What is the value for ISVs and SIs?
Stable and inexpensive platform for ISVs and SIs to base solutions on Software United platform combines best of breed IBM applications (Lotus, Tivoli, Informix, DB2) and enterprise-grade open source software (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Red Hat Enterprise Solutions, Red Hat Infrastructure Products). Software United is a great tool for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and System Integrators (SIs) in facilitating them to develop and base their solutions/applications. Software United offers amazing special bids and, therefore, contrives very strong position for ISVs/SIs in the IT market competition.
For example, if ISV/SI offers a business solution based on IBM Lotus software, customers usually have to buy a platform to run that solution. In that case customers need at least an operating system and IBM Lotus, most probably, they need typical additional software like office suite as well. These investments into platform for solution make total cost of ownership of the whole information system really high. It is especially crucial in the time of limited budgets.
However, Software United offers an opportunity to get tremendous discounts on platform software under solution, which could be more then 50%!
To get these discounts is crucial to integrate all necessary business applications and required platform software beforehand. For example, if ISV/SI offers Learning Management System (LMS) based on IBM Lotus, then it has to be form a complete software stack like «Red Hat Enterprise Linux, IBM Lotus Domino and LMS». This stack as new integrated solution «LMS on Software United» will get discounts on IBM Lotus Domino and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, included in this solution.
Opportunity to offer customers end-to-end solutions rather then just multiple pieces of software
Software United offers simplification for clients and customers business.
- Customer purchases just one license for the whole integrated solution - all necessary licenses and subscriptions are included as well as enterprise-grade support for all components.
- Customer gets just one integrated distribution - all necessary software is included, installed automatically and integrated out of the box.
- Customer gets integrated support for the whole solution - if customer encounters any problems, there is no need to investigate if the problem is caused by operating system, middleware or some misconfiguration. Customer can just pass the problem to the Software United support and it will be sure that vendors and all other partners will work jointly to solve it.
Software United allows customers to concentrate on business needs and business solutions implementation.
Reduced deployment costs
Solutions created under Software United platform include all necessary components pre-integrated and ready to work «out of the box». The whole solution can be installed on bare metal and very easy with just few mouse clicks. All necessary operations required to make multiple pieces of software working together is performed during installation automatically.
There is no need to spend money for expensive time of high-class engineers to perform complicated integration again and again.
There is no need to track compatibility of multiple pieces of software from different vendors.
ISVs/SIs have a great opportunity to concentrate on business aspects and system customization according to the customer business needs and requirements.
Reduced support costs
Solutions developed and based on Software United platform have integrated support. A single source of support is provided for the whole integrated platform by «support grid».
When some problem is addressed, there is no need to investigate is that caused by operating system, middleware or some misconfiguration. The problem just has to be passed to the Software United support and it will be solved efficiently on the most appropriate way.
Software United support is multilingual and provided on several European languages (English, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Ukrainian).
ISVs/SIs can be sure that customers of «Solution on Software United» will get support on their local language even if ISVs/SIs cannot provide it by themself. In such situation Software United “support grid” provides first level of support for the whole solution. Problems/Questions on system platform under solution will be solved by «support grid» internally. Only if the problem/question is related to the ISV/SI part of the solution itself, the request will be passed to the ISV/SI support service.
New strong channels to promote products and solutions
Solutions developed and based on Software United platform will be promoted via well-established VDEL partner network in the Central/Eastern Europe as well as in the Russia and CIS.
This channel gives to ISVs/SIs a great opportunity to enter completely new markets and find new business partners for promotion, deployment, customization and support to their solutions.