As small and midsize businesses look to reduce costs and speed operations through software as a service offerings, Sigma Systems is launching the Cloud Service Broker, which is designed to manage all on-network business services, including voice over IP and high-speed broadband, as well as cloud-based SaaS services.
The service provides seamless order management, provisioning, and entitlement management across a variety of technologies and platforms, offers simultaneous provisioning and support for on-network and SaaS (off-network) services and applications, and enables application programming interface (API) integration for the networking of SaaS-based services and applications, which allows the addition of new services to the catalog through the back-office architecture.
The Cloud Service Broker provides small businesses with end-user portals, order management and provisioning, billing integration and single sign-on (SSO) across a suite of SaaS service offerings and is built on Sigma’s Service Management Platform, integrating with other back-office systems to deliver and scale IP-based service offerings. The platform also allows service providers to create packages by combining high-speed data, commercial voice and other network services with SaaS-based services.
“With the Cloud Service Broker, operators can further solidify their relationships with their SMB customers by becoming a trusted provider and manager of business-critical SaaS services,” Tim Spencer, president of Sigma Systems, said in a prepared statement. “Organizations today are eager to leverage more SaaS services, but do not have the time or resources to manage services from different providers. This presents an opportunity for cable and telecommunications companies to offer a much-needed service to their customers while benefiting from the increased revenues that these services can generate.”
A recent report from IT research firm IDC indicated cloud service brokerage could become an important source of revenue for service providers who target midmarket customers. “Cloud adoption among SMBs has increased dramatically over the past six to 12 months,” Deb Osswald, research vice president with IDC, said in a prepared statement. “Providing a solution that enables cable operators and communications service providers to quickly and easily tap into this burgeoning market opportunity with SMB-oriented applications and content provided by third parties opens the door to a significant new stream of revenue.”
A recent survey from IT security firm Symantec echoed IDCs findings, indicating SMBs are embracing technologies like virtualization and cloud computing: 34 percent of SMBs surveyed either currently deploying or already benefitting from server virtualization. These companies are even more active in the cloud computing space, according to the survey, with 40 percent saying they are deploying public clouds, and a similar number (43 percent) are implementing private clouds to help run their businesses.