NEC has launched Australia’s first SaaS application store via a single online portal for SMBs.

Applications Net is available to any business in Australia via an ISP and will be delivered through NECs 250 strong channel community and its Nextep broadband service which reaches 14,000 businesses.

According to Davide Lacovitti, product manager applications and content NEC, when businesses have so many SaaS offerings available it is difficult for them to share information and makes them complicated to set up and manage.

“It’s like a library of applications. We’re providing all the flexibility and cost effectiveness of the SaaS model, with telephony, collaboration and integration that hasn’t been available before,” he said.

The software has a monthly subscription fee between $5-$80 depending on which application the user takes and what features they use.

Vincent Kennedy, chief engineer network applications NEC, claims the market is ready for this network type of solution because the SaaS business is set to grow by a third by 2012 and will account for 25 percent of IT spend per year.

“This is an opportunity for new businesses that want to expand to the SaaS business,” said Kennedy.

“It’s a place where the reseller wants to be and we see a lot of interest in it. It’s an area where the competition isn’t and the system is designed for the channel.

“NEC has 250 resellers and we have trialled the system with three channel partners. We are going to release it to all of our channel partners and see which ones are interested in it.

“It’s like a supermarket where you can take an application off the shelf to buy and it gives you a lot of flexibility,” he added.

Applications Net has a range of applications including: CRM software from Salesforce.com and Sugar CRM, hosted telephony and PABX solutions, NEC’s hosted call centre solution based on Contactual.

Web, audio and video conferencing, a billing solution, UC, hosted email through Microsoft Exchange, asset management from Smartpath Loc8, car pool and fleet management and e-learning and training.

Independent application vendors and developers can add their software to the service and NEC will increase the number of offerings over time.