Verio, a vendor of business products online, including hosting, applications and managed services, today launched its Verio Business Solutions suite. The on-demand software offerings allow companies to use business-level applications for communications, productivity, security and customer relationship management needs.
The suite offers access to SugarCRM Professional, an open source customer relationship management (CRM) product with flexibility for customization, adaptable to a range of business models.
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 products in-house, and improve their business, sales and technical operations," according to company officials.
SugarCRM, a provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, has announced Softbank Technology has signed an agreement to distribute Sugar solutions in Japan. The new partnership will service a broad range of customer needs by offering ASP services that use Sugar.
"We are constantly looking for ways to improve the service we give our customers. We looked at Salesforce, SugarCRM and Siebel, and ultimately decided to go with SugarCRM because of its superior functionality in relation to cost," said Norikazu Ishikawa, President & CEO, Softbank.
The single, on-demand environment that Verio is offering allows businesses to use business software applications without owning or making a major upfront investment in the applications. For a monthly fee Verio 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.
According to recent industry research by IDC (News - Alert), worldwide revenues associated with the software-on-demand delivery model are expected to reach $14.8 billion by 2011, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32 percent.
"THINKstrategies has found that approximately three-quarters of organizations are either already using an on-demand software service or considering these new services," according to Jeffrey M. Kaplan, THINKstrategies' managing director and founder of the Software-as-a-Service Showplace. "Our research has found that users of these services, especially small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), are very happy with their ease of use, pay-as-you-go fee structure and accelerated time to value."
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 products, company officials say.
Additionally, Verio wants to establish a partner marketplace that enables a go-to-market and distribution channel, and point of integration for prospective partner offerings.
SugarCRM continues to increase its global presence -- over 75 language packs and 400 extensions are currently available for SugarCRM's global community of more than 2,000 commercial customers.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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