Applications

The Meta Value-Added Service

A company has developed a service that helps you deliver value-added services.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [February 5, 2007]

When we last spoke to Montreal-based Radialpoint (see Related articles, below), the company was a security provider called Zero Knowledge Systems. That's changed.

Now, the company has a service delivery platform that currently can deliver the following services:

• Local backup and restore (i.e., to an external hard drive)
• Firewall
• Anti-virus
• Anti-phishing
• Anti-spyware
• Parental controls
• PC optimizer

The company expects to add more services regularly, but that's not its selling point. The selling point is solving a key headache for ISPs: the rate at which customers subscribe to new services, known as the uptake rate.

ISPs face real problems when they invest money in delivering a new service only to find that 10 percent or fewer subscribers are actually willing to pay for it.

The folks at Radialpoint say the problem isn't the service itself, but all the headaches involved in signing up for the service, installing it, remembering a password for each service, and remembering to use it. They say they've solved it.

"When we were a security provider called Zero Knowledge Systems," says Martin Demers, president and COO of Radialpoint, "our first few broadband ISP customers (BSPs) taught us that we were at the mercy of the whole process of gaining customer awareness, of signing up subscribers, the billing process, and maintenance and upgrades."

One year ago, Elliot Noss, Tucows president and CEO, complained about this problem (see Tucows Says E-Mail is Critical). Noss told us, "We need to make it easier for people to do business with us, and easier for end users to do business with our customers. .... Adding a new service means adding new user names and passwords. It's overhead that creates friction and reduces the number of transactions."

Radialpoint realized its VAS infrastructure was more valuable than its security software, so the company changed its core competence and its name. "We went from delivering security to delivering an optimized customer experience," says Demers. "In the past, users had to get long keys by e-mail, enter them into a portal, and so on. Our concept is to simplify all of this to the point where users get presented with a service, and simply click 'yes' to accept it."

The company learned from its first customers, Demers says. "We worked on everything: service awareness, subscription, payment and billing, service, and support."

He has a specific example (though he cannot name the ISP). "One Canadian partner had deployed our security product and achieved 35 percent penetration in two years. About six months ago, they launched anti-phishing with our new service, and in six weeks achieved 34 percent penetration."

More VAS
Radialpoint's future strategy involves adding more services to its portfolio. The company is actively looking for partners in the software community. "The next step for us is to . . . be a clearinghouse between the BSP and providers of content and services," says Demers. "We want to be a uniform window for all VAS services from the BSP."

"Our bundle includes only the best of breed technology," says Paige McEachren, Corporate Communications & Media Relations Manager for Radialpoint.

One example is the disk optimizer. This not only speeds up internet access; it also speeds file access. "A Windows XP PC will have many files," says Jean-Francois Gailleur, director of program management for security services for Radialpoint. "As you increase the number of files, you increase the size of the Master File Table (MFT), the file that references all the other files. This file is often fragmented, and that can slow down access a lot. We have boot timedefragmentation, and we can optimize the Master File Table. In addition, with smart file placement, we can speed up access to frequently accessed files."

The service focuses on speeding access to MS Windows and MS Outlook files. If the word processor and e-mail are working well, customers are less likely to complain.

What it is
The solution is a software widget that resides on the customer desktop, sort of like a desktop version of a webhosting control panel. "One of our customers in Europe calls it the Sentinel," says Demers. "The idea is to make sure it is not intrusive. The customer needs to ask for it to appear. It won't pop up all the time and annoy you; if you want to use it, you can click it. It opens up, and presents you with a list of services. It can also provide messages to the BSP's customers and deliver advertising."

Demers points out that if you own the portal through which customers order their services, they will stay with you. He says many other VAS solutions allow subscribers to take their services with them if they leave.

The future is intelligence
Now that the engine is up and running, Radialpoint is tracking its effectiveness with a new Business Intelligence (BI) engine. "For example, if the BSP wants a red button and we say that this is not a good idea because it looks like a warning, we can use the BI to show that 50 percent are not converting to the service," Demers says. "Then, when we change the color of the button to green, we can find out that 80 percent are now converting."

The BI engine is currently in beta and will be available in March or April. Demers points out that it will also be valuable to companies providing value-added services through Radialpoint. "If you're providing a service, you could track any problems you're having reaching subscribers," he says.

It is the opinion of ISP-Planet that ISPs need something like Radialpoint. However, since it's such a good idea, we expect to see more systems like it. Phil Wainewright, SaaS expert and founder of ASPNews, writes on his blog that anyone developing a SaaS ecosystem needs to leave it open. He says that although SaaS vendors such as Salesforce.com may want to be the Windows of services, competition and internet itself will prevent that.

Instead, we at ISP-Planet expect to see standards developed that would allow services to interact with any platform. As long as a system like Radialpoint remains open, ISPs and vendors will embrace it. If the company tries to become the next Microsoft, its ecosystem will die as fast as Gopher.

— End