During 2011, we were gearing up and concluding the final stages of our infrastructure build and the implementation of new technologies. Added to our abilities to join forces with technology and integration power houses to provide a joint solutions in the PaaS and SaaS, we introduced CirriusIMPACT: providing CCaaS (Contact Center apps as a service).

For the past 3 years we have had a business model available, but we really made an official “appearance” during 2011. So far, we are very pleased with the progress of our ventures; our partners and customers alike are using cloud-based applications such as Outbound, IVR, Recording, Work Force Management, Interaction Analytics, with great success.

2012 is shaping to be one of the more interesting years for CGS/CirriusIMPACT. In addition to the Contact Center technologies, we will continue to add new technologies, verticals, and services, as we deploy them from our “development studio” (aka “garage”) to “prime-time”.

So, for now, have a great 2012 and continue to check back with us for upcoming announcements from  CGS/CirriusIMPACT.

Feel free to drop a line.

Best,

Yossi (Joseph) Teichman

CGS had the privilege to share its success story to the assembly, while having a lot of fun with old and new friends.

While meeting with a lot of industry peers and technology vendors we confirmed our strategies:

1. In this day and age, expenses management and professional implementation quality are a must. Enterprises cannot afford a long TTV (Time to Value). They require a short ROI (Return on Investment) cycle and demand a short implementation cycle, which is professional and reasonable.

CGS’s White Glove Services is perfectly suited for these complex challenges. CGS’s deployments reside in fortune 500 companies’ as well as top government sites. End-users are thrilled to have deployed a system in production within days.

2. Lower TCO, Capex, and Opex are some of the main reasons Cloud Computing SaaS is ramping up to be the next big technology wave. Per industry experts from Gartner, Saas Activities will soar between 2012 and 2014.

CGS’s End-to-End technology offering, CirriusImpact, is proving to be a perfect solution for organizations that demand high-end communication application features at a fraction of the price of an on-premise solution.

Best,

Yossi (Joseph) Teichman

Presence is a global software provider that has developed a modular all-in-one contact center solution suite. By combining these products with our own expertise and resources, we can now offer both Hosted and On-Premises “contact center in a box” solutions.

This new technology partnership will help contact center organizations trim waste from their capital expenditures and operating expenses, while ensuring rapid deployments and quick adaptation of their business tools. It will also help increase return on investment by reducing the amount of time that elapses between the placement of a solution order and an agent’s ability to start taking and/or making calls.

In particular, our Hosted solutions will allow contact center organizations to avoid the costly capital expenditures and operating expenses associated with handling equipment. Furthermore, our Hosted solutions will let contact center organizations enjoy a “virtual contact center” topology (e.g., agents working from home), the rapid deployment of any campaign, the advantage of always utilizing the latest and greatest solution version and features, and the ability to increase and decrease their usage as needed.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about these exciting new offerings.

Always at your service,

Joseph Teichman

Hosting
CGS is well suited for the IT and SaaS (software-as-a-service) outsourcing world. Our hosting business approach is not designed for the one-server / website hosting or collocation world. We tailor our technology know-how to organizations that have a multi-computer environment.

If you are about to host your solution, ask yourself the following questions:

Can you build the hosting facility by yourself?

Can you really put your hosting solution in a collocation center and afford all the expense of “remote” management?

Do you know all of your network, database, and bandwidth requirements?

Do you know who will work with you on the hosting facility… and can they provide constant involvement without costing you a ton of money?

Do you really know how much it will cost you to host your solution based on a “starter menu” of seemingly low prices?

If you’re an application house devoted to providing top-notch SaaS technology, or an integrator who’s superb when it comes to selling hosted solutions but who doesn’t want to invest in hosting (or in partnering with a “hosting” facilitator who’s focused on selling space), then CGS offers a complementary suite of services that will allow you to concentrate on your core capabilities.

Here’s what we have discovered:

• If you’re going to host more than one dedicated server, you need help designing your solution.

• You need someone to work with you on the design of your internal network, your database, and “performance”. This is a constant need. It’s not “one time only” and it’s not “per project”.

• You need basic hands-on help; there’s no other way. You need to work closely with your hosting partner and count on experienced service personnel to help you.

• You need the price to still be reasonable.

• By the time your design is complete, the price per feature (a.k.a. ROI) must not be too high, nor should there be a lack of performance.

As you can see, we focus on non-cookie-cutter solutions. Although words like integration, production, engineering, and installation are the same in both cases, CGS does not perform these on a “mass scale”. We do not provide run-of-the-mill services, nor do we seek to compete with the goliaths of the technology world.

CGS really excels when there are “moving parts that need to be stabilized” between an application / integration house and an end user. Our customers observe an appreciable ROI and their end users enjoy unsurpassed quality of delivery.

We are confident that we can help reduce your post-sales cycle, time-to-value, and days-sales-outstanding, as well as your deployment and installation expenses.

Feel free to contact us.

Always at your service,
Joseph Teichman

Even after a fundamental understanding of what we do “synchs” in, there are always a number of lingering questions:

“We do the same thing, so what’s the big deal?”

– from vendors who consider building computers “integration”

“How can you possibly do that? Even we can’t figure it out!”

– from developers with application technologies so innovative that their version control evolves at a rate exceeding 1 version per year

“I can get a dedicated server extremely cheap at any hosting company. Why would I go to you?”

– from mid-tier hosting companies who host their customers’ computers at a collocation center

“How are you going to compete with the tons of hosting companies out there?”

– from our business friends, peers, and industry consultants

Of course, all of these questions are valid. There’s just one problem: they’re not comparing apples to apples. So, let’s try to set some basic parameters for our discussion.
We can all agree that the world of technology comprises:

• Cookie-cutter products vs. complex systems

• Off-the-shelf products vs. system integrations

• Mass production vs. integrated systems

• Automatic testing vs. staging

• Short production cycle vs. long production cycle

• More than a few thousand systems per year vs. less than a thousand per year vs. one integration solution

We can also agree that there are many more technology cookie-cutters than complex systems. Now, let’s divide the conversation into operation and hosting…

Operation
CGS is well suited for the complex, integrated technology world. We blend operation know-how with technology infrastructure know-how to productize integration.

Think of your application. You want your systems to have the same look and feel when they’re sold, not just for the sake of professionalism but to enable smooth installations and provide the same baseline for support.

With this in mind, what’s required before delivery to your customer? Can you (or would you want to) invest in adding the following functionalities to your organization?

• Hardware design (computers, parts, cabinets, routers, hubs, PDUs, power management, cables); there’s no shortcut here; engineers and operations people are necessary to do this the right way

• Third-party software (O/S, virus, communications, database)

• Vendors, suppliers; you’ll need a second source since time is of the essence; do you have agreements with your vendors on delivery times? on price? on EOL plans?; do you know where to get the part if your vendor says they don’t have it?

• Inventory; do you have space for inventory? do you have the cash to manage it? what’s your turnover?

• BOM; do you know how to build and manage BOMs? do you have a plan for EOLs and ECMs?

• Kitting; do you manage kitting processes?

• Integration; do you have the facility and engineers to integrate the system?

• Staging; can you test the whole system?

• Delivery; do you have facilitation for mass delivery?

• Installation; do you have installers?

• Post-install service; do you have the mechanisms for post-install support?

• Back-office automation; do you have management software to conduct all the operation transactions?

If you’re an application house devoted to providing top-notch technology, or an integrator who’s superb when it comes to selling solutions but who doesn’t want to invest in a sales-execution operation, then CGS offers a complementary suite of services that will allow you to concentrate on your core capabilities.
Here’s what we have discovered:

• Customers who have partnered with us have stabilized their delivered solutions to perfection. All systems delivered have the same look and feel. They can be reproduced, redeployed, and serviced with the same effort as the first one.

• “Integrators” that have tried to match our offerings usually have very limited success and incur a mountain of expenses. Their success is typically limited to one-server system capability. Beyond that, the need to have engineering, operation, and post-sales support presents a highly formidable challenge.

In the final part of our discussion, we’ll take a look at hosting issues and considerations. Until then…

Always at your service,
Joseph Teichman

A lot has happened since we launched the previous version of this site in 2009 and established our first online information portal. Since the second half of 2010, we have been preparing CGS for what we feel will be a new era.

The economic climate and the ongoing technological evolution of infrastructures and vertical markets have certainly presented a few challenges — as well as several highly interesting opportunities. In analyzing these recent events and trends, we realized that CGS has great potential to offer technology and application providers a broader range of complementary services than ever before. We believe that these companies will find they have a growing need for a professional services organization with comprehensive capabilities designed to assist them in the portions of their business in which they do not want to invest, such as system productization, sales execution, and post-sales support. Furthermore, we believe that many newly formed small companies (resulting from the devolution of massive companies) will be receptive to a new type of hosting provider.

In short, we are confident that we are poised to be a true market changer.

So, once again, we would like to welcome you to our new website and thank you for your interest. The next few blog entries will explain and elaborate upon our philosophy, our services, and our success stories. As our business development cycle continues to evolve, we will introduce you to new and exciting CGS offerings that we believe will help you deploy your technology to your customers in an increasingly smooth, professional, and cost-effective manner.

And now, we’re going to make a request:

We would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to share any piece of input, big or small, that you think will help make our services better. Please feel free to call or write. We promise to give each and every comment our utmost attention.

Always at your service,
Joseph Teichman