BroadSoft Solution Gives Partners Easy Entry to App Marketplace

Now, hosted unified communications pacesetter BroadSoft is giving service providers an easy way to cash in on the growing trend in online ecommerce marketplaces and apps sales.

With its new BroadSoft Xtended platform, BroadSoft partners can offer their end users a selection of enterprise-focused applications via a branded online storefront, where customers can browse and download a la carte telecommunications apps.

Leslie Ferry, BroadSoft’s vice president of sales and marketing, said BroadSoft’s app marketplace gives solution providers an easy way to introduce this new sales model into their business.

BroadSoft spent over two years building the APIs and working with its community of over 4,800 registered developers in order to introduce their marketplace, which will help service providers to monetize the growing demand for downloadable business applications.

And by hosting the sites and taking care of the back end processes, BroadSoft provides a complete, turnkey solution for service providers looking to enter the ecommerce marketplace.

Three service providers -- Evolve IP, Simple Signal and Telovations -- are already taking advantage of the service, and launched their own marketplace sites last week.

Marc Tribbe, director of product development at Telovations, said he’s also seen a “paradigm shift” in the way customers drive demand for products and services in the channel.

“The biggest thing I’ve heard from [customers] is they want the ability to go online and do an ecommerce transaction. And really they want the flexibility to order and manage all their different applications themselves. That’s what the marketplace allows them to do,” said Tribbe. “An end user customer can now order, manage and also have a very fast turnaround on the tools that they’re looking for that allow them to be productive.”

Tribbe said that the BroadSoft Xtended platform has allowed Telovations to sidestep the slow and arduous processes of development, pricing, licensing, and allocation, and instead enter directly into the ecommerce marketplace and begin offering his customers the applications and solutions they’ve been asking for.

BroadSoft’s solution is fast, too, he said. With just a username and password, apps downloaded via the marketplace website can be up and running in a matter of minutes.

“It’s a very easy transaction on the end user’s behalf,” said Tribbe.

BroadSoft has around ten apps currently available, with another eight to ten expected to become available by the year’s end. The company took a horizontal approach to the apps it brought to market first, Ferry said, and focused on appealing to the broadest swath of business and enterprise customers with a variety of CRM and mobility tools. BroadSoft expects to come to market with more vertical solutions as the marketplace grows.

Partners can expect both recurring revenue streams and one-time payouts from sales of BroadSoft’s apps. The highest percentage of revenue from applications sales will go to developers and then to service providers, with BroadSoft taking the smallest cut to cover operating costs, according to Ferry.

“We really focused on the developer community, and on enabling them to leverage their expertise, and helping our service providers … to deliver greater value to their customers," Ferry said. “It’s really a win-win ecosystem, with BroadSoft serving as the introductory party between developers and service providers.”