In response to customer demand, CAPS Solutions has entered into a contract with Attenda to launch Unity, an on-demand service management portfolio offering a new model for the provision of its existing and successful UNI-form software and associated support services.

CAPS Solutions' market-leading UNI-form software suite records and integrates information about land, people and property, enabling local government departments to share information using one central repository. Over 260 local government customers, more than 12,000 users and 60% of local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales use UNI-form software solutions.

CAPS Solutions' Unity portfolio has been developed to offer a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model for the delivery of its UNI-form land, people and property software suite.

Gartner predicts that SaaS market will grow seven times faster than on premise software during the next three years and that by 2011 25% of new business software will be delivered as software as a service*.

As a provider of software solutions and services for local government's core functions relating to land, people and property, CAPS Solutions recognised that the changing government landscape demanded a new type of service. Local authorities were being set demanding efficiency targets and were facing tight budgets. At the same time, however, a 'transformational government' strategy had been launched that required authorities to deliver better service to citizens by using the latest technology advances.

As Mark Kennion, Strategic Initiatives Manager, CAPS Solutions, explains, "Authorities really need to do more with less resource. Our UNI-form solutions are ideal for that because they're all about creating efficiencies — through effective information-sharing, by integrating the back office with the front office and with new online service delivery channels. But we wanted to offer our customers a way to use our solutions even more efficiently, to get an even more reliable service, and to be able to keep pace with technological change more cost-effectively and with less risk."

Kennion continues, ""That's why we got together with Attenda to launch our new Unity SaaS proposition. Unity will allow local authorities to do more with less, to improve service delivery and enhance citizen experience."

With Unity SaaS, CAPS Solutions manages the delivery of authorities' UNI-form solutions as an end-to-end service, rather than selling them software that they then have to install, manage and maintain themselves. The service aims to free authorities to focus on their core competencies by unburdening them from non-strategic functions like IT implementation and management. As such, it combines CAPS Solutions' expertise in its own applications, and Attenda's application management and hosting expertise.

"For a regular, predictable fee, authorities get an ultra-reliable, high-performance service that keeps pace with changing technology and is ideal for providing back-office and online services to staff and citizens in an increasingly 24-hour world," says Kennion.

Attenda's role is the delivery of a fully resilient hosted service for the technical infrastructure underpinning the Unity SaaS service, together with application delivery via a Citrix presentation server farm. This means that local authorities who are CAPS Solutions Unity customers can provide their staff and the public with always-on access to their UNI-form applications, while Attenda takes on responsibility for the operational certainty and IT risk of this business-critical environment.

Designed to be highly scalable and delivered in aggressive timescales in order to meet the needs of CAPS Solutions' growing SaaS business, the Windows and Oracle environment also has disaster recovery options for those customers who demand the very highest levels of availability.

Attenda provides monitoring and management of the application and infrastructure operations on a 24x365 basis, with reporting on the capacity and performance of the hosted application.

CAPS Solutions was looking for a proven service provider within the ISV space, with experience in designing secure and scalable solutions. It was also important that this partner be able not only to support the technology and service requirements for the SaaS service, but also add value to the model, including through sales and marketing input. Additionally, it was important to work with a service provider who shared the belief that the availability of the application was of paramount importance, rather than being measured on hardware or physical infrastructure availability.

Kennion continues, "We chose to partner with Attenda because they demonstrated the proven capability to deliver on-demand SaaS solutions in a consistent manner, with the high availability and reliability that our applications demand, together with a built-in disaster recovery solution.

"The CAPS Solutions brand stands for dedication and commitment to technical excellence, customer support and continual innovation, and we've found that Attenda shares this ethos. We look forward to building a long-term partnership with Attenda."

Attenda has played a proactive role in assisting CAPS Solutions with the planning and deployment of Unity SaaS and with the sales and marketing strategy for a hosted solution. Working in partnership with Attenda has also enabled CAPS Solutions to benefit from Attenda's accreditations and reputation in the market.

As a software and services provider, CAPS Solutions has recognised many benefits in being able to deliver its UNI-form software as a service. Many organisations, private and public-sector alike, are investing in this type of on-demand software delivery to avoid capital investment and benefit from easier scalability, technology refresh and more predictable costs.

Unity SaaS completely removes the need for any upfront investment in software licences and implementation services, effectively providing UNI-form on a rental basis. The proposition is therefore a compelling one for the local government market, offering local authorities the opportunity to predict and control their budgets, dramatically cut the total cost of ownership of their core applications, improve service delivery and manage risk effectively.

As such, the SaaS service is a competitive differentiator for CAPS Solutions, and one that offers the benefits of faster sales cycles and user adoption, as well as the reassurance of a recurring revenue stream.

The partnership with Attenda means that CAPS Solutions can focus on its core business of application software development, safe in the knowledge that the supporting infrastructure will be 'always on', responding to customers on demand. The company is able to focus its IT resource on software development and application support, expanding the functionality of its core applications to help differentiate the company from the competition.

"By partnering with Attenda to develop Unity SaaS, we believe we've developed a best-of-breed service that sets us apart and positions us well to meet the needs of the UK's local authorities going forward." concludes Kennion.

*(Gartner research: "Predicts 2007: Software as a Service Provides a Viable Delivery Model" dated: 13 November 2006, Author: Robert P. Desisto, James Holincheck, Gene Alvarez, Benoit J. Lheureux)