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25 March 2008 – EMS-Cortex, a developer of systems that automate provisioning of hosted applications is fast growing a stable of international clients wanting to streamline the provision of hosted software applications to satisfy the growing worldwide demand for software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Melbourne IT, a leading global internet services company, is the latest to roll out EMS-Cortex’s provisioning platform, called Cortex, using the system in its WebCentral hosting business to spearhead the delivery of a Microsoft-based managed email service, called Corporate Exchange, to large businesses.
EMS-Cortex has notched up a veritable who's who of international customers, mainly large data centre companies and application service providers, who want to automate the setup of hosted services and software applications.
General manager Ivan Wells says the company provisions a large number of Microsoft-centric solutions and is receiving growing customer enquiries as Microsoft releases applications ready for hosting and multi-tenanting – more recently Exchange 2007, Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.
“It makes complete sense for most larger businesses to buy these applications on a software-as-a-service basis, which obviates complex setup and new investment in underlying hardware,” he says.
The Cortex platform allows different customers to share the same application (known as multi-tenanting) both directly and through service providers. Cortex manages the secure provisioning of customers, users, contacts, distribution lists and public folders.
Messaging product manager, Michael West says WebCentral, a key brand within the ASX listed Melbourne IT Group, has for some time provided outsourced messaging services to smaller businesses, but saw the opportunity to provide a managed email service for corporates. “Some larger businesses prefer not to manage their own email infrastructure, but still want control,” he says.
However, the company believed its administration interface used by customers to manage their own Exchange environment lacked the functionality demanded by larger companies, and subsequently implemented Cortex to do the job.
“The most important aspect of the Cortex interface is the level of control it delivers to end users,” West says. “It establishes tiered administration, allowing service providers to manage client environments through the interface, without having to run custom scripts; and clients the ability to retain day-to-day control and administer tasks such as adding and deleting users, managing mailbox limits, and setting up user groups and distribution lists.”
Melbourne IT is promoting Corporate Exchange to businesses with 100 to 2,000 seats, which West says are currently under serviced. “There is a distinct lack of providers in this space.” He says the company will use the Cortex platform to provide adjunct services, such as monitoring email capacity.
Cortex also helps the company to manage resellers – partners who on-sell the company’s software services – by allowing resellers to customise the interface to their own company’s branding standards. “We still retain a top-down view and provide resellers with their own customised interface,” he says.
West says Melbourne IT intends to expand its software services portfolio in the future and extend Cortex to manage underlying applications.
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