WebServius's unique and powerful software is at the core of our data monetization solution. It runs in the cloud, and is offered on a Software-as-a-Service model, although private installations are also available.

1. User management and billing

This part of the WebServius product:

• Handles all aspects of interaction with data buyers (self-service user signup, plan selection, and online payment). All this can be white-labeled to match your branding and integrate into your website.
• Provides an administrative portal where you can set pricing and access policies, examine and control individual user accounts (turn them off, give them special privileges, etc), view reports and analytics on total usage.
• Measures each data buyer's usage in real-time, and applies your pricing schemes according to how much data is accessed and according to pricing plans you define.
• Performs all API management tasks (issues API keys to users, enforces API key validation, enforces API throttling / call rate limiting, etc).

If you're technically savvy: It is important to note that the WebServius user management and billing product can be used to manage any REST API — not just APIs for selling data. Simply create any REST API and plug it into WebServius (and the API calls don't even have to go through our servers). For more information, see our API management overview.

2. Data delivery: APIs

This part of the WebServius product automatically creates a best-practices REST API from a table of data. The API supports everything that a developer would need: both XML and JSON data output, and intuitive support for filtering, sorting and pagination. You even get a test console where the API may be invoked from a web-based interface. (Coming soon: Automatic generation of easy-to-understand API documentation and code samples for the most popular developer platforms. In the meantime, we would be happy to manually help you with these tasks.)

If you are technically-savvy: You may use this part of the system yourself - just load data into Amazon SimpleDB, create a WebServius provider account, and follow the simple instructions (click here for a simple integration demo video).WebServius can provide you with tools to make loading the data easier. Support for other cloud data storage platforms will be added in the future.

3. Data delivery: Direct download

This part of the WebServius product automatically creates a web-based system for downloading data (known as a "count tool" in the direct marketing industry). Your data buyers will be able to come to this page, select which columns they want to purchase (for example, "Business Name, Address and Phone Number"), select any filters they'd like to apply (e.g. "State: Illinois, Business type: Dental office"), see how many records match the filters and how much they would cost, pay for the data, and download it right away as an Excel-compatible file (CSV). Of course, this experience can also be white-labeled to match the look-and-feel of your website.

If you are technically-savvy: This product also uses the Amazon SimpleDB integration feature, as described in the previous section.

4. Interfaces to data

WebServius has technology allowing it to interface to most existing data feed formats. For example, if you currently deliver data as CSV, plaintext or XML files over FTP or on password-protected HTTP sites, integrating your data into WebServius should be quick and easy. If your data is in a unique and proprietary format, we can do custom development work to integrate with practically any data delivery mechanism.

If you are technically-savvy: Although this part of WebServius is not normally exposed, we can make some of it available for your direct use, if you intend to use them as part of a WebServius-powered data delivery and monetization system. Please contact us for more details.

Confused?

If you're confused by the tech talk on this page, do not be alarmed — WebServius offers a full-service solution where we do all the work to create and configure the perfect system to sell data for your business. We will be more than happy to patiently explain and demonstrate anything that is not clear to you. Please contact us to get started.