W+sdp White Paper Fil-5232

WorkACE+SDP : The Smart and Dynamic SaaS Delivery Platform

Introduction Faced with intensifying competition, as well as a desire for more stable revenue streams and stronger customer relationships, ICT companies are increasingly, around the world, turning to the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model. Serious challenges, like the ever growing file sharing of cracked and pirated software, makes it harder each day to make money in the perpetual PC software business. Adoption of SaaS is driven in part by end-users, who benefit from access to mission critical applications and data, from anywhere, on virtually any web-enabled device; better licensing and cost control; and assurance that the most recent version of the application is in use. SaaS is built on the legacy of the ASP model, but modernized and enhanced by today’s robust Web Services and SOA integration capabilities, the increased bandwidth and bandwidth availability as well as the more mature computing infrastructures. As a strategic offering, SaaS has already shown that it can: • Open new markets, new revenue streams, and new distribution channels • Provide a stable, recurring revenue model • Afford consolidation of development and support efforts around single version of code In the transition, from old OFF-line computing to new ON-line computing and business models, ICT companies are facing the complex issues involved with building the service delivery capabilities necessary to support SaaS offerings. Building a complete SaaS business with related infrastructure is a

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complex undertaking, requiring a skilled, experienced and committed team and a highly focused effort. Clients demand 100% uptime, appropriate Service Level Agreements, and 24x7x365 Live Support today as well as tomorrow. Meeting those demands requires 24x7*365 control over people, process, application and systems management, hosting, networking and security infrastructures, disaster recovery capabilities, change management policies and procedures, and much more. When we remember that all this happens in a highly dynamic environment we start to understand that the present industrial age systems and working methods are not enough. We are clearly in for a paradigm shift in which only the smartest will survive.

1. Who Needs WorkACE+SDP? Initially, the W+SDP SaaS Delivery Platform was primarily interesting for ISVs, as many are considering or in the process of re-architecting their solutions for SaaS delivery; but recently, an increasing number of attentions has come from other “actors” eager to enter the SaaS business arena as well. Here’s a summary of who they are and what they are looking for: - Enterprises: The primary interest of enterprises on SaaS is how to best consume it as clients of SaaS vendors. However more interesting is that some enterprises go further and want to embrace the SaaS model not as consumers but as Service Providers (SP’s) to their ecosystem. Enterprises’ wanting to embrace the SaaS model is particularly popular with companies with a strong franchise model. The idea is to provide access to the hosted software as part of the franchise deal, allowing the franchisor to have more control on the software environment of the outlets and franchisees to get software to run their business without large upfront IT costs. Typical examples of such SPs are: Hotels, Insurance companies, Cleaning service companies, F&B chains, MLM companies and so on. - Aggregators and/or Web Portals: Lately we have also seen new breed of companies (or actually established web companies re-inventing / diversifying themselves into this new breed): the aggregators. They have two interests, one short term, one longer term of which the short term goal is to act as a Marketplace or Portal. Akin to what shopping malls do for retail stores, aggregators offer “marketing” services, such as a directory/catalog, online communities, a search mechanism, a unique billing interface etc. and of course traffic! Individual Application Providers gain in being in a marketplace as they benefit from the “overall traffic” and have the opportunity of being part of cross selling and/or bundling offerings. Being part of a marketplace also helps to build the trustful relationship required to sell SaaS successfully. In some respect, the marketplace “brand” is passed to the individual provider. It is typical to see co-branding and whitelabeling of SaaS applications in this segment. Longer term the focus of these actors is not only to be a marketplace but being a full fledge business environment and ecosystem hub for SaaS and pure service providers. The main aspiration is to be able to compose new services from and to the ones available. This requires a deeper “aggregation and collaboration architecture” which allows the sharing of resources, data, processes and even semantics among multiple offerings and providers. We have seen both “pure play” aggregators, as well as ISVs expanding their own SaaS offering to an aggregator offering. Copyright QXSystems® | Sep 2008 | All Rights Reserved | workace.qxsystems.com -FIL-5232

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- SaaS Hosters: Another “new breed” emerging is the SaaS Hosters. Often with origins either as ASPs of the 90’s or “classic/hardware” hosters having moved “up the stack”, the SaaS Hosters specialize in hosting applications delivered as a service. Instead of selling just CPU, storage and bandwidth, they offer a shared and virtual infrastructure optimized for application hosting, together with services such as billing, SLA monitoring, SLA enforcement, 1st level support and even SEO and other online marketing services. In other words, business structures that many (smaller) ISVs are not interested (or don’t have the skills) in building. There are usually two topics of discussion: (a) how much of the services and control does the ISV want to outsource to the SaaS Hoster and (b) what does the payment/revenue sharing model look like? - Hosters at Large (this includes: web hosters and TelCo’s): These “actors” are very familiar with the concepts of OSS/BSS and many have already deployed older versions service and content delivery technologies (e.g. SMS, VoIP). The challenge for many of them is to move out of the “Telco/phone based” mindset and understand what it means to have ISVs and SaaS clients as customers. It is quite clear that Large Hosters will move en masse to the SaaS Hoster and/or Aggregator models described above. As of yet, it is however less clear which one will dominate the market. But early mover, like British Telecom, will have an advantage as we could see with companies like Amazon.com and eBay in the late 90’s. - Service Integrators and Value Added Resellers (SIs/VARs): Last we have seen lots of activity from SIs and VARs. Some are quite concerned as they see their core business (deployment and customization of client/server and PC technology) being marginalized by the fast growing SaaS model. The consensus is that there are still at least three areas where they can add value in SaaS. The most valuable added, will be Integration of Web Services. Integration needs of organizations will naturally change from what they are today and they will even increase in value and complexity. SIs have a lot of experience in this field so they will be able to have a good value proposition around integration of SaaS and “in house” (legacy?!) systems. Next will be “Business Consulting”. In SaaS the act of deployment and customization is minimized but not the need of customization and Business Process Consulting. Helping the client organizations to transform from what they are today to SaaS consumers is where the help and the customization is still a valuable service. Finally helping all the actors above “move to SaaS” should be in the arsenal of all SIs. An additional value proposition (not available to all SIs) is to offer SaaS hosting services. Several large SIs host the entire IT of very large enterprises (through multimillion dollar outsourcing deals), the knowledge and capabilities acquired in such IT outsourcing deals are applicable to a large extend to future SaaS hosting.

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2. The “Added Value” Proposition of SaaS In ASP, SaaS’s original incarnation, the reasons for contracting with a service provider largely mirrored the motivation for any other outsourcing relationship: more predictable costs and a greater ability to focus on core competencies while leveraging the expertise of a specialist service provider. These core propositions are quite similar in software as a service value proposition where an affordable, “pay-asyou-go” relationship provides organizations with a service ensuring ongoing value. The following contrasts SaaS and the ISV model: + Lower cash outlays for enterprise-class software purchases by replacing large, upfront licensing expenditures with a smaller, subscription based pricing model that is much more frequent but at a fraction of the cost; shifting expenditures from variable to fixed costs. + Ease of implementation and quicker time-to market. With enterprise software deployments (CRM/ERP/BPM) generally requiring days or weeks compared to six to 18 months with traditional software; while non-enterprise applications the implementation time approaches zero (Basecamp/Google Apps/WorkACE). The focus of a deployment is on end-user training and acceptance, since customers do not have to install or maintain servers, networking equipment, security products, or other hardware. + Reduced technology investment risk and higher ROI with lower upfront investment (capital and resource). The customer avoids the risk of additional ‘hidden costs’ that creep up over the application life-cycle such as ongoing support and maintenance costs, upgrades, user acceptance risks, etc. Many on-demand providers are able to provide a breakeven point in six months or less while licensing models requires a longer payback period.

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+ Frees up internal resources by reducing internal IT staff required to manage applications, keep track of upgrades, maintain performance, etc. Internal IT resources can focus on less ‘risky’ tasks and more strategically focus on bringing core value to the enterprise. + Full application lifecycle involvement, from initial deployment through ongoing support, maintenance and upgrade, that ensures that there is a complete alignment of interests with the SaaS firm having a vested stake in the success of the application beyond initial deployment(see *Shared Risk). Clients are a key value to the SaaS organization, whereby Customer Service is as a conduit to Product Development. When was the last time you felt that a Service call would be directed to the development team? + Continuous support & seamless upgrades with new features and functionality, upgrades, customer support, and other operational services all included instead of being treated as incremental costs. + Shared risks and single-source accountability with customers demanding a different vendor relationship that results in more accountability and flexibility in the actual execution of the software. Just as importantly, the SaaS firm ‘shares’ in the execution risk of the application, since the SaaS provider also earns their own return over the term of the relationship and consequently loses in the equation when customers seek alternatives. + New functionality and improved application performance with on-demand firms receiving continual client feedback in a service-based relationship and often interacting with end-users in the application environment itself to determine priorities for new features and to fix bugs. A critical differentiator is that new product revisions are made more frequently. Consequently, software as a service providers are able to continually refine the application with new releases that add customerdriven functionality that can be utilized by all clients in a shared application and across a multi-tenant model. + Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) with licensing, implementation, customization, maintenance, upgrades, and hardware & support costs being bundled into an on-demand service relationship. The first year total cost of ownership can be five to ten times less expensive than enterprise software with the majority of savings resulting from the elimination of upfront integration and customization projects. Copyright QXSystems® | Sep 2008 | All Rights Reserved | workace.qxsystems.com -FIL-5232

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3. Strong ICT Trend Towards Web Services and Recurring Revenue Beginning in 1998, application service providers attracted a great deal of attention to the hosted software space, offering web-based access to applications from major enterprise software vendors on a subscription rather than licensed basis. A select group of firms continued to move the market forward by amending earlier imperfections and validating the business model with an increasingly receptive enduser population. These companies began building new, purely web-based applications that directly addressed important business functions and provided a strong value proposition. Since the second half of 2003, there has been a shift in momentum towards the Software as a Service model. First we saw the success with Saleforce.com, then Blackberry and Skype and now lately with even iPhone who not only wants to sell the mobile phones but also demand from their Telco partners to get a share of the monthly subscription revenue. It should be clear by now to everybody that the “NEXT BIG THING” in the ICT industry is to sell residual, subscriber based services on the web. This is also confirmed by Gartner in their below report from earlier this year.

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- Next: Software & Services: When the competition among the SaaS Providers increase and it becomes harder to acquire new clients, we will start to see more SaaS Vendors to offer additional services to their existing clients. This for two reasons: 1) It is cheaper to sell new service to an existing client than to find and keep a completely new client and 2) the clients want convenience and don’t want to have accounts and business relationships with an endless number of vendors on the net. The services offered might be a mixture of consulting services, BPO work, back-office and administrative work, project based work, complementary SaaS applications, add-ons, gadgets and or related know-how (in digital form) on how to utilize the above offerings best. This means that not a single organization will be able to serve his clients needs but joint ventures and services consortiums are needed. The key for success in this emerging service model is the Service Providers ability to manage his complete business ecosystem (on both sales and buy sides) successfully and efficiently. Cross selling each others offerings is already common online and the ways to share the occurred revenues are many. The most common one seems to be Affiliate marketing and referral programs which have acquired tremendous interest over the last year or so.

4. Main Challenges of being a SaaS Vendor Starting a new business or switching over to a new form of such has never been easy. Nevertheless, in the history of ICT it has never been more challenging to start a new venture than what it is with the SaaS model. Not only needs the ISV to build a web-native software application that people are ready to pay money for, but he also needs to do it in a high speed and with high costs. In the following we have summarized the most critical challenges that the emerging SaaS SP will have to face.

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4.1. Business Model Challenges - Changing Revenue Models In the traditional enterprise model for ICT Vendors, sales models are predicated on typically long sales cycles (6-18 months) executed by highly compensated, direct sales teams of account executives, sales engineers, and services consultants. The deals are larger, the targets are often fewer, and the customer evaluation model includes key influencers who can speed up or slow down the sales cycle. Sales development teams are as effective at lead generation as traditional marketing vehicles, if not more so; and relationship management and the old “belly-to-belly” sales model can overcome a host of operational weaknesses, especially in the early days. In the on-demand or SaaS model, the demand generation process and costs are more akin to those of carpet bombing than precision air strikes, and there is a profound blurring between marketing and inside sales processes. The focus is on high-volume; low-cost demand generation typical of that in SMB markets or desktop software markets of the past and present, and more attention must be paid to webbased demand, social-networking and online marketing systems. - New Focus and Sales Drivers One of the fundamental shifts we have experienced in the new software model is the drivers for consideration of a purchase. More often than not, SaaS Vendors are selling to the business managers/users/owner and not the IT people. These business users are interested in the provided domain expertise - knowledge about the business process we are automating or servicing - and view that expertise, not our technology stack, as the most important asset the SaaS vendor brings to the relationship. There’s significantly less talk about the IT stack (although IT often remains part of the process), but the conversation shifts dramatically to Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Without the “on the ground” handholding that is key to jumpstarting a traditional software business, you must focus on service, service, service; you must set the tone of a service-oriented company from the first contact through every touch point with the customer. Many would argue that this service orientation is equally important in traditional software, but with customer satisfaction ratings often hovering around 20-25% reflects how bad ICT companies have historically embraced the service orientation in the traditional enterprise software model. And, finally, “time to value” remains the primary driver for many customer SaaS purchases. - New Partners and Distributor Systems One of the toughest questions for an entrepreneur whose past has been spent in traditional software models with VARs and system integrators (SIs) as effective channel partners is: “Where’s the opportunity to add value when the complexity of implementation is removed?” Sometimes there is an answer, but the partner must be equally comfortable with the answer that there may be none and that the business relationship must therefore change.

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The opportunity for customization and integration remains as a premise for partnering in the new world of SaaS solutions. The best on-demand applications will likely be those that offer the most complete solutions to the problems they solve for customers (which will require greater verticalization or specialization in many instances) but less opportunistic for System Integrators who today act as resellers and the distribution channel as well. 4.2. Technical Challenges The SaaS technology is evolving very fast and the last bigger change took place around a year ago when the switch happened from an early stage SaaS 1.0 to a more mature SaaS 2.0 level. The same kind of changes is predicted, as we can see below, to continue to happen for another 5-8 years until we have reach a maturity level at which SaaS vendors can offer to the clients complete, integrated, dynamic and optimized eBusiness ecosystems. SaaS vendors who have not been able to foresee these big changes will be forced to constantly update and upgrade their solution and the underlying technology bed. This will lead to a very uncomfortable relationship with their clients who will have to live with a very unstable and buggy application. Since these changes will happen on a deeper level they will always have a profound effect on the clients computing experience and his business relationship with the SP. Above and below are some of the emerging bigger changes that are ahead.

The latest emerging technological changes with regards to SaaS Delivery Platforms are:

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- Cloud Computing Is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet ("in the cloud") without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. In short, the physical servers and data centers are replaced by digital computing units doing the work of their physical peers while existing only ‘in the cloud”. Key characteristics •

• •

• •

• •

•

Capital expenditure minimized and thus low barrier to entry as infrastructure is owned by the provider and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Services are typically being available to or specifically targeting retail consumers and small businesses. Device and location independence which enables users to access systems regardless of location or what device they are using (e.g. PC, mobile). Multi tenancy enabling sharing of resources (and costs) among a large pool of users, allowing for: o Centralization of infrastructure in areas with lower costs (e.g. real estate, electricity) o Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load levels) o Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10-20% utilized. Performance is monitored and consistent but can be affected by insufficient bandwidth or high network load. Reliability by way of multiple redundant sites, which makes it suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery, however IT and business managers are able to do little when an outage hits them. Scalability which meets changing user demands quickly, without having to engineer for peak loads. Massive scalability and large user bases are common but not an absolute requirement. Security which typically improves due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc. but which raises concerns about loss of control over certain sensitive data. Accesses are typically logged but accessing the audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible. Sustainability through improved resource utilization, more efficient systems and carbon neutrality.

- Relational Content Management With an ever growing amount of content and data in the world, it has become obvious that there is a need for building smarter computer system in which the systems build relationships between the content objects. Today people still are the only connectors between objects and this has lead to very low efficiencies, especially when people leave the organization and takes all this ‘tacit’ knowledge with him. In the next generation computing system, like WorkACE, all this is taken care of by the software system itself leading to a much higher security, compliance as well as efficient working.

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- Inter-Organizational Computing We all know about social-networking sites like Facebook on which people are able to interact with their peers. This same need is there also between organizations and within networks of organizations. In short, what is needed is online computing environments in which people can be invited to work and collaborate easily on defined/shared processes. This kind of inter-organizational computing is especially important when SaaS providers form Joint Ventures to serve common clients and share R&D resources to cut costs and time to market. 4.3. Operational Challenges In SaaS the blurred sales and marketing model is an extremely process-driven model that is metricsfocused at every step of the process (i.e., it is a numbers game), and the ability to build an effective inside operational machine is paramount. Training and certification of inside sales representatives (ISRs) are critical processes since ISRs are in demand with the growth of SaaS companies, and one may have to rely on less proven individuals who are more likely to job hop in a competitive market. And while the cost of the ISR may be lower, the expense associated with other sales and marketing processes is higher as you attempt to sell large volumes of applications or services at lower price points. In short, the SaaS or on-demand model demands even greater attention to process, operational skills, metrics, training, as well as the ability to succeed or fail quickly and adjust accordingly. This same fact goes throughout the complete organization, starting from HR, R&D, After-Sale as well as Administrative work. The fact that these operations does not happen inside the same building or even in the same country or time zone, makes it all so much more demanding. Under a service-based relationship, continuous client feedback is received to help develop new functionality and improve application performance or business models. By default, there is more interaction with end-users in the application environment itself that lead to better prioritization for new features, bug fixes and system extensions but at the same time leads to a situation in which each day the new ‘problems’ get the fullest attention while the issues from the day before already are forgotten. In this kind of an ‘ad-hoc’ working environment the focus of the workforce easily shifts from what should be done to what feels most fun to do. Processing thousands of transactions from simultaneous users and providing quick access to critical information can quickly become a challenge as well. For most service providers, building and maintaining a redundant SaaS delivery system to ensure needed service, software availability and data security is costly. Most standard Service Level Agreements (SLAs) require optimal performance that can only be achieved by a large investment in infrastructure. The ability to support peak demands also elevates hardware and networking requirements as software usage increases. The importance of automating as many recurring tasks as possible is essential in driving down operating costs to support an application. Business automation reduces learning curves and increases productivity to ensure deadlines are met. Monitoring system processes is critical to identifying human errors as they are not only expensive to resolve, but often lead to customer dissatisfaction.

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4.5. Financial Challenges Global reach and global access to clients also means global competition from other SaaS SPs. In short this means that SaaS providers should build their business models on a very price effective price level. For providers with a competitive cost-base this will be an advantage over providers with a higher cost factor. Volumes, which mean a large number of users, must compensate for the lower per unit price. Another of the largest challenges of the SaaS model is obviously payment terms. Getting paid monthly or quarterly, per-usage, versus getting paid one very large check up front is the major driver of the need for more cash to fund operations. Even getting the first year’s payments all in advance is still significantly less cash than the perpetual model. This leads to a cash flow squeeze, as cash coming in significantly trails bookings. Bottom line, a SaaS company can take 5-10 times more capital to build the business than a perpetual license model company. Here are some examples on how much pre-IPO investments these listed companies required as of late:

5. The Necessity of WorkACE+SDP By now it should be pretty obvious that building a brand new SaaS business to even a moderate success is no child’s play. Lot’s of new technology, knowledge, time and money is needed. We are talking about up-front, high-risk investments in the millions to even get online with the smallest SaaS Venture. On top of that one cannot exclude the global competitive nature of the SaaS business bringing the sales prices down and the ever changing deliverables and working conditions. It is not just to develop a web-native application of some kind and put websites together and get going. A solid base and eBusiness Facility, for building, running and maintaining the professional SaaS business is needed. That is why we built WorkACE+SDP. Let us first take a look at some definitions of the words used: - What is WorkACE, aka W~? W~ (Pronounced as “WorkACE”) is a cognitive eBusiness and eWorking Facility for the Mobile, Digital and Global working communities of the Knowledge Age. It is a virtual eFacility with built in features of Intranet, Extranet, Employee Management, Document Management, Content Management, Groupware, Knowledge Management, Business Ecosystem Management, Project/Process Management,

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Supply Chain Management, eMail Server Functions, Webmail, IM/Chat, Work Flow Management, Wiki Systems and eSupport; all compiled into a comprehensive and cognitive eBusiness and eWorking environment. WorkACE acts also as the missing SOA master glue for any existing ICT architectures, leading to a highly efficient business operation and computing system. - What is WorkACE+, aka W+? WorkACE+ (Pronounced as “WorkACE Plus”) is the entire cluster of technologies built around the core W~ technology. As on date WorkACE plus, comes with a state of the art Live Support portal which enables business users to interact with its ecosystems and provide customer service to its end users either directly or through its third part vendors. Along with the Live Support portal W+ even comes with the multi-level online Partner Program Management System (PPMS), which leverages business users to build further on its partner channel / network without diverting its focus from the core business offering. As developing capabilities, in a channel is not cheap any more. Any business owner who wants channel partners to grow in their ability to position, sell and support its products and services has to be prepared to invest in developing its channel and its channel's capabilities. That may involve assessments, training, communication, community building, reporting and more for each of the employees of each of channel partner organization. The costs for such activity grow exponentially, hence W~PPMS provides a definite edge over the competition. - What is a SDP? The term SaaS Delivery Platform (SDP) refers to a set of components, which constitutes itself in a SaaS delivery architecture in order to deliver various software and services in a SaaS or ‘rental’ mode. As SDPs evolve, they will require integration of business and IT capabilities and the creation of services beyond technology and network boundaries. The business objective of implementing the SDP is to enable rapid deployment and efficient operation of a SaaS business. Earlier we read above about the fast changing technical environment as well as the impeccable 24*7*365 service demands from SaaS clients. On top of that, we have to do it to a cost that makes financial sense for the investors who takes the risks. If we don’t, who will be ready to wait for years for the business to be built and spinning profits? The good news is that when the SaaS provider makes it they will be handsomely rewarded with both a stable and fast growing business as with a high valuation on his business. Since the risk of starting a profitable SaaS business is so high it is only natural that one chooses as a partner and business system something that has been built with that success in mind. WorkACE+SDP is the only SaaS Delivery Platform that will take all the aspects into account and minimize the risks of a SaaS business failure. Why can we say this? Because, WorkACE+SDP was not built as a ‘product”, but as a comprehensive solution for our own eBusiness needs. We went out to build the ultimate eBusiness Facility and we succeeded in that task. Every single feature in WorkACE is designed according to the best available IT and business knowledge only with a complete business understanding as guidelines. WorkACE+SDP is the only holistic SaaS Delivery System in the world built with a long-term vision and success of the system owners in mind.

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In WorkACE+SDP offer to you the same platform that QXSystems is running its very own WorkACE.com (an all-in-one SME centric Web2.0 + SaaS Level 4 application) business on. We don’t think you should spend years of development efforts and millions of dollars to build something similar by yourself. Even better, we make it available to our partner for a very reasonable investment price, because we think that by becoming business partners we can become together even more successful. Delivering on this SaaS concept, QXSystems has integrated these end-to-end requirements in its W+SDP (5th generation Software as a Service Delivery Platform), which combines hosted development, network marketing & sales, day to day operations and deployment to provide on-demand support for the complete application lifecycle as well as for its clients. In the following we are going to take you on a deep tour on what WorkACE+SDP contain and what it will do for your SaaS business.

6. Main Parts and Features of WorkACE+SDP Technology W+SDP architecture is extendable and fully configurable system where in it integrates with other W~ technologies. It provides complete control over the SaaS enablement starts from multi-tenancy emulation, to order management, account management, billing, invoicing, and provisioning and along with the monitoring/metering functions. It’s also integrated with W+NMMS, which a promotional platform is using which the product/items can be promoted by end users. Here we will list out the detailed architecture of the W+SDP as follows: 6.1. Web Presence System Web presence refers to the appearance of a person or organization on the World Wide Web. It is in essence the gift to see ourselves as others see us, enhanced uniquely by the Internet. It might be more precisely defined as an ability to convey messages in text, sound, and image over the Internet through means of communicating asynchronously through fixed URLs. Web presence expresses the idea that a site is not tied to a specific geographic location, but is somewhere in cyberspace, hence these can act as landing pages to attract traffic and customers. The W~CMS module inside W~ provides the technical framework for building and managing the look, feel and usage of an endless number of websites. The content for these sites comes from within the structured and controlled WorkACE Application Instance, which also is called W~Facility. 6.2. SDP Runtime System This is the core of the SDP technology, where in it handles all the core process of a SaaS Delivery Platform. 6.2.1. Sign-up and Access Control System: Access control determines the client identity details and their access related information. This system has the option of the client deciding on more than one user mapped to the system and also being the center point of access control to the solutions delivered thru the SDP. 6.2.2. Order Management System:

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Order management handles the transaction details of the orders made, processed, and the payment processing related information. Provides option to initiate orders, manage their order details, and its related invoice management. 6.2.3. Management Agent System: This attributes to the functioning of Application management, like buying in more licenses, or canceling existing licenses and going for new products etc on the client front. This is also the Administration part for the SDP wherein the vendor can set up the configuration details and the SaaS product related information and provisioning and other management. 6.2.3.1. Items Management Module In SDP you can sell more than one product/item/service and the same buyer can buy more than one of these Items. This module helps to define the type of product/item/service based on its usage (License based or Usage based), Discount options for the item, Additional criteria’s for the same and also the installation/provisioning management as well. Also this intern relates with the billing cycle management wherein each end user can have their own way of billing cycle. Other features are: • • •

Configurable product / item / service details Installation can be configured based on product / item Billing cycle and discount details can be mapped for individual Item level

6.2.3.2. Billing Cycle Management Module In Admin panel the client can define different billing cycles and also they can map to the discount options on the billing cycle. There are provisions given for setting up the discount based on the duration, and the more the end user stays with the system the more the beneficial for both the parties. 6.2.3.3. Discount Management Module W+SDP provides comprehensive discount management, wherein the Administrator can setup different kind of discounts, i.e., flat or percentage based, specific client / item / invoice, based on the quantity of purchase, billing cycle, etc., 6.2.3.4. Coupon Management Module W+SDP provides comprehensive coupon management, wherein the Administrator can create different kind of discount coupons, i.e., flat or percentage based, specific client / item / invoice, based on the quantity of purchase, billing cycle, etc., It also has the option of creating coupons time based ,or usage base, and so on. Other features are: • • •

Can create coupons for discount options Various options available i.e., Time bound, count bound Can be mapped at item / client level

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6.2.3.5. Credit Management Module W+SDP provides comprehensive credit management, wherein the clients can buy their credits so that they can set up auto debit feature in their billing so that the invoices get paid automatically and they don’t need to remember for each invoice. Also it been integrated with W+NMMS wherein the commissions earned through their promotions can be adjusted to their credits as well. 6.2.3.6. Accounts Management Module W+SDP provides detailed account management, wherein the end user can setup different access control for the items, enable / disable auto debit functions, can see/monitor their W+NMMS related activities, etc., Also have features for withdraw amount from the credit systems, and transfer/share credits with other account holders (under testing). Other features are: • • •

Can setup user access details for Items (under testing) View client/associate details Setup credit functions and enable auto debit function

6.2.4. Metering Agent System: Metering happens at different levels, and can be configured based on the type of solution hosted thru the SDP. It can be on licenses, usage, or resource level (CPU, Memory, Disk space, Bandwidth etc). This part provides detailed information for both the end user as well as the provider based on which they can take actions. 6.2.5. Load Balancing System: Load Balancing is a technique to spread work between a cluster of computers, network links, CPUs, hard drives, or other resources, in order to get optimal resource utilization, throughput, or response time. Using multiple components with load balancing, instead of a single component, will increase reliability through redundancy. The balancing service is provided by stack of a dedicated programs, hardware devices and Grid Services. 6.2.5.1. High Availability (HA) Server Cluster Module High-availability clusters (also known as failover clusters) are implemented primarily for the purpose of improving the availability of services which the cluster provides. They operate by having redundant nodes, which are then used to provide service when system components fail. The most common size for an HA cluster is two nodes, which is the minimum requirement to provide redundancy. HA cluster implementations attempt to manage the redundancy inherent in a cluster to eliminate single points of failure. •

The service offering is always available to the end user

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•

Enables ISVs and Service Providers to meet SLA uptime requirements

6.2.5.2. High Performance (HP) Server Cluster Module HP clusters operate by distributing a workload evenly over multiple back end nodes. Typically in non-grid environments the cluster will be configured with multiple redundant load-balancing front ends. • •

The service offering is always available to the end user Enables ISVs and Service Providers to meet SLA performance requirements

6.3. Billing System Billing in W+SDP happens based on Usage as well as licenses. W+SDP provides comprehensive billing options, where in the end user self can choose the different billing cycles. There are provisions given to use multiple payment gateways using which the payment processing can be handled 6.3.1. Subscriber Account Management Module • • •

Adds, removes, and modifies subscribers, subscriber information, and configuration data Views, updates and renews account policies Suspends and deletes accounts

6.4. Payment Gateway Management System W+SDP also comes with different payment gate options integrated. By default it has the integration for Google Checkout as well as Paypal, and both are integrated with the API based system. So any kind of customization needs to be done on the Invoice calculation can be handled seamlessly. Also W+SDP has the provisioning for using other payment gateways or credit card service providers by adding them in the Admin panel. 6.4.1. Payment Processing Module • • • •

Configurable payment gateway options Pre build credit system which is integrated with W+NMMS and the Payment gateway Auto debit features enabled so that end user don’t need to remember to pay invoice on the respective billing cycles Combined invoicing is provided for different product/items

6.5. Installation and Provisioning System This is the place where the automatic installation process happens. Based on the type of the product / solution hosted, it can emulate the multi tenancy SaaS application, or can have multi tenant SaaS apps, or services can also be provided. This is configurable at product/solution level wherein what mode should be chosen while provisioning is made and do the process accordingly

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6.5.1. Multi-Tenancy Emulation Module • • •

No need to re-architect the application to produce multi-tenancy Get to market quicker at less cost Each client get a bigger freedom and control over their applications and computing environment in which even application customization can be provided

6.5.2. Automated Provisioning Module • • • 6.5.3 • • •

Fully automated order fulfillment Standard subscription lifecycle Event-driven Advanced Release Management Module Adds, removes and updates published service offerings Supports hot runtime updates. No client interruption required for minor patches and bug fixes Enables service configuration

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6.6. Usage Tracking System This provides the detailed report to the end user as well as the provider to know about the usages on different levels, e.g., License level, resource level (can be of different types, like CPU, Memory, Disk space, Bandwidth, etc) which can provide a overview for the end user to know what and how much utilization is happening 6.7. SLA Monitoring System This provides the functionality for the complete monitoring system on availability, and performance as well as security. Monitoring functions enable the services for the availability and incase of any issues happened, makes sure that the end users don’t have the down time and the same with the scalability as well. This monitoring interacts with the cloud computing servers and handle the initiation and shutdown procedures 6.8. WorkACE~CORE: Application Instance (WAI) W~CORE is the backbone for the W+SDP as well as the W+LSS Live support system put together. All the details are integrated tightly so that the Work force and the eco-system can have access to the W~CORE, which can handle all the daily work processes. Some of the key features of W~CORE are: • • •

• • •

•

It has been designed to address the needs of the Digital Knowledge Age businesses, where static office work has become dynamic eWork. It is designed to solve issues pertaining to people, data and assets in the cognitive eWorking mode of a modern eOrganization. It is a fast to implement and secure online eFacility, giving the stakeholders the environment, service oriented architecture and cognitive tools for efficient and effective eWorking. This makes WorkACE a prominent entity in Web2.0 space and further. It is capturing, organizing and storing the knowledge lost in communication by stand-alone email, chat, Video conferencing and VoIP systems. (Statistics: It is ~80% of daily process data). It eliminates the risk of knowledge and process brain-drain, which occurs when key players disembark. Replacement staff becomes productive in days rather than months. It reduces the time spend by employees seeking and storing information; normally wasted in clicking and browsing through endless number of unproductive screens in Industrial Age Software. (Statistics: Is around ~40% or even more). It also reduces the time spend by process leaders and managers traveling to keep their organizational operations moving. (Statistics: ~80% in a paper based organization; ~50% in an email based one).

Please check the following white paper on W~ which can be directly downloaded from QXSystems operational WAI, for more details: https://workace.qxsystems.com/filedownloader.php?data=FIL-5039

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6.8.1. Business Process Management System : W~BPMS Business process management (BPM) is a method of efficiently aligning an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It is a holistic management approach that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility and integration with technology. As organizations strive for attainment of their objectives, BPM attempts to continuously improve processes - the process to define, measure and improve your processes – a ‘process optimization' process. The main parts of W~BPMS are: • • • • • •

Program Management Module Project Management Module Events Management Module Tasks Management Module Activities Management Module Work-log Management Module

6.8.2. Business Ecosystem Management System : W~BEMS A BE is an economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals-the organisms of the business world. This economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organizations also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors, and other stakeholders. Over time, they co-evolve their capabilities and roles, and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies. Those companies holding leadership roles may change over time, but the function of ecosystem leader is valued by the community because it enables members to move toward shared visions to align their investments and to find mutually supportive roles. The main parts of W~BEMS are: • • • • •

Accounts Management Module Contacts Management Module Marketing Management Module Sales Management Module Purchase Management Module

6.8.3. Content Management System : W~CMS A content management system (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish an endless amount of content in a consistently organized, structured and secured fashion. From an organization stand point, W~CMS store and manage an organization's electronic document and Web content so that the employee of the company can reuse the information across different segments of the operation. The web published content can also be distributed to customers and eco-system partners outside the organization, enabling the business entity to establish a consistent look and feel throughout its site. It even gives an organization's non-technical content authors and editors the power to easily and quickly publish and update their own content using simple, but powerful, browser-based tools; which is otherwise done by technical programmers. This helps manage content during its entire lifecycle i.e. from creation through publishing.

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A wide range of content and business functions can be published and automated using W~CMS. This can be characterized as: • • • • • • • • •

Simple pages for normal company or product presentation Complex pages, with specific layout and presentation Dynamic information sourced from databases and will change on regular time intervals Training material Online manuals General business documents Thousands of pages in total for different categories of customers on hundreds of sites Extensive linking between pages and content objects Ecosystem driven modular applications, like: product and events registrations, online networking communities and sessions as well as user driven content sharing and distribution.

6.8.4. Issues Management System : W~IMS Issues form a gap between the organization’s performance and stakeholders' expectations. Are such issues identified in your organization today? Is there an effective system mitigating the impact of issues? Get to know your issues. And take action to reduce the impact of an issue. What you need is an Issue Management System that includes all knowledge on your issues, decisions made and actions taken. It should assist you in reducing the impact that result from issues. It should be able to: • saves time and money so that you can focus on the most critical task of running your business. • delivers cost-effective actions so that issue management adds value. • provides consistency across the organization. • is accessible to business units across the organization and its eco-system. • is an invaluable management tool for the return is many times higher than the cost of the investment. The W~IMS combines good information and ease-to-use to get maximum benefit out of your issue management efforts. 6.8.5

Document Management System : W~DMS

A document management system (DMS) is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. There are several common issues that are involved in managing documents, whether the system is an informal, ad-hoc, paper-based method for one person or if it is a formal, structured, computer enhanced system for many people across multiple offices. W~DMS is a powerful electronic Document Management System module with rich features for archiving, managing, indexing, structuring, retrieving and publishing documents. Some of the key characteristics present in W~DMS are:

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• •

•

•

• • • •

•

• •

6.8.6

Defined Location : Where will documents be stored? Where will people need to go to access documents? Retrieval : Retrieve the electronic documents from the storage. Although the notion of retrieving a particular document is simple, retrieval in the electronic context can be quite complex and powerful. Indexing : Indexing may be as simple as keeping track of unique document identifiers; but often it takes a more complex form, when one works in a dynamic mobile, digital and global environment. Distribution : A published document for distribution has to be in a format that can not be easily altered. As a common practice in law regulated industries, the original copy of the document is usually never used for distribution. Security : Document security is vital in many document management applications. Compliance requirements for certain documents can be quite complex depending on the type of documents. Storage : Storage of the documents often includes management of those same documents; where they are stored, for how long. Collaboration : Collaboration should be inherent in an eDMS. Documents should be capable of being retrieved by an authorized user and worked on. Versioning : Versioning is a process by which documents are checked in or out of the document management system, allowing users to retrieve previous versions and to continue work from a selected point. Versioning is useful for documents that change over time and require updating, but it may be necessary to go back to a previous copy. Publishing : Publishing a document is sometime tedious and involves the procedures of proofreading, peer or public reviewing, authorizing, printing and approving etc. Those steps endure prudence and logic thinking. Relationships: W~ automatically (in the background) creates relationships between the related objects for easier control and understanding. Dynamic: Due to its intelligent architecture W~ is 100% dynamic which means that hyperlinks and relationships will stay alive and fully functional even after objects are moved and/or renamed. Collaboration & Communication System : W~CCS

As the business expands, worker mobility increases, and travel budgets tighten, comprehensive and integrated collaboration tools become increasingly important. Employees need integrated communications tools combining ease-of-use with the ability to choose the medium appropriate to the task at hand. By integrating voice capabilities and collaboration applications, such as e-mail and instant messaging, the business users can help its employees to be more productive, responsive and accessible. One can also streamline operations, improve accuracy and responsiveness to customers and make vital information accessible when employees are away from the office. Enhancing business applications with these communication enablers can drive even more efficiency as the right person is provided with the right information at the right time.

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Collaboration and Communication systems is an application designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. It is the basis for computer supported cooperative work. Such software systems as email, calendaring, text chat, Wiki based discussion forums, VoIP(under testing) belongs in this category and W~CCS comes with all these components 6.9. Live Support Management System : W+LSMS W+SDP comes up with a comprehensive live support system provision wherein all the support system can be controlled with the WorkACE Application Instance (WAI) itself. It has different functionalities, starting from Live chat for immediate/interactive assistance, to Issue management, Forums, and also FAQ’s. This is also extendable to other functionalities as well. - W+LSMS : Key Features: •

•

Enables comprehensive Live Support portal for the clients and end user
Full featured Wiki based manual
Live Chat for immediate response
Issue management, like direct bug reporting
Forums
FAQs and more
Full Cognitive and Structure (While structuring, organizing, indexing and making all these information 100% cognitive, so that SaaS service providers are able to provide efficient support services.)
SIP based VOIP (under testing) Built in Live Support system to interact with the W~SUPPORT Team

6.10. Partner Program Management System : W+PPMS As we see a shift in the way people do business with the help of SDPs, there has been an ever increasing demand of online partner program systems which is seamless and borderless. To accommodate this need W+SDP comes with a comprehensive multi-level online Partner Program Management System. This means that as a W+SDP user, you have the ability to build your business anywhere in the world regardless of where you were born, through your own committed network of affiliates and associates. W+PPMS has various commission setup options including: % from each sale, fixed fee from each sale, % from first sale, fixed fee from first sale, Per Unique Click. All that options could be used separately or in combination.

- W+PPMS : Key Features: • • •

Ability to group items and adjust setting per group. Banner and text linking codes system. Manage unlimited number of Partners (affiliates, associates etc)

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• • • • • • • • •

Integrated mailing system (from admin to all affiliates / associates, approved/non-approved affiliates / associates) Built-in PayPal module for paying commissions. Ability to create printable version of reports. Manage affiliate / associates accounts. Adjustable N-tier for affiliate / associate commission. Monitor Affiliates and Partners Activity Keep track of campaigns (clicks, leads and sales) Keep track of commissions (paid and pending) Configurable Commission handling o Recurring commissions o Based on sales volume o Based on levels(Multi level)

An example of the power of the QXSystems’ 5th generation W+SDP can be seen at www.WorkACE.com . WorkACE.com, launched in March 2007, is the FIRST SaaS + Web2.0 application in Asia and among the very first in the world.

7. CONCLUSION In order for software developers and SaaS Service Providers to compete in this rapidly evolving market they must leverage both proven and new tools to accelerate their developments cycles and reduce their time to market. IT departments and business units within companies of all sizes are also finding that they can leverage SaaS Delivery Platform like WA+SDP, in order to develop and deploy web-based applications to meet their corporate requirements. While there are many alternatives that offer components of SaaS Delivery Platform, it is important to recognize the differences between these alternatives to make the best possible decision. Choosing the wrong SDP provider will, indeed, be a very expensive mistake that easily will take years to discover and to correct. Some of today's SaaS Delivery Platforms offer 'bare-bones' computing power with minimum tools or resources to leverage on the full SaaS business opportunity. Not many, if any, of the developers of these systems have any SaaS Vendor experience themselves. Therefore their knowledge and experience in this emerging field can only be limited. We at QXSystems base our knowledge in this field on the 10 years of hand-on leading expertise in SaaS computing as well as our state-of-the art knowledge on how to build highly efficient Mobile, Digital and Global organizations. QXSystems offers to you, our clients, the exact same SDP that we have built and continuously are building better and are using ourselves. To better understand the difference in our holistic approach to what other pure software vendors have to offer, we strongly suggest that you immediately contact one of our business development managers and

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setup a hands-on demo. Once you have seen the full-scale demo of WorkACE+SDP everything will be very clear for you. Maybe you don’t want to build and run your own SaaS business and take all the related risks yourself but are looking for something more of a Joint Venture type of arrangement. For this and for many other business relationships models with QXSystems we have created a complete Partner Program, called W~PP. If you are interested to know more, please let us know or sign-up as our Partner at: https://www.workace.com/wa_nmpp/ , where you also can download more information. Please contact us at: [email protected]

About QXSystems: QXSystems, a leader in enabling smart eBusiness and state-of-the-art Software as a Service (SaaS), providing cost-effective, turnkey solutions for ICT companies that need to quickly add or grow SaaS business and revenue. WorkACE+SDP, a comprehensive and scalable SaaS Delivery Platform built on the company’s highly regarded WorkACE Technology. QXSystems meets the growing need for ICT companies to deliver SaaS quickly, without the inherent risk and investment in a costly services infrastructure. WorkACE+SDP includes application management, end-user support, 24x7 systems management, hosting and networking, security, disaster recovery, change management, and more, as well as optional consulting services to help ICT companies work through the business model, code, and operational issues associated with SaaS. WorkACE+SDP is provided under the software company’s brand and priced per unit, on-demand, delivering immediate and ongoing ROI. Founded in 1998 in USA and today headquartered in Singapore, with regional operations in USA, Europe and India and with a over 10 years of continues successful web computing track record we are very well equipped to handle even the most challenging projects. We are confident to say that no other company in the world can challenge our position as the true Know-How leader in building smart and dynamic eBusiness solutions. For more information about QXSystems, visit the company’s web site at QXSystems.com.

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