“What’s on tap?” It’s the first question I ask a bartender. A beer on tap is fresh, easy to pour and among the best the bar has to offer. It makes my decision easy. If only business decisions were that simple.

Imagine if setting up access to a business communications environment were as straightforward as ordering a beer. Make it simple to verify a SIP trunking service will work across the leading communications platforms. Or optimize an application. Even demonstrate capabilities to enable sales.

What if we made the business communications lab available as a service — on tap, so to speak? We have Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) and our very own Testing-as-a-Service. All made possible through virtualization. So why not a virtualized lab facility, offered as a service?

That’s the funny thing about technology. You test, optimize and demonstrate cloud solutions and it makes you think. It inspires you to apply those same cloud best practices to your own services. That inspired our latest service – onTAP, providing easy access to our virtual business communications facility.

We already had virtualized testing environments in place, so the next step was to create an entirely virtual testing lab. Early indications show that onTAP is exceeding expectations and finding creative new benefits for our customers.

First, as a virtual service, OnTAP enables remote capabilities that allow a team to simply order up time in the lab and test from their own location. This provides great flexibility and can accelerate time to value significantly.

Second, OnTAP provides ‘pay-as-you-go’ cloud pricing that overcomes the typical cost barriers that limit many service providers and vendors. No need to invest in the platforms and build it in house, or even travel to an independent testing facility. With manageable pricing based on use, onTAP is leading to more testing and optimization, particularly for enterprise-class environments.

Perhaps most impressive is how early customers are leveraging onTAP for sales enablement and training. Beyond interop testing and optimization, several forward-thinking clients have employed onTAP as a sales tool to demonstrate capabilities in a live environment.

It’s one thing to cite independent verification that a solution will work. But nothing influences a decision more than a demonstration showing how it works. Prospects can experience the demo from the convenience of their office, a conference room, or even their own living room. Better yet, they can pull in others on who might want to see the demo on the fly. It’s a powerful sales tool that could help close the deal – or at least accelerate the decision.

We launched onTAP this week with several interesting early customers. They’ve gotten tremendous value from the service and we are now making it available to the industry. We encourage you to learn more at  www.tekvizion.com/services/ontap.

In the meantime, all this talk of onTAP is making me thirsty for a beer.