Zoho, creator of a suite of online business applications, has been selected by the Swiss telco Swisscom to launch a six-month pilot offering a package of Zoho's business productivity applications to Swisscom's 300,000 business customers.
Swisscom and Zoho have teamed up to create a custom version of Zoho Business, with Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook, and Meeting on Swisscom's Teamnet portal. Even though Swisscom is the incumbent telco operator in Switzerland, it is taking what some have described as a bold approach by extending its offerings to the SaaS space.
Increasingly, service providers are looking to add value on their existing networks and have started to include online applications like Zoho to their portfolio of services. In the past, one would not turn to the telephone company for productivity applications, but this is changing with the wider adoption of SaaS in the marketplace. Zoho said it is pleased to see Swisscom take a lead in this initiative and said it looked forward to more partnerships as this trend picks up momentum in coming months.
"The goal of the pilot is to provide our business customers with a value added Web offering they can evaluate as part of a turnkey solution from their service provider. Zoho is an ideal partner that combines a wide and very innovative range of applications as well as a very solid engineering team to deliver the capability we wanted," said Michael Gmuer, head of Business Process Optimization at Swisscom.
Zoho and its Alliance Partner Program offer service providers multiple paths to increase ARPU (average revenue per user), the holy grail that telcos seek to maximize by adding additional services to their existing infrastructure. The program offers partners a flexible means to bundle various Zoho services for both consumers and business users.
While Zoho acknowledges that it is starting small with the Swisscom project, it is a significant step towards a broader Zoho distribution channel in Europe. This follows the company's recent partnership with online distributor Baihui in China.
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
LATEST COMMENTS
MC Press Online