HCL Technologies announced the launch of its new SaaS Service Delivery Platform (SDP) AGORA.

Service disruption and Web 2.0 have resulted in a sudden outburst of participation by the user and developer communities. This, along with increasing collaboration between independent service providers, communications service providers, application service providers and content service providers have resulted in the service value chain becoming larger.

Using the AGORA platform, ISVs and service providers in any geographic location can deliver high quality, efficient and cost-effective software services to customers. AGORA is a collaborative platform that provides single sign-on, unified and secure access to the services that are delivered through the platform, and integration with back-office applications like CRM and ERP. The platform is an efficient automated infrastructure that provides functions such as customer lifecycle management, service management, metering of service usage, billing based on usage, and customer support.

"Beyond executing on-demand secure services, the SaaS delivery platform is evolving to become an ecosystem to empower the end-users, tap the endless, dynamic needs of the user community and strap them to drive service innovation," said Sandeep Kishore, SVP and head Hi-tech and Manufacturing, HCL. "It is an ever growing circle and AGORA lays the foundation to drive and enhance the service value chain."

AGORA uses Web 2.0 principles for providing a rich experience to end customers. The social collaboration features of the platform harness the collective intelligence of the provider, reseller and customers. The platform has accelerators for several verticals and pre-built integrations with standard back-office systems enabling reduction of the overall time required to deliver services through AGORA to as short as six weeks.

Service Delivery Platform for ISV and Service Providers
AGORA's Service Delivery framework is a multi-service provider SOA-based platform that supports multiple channels like direct sales, reseller channel and online market places. Through a Meta Data overlay, AGORA provides multi-tenancy emulation, using which ISVs could deliver their existing products through SaaS without having to invest heavily on migrating to a multi-tenant architecture. The platform has additional benefits such as the ability to re-brand the interface for ISVs, their end customers and their resellers, and allows the reseller of an ISV to share the same infrastructure as the provider to resell services along with the ability for the reseller to aggregate services from other providers and sell using the same platform.

AGORA was designed to enable ISVs, service providers like telcos, financial institutions, media and content providers and IT service providers to expand their business into the long-tail through a SaaS based delivery model. AGORA augments HCL's SaaS enablement program to provide the right platform for customers to launch their services, and complements HCL's other offerings such as Tools as a Service, which is HCL's hosted IT Service Management tools offering.