

• Handle many systems– Different API technologies– With orchestration capabilities (order of execution, error

handling…)

ON PERSISTENCE

• You can’t do without it!– If you have more than one underlying system– Some tried and failed miserably!

• Intelligent data model– To handle future evolutions– With a business rather than an technical representation– Enable own workflows

• Suspend a user• Move users across systems

• Avoid collisions with ecosystem– Manage multiple master data sources– Graciously manage data conflicts

ON BUSINESS LOGIC

• Capture Marketing requirements– Service Packaging– Customer interaction

• Translate functional scenarios into technical multi-step multi-system workflows– I.e. Downgrading from multi-line, premium device to a basic package:

• Which line do you keep?• Should you bother changing the device?

ON RENDERING

• Ergonomic design• Adaptive and customizable• Multi-language

OTHER IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

• Security– Continued compliance with industry standards– Network and database isolation

• Robustness– Redundant platforms– No SPOF

• Interaction with customer’s IS– Active Directories– Authentication systems

• Interaction with provider’s IS– Ordering– Billing

End-users

Customers Administrators

Internet

Load Balancer

Apache Cluster

Kurmi Cluster

SP SSO

DB Cluster

SP Information System

SSO

Unified Com. Platform For Company 1

Unified Com. Platform For Company 2

Unified Com. Platform For Company N

ARCHITECTURE & IS INTEGRATIONSP Administrators

billing

API

THE ECONOMICS OF « BUY »

• Proven compatibility with UCAAS model– 2+ years of market experience– Tier 1 and Tier 2 providers– In many geographies– Pay as you grow

• Many of our customers tried “Build” before– And If they paid us that money, I would be driving a Roll’s

Royce!

RennesKurmi Software38 ter, rue de RennesF- 35 510 Cesson-SévignéTel: + 33 2 99 32 02 84

ParisKurmi Software14, Boulevard des Frères VoisinF- 92 130 Issy-Les-MoulineauxTel: + 33 1 58 88 30 72

[email protected]

Kurmi Software Professionals

MinneapolisKurmi Software4316 Blenheim CircleMinnetonka MN 55345Tel: +1 612 594 7174