KANA Software has just released the fully-integrated OnDemand version of its premises-based call center software suite. The company initially released hosted versions of KANA Response and KANA Response Live in 2005. The response from customer was positive enough for KANA to offer the full suite of software on a hosted model.
KANA Response and its OnDemand counterpart are high-volume email management tools. KANA Response Live and its OnDemand sister enable live chat and co-browsing. Also included in the OnDemand is the KANA IQ knowledgebase.
The biggest advantages of hosting are rapid deployment and lower cost. KANA's director of product marketing for OnDemand solutions Scott Sieper told us that the OnDemand applications have been launched as quickly as 5-10 days. A premises-based installation can take between 12 weeks and six months. Sieper said many companies are opting for a hybrid approach.
"For KANA, it's not about going and developing another product for the mid-market, because our products have been multi-tenancy from the beginning," KANA's chief marketing officer Marchai Bruchey told us. "It's really more of being able to get at the usability of the product, to get on what I'd call 'mid-market ready' and launch that as an option. Really what we're announcing with OnDemand and the reason we decided to move into this market was, clearly, to get our customers the flexibility of choice in this dynamic business environment of how they want to deploy our software."
