UPDATED 23:27 EDT / SEPTEMBER 04 2017

CLOUD

BT launches cloud-based platform for digital service delivery

U.K.-based telecommunications firm BT Group Plc is touting a new cloud-based “business platform as a service” offering that aims to help businesses speed up the delivery of digitized services.

BT’s new Personalized Compute Management System enables customers to buy, access and bring digital services to market within just 12 weeks, the company said.

It added that PCMS is built atop of its Cloud of Clouds platform, which enables customers to connect to cloud collaboration applications, customer and third-party data centers, and public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer and others. With the new platform, customers can consume digital services or bring them to market for their own customers, thereby accelerating their digital transformation.

“PCMS brings to life a vision of how businesses can innovate in the digital economy,” said Neil Lock, vice president of compute for global services at BT. “It is a ready-made platform that allows new ways for companies to digitalize, manage and build profitable business models from their own vibrant ecosystem of consumers, producers and innovators.”

The concept of business-platform-as-a-service is a “key innovation,” as it allows enterprises to consume technology services and control the entire setup, configuration, maintenance and payments across various use cases, said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc.

Mueller said it was a good move for BT to enable companies to consume services in this self-service fashion, as enterprises are looking to grab any opportunity they see to accelerate their business processes. “It’s also interesting that enterprises can also become resellers for BT services, not just consumers, so to a certain point its not just a BPaaS offering, but a marketplace to procure compute services for resale,” Mueller added. “It’ll be interesting to watch uptake and progress.”

The platform delivers “ready-made business support processes and functions” for customers to sell, fulfill and monetize, BT said. For example, companies that want a rapid entry into the cloud market can use the platform to resell BT’s existing services, such as Cloud Compute, Cloud Storage and Apps. In total, PCMS supports 45 digital business support processes around product management, customer management, user authentication, order management, service management and billing and collections.

BT said that by putting all of their business support processes under one roof, so to speak, it helps simplify how digital services are managed globally. The platform provides support for multiple sales and execution channels with appropriate language, contract terms, currencies and pricing.

BT said it developed PCMS in partnership with the Netherlands-based technology consultancy firm BearingPoint Holding BV, which will help the telecoms giant to pitch the platform to customers. The PCMS platform will be available starting in the fourth quarter.

BT’s latest offering follows the May launch of its Dynamic Network Services portfolio, which comprises bandwidth on demand, on-demand virtual services such as routers, WAN optimizers, firewalls, Wi-Fi controllers, and on-demand software-defined wide-area networks.

With bandwidth on demand, customers can leverage consumption-based pricing to speed up or slow down their connection speeds as required. The on-demand virtual services will be launched next year, extending that capability to BT’s Cloud of Clouds services. Meanwhile, the SD-WAN suite is designed to help customers provision on-demand virtual networks.

Image: Bruce Clay, Inc./Flickr

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