SaaS: Microsoft Preparing BPOS Billing for VARs?
Assuming it’s accurate, the grapevine is treating The VAR Guy particularly well this week. One prime example: Our resident blogger hears Microsoft is testing a syndicated BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) partner program, which may allow resellers to manage SaaS billing for end-customers. Is this a defining moment for Microsoft’s SaaS channel strategy? Or do more hurdles remain? Here’s the scoop.
First, The VAR Guy needs to tip his well-worn hat: Contributing Associate Blogger Matt Weinberger nailed this story, before The VAR Guy muscled in to steal Weinberger’s byline. Sure enough, multiple SaaS pundits say Microsoft is about to make a BPOS billing move, potentially empowering partners to better leverage Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and other on-demand applications.
The VAR Guy isn’t surprised. In March 2010, Microsoft Channel Chief Allison Watson told The VAR Guy that the software giant would continue to refine BPOS, based on partner feedback. Watson shared her SaaS and cloud channel thoughts in this video.
What’s the Story — Today?
Fast forward to the present and a Microsoft spokesperson declines to comment about the alleged BPOS billing news. Here’s what The VAR Guy knows — or claims to know.
Exact details are expected to surface at the Microsoft Hosting Summit on April 28. As part of the announcement, specific BPOS partners will be allowed to manage their own billing for end-customers, according to multiple sources. That’s a key move, since many initial BPOS partners complained that Microsoft controlled all pricing and billing.
Now for the tricky part. In order to differentiate from rival BPOS partners, Microsoft will require each partner to deliver at least one additional bundled service with BPOS.
Remaining Holes?
Sounds intriguing. But plenty of questions and challenges remain. Some VARs remain very upbeat about BPOS, because it provides easy access into the SaaS and recurring revenue markets.
Still, skeptics remain. One source says Microsoft has been beta testing the new service with at least two partners. Another skeptical source says BPOS still involves some key negatives for hosting partners.
The source says: “The reseller, while maintaining a billing relationship with the customer, the reseller still has no control over the offering, support or product differentiation. So in effect, the reseller gets all the responsibility for billing and support — but none of the authority to make a better mousetrap.”
Hmmm… Those are solid points that Microsoft partners will need to consider. Also of note: Microsoft will need to balance the world of BPOS with the world of third-party hosted Exchange providers, where companies like Apptix and Intermedia are showing considerable momentum.
Back to Our Originally Scheduled Program
Meanwhile, The VAR Guy just landed in San Francisco for the Cisco Partner Summit. Stay tuned for plenty of Cisco chatter. And our resident blogger will provide a BPOS update if/when Microsoft makes official announcements on April 28.
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Whose challenge is this ? Marketing team is coming up with innovative price plans, Sales is aggressive in acquiring customers, Technical team is provisioning services, Customer is availing every option of service extensively but end of the month, usage metering , calculation and invoicing !…..How do we do this? Is this a concern for every cloud computing provider ?
To have competitive edge and sustain in the cloud market place, cloud service providers are flexible in terms of their services, price plans or pricing structure which introduced the concept of Pay Per Use (PPU). But, one must not ignore the pains of a cloud service provider in tracking, collating and calculating the usage of each and every customer, applying respective rate plan, and generating a bill.
In addition to the usage based pricing parameters such as storage space, bandwidth consumption, computing cycles, number of users, modules, services, instances, downloads, alerts, hours etc, every cloud service provider has its own vertical specific usage based pricing charges e.g. in SaaS HRM vertical , they charge based on number of employees, or per month per user, Now the challenge here is cloud service provider has to have a continuous watch on the usage consumption of its customer(s) which may prevent from significant revenue loss. Alerting and allowing a customer on the usage limit (threshold) is again one such crucial business process. Cloud service provider follow a manual process or they have a tool in house developed to track such things. This exercise involves additional human resource or efforts to their operations .
Manual usage tracking is not much of a painful process for start-ups with less customers. However usage tracking process would become a challenging and painful process for the service providers with Large customer base. Hence cloud service provider should automate its usage tracking process and keep a weather eye on the individual customer’s usage consumption. This will reduce the revenue loss occurred in manual process.
eVapt has proven experience in collecting the usage records for cloud subscription service providers across the globe. eVapt has deployed its solution along with it’s Metering module which integrates with cloud service providers database servers / control panel /virtualization platform to collect the usage detailed records (UDRs). This will collect data that is in logfiles, databases or can run scripts written in Java to collect data. The Metering component in eVapt allows collections of multiple usage type and accurate processing of the same. This will plug the loss of revenues through accurate usage collection and processing
Smith: So, um, is it safe to say you’re affiliated with eVapt?
-TVG