Hello and welcome to today's podcast featuring. IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Business Partner Aria Systems. My

Transcription

1 IBM Podcast [ MUSIC ] Hello and welcome to today's podcast featuring IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Business Partner Aria Systems. My name is Jeff Miller, and I'm responsible for WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud Integration Strategic Partners, and joining me today is Mike Gerardi, Vice President of Channel and Business Development for Aria Systems. In the next few minutes, Mike and I will be discussing an overview of Aria Systems, their application integration needs and the benefits of WebSphere Cast Iron to Aria Systems customers. Mike, thanks for taking this time here to join me today. Great, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Excellent. Let's start with, why don't you tell us a little background about Aria Systems? Sure. So, Aria Systems offers the industry's most advanced software as a service billing and subscription management solution. We built our platform to simplify the billing complexities and enable subscription businesses to easily drive recurring revenue through the rapid -1-

2 monetization of goods and services. We support any size company across multiple industries and company sites. So from innovative cloud startups to massive global Fortune 500, Global 2,000 companies, there's definitely a growing market shift towards subscription commerce business models. If you're a smaller company that's just getting started or are starting to ramp up, obviously valuations are much higher on companies with recurring revenue business models. If you're a large, entrenched global organization, you don't want to get blindsided by a competitor who figures out a way to deliver a service in a more efficient, cost effective manner. So all companies are looking to find out ways to transform their business models from traditional one-time transactions to recurring subscriptions. And this helps build a much more long-term relationship with their customers. So this is obviously great for the consumers who can buy things on demand when they want...what they want when they want it. And it's great for the company, which can generate predictable recurring revenue flows and grow profitable relationships with their customers. So this market shift and the reason behind Aria's value -2-

3 proposition to market requires a new approach to billing since traditional billing systems were not designed to meet the needs of the subscription commerce. So, the Aria platform enables companies to optimize their pricing and packaging mix, capture orders, manage renewals, automate billing and collections and analyze customer data. So we give companies the ability to effectively manage each step of the subscriber lifecycle in order to grow their business. Perfect. And with your offering, what do you see as the application integration challenges for Aria Systems? Well, a subscription billing platform or a billing platform in general always sits in the middle of many other systems within a company. You've got your CRM systems, your back end general ledger and ERP systems, you have BI systems, you have front end e-commerce experience, your service delivery systems -- all of these systems need to efficiently inform or be informed by the billing system in some way, shape or form. So active orchestration of these systems is crucial, and even more so in any company deploying subscription services. So the challenge is that every organization has made -3-

4 different technology decisions around these types of systems. Right? Nobody has like standardized an industry standard on a CRM. Right? Everyone either has...you've got SAP, you've got Salesforce, you've got Oracle. So we always need to ensure key customer touchpoints are optimally managed, regardless of the system. And this is even more important when a company's going to market with both a traditional one-time transactional model along with the recurring business. In this case, ensuring an integration across systems is essential to delivering a top notch customer experience. You don't want to have to buy a physical item that may have a subscription attached to it and have two different systems doing the billing. It needs to all work together. Makes sense. So what do you see as the benefits then of Cast Iron to Aria Systems customers? Well, first the enterprise-grade nature. Aria believes and the market has proven, as far as we're concerned, that our solution is enterprise grade. So while we continue to work with smaller, fast-growth, innovative companies, Aria also has the most Fortune 500, Global 2,000 companies in the cloud-building industry. -4-

5 As such, when we deal with these large global organizations we're often asked to integrate with existing, deeply entrenched, non-cloud, on-premise, ERP, GL, CRM systems like SAP and Oracle. So, Cast Iron's configuration, non-coding approach to those on-premise systems allows us to retain our core value proposition of velocity to market, let's get you to market quickly with your offering -- while at the same time, being able to deliver an integration to those complex, on-premise systems. So that's number one, the enterprise-grade nature. Number two is flexibility. We have learned that change is always constant in subscription commerce -- that the way that you may be pricing your offering today may not be the same the way you price it three months from now. So companies initiate subscription services as they grow and expand their business; their integration needs change as well. So for us. Cast Iron provides rapid, industrial strength integration capabilities across many types of systems, both cloud and on-premise, which help our customers quickly and effectively manage their growth. It's essential for us that we help our customers scale with enterprise-caliber technology so that they don't lose that valuable time to market. -5-

6 So it's easy with Cast Iron to connect to disparate systems and cloud applications without a lot of heavy lifting. The templates provided for systems like SAP, Oracle, et cetera, uniquely position our customers to manage their change effectively and avoid delays in entering new markets or expanding their existing service portfolio. Great, yes. Definitely a good partnership and very exciting offering from Aria Systems. Where can the audience find more information about Aria Systems? They can visit us on the Web. ariasystems.com, which is A-R-I-A systems, dot com. There's a lot of good information out there, a great active blog, as well. And there's both information about the Aria platform as well as about the shift taking place to subscription commerce. We would also invite people who are interested in learning more to reach out to Cast Iron to learn more about our joint proposition and how IBM and Aria Systems can help. Perfect. Well, thanks, Mike. I appreciate you joining us today to tell us about Aria Systems, the application and integration needs and the benefits of WebSphere Cast Iron to Aria Systems customers. -6-

7 For more information about IBM WebSphere Cast Iron cloud Integration for Aria Systems, please visit us on the Web at ibm.com/castiron. Thanks for everyone to join us today. Thanks a lot, Jeff. IBM Podcast [ MUSIC ] [END OF SEGMENT] -7-