Examining the temptation to build one's own Unified Communication Cloud Service management portal. This presentation offers the opinion that it is better to buy from a specialized vendor.

1. UCAAS MANAGEMENT PORTAL: BUILD OR BUY?
Abdel Kander, CEO Kurmi SOftware
© Copyright 2014 Kurmi Software S.A.S.

2. WARNING
• You may be right in thinking that this is a rhetorical
exercise coming from Kurmi Software since we make
a living out of selling UCAAS Management Portals
therefore we should be deemed ill-placed to make
the case for the « Buy » option but we hope you’ll
detect at least some traces of intellectual honesty!

3. THE PORTAL IS THE FACE OF UCAAS
• Attraction
• Retention
• Upselling

4. “BUILD”, A TANGIBLE POSSIBILITY
• The basics are available
– Interfaces
– Web frameworks
– Developers
• Only needs to look good to customers
– “We’ll do the back office manually to start with”
• You probably have the functional expertise
– You know your stuff better than anyone else!

5. “BUILD”, THE ECONOMICS LOOK GOOD!?
• Available R&D staff providers
– Good mix of on/off-shore
– Market is competitive enough to force bidding war
• Or maybe internal developers
– With 0 incremental cost
– Plus you gotta keep the guys busy, right?!
• Part of the project setup
– Then no ongoing cost
• Built to own specifications
– No customization costs

6. ARE YOU SURE?!

7. « I DID SOMETHING FOR THE WORST POSSIBLE
REASON -- JUST BECAUSE I COULD »
Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinski affair,
June 20, 2004, CBS 60 Minutes

8. SOME FUNDAMENTAL FACTORS
• UCAAS, unlike PAAS is a user-centric service
– Not an ICT play
– No matter how sophisticated is the Data Center, if the
phones don’t ring it’s bad!
• A good portal is the difference between making and
loosing money
– Delegation reduces costs and increases customer
satisfaction and retention

9. SOME FUNDAMENTAL FACTORS
• It’s a moving target…
– Customer/user expectations evolve
– New usage habits spawn new needs
• On shifting grounds
– Ecosystem vendors upgrade versions potentially triggering
new unscheduled developments for you
– Competitive landscape impose fast reaction
– “Nice to have” features become “Must have”

10. WHAT MAKES A ROBUST ARCHITECTURE?
• Four layers
– Connectivity
– Persistence
– Business Logic
– Rendering

11. ON CONNECTIVITY
• Ability to interact with underlying systems
– Query and modify every object and attribute
– While maintaining a coherent state at all time
– With roll-back capabilities
– Manage concurrent data access
– Throttling to avoid overload
• Handle many systems
– Different API technologies
– With orchestration capabilities (order of execution, error
handling…)

12. ON PERSISTENCE
• You can’t do without it!
– If you have more than one underlying system
– Some tried and failed miserably!
• Intelligent data model
– To handle future evolutions
– With a business rather than an technical representation
– Enable own workflows
• Suspend a user
• Move users across systems
• Avoid collisions with ecosystem
– Manage multiple master data sources
– Graciously manage data conflicts

13. ON BUSINESS LOGIC
• Capture Marketing requirements
– Service Packaging
– Customer interaction
• Translate functional scenarios into technical multi-step multi-system
workflows
– I.e. Downgrading from multi-line, premium device to a basic package:
• Which line do you keep?
• Should you bother changing the device?

14. ON RENDERING
• Ergonomic design
• Adaptive and customizable
• Multi-language

15. OTHER IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS
• Security
– Continued compliance with industry standards
– Network and database isolation
• Robustness
– Redundant platforms
– No SPOF
• Interaction with customer’s IS
– Active Directories
– Authentication systems
• Interaction with provider’s IS
– Ordering
– Billing

16. Customers
Administrators
End-users
Internet
Load Balancer
Apache Cluster
Kurmi Cluster
SP SSO
DB Cluster
SP Information
System
Unified Com.
Platform For
Company 1
Unified Com.
Platform For
Company 2
Unified Com.
Platform For
Company N
ARCHITECTURE & IS INTEGRATION
SP Administrators
billing
API

17. THE ECONOMICS OF « BUY »
• Proven compatibility with UCAAS model
– 2+ years of market experience
– Tier 1 and Tier 2 providers
– In many geographies
– Pay as you grow
• Many of our customers tried “Build” before
– And If they paid us that money, I would be driving a Roll’s
Royce!

18. Rennes
Kurmi Software
38 ter, rue de Rennes
F- 35 510 Cesson-Sévigné
Tel: + 33 2 99 32 02 84
Paris
Kurmi Software
14, Boulevard des Frères Voisin
F- 92 130 Issy-Les-Moulineaux
Tel: + 33 1 58 88 30 72
www.kurmi-software.com
contact-us@kurmi-software.com
Kurmi Software Professionals
Minneapolis
Kurmi Software
4316 Blenheim Circle
Minnetonka MN 55345
Tel: +1 612 594 7174