Bristol, UK, 17 June 2011 – UNIT4, the world’s leading provider of business software for fast changing organisations, today announced that after a series of pilot deployments in a cloud-based, shared services environment, the company is launching a new solution to public and private sector organisations. Called “Shared Journey,” UNIT4’s new cloud-based offering is available for both its Agresso Business World and Coda Financials enterprise software solutions.
Shared Journey allows groups of companies, public sector bodies or not-for-profit organisations to work together to quickly set up and launch a shared services operation based on either Coda or Agresso. The solution is unlike competitive options in that it allows each organisation/division within the shared service to obtain all the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining the highest level of independence/identity, while delivering group benefits and efficiencies.
“Shared Journey is a solution developed after carefully monitoring the experiences and requirements of more than 6,000 customers,” said Ton Dobbe, V.P. of Product Management, UNIT4. “What we observed and collected was a universal set of requirements for both enterprise resource planning (ERP) and financial software needs, and compared these by industry segments most likely to adopt a shared services approach. What we discovered is that regardless of the similarities of the user organisations, rapid-change companies behave differently. They have to consider interoperability, and the impact of operational and other change dynamics that require them to take an “independence” approach to their buying behaviour, and not get locked into any one deployment model.”
Flexibility and Cost are Fundamental ‘Shared Journey’ Drivers
Over the past decade, UNIT4 has implemented more than 100 shared services solutions, including hundreds of organisations across both central and local government as well as commercial companies, all seeking to gain better control, reduce costs and increase their ability to respond to change. Leveraging the core strengths of the Agresso Vita architecture, which supports unlimited “do-it-yourself” change, and the Coda Link architecture, which allows easy integration to multiple systems, recent trends around deployment meant that UNIT4 saw a unique opportunity. The growing demand for cloud deployment models in shared services delivery can provide significant additional benefits as well as lower infrastructure costs, and this has driven UNIT4 to offer the solution more universally.
Today, Shared Journey is based on three components:
- A virtual machine environment of choice – allowing grouped users to migrate to whatever cloud/hardware environment suits them best – then change if they so desire;
- A private/public cloud environment – again supporting cost/data security requirements as the group prefers;
- A redundant web backbone and data storage hub – providing a fail-safe back-up strategy.
Subscription-Based Pricing, Includes All Components
Key to the UNIT4 Shared Journey is affordable subscription-based pricing that includes the shared license, maintenance, and technical IT and operational support services. A demand-driven pricing model allows the group to scale and grow as it requires. It’s also incentive based which means the more organisations that join Shared Journey, the lower the monthly fee becomes for the other individual members.
Additionally, the cloud deployment is managed by UNIT4 IT Solutions on the UNIT4 Hybrid Computing Platform, which provides the advantages of a single point of contact, one set of terms/conditions, aligned service levels, central provisioning, centralised reporting, end user support and telephone/e-mail and/or self-service portals. The solution is ISO 27001 certified. UNIT4 IT cloud solutions are underpinned by 300 carriers and four of the top five peering points in the world, offering the company’s cloud-based users a full range of flexible, scalable options with superb connectivity and support.
“UK public and private sector organisations are calling for technology that can support business strategy during this time of market volatility,” said Anwen Robinson, Managing Director of UNIT4 Business Software Ltd. “The technology, flexibility, scalability and commercial terms offered as part of Shared Journey delivers to this need at every level.”
Shared Journey is now available on demand to customers worldwide.
About UNIT4
UNIT4 is a global business software and services company aimed at helping dynamic public sector, and commercial services organisations to embrace change simply, quickly and cost effectively in a market sector it calls 'Businesses Living IN Change' (BLINC)™. The Group incorporates a number of the world’s leading change embracing software brands including Agresso Business World, our flagship ERP suite for mid-sized services intensive organisations and Coda, our best-of-class financial management software.
In the UK we focus strongly on the public sector, where we are the leading provider of ERP systems to local government and post 16 education organisations, as well as having a considerable presence in the emergency services and health sectors. We also focus strongly on professional services organisations and a range of commercial sectors including Financial Services, Retail and Media and Publishing. Overall we aim to be the UK’s foremost business software company, providing solutions that transform the delivery of public services and comprehensively support commercial organisations in their ability to adapt and prosper in rapidly changing environments.
With operations in 17 European countries, as well as 7 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Africa and sales activities in several other countries, its revenue was €421.7 million in 2010. UNIT4 is headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands and has over 4,000 employees. It is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and is included in the Amsterdam Midcap Index (AMX). For more information on UNIT4 or any of its operating companies, please visit the website at www.unit4.com, follow us on Twitter @UNIT4_UK
