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BNS Group Meets Growing Demand for Cloud-Based SMS Solution on AWS

admin — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:57:39 +0000

BNS Group Meets Growing Demand for Cloud-Based SMS Solution on AWS

Original Article published via AWS (Amazon Web Services)

When harnessed strategically, Short Message Service (SMS) can be an extremely effective marketing tool. According to Gartner, SMS open rates are as high as 98 percent compared to email’s 20 percent average. Companies looking to run scalable SMS applications often rely on commercial software from independent software vendors (ISVs) such as BNS Group to reach their target audience.

BNS is an Australian software provider focused on secure enterprise SMS and fax messaging. Its software runs on the Windows platform and is licensed to public sector organizations such as the Australian Taxation Office and to private firms like Suncorp. For Suncorp, BNS software handles between 2 million and 3 million monthly SMS messages.

Pursuing a Cloud-Based Deployment Model

The founders of BNS had been contemplating a migration from the company’s on-premises data center to the public cloud and observed a growing demand for cloud-based operations among current and potential BNS customers.

Laurence Buchanan, CEO at BNS Group, says, “Some of our larger customers have started asking about the cloud as they begin their own modernization journey. As an independent software vendor, we knew we had to be on the cloud too. We had to ensure our products work in our customers’ cloud tenancy and build documentation to support a cloud versus an on-premises deployment of our software.”

The final push for cloud migration came when BNS customer Praisal approached BNS for a cloud-based SMS solution in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) tenancy to connect with its users. BNS then consulted with AWS on how best to build new virtual machines and relicense software development tools securely on the cloud. The business wanted to steer away from the “lift and shift” migration approach to avoid transferring technical debt and “baggage” from the data center into the cloud.

Receiving Strategic, Foundational Support from ISV Specialists

BNS founders gravitated to AWS because of its high availability and the AWS ISV Accelerate Program. “We really liked that AWS has an ISV competency in its partner program,” says Buchanan. “It was important for us to have our enterprise SMS software verified for use on AWS. The value that AWS places on the ISV stream sealed the deal in our choice of cloud provider.”

Over the course of five months, BNS performed an AWS Foundational Technical Review with the support of the AWS ISV team and completed its cloud migration in June 2022. “AWS has been very responsive throughout our migration journey and guided us in setting up the right cloud foundation from day one. The review process really helped us understand the AWS security paradigm,” adds Buchanan.

Reducing Virtual Machines from 40 to 12

By strategically starting with a clean slate on the AWS Cloud, BNS decreased its virtual machines from 40 to 12 and reduced infrastructure costs by 50 percent. The business spins up resizable Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances for Microsoft Windows servers and uses Amazon RDS for SQL Server for database management.

After its migration, BNS began developing a custom SMS solution for Praisal on AWS. Developers decided to use Microsoft SQL as a front-end application programming interface (API). Within two days, BNS developed an SQL API that could send and receive SMS from Praisal’s clients without its team having to learn any REST API calls or other technical complexities.

Clive Pereira, R&D director at BNS Group, explains, “The database that records Praisal’s SMS traffic resides in Praisal’s AWS environment. Praisal can now run complete analytics across its data and gain insights into what’s happening with its SMS traffic, which is a real game-changer for the organization.”

Onboarding Data Scientists to Enhance Analytics Capabilities

The BNS SMS solution includes user-friendly dashboards that clients such as Praisal can use to understand their data and perform predictive analytics. The business plans to further enhance its analytics capabilities as part of its product development strategy, and recently hired two data scientists. According to Buchanan, onboarding new hires on AWS is much faster and easier compared to the BNS data center environment.

One of the areas BNS Group is focusing on with clients is to track the journey of each SMS—those received and not received by target customers—via out-of-the-box analytics models. With enhanced analytics, BNS Group’s clients can drive customer engagement, increase retention, and reduce churn.

Accelerating Transaction Rates While Increasing Productivity

The company has also experienced faster transaction rates on its SMS platform since the migration to AWS. “I’ve seen big improvements in throughput. We’re able to process and transmit data faster on AWS,” Buchanan says.

BNS has also reduced time spent on backend operations, because it no longer carries out server maintenance, firewall updates, and disaster recovery planning and testing—elements that are now automated on AWS. Productivity has risen, and Buchanan can now allocate his time to R&D, quality assurance, creating documentation, and customer engagement.

To further enhance its analytics ambitions, BNS is now exploring how artificial intelligence and machine learning can benefit its clients. The company is also looking to list its enterprise solutions on AWS Marketplace to increase its customer reach. “If we didn’t migrate to AWS, we wouldn’t be able to engage the wide AWS customer base,” Buchanan says. “It’s been a win-win for BNS and AWS, and we look forward to what the future brings.”

Learn More

To learn more, visit aws.amazon.com/solutions/migration.

BNS Group Joins AWS Partner Network (APN)

Drew — Thu, 26 May 2022 00:23:32 +0000

BNS Group Joins AWS Partner Network (APN)

24 May 2022 BNS Group Leaves Physical Data Centre Behind To Join Global Community Of Amazon Web Services Partners

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory – BNS Group, Australia’s leading SMS and Fax software developer for government and private firms, has left the world of physical data centres saving its clients time, money, and providing them SMS service provider flexibility. Upon partnering with Amazon Web Services, BNS has fully migrated its entire technology suite to the cloud in under two months.

Co-founders Laurence Buchanan and Clive Pereira had been discussing the importance of offering their clients a solution based in the cloud for years, utilising either AWS or Microsoft Azure, however it was a new client, technology start-up Praisal, that eventually forced the duo into action.

An off-market residential listing marketplace, Praisal needed a way to connect with its users, monthly, to update them on the total number of digital rings, the views their property accumulated, and distribute leads to property professionals.

“Ultimately, the decision was made for us when we were approached by Praisal,” said Clive Pereira, also Technical Director at BNS Group. “Praisal wanted to launch a progressive web app that runs on phones and runs on desktops and they wanted to deploy out of AWS. They asked the question of BNS… ‘What can you do? What can you do with SMS that can run in our tenancy?’” said Pereira.

Pereira continued, “We had a solution that was running on premise, but they wanted us to provide something that we didn’t have and that was to be able to take requests from SQL. That got us thinking, ‘Hey, why can’t we drop our traditional mechanism, which was an email type feed mechanism and go to SQL?’ That’s what got us thinking about not only SQL, but also about running in AWS.”

Following months of beta testing and collaboration with Praisal, BNS Group were able to successfully deploy their SMS technology via AWS and have it verified with AWS’s ISV Accelerate Program, making the solution even more attractive to enterprise organisations who utilise SMS as a means of communication.

Laurence Buchanan, also Chief Executive Officer, quotes the open standards approach as a key benefit of their solution. “In taking an open standards approach, the customer can now negotiate the cost of their SMSs because they can move from one service provider to another without having to re-engineer.” he said.

“Their software developers do it once and once only.” Buchanan continued. “They don’t have to go and change, and they’re not using proprietary APIs. For example, if they’re locked into Telstra and they use the Telstra rest API just to send and receive SMSs, then they’re locked into Telstra. They don’t have that flexibility. With our platform, they do.” he concluded.

For enterprises interested in the SMS solution, the application will shortly be listed within the AWS Marketplace as a part of the Accelerate Program, with BNS Group spent 6 months documenting the architecture, deployment guides and prerequisites for installation. In the interim, BNS Group can provide guidance on system compatibility.

About BNS Group:

BNS Group is a privately owned company based in Sydney and Canberra focused on secure enterprise FAX and SMS messaging. BNS manufactures commercial software products on the Windows platform which are licenced to customers and reseller partners globally.

BNS’s customers include Australian Taxation Office, Defence, Computershare, Panalpina Freight, Suncorp Group: Suncorp Bank and Insurance, AAMI, GIO, and Shannons.

BNS has been a certified Microsoft developer partner since the early 1990’s and are a certified AWS ISV Partner as of 2022.

To learn more about BNS Group, visit

https://www.bnsgroup.com.au/about/

About AWS Partner Network:

The AWS Partner Network (APN) is a global community of partners that leverages programs, expertise, and resources to build, market, and sell customer offerings. This diverse network features 100,000 partners from more than 150 countries.

To learn more about AWS Partner Network, visit

https://aws.amazon.com/partners/

About Praisal:

Praisal is an off-market residential listing marketplace, where owners can create a listing for free and buyers can digitally ring their doorbell to express an interest in the property.

To learn more about Praisal, visit

https://www.praisal.com.au/

About AWS ISV Accelerate Program:

The AWS ISV Accelerate Program is a co-sell program for organisations that provide software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS. The program helps you drive new business and accelerate sales cycles by connecting participating independent software vendors (ISVs) with the AWS Sales organisation.

To learn more about AWS ISV Accelerate Program, visit https://aws.amazon.com/partners/programs/isv-accelerate

Media Contact:

Laurence Buchanan
Tel. +61 412 869 531
Email: ceo@bnsgroup.com.au

Photo Credit: @vibe.imagery

msXsms wins ACT state iAward for communications

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:43:45 +0000

msXsms wins ACT state iAward for communications

2010 natural disasters in Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and Tornado affected regions around Lennox Head in New South Wales have increased the pressure on insurance companies to process claims quickly and effectively. For the biggest general insurer, Suncorp, the increase in claims highlighted the need to keep clients better informed on the progress of their claims.

For many victims of the storms and floods there was no internet connection let alone a computer, paperwork was all too often lost or destroyed and mail had major disruptions in some regions. …

How did customers make claims and get things moving? Well all they needed was access to a mobile phone.

For Suncorp and GIO customers they had a side benefit of receiving an SMS system using a system designed by an Australian company, Better Network Services (BNS), to keep them up to date on the progress of their claims.

BNS’s msXsms Enterprise solution won the 2010 Australian Information Industry Association’s ACT state iAward for the best in Communications category sponsored by ZD Net Australia.

At the height of the storms and floods, Suncorp processed more than 30 000 insurance claims. The newly designed solution known as, msXsms® Enterprise for Microsoft® Exchange, was implemented by Suncorp in January this year and has meant that the 1000 claims made on average every day with Suncorp can now be confirmed with an SMS message.

“As a customer hangs up from making a call they are sent a message on their phone confirming that contact on behalf of their insurance company. It is really a great way for any of the Suncorp businesses to send an acknowledgment for each step along the way. BNS worked with Suncorp’s IT department for two years to deliver the right technology platform to their businesses,” said Laurence Buchanan, Director Sales & Marketing BNS Group.

Buchanan, who lost his family home in the 2003 Canberra fire storm, knew that providing the right technology to BNS’s clients like Suncorp would ultimately benefit people in need.

“Our SMS technology can be used for any corporate or Government business systems not just insurance companies, our next release provides protective marking compliance for Australian Government, the applications for SMS in government are huge” said Buchanan.

In the designing of msXsms, BNS have implemented specific security features which meet the standards of Australian Government departments and the security standards for corporate companies. It has the vital security features required under Australian Government Security Manual also known as ACSI33.

According to Buchanan the base work is done and the unique design of the software allows it to integrate seamlessly into any existing email system. msXsms can be used for 2 way SMS communications from any business application with significant data and audit controls provided by the solution.

The next step for msXsms Enterprise is the August 2010 release of a version which implements the security requirements for Government departments and agencies allowing controlled classification of SMS messaging to public SMS networks.

Better Network Services (BNS) Group is a privately owned Australian company based in Sydney and Canberra. Microsoft Certified Partners for over 15 years, BNS has focused on the design and manufacture of commercial software products for secure Fax and secure SMS messaging. BNS’s niche is adherence to security standards and controls required by Australian Government Information Security guidelines also known as ACSI33.