In a recent article by Telephony Online, entitled ASP to SAAS to Clouds — Oh my!, Rich Karpinski looked at how service providers are attempting to offer cloud-based solutions as part of their menu of services to their endpoint clients.  So how hard could it be for those same service providers to deliver network-based apps, be they simple things such as e-mail and hosting or complex applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management? The answer is, it turns out, pretty hard. But that doesn’t mean that carriers have — or should — give up on delivering software applications via their networks. It just means they have to be smarter and savvier, even as the types of services and apps that can be delivered via the network cloud are rapidly proliferating — from relatively simple messaging and security services to full-blown virtualized computing environments that can be “rented” by the month or hour.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Service providers have a maturation process they will need to go through to become software distribution channels. Since they are primarily geared towards an SMB market, they will require ready-to-go solutions that have immediate, meaningful impact, yet be able to take the shape of the businesses they are trying to serve.

For LongJump, we’re certainly trying to lay some groundwork in this area. LongJump, has partnered with service providers in some instances, including Singapore Telecom and Jamcracker, to deliver a broad range of platform-based application services to businesses.

“Every ASP application needs to have the ability to be customized; there isn’t a single customer willing to take a completely canned product,” said Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump, of his company’s platform play. “If a service provider were to try to build what we can provide for them, it would take years. That’s our story: They can operate a single platform and build very powerful apps that they can offer individually but also are designed to talk with one another.”

In the end, it makes perfect sense. Service providers are the keepers of the pipes. As their business becomes more commoditized, they need to differentiate their services and take on a more value-added reseller role.