Case Study: Cloud Services Portal

Overview

Windstream has a vision to become a SaaS provider, offering a suite of communication and business services through an eco-system of partners, all deployed within Windstream data centers and delivered via Windstream’s extensive nationwide network. SaaSafras is helping to deliver on that vision be developing a centralized portal to coordinate ordering, provisioning, and billing activities between Windstream and its eco-system partners.

Situation

Windstream Corp is a leading provider of advanced network communications, including cloud computing and managed services, to businesses nationwide. The company also offers broadband, phone and digital TV services to consumers primarily in rural areas. Windstream has more than $6 billion in annual revenues and is listed on the S&P 500 index. A recent initiative has been to offer enterprise Unified Communication solutions from Windstream data centers and delivered over Windstream networks as a holistic subscription based service. The solution integrates core platforms from multiple enteprise PBX vendors, with complementary value-added services from a gowing eco-system community. The challenge was to integrate the delivery of these services, combined with access to billing, administration, and monitoring systems, all within a common portal. In addition, Windstream has a vision to eventually offer a complete SaaS store that combines SaaS services ordering with automated provisioning on the back-end using a Business Process Management System (BPMS) to integrate ordering, provisioning, and billing between Windstream and its eco-system community.

Solution

The central portal being developed by SaaSafras is designed to support a multi-tenant, multi-platform environment. It centralizes user access/authentication and combines access from multiple underlying platforms, including:

• Order processing,
• Monitoring/management,
• Billing,
• and access to 24/7 help desk support.

Users will be able to access all services over a common interface, with a single access login. Impact to the underlying platforms is minimal – all integration is handled by the SaaSafras portal. In a future release, SaaSafras will integrate the portal with a BPMS back-end to help automate the provisioning of services between SaaSafras and its partners, tied back to a SaaS ordering store within the portal. SaaSafras will handle not only the portal development, but also the design and programming of the BPMS platform.

Benefits

With the SaaSafras portal, Windstream will gain a competitive advantage. Ecosystem partners can offer and deliver their services as if they are part of Windstream, with Windstream providing sales, coordinated service provisioning, and billing for services. Windstream customers get access to a diverse offering of communication and business services – ordered, delivered, and billed from Windstream. And, Windstream is able to market and deliver these services in a coordinated fashion, without the need for internal headcount to deliver these services by itself.