On demand delivery: Compelling value that's defining the future of the enterprise software

For years, the implementation of enterprise software was a slow, costly, hassle-filled and risk-laden proposition. Companies seeking the business benefits offered by these applications had to make huge upfront investments in both software licenses and IT infrastructure. They would then have to go through the laborious process of installation, integration and customization. They would also have to bear the ongoing burdens of technology ownership - including maintenance, installation of patches and upgrades, capacity planning, troubleshooting and the provisioning of disaster recovery capabilities.

Worse yet, these investments and burdens didn't always pay off. Sometimes the software didn't deliver promised benefits. Sometimes implementation cost over-runs ate up ROI. Sometimes the entire project had to be abandoned because of its complexity and snafus.

Today, there is a compelling alternative: the on demand delivery model. Under this model, the software vendor hosts and manages the application for the company. On demand delivery thus offers a wide range of significant advantages when it comes to implementation of enterprise solutions. These advantages include:

Faster time-to-benefit

By eliminating the entire process of infrastructure installation and software integration, the on demand model enables companies to deploy new solutions in weeks - rather than months or years. RightNow solutions are designed for Day1 Advantage™

Greater scalability and reliability

Economies of scale enable on demand vendors to provision levels of redundancy and capacity that would be cost-prohibitive for any individual enterprise. This readily available capacity also enables companies to scale their deployments up and down far more rapidly and flexibly than they would if they ran the software on their own infrastructure.

Lower cost of ownership

Instead of having to purchase, install and manage servers, storage, and other IT infrastructure, companies can now leverage the infrastructure provided by the on demand vendor - whose economies of scale significantly reduce both capital and operating costs.

Effortless global distribution

By using high-performance web-based architecture, on demand vendors make it easy to provide users anywhere in the world - including outsourcers and other third parties - with as-needed access to system functionality. This eliminates the need to design and engineer complex web hosting environments and/or wide area networks.

Reduced project risk

Unlike conventional software implementation, the on demand model doesn't require you to invest millions of dollars in software and infrastructure before you achieve any business benefit whatsoever. It thus protects you from the significant risks historically associated with major enterprise software deployments.