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CWH: "What’s in the future for Aplus.Net?"
Aplus.Net: "In Aplus.Net’s immediate and long-term future, you’ll see a growing focus on Saas, or “Software as a Service,” which of course is the practice of giving your customers the ability to consume software applications as services. In addition to being a smart, more consumer-focused way to align your products and services, this is actually what the marketplace is demanding right now.
Consumers are getting more and more frustrated with current software deployment cycles. These lengthy, resource-heavy cycles are really no longer geared to today’s consumer, who has at his or her fingertips literally a world of companies to choose from. That ups the ante for competition, and makes innovating and streamlining a necessity"

CWH: "How will this focus on Saas change Aplus.Net?"
Aplus.Net: "There won’t be changes so much as there will be improvements. Saas is our future. However, hosting is and always will be our base, what we do, and this renewed emphasis on Saas does not endanger or compromise that foundation in any way. In fact, that’s the whole point of Saas—to develop a “long tail” of products and services that flows from our main product."

CWH: "How will you actually integrate this new Saas model into your existing products and services?"
Aplus.Net: "It’s a natural fit, and in many ways, we’re already doing it. For example, the CRM Chat and Push-to-talk functions that we offer to our consumers now are examples of Saas; they’re add-on services that we offer as complements to our basic hosting and ecommerce services.
The same goes for any of the control panels that we offer. We developed that software ourselves. Web design is another example. The fact that we can host a site and also provide professional-quality design fits nicely into the Saas model. We knew that back when we decided to invest in high-quality web design; we knew it was important to give our web hosting consumer base an incentive to do additional business with us."

CWH: "Who is the Aplus.Net customer?"
Aplus.Net: "Our customer base is overwhelmingly small- and medium-sized business owners. They may have ambitions to create a fully integrated, shopping cart-enabled ecommerce website. Or they may just need a simple web page to keep up with the times. In any case, Aplus.Net’s focus is meeting whatever specific needs that may arise for them. Our motto is “Everything for your business online,” and that phrase is still probably the best way to sum up who we are and what we do.
So, what does a growing company need? Customer Relationship management applications, billing systems, Human resource systems, sales force automation, phone tracking systems … all of these can be offered as Saas; they’re all things Aplus.Net is looking at developing as we seek to dramatically expand our product offerings in order to better meet the needs of what has become a very dynamic marketplace."

CWH: "What kind of new benefits will your customers get as a result of these new initiatives?"
Aplus.Net: "It’s all about enabling the consumer. We want to give our consumers the ability of utilizing the Internet for instant access to services and applications that they previously had to install themselves. It’s incredibly convenient to them, and very advantageous to us in the sense that we get to build on our existing customer relationships and become more of a full partner to them. That’s exactly the direction we want to be going, from a consumer-relationship perspective. So in a very real sense, we’re practicing what we preach, we’re walking the talk. This isn’t just the latest business fad but a very viable, workable, and lucrative model we’re engaging in. It’s good for us, good for the marketplace, and, most importantly, it’s great for our customers."


About Aplus.Net
A recognized industry leader since the Internet's commercial start in 1995, Aplus.Net specializes in helping small businesses build an online customer base with a comprehensive range of services that includes web hosting and design, dedicated servers, online marketing, e-commerce, domain name registration, and much more. Aplus.Net has been awarded many honors for excellence, including the prestigious CNET Editors' Choice Award, and has been featured in top U.S. business publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Black Enterprise, and PC Magazine. For more information about Aplus.Net, please visit www.aplus.net.

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