The holiday season has come and gone and if you're like me and my family, you got "slightly" more austere gifts as a sobering reminder that we are indeed in challenging times. But it is these challenging times that defines companies and people. How we react to the challenge and what we do to hit it head on, that's when great companies shine. This is no time for wimps!

Case in point is PanTerra Networks. We have build our business around Software-As-A-Service, a business model that saves customers money every month, virtually eliminates upfront CAPEX expenses, and obliterates product obsolescence by delivering future-proof on-demand services. A perfect example of this future-proof capability is the recently introduced "UNIFIED PRESENCE" features which I think will revolutionize how we manage our time and how much of "our time" is spent on "managing our tools". There are three components to the Unified Presence feature:

• MobileCall
• MobileMessage
• IM/Phone Automatic Presence Detection

All three are incredibly exciting. I should know, I've been using them for some time (benefits of being a beta tester!).

Let's start with MobileCall. This feature allows you to receive (or make) a call through PanTerra's virtual PBX and once connected, transparently move the call to another phone WITHOUT dropping the caller or the caller knowing what happened. Think of the possibilities. Have you ever taken a call on your office phone and felt "tethered" to the cord as you're late for your next off-site meeting? Now you can transparently move the call from your desk phone to your cell phone without breaking the conversation! Or did you ever take a call on your cell phone and reach your home (which has bad reception) and struggle to talk? Now you can transparently move the call to your home office phone in a snap! MobileCall allows your calls to truly adapt to your presence!

Now then, what is MobileMessage? Well, it allows you to route your messages that come in on one messaging system, like email or IM, and re-route them to another (or multiple) messaging system automatically based on your presence! Imagine an important IM coming in to you while you're away form your desk and having it automatically re-routed to your cell phone via an SMS message! Or having it re-routed to an email, showing up on your blackberry. And the cool thing? When you reply, your reply message gets automatically converted back to the sender's original messaging system! Now that's cool. All of this happens AUTOMATICALLY based on your presence!

Lastly, wouldn't you love to have your IM status change automatically when you're on the phone? Not just your softphone, but your desk phone too? Well, you have it now with WorldSmart! WorldSmart automatically updates your presence when you're on your desk phone or softphone. Once again, WorldSmart uses presence to make your life easier and make connecting with customers more efficient and productive. Now that's a present of Presence!

Seems like these days small and medium sized businesses are all the rage and in the news. Take "Joe" the plumber. For those that don't know Joe, you can read about him, well, just about anywhere! Joe represents all the small and medium sized businesses trying to get ahead by working hard and saving everywhere they can. They are especially concerned about having their money "taken" from them without any value in return or through what they might perceive as "schemes" to look them into payments, thus enacting the "slow extraction of their hard earned money". Yes times are tough for Joe, especially if Joe has to buy capital equipment for his business. Getting credit right now is all but impossible and using hard earned cash for large ticket capital purchases is a tough justification. What Joe needs is a better way of doing business so that Joe can concentrate on what Joe does best.... fixing the pipes!

So let's help Joe out. First of all, what is the single most important way to improve Joe's business? How about making him more productive and efficient while cutting his costs and eliminating expensive capital equipment purchases? That's exactly what a communications Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution can do for Joe. Getting rid of his antiquated 20th century PBX/key system which causes him to lose business because it can't route incoming calls to his cell phone when he's on a job is a start. Replacing it with a no up-front cost SaaS solution that can "find" Joe and always connect his customers to him will increase revenue. Add a secure IM network with his plumbing vendors and partners so that he can instantly find out about parts availability across all his vendors while still on the phone with a customer, and he's really liking SaaS because it's allowing him to be more productive and responsive to his customers. Joe's really getting the hang of "unified communications SaaS" now! He's getting daring as he creates a plumbing solution diagram and "shares" it instantly with another plumber friend to get his input on the layout and costs before submitting it to his customer. Wow, Joe is really grooving now. He is actually moving his business into the 21st century with unified communications SaaS and he's saving money while doing it.

Ah but Joe's no dummy. He's looking for the catch! He gets all the benefits of a no up-front cost, integrated, productivity enhancing unified communications solution? There must be some kind of long term contract! 3 year lock in! That's what most of these communications vendors want right? Well, Joe's right that most old fashion communications companies fall back to the "contract lock-in" to extract their pound of flesh from Joe. But, Joe didn't become successful just picking any old vendor to work with. Joe knows that the best vendors will deliver great solutions and earn his business not through lock-in contracts, but through great service and continuous innovation which will elicit Joe to continue with the service. So what is Joe's "punch down list" for the ideal communications solution for his business? Here it is:

• On-demand solution as opposed to on-premise so I save up-front capital costs
• No long term seat contracts so I have maximum flexibility
• Choice of bandwidth providers so I can get the best quality of service at the best price
• Unlimited fixed price service so I can plan my monthly business costs accurately
• Integrated unified communications so I don't have to deal with multiple vendors

Can Joe really get all these things in a single vendor? Click here and find out!

"Cloud Computing", "Software As A Service", "Application Service Provider", "Client-Server", the terminology goes on and on. Technology loves its terminology and acronyms. We create a new term every time the old one seems to need a facelift. Well, that would be the slightly cynical view at least. Luckily there are many good industry analysts out there to example these terms in common understandable terms, like Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies who is a strategic consultant with significant experience in the computing industry and its trends. He recently wrote about all these above mentioned computing terms in his blog.

Without repeating, I thought I'd give my two cents on all these terms. May of these terms have historical roots that provided the basis for their younger siblings. Take for example "client-server", which I would call the "father" of Software As A Service (SaaS). In the 80's with the advent of the "Personal Computing", software was empowered to create and deliver "individual productivity applications" like the spreadsheet and the word processor. It was a glorious time for personal computing. The only problem was that corporate computing or "non-personal productivity" was left in the dust. Until the concept of "Client-Server" was create. Put a personal computing front on a corporate application (like HR or Sales). The front end ran on the PC and the "back end" ran on the trusted mainframe in the datacenter. In my humble opinion, this was the forefather of the concept of SaaS (with some of the player roles changed).

Now fast forward to the 90's and the technology that would change the world: The Internet, and more specifically global IP communications. With a standardized protocol to communicate between computing and people, new opportunities were created. This is the time when "Application Service Provider (ASP)" came into existence. You see Client-Server was reserved for the fortune 100 who had huge datacenters and massive budgets to run Oracle and SyBase (now Microsoft). But what about the rest of us? Well, the industry evolved and up sprouted "independent datacenters" with Internet/IP connectivity. They ran Oracle and SyBase and they managed the datacenter. They "rented" these applications to companies that could put their databases on them and gain the benefits that the larger companies had up till then. Thus ASP followed Client-Server breaking out the back end datacenter from an internally managed environment into an externally provided datacenter.

OK, half way there! Now fast forward to the 21st century. IP communications is ubiquitous and reliable. This ushers in the era of Globalization. With globalization comes opportunity and challenge. The opportunity is the significant increase in market and customers. The challenge is global competition. Global competition means that operating costs become normalized to the lowest common denominator around the world. Operating inefficiencies and ineffective business models become exposed. One of these inefficiencies is how companies manage and deliver support services throughout their company. The old model was to purchase capital equipment (servers, telecom equipment, etc), purchase expensive software licenses and hire large IT staff to manage it all. Unfortunately, that's so 20th century!

Fortunately, the computer industry once again has evolved to provide a better solution, but is it "Cloud Computing" or "Software As A Service (SaaS)"? Well, the answer is "It's Both!". Sound like a cop out? Well, let me explain. Cloud Computing is the infrastructure or overall architecture term to describe the outsourcing of the backend datacenter to an external third party. This third party typically provides tremendous scalability, support for open standards and high levels of reliability. With Cloud Computing, companies do not have to invest in expensive and capital intensive datacenters and equally important, can deliver services in a more globally scalable manner.

Now if Cloud computing is the new infrastructure/architecture for computing, then Software As A Service (SaaS) is the delivery mechanism (or model) of applications that utilize the Cloud Computing infrastructure. Thus SaaS runs on top of Cloud Computing to deliver the application. What's interesting is that Cloud Computing could use ASP or even Client-Server to deliver the application as well. So in that sense, Cloud Computing is broader than SaaS. As Companies take advantage of SaaS to deliver on-demand services, they will benefit from the most optimal way of running their business, making them globally competitive. On-Demand flexibility, elimination of up front capital costs, elimination of software obsolescence, increased productivity and optimization for multi-location globalization are all benefits of the SaaS model. So if you hear "ASP", "Client-Server", "SaaS" or "Cloud Computing", while there are nuanced differences in the terms, know that they all provide benefits in optimizing the delivery of services for your company.

It's interesting to see how markets and companies evolve. When something new and "good" comes out, everyone wants it and many companies rush to give "the people" what they want. SaaS is a good example of this phenomenon. SaaS, or Software As A Service, became a hit once IP connectivity became inexpensive, ubiquitous and more reliable (that's another blog topic!). Companies such as Salesforce.com, Webex and Websidestory build huge businesses around delivering that one SaaS service they developed.

As markets mature, however, one tends not to be enough. And in fact in the SaaS marketplace, the very nature of SaaS is that you can deliver services more rapidly and on demand. The very nature of SaaS means that you have to evolve and adapts. Hence the evolution of next generation "Multi-Service" SaaS companies. These companies, like Netsuite, Revenue Science and PanTerra, take SaaS to the next level. By creating a truly scalable multi-service SaaS platform, these companies can offer what fist generation SaaS companies cannot: a one stop shop for most if not all your services. This takes SaaS to the next level, significantly reducing TCO, administration, support, maintenance while increasing productivity and allowing businesses to focus on what is important to them: their customers. Many services on demand, completely integrated, just the way you want them... now that's a better idea.

It's amazing to me how some businesses optimize their value proposition story when they sell to their end customers and then turn around and blindly purchase the cheapest products from their vendors in order to save money. While these companies may save a few dollars, it doesn't make much sense in many situations and generally causes long term harm to a company.

Now, to be sure, I'm not saying "throw caution to the wind". Actually, being well informed and knowledgeable is the key to making the right decisions about what services and products you need to optimize your business. In today's challenging business world, those companies that leverage innovative solutions can propel their businesses beyond their competition. The proverbial "competitive edge" is measured in both human resource as well as optimized operations. I've seen many instances where an employee armed with advanced communication services (mobile email, desktop sharing, etc...) beat out their competition armed with inexpensive basic communication services (desktop email). Indeed, sometimes spending a few dollars, not only makes more sense, it also makes more dollars.

As the saying goes, "You gain perspective with time". This was re-enforced by the marketing people at Oldsmobile when they coined the phrase "This is not your father's Oldsmobile". It had even more meaning since they WERE Oldsmobile, trying to sell you another Oldsmobile. In the end, the saying stuck in people's minds and Oldsmobile did change and as a result they sold more cars. What does that have to do with communications? Well, communications is changing as well and with time, the industry is gaining perspective too. It wasn't long ago, with the telecommunications act and deregulation of the old phone company (AT&T) that a whole new ball game emerged: Voice Over IP (VOIP). It had a great ring to it. Rolled off your tongue with a certain twang and a whole new industry was born. Indeed, VOIP was the promised land for many who rushed out to build VOIP companies. But wait, where would they get the technology? They didn't have it so they went looking for it. And they found it in two places: Old iron companies that build old fashion PBXs and bolted an internet IP connection to them and claimed "victory" and old fashion software licensing switch companies that wanted to sell you software so you could build your own telephone company.

Since VOIP was so new, many of these companies rushed to the market with either big iron internet capable PBXs or tried to build their own switches with software technology licensed from a technology provider. Unfortunately, two things happened on the way to the ball, the only value people saw in VOIP was cheaper rates and since these providers of VOIP didn't own the technology, they couldn't innovate and add value. They were stuck with a commodity product and no way to add value. What does that spell? Disaster. When you add to the fact that many of these VOIP providers were under funded, you get a marketplace full of tombstones. We'll call this era the "Oldsmobiles of the past".

So why is PanTerra different? First of all, we're NOT a VOIP provider. VOIP is just a way to get cheaper service (you see we agree with you!). Second, we didn't build the company around the "old" technology others have used. We built a next generation Multi-Service SaaS platform. SaaS stands for Software As A Service and it's the most innovative way to deliver services to customers. With SaaS you don't have to buy hardware or software assets that are immediately obsolete the minute you buy them. With SaaS you get only what you need when you need it. Now many of the walking dead VOIP providers have seen the light and advertise them as SaaS providers now, but remember that nagging little problem...they don't own their technology so it's had to change something you don't own. And the true power of PanTerra is in its ability to deliver multiple SaaS services in an integrated suite with common administration, billing and support. That's the true power of PanTerra's WorldSmart solution. So kick the tires, take a test drive, 'cause this is NOT your father's VOIP provider!