Service Providers

Whether your are an established cloud Service Provider or a newcomer to the field, you are likely to face the following key day-to-day business challenges:

• How do I uncover new inventories of money-making cloud-based applications that I can easily resell with a minimum of time and engineering investment?
• How do I make it simple for my business customers to self-serve their application maintenance tasks so that I can scale my profits without scaling my overhead?

APS is designed to standardize the packaging of applications that you receive from ISVs, as well as to provide logical and creative marketing opportunities on a large inventory scale. With a focus on the lucrative and highly versatile small and medium business (SMB) market, APS helps you overcome traditional barriers to scalability by providing a common, rich ecosystem of connected business across the cloud supply chain.

APS creates revenue opportunities for cloud Service Providers by introducing a "pluggable" approach to distributing cloud-based applications. Once packaged in the APS format by a software vendor, an application can be easily "plugged" into an infrastructure of any hosting/telecommunications provider whose platform is compatible with the standard "socket" for APS applications.

This section describes your path as a Service Provider to realizing benefits and increased profits as you use APS-based applications to expand your business farther and deeper into the cloud.

APS and Automation: Plug Into Increased ARPU

As a provider, you know that your business lives and dies by the net average revenue per user (ARPU) you are able to attain through your subscribers. By providing a packaging standard that allows for compatibility with mainstream cloud-based application automation systems, such as Parallels, APS empowers you to maximize your net ARPU by minimizing your application life cycle cost.

The upshot of automation as it is enabled by APS is that you can offer "low-touch" or "zero-touch" application delivery by converting the following tasks to self-service for your business customers:

• Automated provisioning of a SaaS offering at the time of purchase
• Automated billing
• Customer self-service administration

You can choose from hundreds of APS applications to meet your go-to-market plans. As new applications become available, turn-key automation of these applications reduces your time-to-market as well as your total cost of service. Automation translates to higher net ARPU, meaning you can scale to more and more APS applications and markets without taking a hit to your bottom line.

What Kinds of ISV or SaaS Offerings can be APS Packaged?

With hundreds of applications to choose from, there is likely to be an application available to meet your specific go to market need. The APS Certified Application Catalog provides a comprehensive list of applications cataloged into the following key areas, including:

• Back Office applications
• Collaboration applications
• Infrastructure applications
• Web applications

Additionally, Parallels, the leader in APS-enabled automation tools, has a deeper spotlight on select sets of APS packages preferred by their partners located here.

What if My ISV is Not APS Packaged?

APS packaging an application is simple. ISVs can leverage an APS Packaging Certified System Integrators for assistance, or they can learn how to package APS applications themselves. With sandboxes and training available, along with SI support links, documentations, and hundreds of examples applications already APS-packaged, the Let's Get Started section of this site provides everything ISVs need to easily align their offerings with your APS-ready platform.

What are the Business Models for Distributing APS Applications?

APS provides a flexibility in the business model between you and the APS-packaged application provider. APS does not define the business relationship between you and the distributor of your offerings. Partners are free to engage with one another within a variety of business models in the distribution of APS-packaged offerings. Some APS partners who have developed their own APS automation platform, such as 1&1 and Strato, have a direct reseller relationship with ISVs. Other partners provide additional choices, including Parallels, the leading automation platform for APS-enabled applications. Parallels supports multiple business models with its reseller partners, including direct reseller relationships, referral-based relationships, and license resale revenue. To learn more about the Parallels APS ecosystem and how they can help you promote your application to thousands of their distribution hosting/telecommunications partners, visit www.parallels.com/cloudservices.

Ready to get started? Contact us if you are a Service Provider who would like to host ISV applications, or if you have any additional questions about building a business model for APS platform distribution.