In a recent whitepaper by NEI, the company discusses how to ship your software application as an appliance, gaining the business benefits and avoiding pitfalls.
The paper says for independent software vendors (ISVs) that sell applications to enterprise customers, traditional methods of delivery create operations challenges. The challenge is when customers are confronted with integrating the application to the latest version of the operating system and service pack on a new server.
They are also faced with the complexity of managing enterprise-class applications on their general purpose servers through the lifecycle of the applications and devices.
NEI, established in 1997, delivers appliances for the technology industry. The company has been the appliance solution provider for technology companies worldwide and today they partner with customers ranging from small start-ups to some of the largest in the industry. By partnering with NEI, customers gain the benefits of deploying their software applications as appliances without having to directly handle all the required hardware engineering, manufacturing, remote management, worldwide logistics and support.
Knowing that their appliances will be built, delivered and supported reliably and securely allows their customers to stay more focused on their core competencies for maximum competitive advantage and customer satisfaction.
The whitepaper says the bottom line is that enterprise applications installed on general-purpose servers open up a host of potential problems that are difficult, time-consuming and expensive for ISVs to correct.
It says that for many ISVs, a smarter approach to software delivery is the appliance model and that by delivering their applications as appliances, software companies can improve their applications’ performance and availability by avoiding problems with general purpose servers.
The whitepaper concludes that ISVs can use the appliance model to gain significant competitive advantages and operational efficiencies. But to gain those benefits, ISVs have to take the right approach with their appliance strategy.
ISVs should choose an appliance partner that offers all the elements required for success under the appliance delivery model: hardware engineering and manufacturing, enterprise grade software for managing appliances over their lifetimes, and the logistics and support services needed to keep an ISV’s global customer base up and running.
With the right appliance partner, the ISV can focus their efforts and resources more completely on where they add value and differentiate themselves from their competitors – in application development.
To download the whitepaper, go to: http://www.nei.com/
Eve Sullivan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Eve's articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Eve Sullivan