Backplane Launches the First Hosted, Enterprise-class Billing and Customer Care Solution for Recurring Service Providers.Business Editors, High-Tech Writers EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2001 Company Secures Customers, Announces Partners and Financing Backplane An interconnecting device that has sockets for printed circuit boards to plug into. Passive and Active Although resistors may be used, a "passive" backplane adds no processing in the circuit. Inc. (http://www.backplane.com), today announced the immediate availability of Backplane Billing, the first hosted billing and customer care system to offer recurring service providers a comprehensive, enterprise-class solution -- from order management and service activation to bill presentment and payment See EBPP. processing. Backplane Billing gives recurring service providers the power of an enterprise-class system without the pain of implementing or managing a solution in-house. Backplane is also announcing customer acceptance and licensing agreements with Atomz -- a leading provider of hosted Web site applications, Imperito -- a provider of managed VPN (Virtual Private Network) A private network that is configured within a public network (a carrier's network or the Internet) in order to take advantage of the economies of scale and management facilities of large networks. services for corporations, and inServ -- a Customer Relationship Management (CRM (Customer Relationship Management) An integrated information system that is used to plan, schedule and control the presales and postsales activities in an organization. ) company that offers web-based solutions to telecommunications and high-tech companies. Additionally, Backplane is announcing key industry partnerships with Standard Register, CyberSource, Derivion, and Artizen. "Recurring service providers are feeling a lot of billing-related pain as they grow their customer base and attempt to quickly introduce new services," said Ben Dillon, Backplane CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. . "With Backplane Billing we provide a reliable and scalable solution that allows customers to rapidly build profitable businesses while still maintaining excellent customer service." "We're focused on delivering on our customers' product needs, not developing and maintaining a billing infrastructure," said Steve Kusmer, CEO of Atomz. "Backplane provides everything we need in an end-to-end billing solution backed by a 100% service level agreement guarantee, without the headache of installing and managing the software ourselves." The Backplane Billing Solution Backplane Billing is the first hosted billing and customer care solution developed from the ground up for providers of recurring services, such as logistics services (teleservices, transportation, data and information services See Information Systems. ), Internet-based services (ASPs, ISPs), and infrastructure services (MSPs, security companies, storage providers). Backplane Billing allows service providers to focus their valuable IT resources on core competencies A core competency is something that a firm can do well and that meets the following three conditions specified by Hamel and Prahalad (1990):
Backplane Billing is pre-integrated with a suite of value-added services including private-label paper bill presentment See EBPP. , online bill presentment, electronic payment processing, tax calculation, and online customer self care. As such, it delivers an end-to-end solution (jargon) end-to-end solution - (E2ES) A term that suggests that the supplier of an application program or system will provide all the hardware and/or software components and resouces to meet the customer's requirement and no other supplier need be involved. Compare: turn-key solution. that neither homegrown home·grown adj. 1. Raised or grown at home. 2. Originating in or characteristic of a locality: "Rock is homegrown music in the United States, evolved from blues and country and Tin Pan Alley" nor enterprise billing installations can match. Backplane Billing is a hosted service that runs over the Internet and is accessible by any Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. . Backplane Billing enables service providers to: -- Automate Billing Processes -- Manual billing processes are costly, time consuming, and generally inaccurate. Backplane Billing streamlines internal billing processes to ensure timely remittances and improve the bottom line. -- Reliably Scale Operations -- Backplane scales to support millions of customer accounts and transactions. And as a hosted solution, we manage systems administration including connectivity, hardware, software updates and upgrades, backups, and data archiving. -- Rapidly Introduce New Services -- Backplane implementation takes only weeks to complete -- and once implemented, Backplane's flexible, Web-based administrative interfaces enable service providers to quickly introduce new products and services without having to first build or program a billing system. Backplane Team and Investors Backplane was founded and is managed by technologists and executives from Macromedia, Verio (Best Internet), NorthPoint and IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) (Whistle Communications). Ben Dillon, CEO, leads the company. Prior to co-founding Backplane Mr. Dillon spent 5 years at Macromedia where he led the company's business development group for Internet products and services, and the Macromedia Flash and Shockwave product groups. Additionally, Backplane has secured Series A investments from Starter Fluid, L.P., Staenberg Venture Partners, as well as several high profile angel investors An individual who invests his or her own money in a private company, which is typically a startup. An angel investor is not an employee or member of a bank, venture capital firm or other financial institution that normally makes such investments. . "Backplane has done an excellent job of listening to customers and delivering on their needs," said Robert von Goeben, Starter Fluid's Managing Director. "Backplane meets all of our criteria for a winning early stage company: a solid management team, a mission critical application, and a huge potential market." About Backplane Inc. Backplane, Inc. is dedicated to making companies of all sizes more successful by providing mission critical business solutions that enable growth, increase profitability, and reduce expenses. Backplane Billing is the first hosted billing and customer care system to offer recurring service providers a comprehensive, enterprise-class solution. For more information about Backplane, Inc. visit www.backplane.com. For sales inquiries call toll-free 866/596-0600, or email sales@backplane.com. Backplane is a registered trademark of Backplane, Inc. Atomz is a registered trademark of Atomz, Inc. Imperto is a registered trademark of Imperito, Inc. inServ is a registered trademark of inServ, Inc. Standard Register is a registered trademark of Standard Register, Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :SR) Derivion is a registered trademark of Derivion, Inc. CyberSource is a registered trademark of CyberSource, Inc. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines, Inc. (NYSE:IBM) All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. |
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