June / July 2015 Volume 17 Issue 3 ISSN 1745-1736

■ ANALYST REPORT Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan says BILL & the siloed billing era is ending ■ TALKING HEADS Joe Hogan warns that CSPs can’t save their way to greatness

■ REAL-TIME CHARGING CHARGE Why the BSS happy hour can Are CSPs ready for an on-demand, real-time world? last a little longer

PLUS: Comverse buys Acision for digital services expertise ■ Ericsson adds CENX service orchestration product to managed services offering ■ European CSPs could realise €39 billion by re-imagining the network, says Arthur D. Little ■ NetCracker 10 launched to help redefine network economics ■ Gabon Telecom modernises wholesale billing with CSG International ■ Redknee wins EcoMobile SaaS converged billing deal ■ Sigma Systems takes new venture capital investor ■ Read the latest news, opinion, blogs and features now at www.vanillaplus.com

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www.asiainfo.com CONTENTS

IN THIS ISSUE 4 EDITOR’S COLUMN George Malim wonders if going large just means CSPs will get bloated with more of the same problems Joe Hogan warns that 5 MARKET NEWS Are CSPs ready for an CSPs can’t save their way Comverse to acquire Acision, Openet and NTT-AT collaborate on on-demand, real-time to greatness production-ready BSS using NFV world? 6 INDUSTRY NEWS Ericsson adds CENX service orchestration to managed services offering, Sigma Systems takes new private equity investment 13 17 7 PRODUCT NEWS Ericsson launches Adaptive Inventory 9.3, NetCracker 10 targets redefinition of network economics 32 9 CONTRACT NEWS REAL-TIME Gabon Telecom modernises wholesale billing with CSG International, LG CHARGING Uplus chooses Syniverse for LTE roaming 10 HOT LIST The latest vendor deals listed 11 PEOPLE NEWS Who’s on the move 13 WHAT’S ON VANILLAPLUS.COM The pick of this month’s online content plus new VanillaPlus Editorial 37 Advisory Board announcements DIGITAL SERVICES 15 VANILLAPLUS BILL & CHARGE INSIGHT Our VanillaPlus Bill & Charge Insight report contains 24 pages exploring how the twin disciplines of billing and charging are breaking out of their traditional siloed approaches to enable greater flexibility. The Insight contains a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firm Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan and includes features and interviews to help you gain a greater understanding of the challenges facing billing and charging as telecoms moves to an on-demand, real-time world

41 THE ROAD TO TELCO CLOUD SUPPLEMENT 39 Ten pages covering the likely journeys CSPs will make as they migrate to EXPERT OPINION telco cloud architectures start here 42 INTERVIEW Charlie Thomas, the chief executive of Razorsight, says CSPs’ opportunity to participate in the cloud era will vanish if they fail to make use of their data 45 TELCO CLOUD Nick Booth sees the cloud as a means to liberate telecoms from long-term planned IT 48 EXPERT OPINION Pablo Martinez goes in search of dynamic value constellations 50 VIRTUALISATION George Malim explores how virtualisation is a step on the road to telco cloud 52 DIARY CLOCKING OFF! Where to go and who to see 53 CLOCKING OFF! 53 Nick Booth reckons the cloud could make us all less pretentious

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 3 COMMENT

Going large for more of the same could lead to a bloated, lethargic telecoms industry Several times in the last month I’ve heard industry insiders emphasise the need for telecoms-related companies to gain scale. The comments come both from the vendor side and from the communications service providers (CSPs) and, while each faces different pressures, there are similarities

n the CSP side it’s clear that scaling make moves to accomplish a complete portfolio – appealing to a smaller CSP up is being seen as the way to as witnessed by cable companies buying mobile as a large one, there’s just generate cost savings through operators and vice-versa and CSPs such as an order of magnitude to increased purchasing power and British Telecom buying sports broadcasting rights consider. developing products and services for as well as a mobile operator. However, the market a larger market. Ultimately, that will consolidation moves seem to make less sense. The vendor sector in the O O/BSS market is also give CSPs even bigger big data that they’re still If you’re AT&T and bemoaning dwindling margins working out how to monetise. However, as – at in your core business, how does investing heavily chasing scale. The last year best – an amateur economist, I struggle with the in the same sort of assets in Mexico represent an has seen smaller BSS companies Volubill and George Malim, concept of how investing in more of the same optimum use of capital? Isn’t that just investing in editor, VanillaPlus results in a better position. more of the same in a margin-constrained Orga Systems acquired business that faces substantial challenges? from distressed positions Admittedly, there is value in becoming a complete by CSG International and Redknee respectively service provider encompassing mobile, fixed and Scale for the sake of scale simply doesn’t work – (the full story of the Orga Systems acquisition by entertainment and we’re seeing a raft of CSPs there needs to be a reason beyond the notion of Redknee is live at www.vanillaplus.com now). potential cost saving That suggests smaller vendors have less of a role synergies. I don’t to play as their customers focus on becoming believe a massive CSP bigger and want to deal with companies that have group will be able to the scale to cope with their large and tangled achieve those across operating units – and can handle their demands 30 different operating for financing, managed services and cost companies and reductions. numerous campaigns, services and My fear is that in this march towards supersized propositions. CSPs and vendors, some things will be lost. Agility, innovation and non-standard approaches Maybe virtualisation to unusual problems seem to be most under and telco cloud threat from investment in more of the same. present opportunities to reset the cost base Enjoy the magazine! of CSPs, but the benefits seem as George Malim

EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Louis Hall, chief executive, David Heaps, senior vice Martin Morgan, vice Simon Muderack, senior vice Justin Paul, head of OSS Chris Yeadon, director of Dr Reinhard Zuba, CMO, Cerillion Technologies president, Strategy, CSG president of Marketing, president for Marketing and Marketing, Amdocs Product Marketing, Ericsson Vipnet (Telekom Austria) International Openet Alliances, Sigma Systems

EDITOR DIGITAL SERVICES DIRECTOR DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC PUBLISHED BY George Malim Nathalie Bisnar PLANNING WeKnow Media Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 1225 319 566 Tel: +44 (0) 1732 808690 Charlie Bisnar Suite 138, 70 Churchill Square, [email protected] Tel: +44 (0) 1732 807411 Kings Hill, West Malling, [email protected] [email protected] Kent ME19 4YU, UK BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Tel: +44 (0) 1732 807411 EDITORIAL DIRECTOR DIRECTOR DESIGN & PUBLISHER Cherisse Jameson Jason Appleby DISTRIBUTION Jeremy Cowan Tel: +44 (0) 1732 807410 Ark Design Consultancy Ltd UK Postings Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1420 588638 [email protected] Tel: +44 (0) 1787 881623 Tel: +44 (0) 8456 444137 [email protected] © Prestige Media Ltd 2015

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4 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 MARKET NEWS

Comverse to acquire Acision to strengthen digital services capability

Comverse has agreed to acquire Acision, a providers (CSPs) transition to digital service quickly building scale and market privately-held provider of secure mobile providers (DSPs) and gain competitive leadership in the fast-growing digital messaging and engagement services, advantage through a portfolio of solutions services sector. This acquisition creates a based in Reading, United Kingdom. The that help them monetise the coming fourth formidable platform for innovation that is move follows the sale of Comverse’s BSS wave of digital services. The combined expected to serve our customers’ current assets to Amdocs earlier this year for company’s expanded portfolio will extend and evolving needs. Acision brings a US$272m. into new digital application areas including diverse portfolio of mobile monetisation data analytics, secure enterprise and rich enterprise messaging solutions Comverse will acquire Acision for a application-to-person (A2P) messaging, complementing Comverse’s digital services purchase price consisting of approximately credit orchestration, two-factor platform. The combined portfolio will allow US$135 million in cash, 3.13 million shares authentication, and machine-to-machine us to enable our service provider and of Comverse’s common stock, and (M2M) communication sas well as Rich enterprise customers to deliver and potential earnout payments of up to US$35 Communication Services (RCS), WebRTC monetise a new array of advanced digital million. In addition, Comverse will seek to and APIs for rapid service creation. services to their customers.” maintain Acision’s existing US$157 million senior credit facility following completion of “Continued consolidation in the CSP space Didier Bench, the executive chairman at the transaction. creates the need for strong suppliers,” said Acision, added: “The acquisition is in line Tartavull. “Our acquisition of Acision with our growth strategy to broaden our The Boards of Directors of Comverse and underscores Comverse’s commitment to reach and capabilities, and brings two Acision have approved the transaction, leading companies together to deliver the which, subject to satisfying closing very latest monetisable, rich conditions, is expected to be complete by communication services for mobile the end of the third quarter of this year. operators and enterprises worldwide. The Following completion of the transaction, the two companies are well aligned in their new company will be led by a team comprised respective visions and strategies, yet were of executives from both organisations under operating in largely complementary the leadership of Comverse president and markets. We believe that joining forces is in chief executive Philippe Tartavull. The the best interests of both our customers company will remain headquartered in and our employees, and our commitment Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA. to them and the products we provide will Comverse says deal will accelerate it’s growth in the remain our highest priority.” Comverse helps communication service digital services sector

Openet and NTT-AT collaborate to deliver production ready BSS using NFV

Japanese systems integrator NTT market, reduced TCO, increased elasticity with a variety of new Advanced Technology (NTT-AT) has been and greater service availability. Following access points into one of announced as Openet’s latest reseller the successful test, NTT-AT will look to roll the world’s most partner. The deal will extend Openet’s Openet’s virtualised BSS technology out innovative operator reach into the NTT group and significantly across the NTT Group. groups. Our virtualised enhance its commercial footprint across BSS technology will Asia. “Having rigorously tested Openet’s deliver a wide variety of virtualised BSS solutions, we are extremely benefits and new revenue NTT-AT, which represents the technological confident of the immediate value it will streams for subsidiaries Cyril Dolan: core of the NTT group, will re-sell Openet deliver to the NTT group as a whole,” said within the NTT group and Partnership products and solutions to all subsidiary Masayoshi Nagao, the sales chief of the clearly demonstrate the provides access operators within the NTT group. NTT-AT Openet team at NTT-AT. “The level of mutual value of our global points into NTT chose to partner with Openet after support offered by Openet will afford us the partner programme. We group operators successfully trialling a series of policy and ability to build increasingly agile systems to actively welcome new control functions across NFV (network provide service diversity and faster time to entrants to this programme and we believe functions virtualisation) environments. market for NTT subsidiary operators.” partnerships between specialist systems Integrating solutions where NFV techniques integrators like NTT-AT and Openet offer are applied to OSS/BSS enables the NTT Cyril Dolan, the global vice president of CSPs the best opportunity to build an agile group to deliver on the promises of NFV, Indirect Channels at Openet, added: BSS environment.” such as system agility, faster time to “Our partnership with NTT-AT provides us

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 5 INDUSTRY NEWS

Ericsson adds CENX service orchestration to managed services offering

CENX, a provider of service orchestration network availability and enhancing customer deployment has proven that solutions for software-defined and virtualised experience. Cortx Service Orchestrator networks, has partnered with Ericsson to is able to meet the usability, integrate CENX’s Cortx Service Orchestrator Ericsson will be able to identify degradation of scalability and performance as a key element of Ericsson’s global ethernet circuits before they begin to requirements of one of the Managed Services Delivery Platform. The significantly impact end users of the network world’s largest network Cortx Service Orchestrator allows Ericsson’s using the CENX system, which also provides operations.” managed service professionals to proactively service delivery teams with the ability to monitor customers’ data connectivity measure Local Exchange Carriers and Jean-Claude Geha, the vice services, providing real-time visibility into end- Alternate Access Vendors’ performance president and global head Ed Ogonek: to-end circuit availability and performance, against key performance indicators and manage of Ericsson’s Managed Global go-to- market strategy spanning multiple technologies. Cortx Service them in line with service level agreements. Services Business Portfolio, with Ericsson Orchestrator delivers a graphical dashboard added: “This successful provides to identify performance degradation – such as “We are pleased to be working with Ericsson partnership is one example integrated offering frame loss, latency and jitter, and simplifies for a global go-to-market strategy with an of how Ericsson Managed the isolation of faults, significantly reducing integrated solution offering,” said Ed Ogonek, Services is continually using innovative tools mean time to repair (MTTR), increasing the president and CEO of CENX. “This to serve its customer base worldwide.” European telecoms could realise €39bn by re-imagining the network

Challenged by anticipated growth in fixed, Network virtualisation technologies are must work even more closely together with mobile and IoT traffic, European opening up the market to new competitors manufacturers, vendors and governments communications service providers (CSPs) that could rapidly erode traditional carriers’ to ensure the new networks allow on- are devising new technology designs and market share. As network ownership is no demand connectivity and are interoperable standards, drawing inspiration from highly longer a prerequisite for service delivery, with new types of computing and multiple optimised technology and the business virtually anyone can become a service operator networks. design of their cloud peers. provider. Enterprise customers like banks, retailers or media companies could The report findings show that the efficiency A new report from management consultancy become powerful alternatives to the impact of onboarding NFV and SDN for Arthur D. Little (ADL) and Bell Labs traditional telecoms network, encroaching these CSPs could be worth €14 billion per Consulting, the industrial research and on the mass telecoms market. Traditional year in the network domain alone, which advisory arm of Alcatel-Lucent, ‘Reshaping providers should both observe and will be augmented by a further €25 billion the future with NFV and SDN’, predicts that capitalise on this new class of mass- per year in non-network operating costs the shift to becoming a cloud carrier has market competitor and develop network through greater automation and the potential to significantly re-define how functionality that enable them to tap into simplification of business processes. the industry competes in the cloud era. higher-value products and services “The time is now for Europe’s telecoms segments such as the fast-growing €18 industry to bring networking into the cloud In the report, ADL and Bell Labs present an billion IT security business and €17 billion era, it will not be trivial to execute analysis of the strategic value and impact cloud services market. programmability and automation at the of bringing network functions virtualisation scale required for success, but the prize is (NFV) and software defined networks (SDN) As the telecoms industry prepares to significant,” said Jesús Portal, a partner at into the carrier network. Key insights from advance its networking functionality to a Arthur D. Little. the study include: whole new level of programmability, CSPs

NEWS IN BRIEF

Mobile devices to generate the Wi-Fi, Small Cell & Network Strategies 2015- and the existing Sigma management team 2019’, estimates that the average monthly will form a new partnership with Birch Hill. equivalent of 10bn Blu-ray data usage by smartphone and tablet users movies by 2019 will double over the next four years. The “This investment by Birch Hill marks a daily media consumption by mobile users significant corporate milestone for Sigma,” New research has forecast that mobile data will continue to rise, bolstered by the rise in said Andy Jasuja, co-founder and chairman traffic, generated by smartphones, 4G adoption and factors such as HD at Sigma Systems. “It is a recognition of the featurephones and tablets, will approach video usage. tremendous success Sigma has enjoyed in almost 197,000 petabytes) by 2019, the industry.” equivalent to over 10 billion Blu-ray movies, according to Juniper Research. Sigma Systems takes new Michael Mazan, a partner at Birch Hill added: “Sigma Systems is one of the leading brands However, the research found that only 41% investment from VC firm of the data generated by these devices will in the communications software market. be carried over cellular networks by 2019, Birch Hill Equity Partners has made a They have a strong management team with the majority of mobile data traffic significant investment in Sigma Systems in coupled with talented and experienced offloaded to Wi-Fi networks. support of the vendor’s continued growth people. We look forward to working with plans. In connection with the transaction, Tim and his team to execute their ambitious The research, ‘Mobile Data Offload & Onload: Sigma president and CEO, Tim Spencer, growth plan in this dynamic industry vertical.”

6 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 PRODUCT NEWS

Ericsson unveils Adaptive Inventory 9.3 for full visibility and control

Ericsson has launched Adaptive Inventory CSPs for better decision-making, including resolution and new 9.3 to bring the full visibility and control that the ability to predict the future-state network efficiencies as communications service providers (CSPs) network from a combination of current and mobile data and IP-centric need. This includes autonomy to build new proposed network plans. The latest tools service delivery becomes technologies, capabilities, web-based GUIs that Ericsson Adaptive Inventory brings to more fluid. It features an and applications. market are easy use, deploy and maintain, enhanced Unified Inventory helping operators thrive in an ever- Engine, intuitive web Elisabetta Romano, vice president and changing environment.” interface, component- head of OSS & Service Enablement at driven design automation, Elisabetta Ericsson, said: “Ericsson Adaptive Ericsson Adaptive Inventory, formerly and system extension kit. Romano: Inventory builds on a powerful software Ericsson Granite Inventory, uses data from Ericsson has created a Accurate network solution that is deployed around the world a broad range of available sources to offer migration path to Ericsson data positions CSPs for better and sees Ericsson continue to redefine the most complete view of a network at Adaptive Inventory for decision making inventory management with capabilities any given moment, including past, present existing Ericsson Granite that our customers need to be successful. and future configurations. The result is Inventory customers. Access to accurate network data positions faster service rollouts, improved trouble

NetCracker 10 launched to redefine network and IT economics

NetCracker Technology experience and service creation and delivery. Using its revolutionary single-platform has launched its latest approach across network, service and product suite, NetCracker “We are thrilled to announce NetCracker customer domains, NetCracker 10 enables 10, which combines 10, the next generation of our highly communications service providers to capabilities in sophisticated end-to-end product suite, migrate seamlessly from existing virtualisation, cloud-based which redefines some of the fundamental environments to the next generation of delivery of applications, economics around network and IT, virtualised networks and IT infrastructure. embedded analytics and operations, deployment, customer Sanjay Mewada: biometrics onto a single, retention and service creation,” said Sanjay The capabilities incorporated in the As CSPs shift from unified platform. With Mewada, the vice president of strategy at NetCracker 10 suite have demonstrated physical to hybrid these capabilities, NetCracker. “As service providers prepare numerous financial and operational to virtualised NetCracker 10 for the inevitable shift from physical to improvements including: up to 40% infrastructure, fundamentally redefines hybrid to virtualised infrastructure and reduction in total cost of ownership; more NetCracker 10 lays the the economics of network offerings, NetCracker 10 lays the than 30% increase in infrastructure foundation for a deployment and foundation for a risk-free and seamless utilisation; up to 30% increase in net risk-free migration management, IT migration, ushering in the next wave of promoter score, according to NetCracker’s operations, customer innovation.” internal benchmarking.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Helix expands TEOCO’s unified “Helix brings together service assurance with allow communications service providers real time analytics and machine learning,” (CSPs) to aggregate data from multiple service assurance suite said Shachar Ebel, the CTO of TEOCO. “The marketing, network and customer care TEOCO, has launched Helix, its platform is a leap forward in the ability of sources and generate business and comprehensive unified service assurance service assurance software to offer cross customer insights with actionable suite. Helix brings together TEOCO’s market domain solutions that can boost network recommendations. performance, fault, service and customer and service performance, as well as experience management capabilities and customer quality of experience, while The new applications build on Amdocs’ big delivers further real-time analytics and prompting the implementation of predictive data analytics launch last year which machine enhancements. automated operations and processes for introduced an end-to-end, communications- traditional and virtualised networks.” specific big data analytics portfolio and that makes data clean, accessible and actionable Helix enables CSPs to accelerate their for service providers or third-parties to evolution to a Service Operations Centre enable open innovation. (SOC) model and focus on delivering end-to- Amdocs introduces actionable end service quality. By using TEOCO’s analytics for CSP marketing, Amdocs’ new big data actionable analytics domain, big data and process integration applications include: high definition expertise, Helix reduces a CSP’s total cost of network and care marketing analytics, deep network analytics ownership (TCO) and enables the delivery of Amdocs has announced new and consumer and business satisfaction better customer experience. communications-specific applications that analytics.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 7

CONTRACT NEWS

Gabon Telecom modernises wholesale billing with CSG

Gabon Telecom is in production with CSG’s correctly capturing data records, accurately clients who recognise the Wholesale Business Management Solution. invoicing our partners, and shortening the value our solutions add to The implementation includes CSG’s time to settlement. Thanks to CSG, we are their operations as well as Interconnect and Intermediate solutions, able to monitor the operations through KPI the domain expertise we George Fraser: and will support the CSP’s wireless and dashboards updated daily and proactively bring to every Increased wireline businesses. CSG now supports the address any anomalies.” engagement,” said George customer base in operations of the top three CSPs in Gabon. Fraser, the vice president Africa demonstrates Gabon Telecom, which operates under the of CSG’s Europe, Middle functional depth of “Revenue and net income growth are Libertis brand, was the first CSP in Central East and Africa regional offerings dependent upon the efficiency of our Africa to launch LTE, and made the operations. “Our increasing operations,” said Bernard Mbangangoye, strategic decision to not just modernise its footprint in dynamic the director for international and network but also the systems responsible markets such as Africa is a testament to interconnection at Gabon Telecom. “With for monetising its network traffic. our knowledge and the functional depth of the CSG solution we are able to control our our offerings.” wholesale process from end-to-end, “CSG builds strong relationships with our

LG Uplus launches VoLTE roaming over Syniverse IPX network

Syniverse has announced that it is enabling connections that enable Syniverse to With the Syniverse IPX, CSPs have the South Korea’s LG Uplus to launch a launch VoLTE trials and deployments flexibility to implement VoLTE through S8 commercial VoLTE (voice over LTE) roaming around the globe. As a result, Syniverse home routing, local breakout or VoLTE service, featuring HD voice. Made possible recently enabled the transoceanic VoLTE interconnect, which are three key emerging by Syniverse’s IPX network, the service roaming call and has direct LTE VoLTE implementation models. LG Uplus is allows LG Uplus subscribers to roam onto connections with 14 of the 16 CSPs that launching VoLTE over IPX through the KDDI network in Japan and will allow have launched VoLTE. Syniverse’s S8 home-routed LTE data LG Uplus to expand coverage and services roaming platform, which allows CSPs to in additional markets. “Because LTE roaming is the prerequisite rapidly deploy VoLTE by using their existing to launch VoLTE, Syniverse’s reach to LTE data roaming connections. In addition, Syniverse’s IPX interconnects the networks nearly every CSP that has launched LTE the Syniverse IPX is prepared to offer other to make LTE roaming possible. With nearly roaming enables us to achieve the critical IP-based multimedia service features such 800 LTE roaming routes, Syniverse’s IPX reach and coverage our subscribers will as video over LTE (ViLTE) and rich reaches more than 200 CSPs in 44 demand,” said Hong Jun Choi, general communication services (RCS). countries. This reach includes 104 direct manager, LG Uplus.

NEWS IN BRIEF StarHub selects Neural The new supply agreement with Neural Comptel wins Telefónica Technologies will provide comprehensive Technologies fraud protection against a broad range of fraud Argentina analytics deal management system types throughout StarHub’s entire business. Finnish vendor Comptel has announced that it has agreed the first deal for its new Neural Technologies has won a contract with Stephen Kai Sui, the group chief executive at integrated analytics solution, called the StarHub, Singapore’s first fully integrated Neural Technologies, said: “It’s a real Operational Intelligence SoftBlade. info-communications company. The deal is privilege to work with StarHub. Singapore is valued at approximately US$1 million and is regarded worldwide as an innovative market, This strategically important deal with the first strategic collaboration between and we think that the installation of our Telefónica Argentina Movistar demonstrates Neural and StarHub. Minotaur Fraud Management system here the value of the Data Fastermind analytics will be a great example to operators in other embedded to the customer’s existing Data StarHub is the second largest telecoms regions facing similar challenges. This new Refinery and EventLink technology platform. company in Singapore. The company deal continues to extend our global network The deal consists of software licenses and provides a full range of information, of customers and, on Neural Technologies related services with a value exceeding communications and entertainment services 25th anniversary year, it reinforces our €890,000. for both consumer and corporate markets position as the risk management software and operates a mobile network that provides provider of choice for global companies.” 4G, 3G and 2G services.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 9 HOT LIST

VanillaPlus Hot List: June / July 2015 The Hot List below shows the companies informing us of recent contract wins or product deployments. If your contract is not listed here email the details to us now marked "Hot List"

Vendor(s) Client Country Product/Service Awarded Alcatel-Lucent Windstream, USA Provision of Alcatel-Lucent Velocix content delivery network (CDN) system as well as professional services to enable IPTV launch 5.15 Allot Communications Vodafone, Germany Allot WebSafe Personal chosen to power new Secure Net security as a service proposition for mobile users 5.15 Amdocs Linkem, Italy Amdocs Virtualised Policy Controller and Home Subscriber Server chosen by Italian wireless broadband provider 5.15 Amdocs Telefónica, Chile Selection of Amdocs data management services for operating data store operations in Chile and Peru and Peru Anite China Telecom, China Anite’s SAS platform selected for LTE throughput testing 5.15 CoralTree UPC, Poland Poland’s largest cable TV provider selects CoralTree Renaissance CRM to increase operational efficiencies across 5.15 customer services and sales functions CSG International Charter Communications, Five-year contract extension to existing residential billing and customer care deal at fourth-largest US cable operator 5.15 USA CSG International Gabon Telecom, Gabon Modernisation of wholesale and billing operations with deployment of CSG’s Wholesale Business Management Solution (WBMS) 5.15 Ericsson Telstra, Australia CSP selects Ericsson Media Delivery Network as a fully managed CDN service to support growth in IP video 5.15 MDS/Tech Mahindra iD, UK Provision of billing, customer management and services infrastructure for retailer Dixons Carphone’s new MVNO, iD 5.15 MycomOSI FarEasTone, Taiwan Selection of MycomOSI NIMS-PrOptima for LTE performance management 6.15 Myriad Group Vivo, Brazil Deployment of Myriad SMS service gateway to support Vivo Twitter SMS service 6.15 NetCracker Technology Consolidated Deployment of catalogue-based OSS offering to enhance service inventory and management at business and broadband CSP 5.15 Communications, USA NetCracker Technology C-Spire, USA NetCracker converged billing and active mediation deployed to support pre and postpaid wireless services on a single 5.15 rating and billing platform NetCracker Technology Andorra Telecom, Deployment of NetCracker end-to-end systems as part of complete BSS and OSS transformation 6.15 Andorra NetCracker Technology Vivacom, Bulgaria Quad-play provider goes live with upgrade to NetCracker revenue management system to enable convergence of rating, 6.15 billing and charging NetCracker Technology Schurz Expansion of relationship by establishing a standardised business process across all CSP’s properties using NetCracker’s 6.15 Communications, USA billing and revenue management system NetCracker Technology Vast Broadband, USA Deployment of NetCracker revenue management system under multi-year hosted managed services agreement 6.15 NetCracker Technology Turkcell, Turkey Turkcell Superonline chooses NetCracker systems to optimise business to business and business to consumer service 6.15 /NEC fulfilment and assurance Neural Technologies Starhub, Singapore Replacement of fraud management system with Neural Technologies’ systems to provide comprehensive protection 6.15 across entire operation OpenCloud Spark, New Zealand OpenCloud Rhino Sentinel VoLTE Application Server chosen by Spark to support virtualised VoLTE proof of concept 6.15 Openmind Life, Ukraine Deployment of Openmind Short Message Service Centre (SMSC) to enable bulk application-to-peer (A2P) messaging to 5.15 13.9 million users Redknee EcoMobile MVNO subscribes to Redknee cloud-based converged billing and customer care fully managed, software-as-a-service 6.15 (SaaS) offering Syniverse Ooredoo, Qatar Syniverse IPX Network Solution deployed to enhance 4G roaming service for Ooredoo customers. Deal builds on 5.15 20-year relationship with Syniverse Syniverse LG UPlus, South Africa Syniverse IPX enables CSP to launch commercial VoLTE (voice over LTE) roaming service, featuring HD voice 6.15

Redknee wins EcoMobile converged billing deal EcoMobile, an MVNO solution we have the flexibility to efficiently and customer care system offers a fully (mobile virtual network manage our customers from activation and virtualised platforms, enabling operator) that operates on retention to full customer care support. communications service providers (CSPs) the Sprint network, has Redknee is providing us with fast time to to launch a new brand in a matter of chosen a fully managed, market, which is crucial for EcoMobile to weeks. It provides Mobile Virtual Network software-as-a-service, increase market share and drive Enablers (MVNEs) with an agile, flexible and Lucas cloud-based converged differentiation and innovation in a modular suite of solutions on which to build Skoczkowski: billing system from competitive environment.” a profitable wholesale business. CSPs can CSPs are selecting Redknee’s cloud Redknee. take control of the services and promotions services for Lucas Skoczkowski, Redknee’s CEO, they launch with a real-time billing, rating greater business Garvin Garmo, the chief added: “EcoMobile is the latest customer and charging with integrated policy, agility executive of EcoMobile, to launch Redknee’s cloud-based promotions, analytics and business said: “We selected converged billing solution, which increases intelligence. Provided as a SaaS offering, Redknee’s cloud-based billing and our footprint in the US market and adds to Redknee Cloud allows consumer brands or customer care solution to support our the growing portfolio of customers that are retailers, who may not be experienced in growth strategy, while minimising risk, selecting Redknee’s cloud solution for the mobile sector or billing, to concentrate reducing our cost base, and enabling us to greater business agility. ” on their sales, marketing and distribution launch new services quickly to the market. strategies rather than the management of With Redknee’s end-to-end managed Redknee’s cloud-based converged billing their billing system.

10 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 PEOPLE NEWS

Ben McCafferty joins MDS as senior chief marketing officer and affordable solutions enable us to stand out vice president of Sales and a chief financial officer to from our competition,” said Ali Durmus, help support the founding partner and chief executive of Alliances company’s further growth. Etiya. “Etiya International will enable us to MDS, has announced Ben McCafferty The company has bring those solutions to a broader market has joined the company as senior vice appointed Lewis Black and to accelerate our growth and president of Sales and Alliances. Reporting as chief financial officer innovation around the world.” to MDS chief executive Mark Edwards, and Gabi Schindler as McCafferty has responsibility for driving Gabi Schindler: chief marketing officer. As chief executive of Etiya International, MDS’ sales growth and international Admirer of Woon will lead product management and expansion. Nexmo’s disruptive “I am thrilled to welcome drive the business and innovation globally. approach to cloud communications Lewis and Gabi to He has more than 20 years of technical McCafferty’s role will engage service Nexmo,” said Tony and management experience in the providers in thinking about how they will Jamous, the chief executive of Nexmo. telecom industry. Woon has extensive approach digital transformation and “Both of them personify our company experience with every aspect of the includes a focus on the increased demand values of being disruptive, having a passion business, from systems architecture and for managed services and cloud, which for impact, valuing our customer’s success implementation to driving products to the MDS is well positioned to take advantage as much as our own, and having the market and brokering deals. He was vice of. Partnerships will also be a key growth integrity and focus to get things done. With presdient of marketing and business area for the business and a way to deliver their help, we will continue to lead and development at ConceptWave, which was even more value to customers. revolutionise the cloud communications acquired by Ericsson, vice president of space.” marketing at Nortel Networks and has McCafferty joins MDS from Redknee, a held management positions at Ericsson, BSS provider, where he was head of sales Black joined Nexmo from Citrix Systems Architel Systems, which was acquired by and responsible for growth in the Middle where he was most recently the vice Oracle, and Siemens. East and Africa markets. He successfully president of Finance and Operations for the closed several new contracts and Enterprise and Service Provider Division. Anam recruits Carberry to increased revenue significantly in an Prior to Citrix, he held leadership roles at managed SMS service team emerging and dynamic region. AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Avaya. Schindler joined Nexmo from Amobee, To support the launch of the Managed Anam Previously, McCafferty was vice president where she was also chief marketing officer SMS Service offering, has Hugh Carberry of global sales for Volubill, a provider of and helped establish the company. Prior to appointed as senior real-time charging and policy solutions, Amobee, she held marketing leadership commercial analyst to its managed serving mobile and fixed-line Service roles at Apple, AT&T, Saba Software and services team. Prior to joining Anam, Providers, acquired by CSG. He built and PalmSource. Carberry spent more than ten years at managed both the global sales and pre- Telefónica O2 where his responsibilities sales teams, launched a successful partner “I have long admired Nexmo’s disruptive included interconnect reconciliation and programme and closed contracts with approach to be the leader in the global billing, Premium SMS billing and major operator groups and services cloud communications space, and I’m settlement, direct carrier billing and providers. He also held senior sales excited to work with such a talented, global application-to-peer (A2P) SMS billing. positions at Subex and ATOS, focused on team as we continue to raise the bar in the the service provider market. industry,” said Schindler. In his role at Anam, Carberry will use his first-hand operator experience to advise on “I am excited to join MDS,” stated Woon joins Etiya to lead the operational and budgetary challenges McCafferty. “A strong product, innovative faced by mobile operators so Anam’s customers, expert in-house team and an international unit services are developed in-line with current established private cloud services delivery Catalogue-driven B/OSS for digital and and future market expectations. model, provide a proven combination for communications service providers vendor, digital service providers (DSPs). I believe Etiya, has established Etiya International to Brian D’Arcy, the chief commercial officer that MDS is perfectly positioned to enable drive its growth worldwide and appointed at Anam, said: “The development of the service providers seeking transformation to Chun-Ling Woon as the group’s chief Managed SMS Services is designed to a cloud-based DSP business, and I am executive. address some of the biggest challenges looking forward to supporting MDS’ facing mobile operators. They are unable to customers and driving international growth Established in 2004, Etiya is now one of reap the rewards of the growth in the A2P with strategic partners.” Turkey’s largest corporate software SMS market due to traffic terminating on providers. With the formation of Etiya their network without their knowledge so Nexmo expands management International it is taking an integrated they cannot bill for it, and their subscribers worldwide approach to meet global are receiving spam. In order to leverage the to accelerate growth demand for its services. benefit of A2P revenue monetisation mobile Cloud communications platform provider, operators need a combination of technical, Nexmo has announced the addition of a “Our innovative, easily applied, flexible, and industry and commercial knowhow.”

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 11 Be the first to know from the global voice of B/OSS

NEWS ■ COMMENTARY ■ WEBINARS ■ ANALYSIS ■ INSIGHT

THE GLOBAL VOICE OF B/OSS vanillaplus.com WHAT’S ONLINE THIS ISSUE Hot on VanillaPlus.com this issue

Orga Systems Cowan, “This is problematic, the first drove him and his co-founders to launch exclusive update: experience seems a breach of trust.” an OSS company against such giant Employees to be opposition. The first part is also still retained, deal http://www.vanillaplus.com/2015/06/14/ available online. price fair not 9026-why-arent-bills-customer-centric- cheap, says communications-to-build-loyalty-and- http://www.vanillaplus.com/2015/06/26/ Redknee CEO cut-the-cost-of-calls-to-care/ 9444-how-one-oss-company-was-built- from-an-unanswered-need-to-see- With its planned customers/ Lucas Skoczkowski acquisition of Orga Executive Systems from the Snapshot German equivalent of Chapter 11 Oracle Communications virtualises bankruptcy protection for €38 million, Nan Chen, the co- products to support NFV initiative Redknee will gain what its chief executive, founder and Lucas Skoczkowski, tells George Malim is executive vice- Oracle has released four products that a “great customer base”. chairman of CENX, underscore its commitment to provide talks ethernet and communications service providers (CSPs) http://www.vanillaplus.com/2015/06/24/ martial arts in our with a fully virtualised, network function 9403-orga-update-employees-to-be- Nan Chen latest executive virtualisation (NFV)-ready system portfolio. retained-deal-price-fair-not-cheap- profile. With new releases of Oracle Communications says-redknee-ceo/ http://www.vanillaplus.com/2015/06/01/ Session Border Controller, Oracle 8053-nan-chen-cto-of-cenx-talks- Communications Converged Application ethernet-and-martial-arts-in-our-latest- Server, Oracle Communications Services Why aren’t bills customer-centric executive-profile/ Gatekeeper, and Oracle Communications communications to build loyalty and Policy Management, Oracle is to help cut the cost of calls to care? CSPs conquer the layers of complexity How one OSS company was built from inherent in bridging physical and virtual “Imagine a customer buys a new device in- the need to see what happens to environments as they continue on their store and signs up to a $29.99 a month customers journey toward NFV. plan, but the first bill is $54.00. They walked in mid-billing cycle so they have In the second part of this interview, Anand http://www.vanillaplus.com/2015/06/23/ been billed for 45 days.” As Alan Coleman, Gonuguntla, the chief and cof-ounder of 9336-oracle-communications-virtualises founder and CEO of Brite:Bill tells Jeremy Centina Systems, tells VanillaPlus what -products-to-support-nfv-initiative/

New appointments to the VanillaPlus Editorial Advisory Board

The VanillaPlus contributor to the cell deployment. Editorial Advisory telecoms trade Board is in the press, he has He has worked for Airwave, the UK Public process of adding served on trade Safety Network operator (TETRA) as head new members. association and of product marketing, running the product We’re delighted to company boards. management, partner management and announce that At Openet, he is solution architecture organisations. In Martin Morgan, responsible for addition, he has worked at Alcatel-Lucent the vice president of marketing thought as head of segment marketing for mobile Martin Morgan, the marketing at Justin Paul, the head leadership and for the UK and Ireland; at Logica as head marketing manager of OSS marketing at of Openet Openet and Justin Amdocs market interaction. of business development for Intelligent Paul, the head of Networks; and at Nokia Networks OSS marketing at Amdocs have agreed to Justin Paul has worked in 17 years in Netherlands as a system marketing join the refreshed line up and we are product marketing and product manager working on 3G networks. poised to make further announcements in management roles for telecoms the coming weeks. companies. Prior to joining Amdocs in Further board announcements are 2013 he worked as an independent expected shortly and we are especially Martin Morgan has more than 25 years’ consultant to the Scottish Government – keen to increase our members from the experience in mobile communications Digital Strategy and Programmes team CSP sector globally. If you would like to software and has worked in mobile billing running a technology innovation project put yourself or a colleague forward please since the earliest days of the industry. A that covered areas such as M2M, mobile contact the editor, George Malim, at: prolific conference speaker and backhaul, social housing Wi-Fi and small [email protected]

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 13

BILL & CHARGE Are CSPs ready for an on-demand, real-time world?

PLATINUM SPONSOR: GOLD SPONSORS: SILVER SPONSOR: VanillaPlus Insight June/July 2015

CONTENTS 17 TALKING HEADS: CSPs CAN’T SAVE THEIR WAY TO GREATNESS Openet’s Joe Hogan says communications service 17 providers (CSPs) need to move from a mentality of saving TALKING HEADS costs to one of creating new sources of revenue Joe Hogan 20 BILL & CHARGE ANALYST REPORT Our specially-commissioned analyst report, authored by Karl Whitelock, the director of global strategy for Operations, Orchestration, Data Analysis and Monetisation at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan and Troy Morley, a strategy analyst at Stratecast | Frost & Sulllivan

30 EXPERT OIPNION Eyal Amit and Jonah Pransky argue that billing and charging are critical enablers of great CEM

32 REAL-TIME CHARGING 32 Jonny Evans says the BSS happy hour can last a little longer REAL-TIME CHARGING 34 INTERVIEW Redknee’s Chris Newton-Smith tells George Malim why CSPs of all types are turning to cloud and SaaS for billing 34 and charging delivery INTERVIEW Chris Newton-Smith 37 DIGITAL SERVICE Alam Gill explains why innovation in the digital world requires CSPs to let go of their heritage

39 EXPERT OPINION Vic Bozzo says it’s time CSPs get their M2M partner settlement ducks in a row 37 DIGITAL SERVICES

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 16 TALKING HEADS

Joe Hogan: BSS needs to enable CSPs to rapidly develop, launch and monetise new offers CSPs can’t save their way to greatness, new offers and services will be their salvation Communications service providers (CSPs) need to move from a mentality of saving costs to one of creating new sources of revenue. Those can come from effective use of CSP data, greater exploitation of the customer relationship and improv ed agility and flexibility to introduce new services ov er virtualised networks, Joe Hogan, the founder and chief technology officer of Openet, tells VanillaPlus

anillaPlus: Every day we see CSPs CSPs move from a commodity model to selling cutting prices and increasing data based on value? volumes in bundles. Does this signify a race to the bottom and the Joe Hogan: The race to the bottom is happening L V commoditisation of data? If so, how can among CSPs that are in danger of commoditising data

IN ASSOCIATION WITH OPENET

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 17 TALKING HEADS

The cost saving if they just sell data as a product. Every week we see types of customers on certain devices gets implications of another CSP announce data increases in their basic offloaded, for example. bundles and associated price cuts. This is fine if using Wi-Fi are you’ve got a new source of revenue to compensate The cost saving implications of using Wi-Fi are huge huge but in order to for the loss but if you don’t, then there is a real danger but in order to take full advantage, CSPs need to take full advantage, that data could be commoditised. ensure that they’re delivering the quality of services CSPs need to that customers expect. The impact on BSS is that as We are seeing CSPs develop new revenue sources – CSPs look at multiple access methods – LTE, LTE-U ensure that they’re from selling more products and services to looking at and Wi-Fi there does need to be a capability to extend delivering the new business models. Working with content partners policy to the device to ensure the customer network quality of services and upselling television, entertainment and music experience is as expected. services, for example, is happening. Also providing that customers better direct customer engagement is helping boost In many cases CSPs are losing out to free Wi-Fi. Some expect revenues, such as from selling roaming passes or prepaid customers top up infrequently and then don’t add-ons. Either a data block at the end of the month, even bother switching mobile data on. They use public or a content upsell is helping augment the fixed and free Wi-Fi. CSPs are offering service passes that monthly data bundle revenues. stress the convenience of cellular data as well as low cost. For example, we see CSPs in some countries BSS needs to enable CSPs to rapidly develop, launch offer a one-day, 50MB data pass. We’ve also seen and monetise new offers – this is often not possible application service passes where CSPs offer a service with service heavy legacy systems. BSS needs to be pass for WhatsApp. This is low cost and allows only all real-time, have a centralised offer catalogue that the use of WhatsApp. We’ve seen this in countries can enable fast time to market for many, many with a large migrant workforce that uses WhatsApp to more offers. call their family back home. Here the CSPs stressed the low cost and convenience of WhatsApp service VP: With free Wi-Fi becoming increasingly pass, as opposed to walking around shopping malls widespread and reports that between 60-70% of or public libraries trying to get free Wi-Fi. mobile data traffic currently being carried by Wi- Fi, is there a danger that CSPs could even lose VP: One of the main assets that CSPs have is out in the fight for basic connectivity? How can their customer base but when you compare the they better harness Wi-Fi to their advantage? level of engagement a CSP has with its customers, compared to a say, Facebook or JH: The importance of Wi-Fi is increasing. Just look at LinkedIn, there’s no comparison. Is it fair to say the connectivity models for Google’s Project Fi. It’ll be that CSPs are not engaging with their customer Wi-Fi connectivity where possible and then LTE as a base and therefore are at risk of ignoring their fallback. As long as the quality is good customers most valuable asset? probably don’t know and don’t care over what technology their mobile data is going. The key point JH: Yes, a CSP’s customer base is their most here is that the customer will be happy as long as the important asset, but they have to ask some very hard quality is good. CSPs are selling high-speed LTE questions of how relevant they are to their customer services, people are watching television on their base and measure themselves against the competition. devices so the network experience must be good In this case competition can be the digital service otherwise customer will turn off. providers such as Google, Facebook or LinkedIn. These companies engage with mobile customers day In order to deliver the type of network experience in, day out and, more importantly, customers engage customers expect there is a role to play for network with them. The main reason is relevance. On the selection intelligence. This is a combination of ANDSF whole most CSPs don’t really engage that much with (access network detection and selection function) and their customers. Many customers just get a bill policy management. This not only identifies available emailed to them once a month, and some don’t even Wi-Fi hotspots for offloading data traffic to but also open the email. If they’re lucky they’ll get a call from a can measure the quality of the Wi-Fi hotspot and also call centre once a year asking them if they’re happy set the rules as to what traffic goes to Wi-Fi and what with the service. The level of engagement is not great. L stays on LTE. This could mean video traffic for some Which is strange as CSPs have the data that can drive

IN ASSOCIATION WITH OPENET

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 18 meaningful, personalised and relevant customer contextual offers, CSPs can maximise upsell As BSS moves engagement. For example, a subscriber spends a lot opportunities and the chances of uptake by towards all real- of time streaming music to their phone – perhaps customers as they receive the most relevant offers at they’d like to try a free month of Spotify premium? the most opportune time. In a recent survey of 87 time so does the operators by Openet, respondents indicated that they opportunity to use BSS needs to be able to drive real-time, relevant could increase offer uptake rates by 75% and data customer engagement – from upselling a new service revenues by 15% if they could deliver real-time the data collected to providing a customer notification on a loyalty offer. contextual offers. for deeper analytics CSPs already have the data in their systems – the key is harnessing this data and turning it into relevant and VP: CSPs are reducing their network and IT and to drive timely intelligence to drive customer engagement. capex and opex budgets. Does this make them customer offers more vulnerable, or is this a result of new dawn VP: We hear about BSS moving to all real-time, of agility and implementation of NFV and SDN? but what about functions like business intelligence? These have traditionally used JH: Reduction of capex and opex budgets are all part historical data to build a view of customers. Is of CSPs becoming leaner and more agile there an opportunity for real-time network and organisations. SDN (software defined networking) and usage data to enhance business intelligence? NFV (network functions virtualisation) are playing a major role here. CSPs are looking to turn up services JH: As BSS moves towards all real-time so does the in minutes rather than months. With CSPs looking at opportunity to use the data collected for deeper NFV it’s important to examine how NFV impacts BSS. analytics and to drive customer offers. BSS collects Many CSPs’ existing network operations models and data on customer behaviour and usage in real-time OSS/BSS systems are not prepared for emerging new and this is passed to a data warehouse where it can be technologies like NFV. used to provide historical business intelligence, such as churn propensity score, lifetime value, net promoter New thinking is required on how legacy OSS/BSS score and customer experience indicators. However, systems will need to evolve in order to support NFV. while data warehouses provide a good historical view Simply extending existing OSS/BSS models to of customer behaviour, they don’t provide a picture of account for virtualisation will not be sufficient, because what’s happening here and now. This why streaming this approach will not support the new value-added analytics is being used on real-time data so that it can capabilities and services provided by NFV. In addition, also be used to provide a real-time trigger, along with there is also the need for real-time processing of a the historical customer business intelligence, to huge amount of data, including data analytics, based activate context-aware offers. on several data sources. Structured and unstructured data from the infrastructure is a further key challenge The problem is not all CSPs are providing real-time in the OSS/BSS and NFV context. context-aware offers, so many are missing out on additional revenue streams. Traditional upsell offers are On its own, network functions virtualisation is not not real-time; they are usually based on pre-planned enough. NFV concepts need to be applied in the schedules or off-line processing based on historic OSS/BSS to deliver on the promises of NFV such as activity. Whilst CSPs continue to create innovative agility, reduced total cost of ownership, increased data services to generate more revenue, they may not elasticity and greater service availability. This is be maximising their revenue potential with traditional particularly important for policy and charging upsell approaches. Every time there is an opportunity functions. There is little point in having a dynamic to upsell, CSPs should be able to do so. This means network if the monetising, access control, and having the capability to take into account the real-time revenue handling systems are not similarly endowed. and historical customer context to send the most suitable offers to their device in real-time; customers The nirvana, which is five to ten years away, is running should then be able to purchase and activate the NFV over SDN and that is where the capex and opex services instantly. The context can be based on a reductions will really become significant. It will come in combination of historical and real-time data including steps but if you’re just hacking away at budgets you the subscriber activity, usage, application accessed, won’t get the agility you need to stay in business. I location, profile and more. By enabling such real-time don’t think you can save your way to greatness. www.openet.com

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 19 ANALYST REPORT

The authors are Karl Whitelock, the director of global strategy for Operations, Orchestration, Data Analysis and Monetisation (ODAM) at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan (left) and Troy Morley, strategy analyst for ODAM at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan (right) Introduction

ntil approximately four years ago, automation of the charging and billing processes centred almost exclusively on the business-to-consumer (B2C) U model in support of millions of customers. The largest part of any mobile and fixed-line communications service provider (CSP) business today continues to focus on the business challenges from consumers. And for good reason. Addressing the service and billing needs of millions of customers is not easy and comes with multiple business challenges

Globally, the vast majority of consumers receive on their expectations from working with internet broadband access through a mobile network retailers and ecommerce providers. operator. But, customers continue to ask why is it so hard for these operators to offer services Billing and charging solutions installed to address through the same type of self-care mechanism as the consumer services market more than five to internet-based retailers do and at the speed of the seven years ago were implemented as solution internet as well? Must all customers subscribe to silos tied to support for a particular type of network the same data plan offerings? Are pick and choose technology, with little thought about the overall service options something of a nirvana that cannot customer experience involving services from be delivered by the global CSP community at potentially multiple service silos such as voice, large? Are there alternative ways to pay the bill for broadband and video. These systems contain service access beyond a pre-defined pricing plan or multiple databases, duplicated functionality, and are prepaid data usage bucket? From these and integrated through rigidly-defined business several other questions, it is easy to see that what processes. But times have changed and business customers really want is a better experience based requirements today are much more complex. In

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 20 Figure 1: The global communications marketplace is at the centre of the transformation experience strategy of all other industries

fact, it is not uncommon to hear the frustration of relationships are the lifeblood for any large business CSP chief marketing officers (CMOs) – the installed or enterprise. However, the operations and business and operations support systems, monetisation needs of the B2B world are similar, especially the monetisation systems, are but still different, from those that support B2C constraining the CMO’s ability to increase revenue retail services. by attracting new customers and in introducing new services. In the pursuit of providing customers a better experience, most industries are not only blending Enter the world of real-time monetisation solutions mobile communications capabilities with the goods designed around the customer experience. These and services they have always delivered, but new solutions incorporate the benefits of policy network technology advances, computing management with real-time rating and charging dynamics and data storage capacity are allowing along with contextual awareness and near them to bring to market solutions that extend well instantaneous customer notification. Discussion beyond their traditional business focus. Such new about the real-time world of charging and billing for market solutions include shopping malls that bring consumer services is the first part of this story. customers and retailers together through online Though very important, B2C (business-to-consumer) access, to better facilitate customer interaction. is not the full billing and charging story the Other solutions involve healthcare institutions that communications marketplace must address today. provide gourmet cooking clinics as part of a patient’s wellness programme; automobiles with With the advent of cloud services, some of the mobile access; insurance services based on billing industry momentum tied to consumers has consumption and driver performance; and support shifted to the back office business-to-business of other customer needs within industries such as (B2B) relationships that make complex services public services, education, publishing, financial work for the B2C marketplace. B2B wholesale services, logistics and the transportation sector.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 21 ANALYST REPORT

Figure 2: Real-time charging and revenue management systems for consumer billing

Multi-part business ecosystems are redefining how the value-added customer service offerings. For many CSPs, communications marketplace of the future will address the installed systems and processes no longer meet the needs of needs of industry from the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to today’s business environment. Yet, today, rapidly-emerging virtual services offerings. Operations and monetisation competitors are making a big play for customer attention, capabilities within the B2B world form the second part of the customer mindshare, customer loyalty and the customer’s charging and billing story. pocketbook. CSP competitors such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, have a very different IT-systems mindset and solution structure that enables a fast and adaptable Consumer-focused B2C response to customer needs, and rapid optimisation capabilities developed in the internet industry. charging and billing The global billing solution supplier community has done a good CSP systems have remained divided into functionality sets tied job with delivering systems that can address the end-to-end to various business processes from their earliest beginnings. billing process for the consumer-based marketplace. However, The end-to-end monetisation process, often supported through most installed solutions lack a real-time element, and have a multi-vendor best-of-breed environment, consists of grown together in a tightly woven architecture that was never mediation, policy management, rating and charging, invoicing, designed to address rapid change or market-based service collections, customer notifications, partner settlements and innovation. In fact, most CSPs believe the greatest business now, usage insight analysis. This environment provides a challenge they presently face in meeting the needs of new powerful ability to address the needs of millions of customers business opportunity is directly linked to the multi-system with a relatively small number of service offerings. However, business solution environment they now maintain. Timely when business change is rampant, and competitive pressures change management and system redefinition often fall short of are significant, a lack of configurable systems and flexible expectations, especially when modifications across multi- processes fails to satisfy rapidly emerging customer vendor functions require market-speed flexibility. opportunities. This level of change often requires simultaneous updates across all systems. In spite of disparate IT systems Many CSPs still have multi-vendor business suppliers’ valiant efforts to keep pace with change, agility and solution architectures flexibility is simply not practical in a multi-vendor and multi- Today’s competitive mobile services environment involves system integrated architecture. applications, content and cloud services suppliers working with network operators to rapidly deliver innovative, optimised, and Systems silos across several customer management,

22 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 monetisation and service assurance processes operate in a multi-supplier cloud-based configuration would be subject to less than optimally-defined solution definition environment. the same limitations that presently-deployed solution Systems silos tend to create data duplication issues, architectures suffer when a rapid response to changing functionality mismatches, cost excesses, upgrade complexity, market conditions is needed. A single supplier cloud-based slow responsiveness to market change and, ultimately, approach always provides a solution with the most recent dissatisfied customers. features and functions. This integrated stack is not related to network functions virtualisation (NFV), which is tied to the To interact, monitor and understand end-user behaviour network traffic plane. requires real-time functions and services such as real-time self- service and real-time policy-enabled charging. Real-time end- • Contextual user engagement – To efficiently reach the user interaction is also required for contextual customer customer, the solution stack includes a new architecture notifications and optimal offer conversion. This user engagement element – the user engagement platform – which is essential capability is a critical gap that is significantly limited by mobile and fundamentally designed to work with on-device, real- carriers in comparison to internet services competitors. time user experience software to: - Sense the current real-time context of the user: what is An inflexible monetisation environment is no longer conducive the user doing now? to meeting the rapidly-changing business needs defined by new - Deliver real-time, on-device interaction, based on user network technologies, virtual networking and virtual data centre context, to help users understand their service or services. A lack of responsiveness from existing systems and ecommerce options; and to complete transactions processes leaves a gap that can negatively affect the way new including service purchases based on those options. business models are enacted and consumer needs are - Be definable by business logic in the back-end, and be addressed. If left unchecked, such gaps will result in missed adaptable in real-time. commitments, lost opportunities and unmet financial objectives. - Set mobile services policy to address issues concerning network efficiency. Cloud-based mobile services enablement architecture - Provide on-device, out-of-the-box, account and device With the realization of cloud-based software solution activation capability. technology, important differences exist between what can be delivered by traditionally integrated multi-system, multi-supplier • Integrated service creation environment – To truly allow business support architectures, and what is now possible service innovation by the network operator, the system must through a cloud-based, single supplier design focused on the be managed by a single, secure web environment to allow a needs of mobile customers. small team of marketing and IT professionals to very quickly design, beta test, perfect and commercially launch the To compete in an increasingly aggressive market, CSPs should following aspects for services and ecommerce offers: consider a solution in the newly emerged category of customer- - Service plan offering catalogue, service allowances for engaged mobile services enablement. The three defining each plan, pricing for each plan, on-device catalogue elements of this architecture are: appearance/branding for each plan, on-device contextual marketing triggers for offering plans and services with • Agile cloud-based service platform – To enable service immediate user actionable notifications. agility and service innovation, CSPs need to move key - ecommerce offering catalogue with pricing and contextual mobile business support functions to a single integrated marketing triggers for offering ecommerce goods and business logic stack and database. For operational efficiency services on-device. and rapid responsiveness to change, this stack should reside - On-device marketing via user interface (UI) notification in a cloud-based environment defined by a single supplier. A definitions, and contextual trigger conditions to present

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 23 ANALYST REPORT

actionable marketing offers. functionality to support new service ideas is already included - Integrated segmentation capability for targeted services, in the solution. and improved monetisation and sub-brand creation, plus micro segmentation for agile new service testing. • Best of breed service experience – Modern mobile born- in-the-cloud competitors and cloud-client solution providers Major reductions in IT vendor costs accrue when moving from a have used the power of devices to uplift their value multi-vendor, hardware-based architecture with high IT project proposition towards end-users. By incorporating different costs, to a cloud-based, single supplier service creation categories of devices into the design of a solution, a more solution. In addition, a rapid service definition and deployment elegant and compelling user experience is developed to process allows CMOs to validate winning services ideas with engage customers; for example, discovering new services in customers, which reduces the cost associated with launching a contextual fashion, enabling a one-click purchase new services. It also eliminates the sizeable percentage of the customer journey and transforming the perceived value of IT and marketing budgets associated with unsuccessful service the CSP offering. launches. Such actions free resources for promoting the most proven services on a larger scale. • Solution flexibility and agility – A cloud-based, single- supplier, mobile services environment would manage all The benefits from a cloud-based mobile services aspects of service policy, rating and charging, ecommerce enablement solution and user engagement through a seamless set of business A cloud-based mobile services enablement architecture would logic, without the functional boundaries imposed by API be comprised of various software modules that display solution integrations. Through this approach, end-users are exposed flexibility when market conditions change or customer service to new service offerings via a product catalogue. The preferences transform. The solution would involve customer catalogue can address individualised customer service plans, interaction and reduce the need for custom software and handle any level of change without incorporating the development. It would also sharply decrease the time-to-market time-consuming step of an IT project to define, update, test needed by more traditional approaches. The advantages of this and then release software each time change is needed. In type of mobile enablement solution are: addition, on-device user content can be incorporated to qualify all aspects of network policy, self-help user • On-device presence and user engagement – Within a interaction, and ecommerce offers. The cloud-based mobile cloud-based business solution construct, on-device user services approach delivers a seamless end-to-end design of engagement and ecommerce enablement can be designed service and user experience. into the mobile services solution. User context awareness, analytics and on-device policy enhancement can all be made • Rapid innovation through an integrated service creation available. Incorporating these functions in a common set of environment – All aspects of network policy, pricing, business logic and tightly integrated functional modules charging and on-device user self-care for new service offers results in a holistic architectural approach to a mobile are programmed into a single graphical service design and operator’s business needs. This solution environment can deployment environment. This type of approach eliminates IT also deliver flexible service offerings and ecommerce project time – and cost – associated with updating each capabilities at a lower implementation cost compared to system and API definition. The cloud-based mobile service traditionally defined solutions. Most, if not all, of the architecture and service creation environment enables CSPs

24 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 to rapidly create, test, optimise and then launch new management solutions. consumer services in a matter of weeks rather than the months that are typical when defining new services through • B2B services need flexibility and negotiable pricing the traditional service creation process. Enterprises demand personalised and individualised contracts containing service definitions and pricing The rapid service design model, which an integrated, agreements that are unique to the organisation. In addition to cloud-based, mobile services solution enables, allows a CSP usage-based charges, enterprise monthly billing to market-test and optimise multiple service offerings in the requirements involve complex components such as service time a traditional monetisation architecture could launch a packaging and pricing without restrictions, monetisation of single service. This technology actually eliminates certain managed services, and pricing based on a variety of steps within the traditional service delivery model because business models. Addressing these needs requires a flexible the rapid design model incorporates some service creation and configurable approach to service selection, pricing and steps as built in capabilities. usage monitoring.

Another advantage of the rapid service design model is that Enterprise B2B agreements are binding business contracts multiple service ideas can be tested simultaneously with that define the terms and conditions that an enterprise different customer groups, thereby accelerating the pace of negotiates with its services supplier for each of its data responsiveness to changing market conditions. Still another service and applications options. The contract contains advantage for any CSP engaging in this rapid service design pricing discounts, loyalty focus and payment schedules for approach would be quick recognition by its customer base these services. In addition, an emerging table-stakes as an innovator of services and capabilities designed by requirement for any deal now is the provider’s ability to show direct customer feedback. Such a label is what breeds consumption tracking against agreed upon terms. This level customer loyalty. of tracking is essential to prevent enterprise-level bill shock and to eliminate endless manual calculations in determining Enterprise-engaged B2B charging and billing how charges are computed, and whether they are part of an CSPs are challenged today to address the billing needs of agreement. Automating such tracking capabilities within the bundled network services such as voice, text messaging and regularly delivered enterprise payments invoice would save data access for their consumer and small business customers. onsiderable reconciliation time for both the data services They have the added challenge of profitably providing provider and the enterprise. broadband connectivity to their enterprise customers; and managing multiple B2B relationships with solution partners for Stratecast believes that enterprise data services providers several new business endeavours – some of which include need the business support infrastructure to innovate their mcommerce, cloud-based virtual services, IoT communications own pricing and selling models; and that they must have the and enterprise use of mobility services within their product ability to distribute and monetise their offerings to customers offerings to deliver a more enhanced experience for their and partners in a fully automated manner. Without this customers. Monetising this complexity, including compensation capability, these providers will struggle to meet the market to a growing number of business solution partners as revenue demands of an increasing customer base, as they is received from customers, means that CSPs must adopt new continuously update their customised business support business strategies, new business models and new business solutions.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 25 ANALYST REPORT

• Monetisation of enterprise data services is no simple of charges and distribution of payments. In addition, task business needs can change quickly; so, to swiftly negotiate Enterprise data services take on many forms, and quickly or change agreement terms enables a service provider to create behind-the-scenes complexity for the service differentiate in this complex environment by adapting to the provisioning, business management, and monetisation needs of new markets, new business models, or processes. For example, enterprises typically purchase competition. broadband connectivity from one or more network operators according to geographic coverage needs, pricing flexibility Given the complexity associated with virtual service and service availability. This provides evidence from the offerings, or enterprise-level services of any kind, the general enterprise marketplace that CSPs are the best monetisation processes should fit the business model a suppliers of network connectivity. Enterprises also purchase company chooses to run, rather than forcing the business data centre services such as unified communications, remote model to match what the billing system can address. Billing data storage, elastic bandwidth, and computing capacity systems should also allow a company to define its from one or more cloud services providers. In addition, products and pricing strategies in a way that provides enterprises purchase cloud-based applications including flexibility to react to changing market and customer needs ERP, customer care, office automation, sales management at the speed of business, not at the speed of IT, which is and specialty applications from these same cloud usually measured in weeks or months. services providers; or, in some cases, directly from the developer, according to business relationships and service • The key requirements for addressing enterprise B2B needs. billing complexity To better understand the complexities that virtual services While some enterprises are now considering network access now bring, key requirements that a billing solution should and virtualised data centre services from a single supplier, address in support of today’s new business realities include: setting aside the reasons for this trend and focusing on the enterprise market in general, the most important aspect Pricing models – Pricing model support should include associated with enterprise customer billing is the need by on-demand, reserved, usage-based, location-based, free enterprise customers for unique contract agreements and trials, promotions, bundling, peak and off-peak business the tracking of usage to agreement terms. scenarios.

These agreements are based on numerous factors, such as Usage rating for hybrid clouds – Usage rating must include the enterprise customer’s changing business needs, support for any computing model; allow creation of product willingness to spend and flexibility demands pertaining to bundles from multiple sources; and bill channels or partners pricing options, usage discounts, loyalty focus and brand for the components defining each. awareness. In addition, there is a high probability that different partners will be involved with the delivery and Chargeback for private clouds – Deliver ability to maintenance of each service combination package that a chargeback or bill IT departments that use transfer pricing cloud service provider sells. From a monetisation and departmental chargeback policies. perspective, this means complexity as services are billed, revenue is collected and partners are compensated. Corporate and settlement hierarchies – Allow for configurable billing and settlement hierarchies, including Managing the impact from multiple terms and conditions for grouped commitments across corporate hierarchies. each exchange or use of goods or services – an event – can be complex, but necessary to provide proper accountability Virtual bundle support – Allow service bundle billing

26 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 based on partner contributions and revenue sharing agreements.

Channel compensation and multi-party settlement – Manage channel behavior through creative compensation options – incentives, discounts, and penalties – and support multi-party settlement – retainer, residual, shared, and settled. Settlements should include ability to handle multi-party agreements where a single transaction can involve three or more relationships. Conclusion Digital service personalisation has changed the course of Enterprise agreements – Support individualised direction for nearly all CSPs throughout the world. negotiation for enterprise agreements. Unfortunately, most installed systems do not allow them to react to changing market conditions quickly enough to take full Online bill – Provide customisable online billing with advantage of the opportunities the market now provides. re-branding for partners and customers. The longer-term billing implication is that as customer services Dynamic scaling – Dynamically scale to flexibly are consumed, all parts of the end-to-end service definition and accommodate peak periods, including bursting from supply chain process must be reconciled in shorter and shorter private to public clouds. intervals. To achieve future business success, it is imperative that new service offers and new business models not be Product changes – Ability to change product pricing saddled with the limitations of currently defined systems that quickly – in hours or at most days – to respond to market can not show a high degree of flexibility and configurability demand and competition positioning. along with the business processes they support.

Combined payments processing – Account for Some billing suppliers understand the changing business enterprise customer billing and third-party payments, landscape, inside and outside the communications sector, and commissions and incentives from the same platform. are now satisfying those needs with solutions originally intended to address complexities found only within the communications SLA enforcement – Provide automated support for industry. The difference between suppliers that can support the contract commitments tied to service level agreements billing needs of multiple industries, lies in how these systems (SLAs). Though this is less of a function of billing and more are engineered. The complexities of the continuously changing a concern of the service delivery and quality of service CSP environment, to include simultaneous support for multiple processes, it is an important topic for network operators business models will no doubt affect the way billing suppliers and cloud providers. Regardless of the exact terms and meet the future needs of this changing environment. conditions an SLA agreement may require, a clear audit If a single billing solution, initially made for the communications path defining all billing-related customer charges and industry, can simultaneously address hundreds of business partner settlement payments is essential for not only the models that define the operations needs of complex enterprises customer and partner management processes, but the in multiple industries, such as a large international airport today, SLA management function as well. Beyond both of these, imagine what could be accomplished with a similar solution in such detailed accountability is mandatory to satisfy meeting the business relationship and monetisation needs of corporate governance requirements. business strategies yet to be defined.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 27 COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary Company summary

Founded 1982 Founded 1999 HQ Chesterfield, Missouri, United States HQ Dublin, Ireland Employees More than 22,000 Employees More than 800 Revenue US$3,564 million (2014) Revenue Undisclosed Customers Over 250 CSPs in 80 countries worldwide. Key Customers Key customers include: AT&T, A1 Telekom Austria, customers include: AT&T, Bell Canada, BT, Bell, Charter Communications, CTBC, Orange Comcast, Deutsche Telecom, MetroPCS, Sprint, Group, Softbank, Sprint, Telus, Time Warner Telefónica, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone. Cable, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Videotron and Partnerships Strategic partnerships with EMC, HP and IBM. A Vodafone. wide range of partnerships with systems Partnerships A wide range of partnerships with equipment integrators and independent software vendors. vendors, systems integrators and independent Financial Status Publicly Traded (NASDAQ:DOX) software suppliers. Financial Status Privately held Bill and charge products Amdocs Customer Amdocs CES brings together a full suite of Bill and charge products Experience OSS/BSS functionality, including revenue Solutions (CES) management. A selection of revenue management Openet High performance framework utilised by all of the related offerings include: Fusionworks company’s modular software products. The • Amdocs Convergent Charging – Real-time Framework framework centralises common functionality, convergent charging across all services, provides support for custom logic and eases networks and customer types. integration. • Amdocs Policy Controller – Serves as the policy decision function, providing real-time Openet Policy Enables CSPs to dynamically control network usage metering, and service control for Manager resources with real-time policies based on service, advanced data services. Ties in closely with the subscriber, or usage context. These policy rules do convergent charging engine. not just control network capacity and quality of • Amdocs Master Enterprise Catalogue – service, but also enable new business models and Centralised data repository that manages all innovative new services. products defined through various CES modules and external OSS/BSS. Openet Evolved Pre-integrated with the Openet Policy Manager, • Amdocs Mediation – The mediation platform Charging Openet Evolved Charging can be deployed as a supports all networks, services and processing standalone online charging system or as an modes. It operates in real-time or batch mode, adjunct system. It supports spend alerts to reduce with active or passive interaction. bill shock, dynamic pricing models with real-time • Amdocs Partner Management – Provides a notification triggers, shared device plans with comprehensive partner management and usage dashboards, and service bundling – for settlement system to support the complete fixed and mobile, family plans and dual persona partnership lifecycle. enterprise plans. • Amdocs Invoicing – Creates all charges, including recurring charges, discounts, taxes Openet An enterprise-wide platform with the scalability and invoice totals. Convergent and configurability to address the billing mediation, • Amdocs Accounts Receivable – Enables Mediation network event processing and data collection CSPs to gain an instant and accurate snapshot challenges within fragmented and diverse of their financial position at any given time. operator networks. • Amdocs Collection – Facilitates an accurate and manageable collection process. Key differentiation and competitive pressures Key differentiation and competitive pressures Openet offers a real-time data collection, analysis and management Amdocs meets the OSS BSS functionality needs of any size of CSP as solution capable of addressing both customer experience and business shown by its current customer base. The Amdocs CES solution management needs. Its data management capabilities can be modules operate as pre-integrated suites or as standalones according configured to address multiple mediation, rating and charging, or policy to functional need. Amdocs features a global services organistion to requirements. The company has proven it can deliver on the data install and operate its solutions. The company has a strong innovative management challenges for some of the largest CSPs in the world. spirit that allows it to address the needs of any organisation, while Competition within the rating, charging, mediation and now data maintaining a leadership position within the global billing marketplace. analysis domain space is fierce, but Openet continues to remain aggressive and innovative in addressing the changing needs of the communications marketplace.

28 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 Company summary

Founded 1996 HQ Vienna, Virginia, United States Employees 160 Revenue Undisclosed

Customers Global customer base includes tier one CSPs and OTT providers in Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Key customers are: América Móvil, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Twilio, Sprint, Switchco, Telefónica and Verizon. Partnerships The Telarix Technology Alliance Partner Programme includes: Amdocs, Arptel, Ascom, IceHook, NxtGn, PurgeFraud and XConnect. Financial Status Privately held About Stratecast Stratecast collaborates with our clients to reach smart business decisions in the rapidly evolving Bill and charge products and hyper-competitive Information and Telarix iXTools The company’s solutions focus on wholesale charging and Communications Technology markets. Using a mix billing. A selection of revenue management functions of action-oriented subscription research and addressed by the iXTools suite include: customised consulting engagements, Stratecast • iXBill – Ensures billable activities are captured, rated and delivers knowledge and perspective that is only billed, allowing CSPs to address agreement types and attainable through years of real-world experience in rating scenarios such as multi-party settlements and an industry where customers are collaborators; revenue sharing partnerships. today’s partners are tomorrow’s competitors; and • iXConnect – Is a business intelligence platform, for agility and innovation are essential elements for collecting and managing information. iXConnect defines success. Contact your Stratecast Account and manages agreements between CSPs and partners, Executive to engage our experience to assist you in and applies rates to different types of traffic within the attaining your growth objectives. scope of each agreement. • iXRoute – Enables CSPs to identify and implement optimal routing strategies, to keep the network profitable. • iXTrade – Allows CSPs to simplify and automate the buying, pricing and selling processes within the wholesale interconnect business. • iXAudit – Streamlines the validation of interconnect invoices, reconcile charges, and manage settlements.

Telarix iXLink iXLink is an information exchange platform that enables CSPs to automate the exchange of business documents for the interconnect processes and to About Frost & Sullivan electronically share documents, such as pricing quotes, rate and dial code Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, changes, numbering plans, invoices and declarations. iXLink has more than 4,000 works in collaboration with clients to utilise visionary members with 40 million transactions monthly. innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today’s market participants. For more than 50 Key differentiation and competitive pressures years, we have been developing growth strategies for the Global 1000, emerging businesses, the Telarix addresses what it calls interconnect business optimisation, which aims for public sector and the investment community. Is your more efficient carrier-to-carrier relationships through its portfolio of wholesale organisation prepared for the next profound wave of solutions. iXTools can be a pre-integrated suite or delivered as standalone industry convergence, disruptive technologies, modules. The iXLink exchange service allows members to apply business rules increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, that are specific to each partner and/or service to validate transactions, meet breakthrough best practices, changing customer internal business objectives and capture errors so that the sender can be notified dynamics and emerging economies? For more immediately. Telarix is a market leader within the wholesale charging and billing information about Frost & Sullivan’s Growth domain, though it continues to face competitive pressure from other suppliers and Partnership Services, visit www.frost.com. clearinghouses.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 29 Customer experience management relates to you, billing and charging professionals As communications service providers (CSPs) focus more and more on creating differentiation through superior customer experience management, it has become cl ear that billing and charging are critical enablers of great CEM, write Eyal Amit and Jonah Pransky

Proactive online ut a group of different telecoms professionals Online charging is moving charging is also in a room, mention customer experience management, and each person will think centre stage in real-time critical for you’re talking specifically to them – that’s how Why the focus on real-time? As part of an ongoing supporting P focused the telecoms industry has become process to protect consumers against bill shock, personalised plans, on how to deliver the right customer experience. So governments and legislative bodies have been you’ve got the network engineers bringing up quality of collaborating to establish a unified code of conduct. which service service and experience, the care team talking about So European Union legislation currently mandates providers hope will call handling and resolution, and with the billing team, CSPs to notify their end customers at the exact help keep their it’s all about bill accuracy and clarity. moment they have consumed €50 worth of services in their monthly billing cycle. This applies whether they customers loyal They’re not wrong though – customer experience are roaming or in their home country. management definitely means different things to different people, but you can break it down into two In parallel with this, CSPs have also been working major aspects. towards giving their customers the ability to set their own personalised preferences when it comes to • The experience your customer has when actually receiving notifications, such as when nearing the end consuming your products of their service allowance. The customer also gets to • The experience the consumer has when interacting decide the course of action following that notification: with their service provider whether to end the service, freeze it, add funds and so on. These courses of action necessitate real-time Most of the customer’s daily experience is about notifications, which are driven by constant real-time being a consumer, when they are actually using their metering of the customers’ allowances. devices and applications. Unless quality of service is either really good or really bad, the service provider The online charging system is the primary component isn’t consciously – or actively – associated with this responsible for performing these processes, assuring daily experience. notifications are accurate and sent at the right time, Yet there are also those moments when the consumer managing top-up payments and more. behaves like a customer – shopping for and ordering new products, contacting the call centre, receiving and Proactive online charging is also critical for supporting paying a bill. It’s in those moments that CSPs need to personalised plans, which service providers hope will shine in order to keep their relationship with that help keep their customers loyal. Service providers are customer, and maximise the value of that relationship. ramping up their quality of experience beyond just technical capabilities, by making it personal – they That’s where charging and billing come in – when it want to give customers the ability to create comes to delivering an exceptional customer individualised plans so they can to choose the exact experience, charging and billing play a key role in both services they want, the networks they will run on, the L of these aspects. validity period and so on.

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30 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 Shared data plans – a single data/voice allowance for directly to the home, as opposed to online self-service all members of a family or group, and hybrid plans, channels which are guarded by logins and passwords. which combine prepaid and postpaid customers into a single entity, are both particularly challenging to support. This leaves CSPs spending large amounts of money on paper bills that at best leave customers feeling unengaged In order to ensure that quality of experience is met and at worst, confuse or upset them, thus driving with these service plans, the parallel consumption of them to contact the call centre. Clearly, it is time for a data or voice services need to be monitored in real- new billing experience – not just paperless, but also time. Consumption notifications must be provided to interactive, and one that customers will find easy to use. users ahead of time by the online charging system, as The authors, Eyal Amit well as a wide range of system services, including plan As part of our CES 9.3 release, Amdocs has launched (above) and Jonah activations, real-time changes and quota re-allocation the Omni-Channel Billing Experience solution – an Pransky, are product for group members. end-to-end system for bill processing, bill generation and bill presentment. It allows CSPs to easily design marketing managers in the revenue and personalise bills for print, PDF and online channels management division A new billing experience is interactive and ensures that data is consistently displayed across of Amdocs While the monthly bill may be a CSP’s most consistent those channels. But most importantly for the customer – and usually most frequent – interaction with their experience, it also includes new interactive email bill customers, most customers don’t regard it a positive functionality. This provides customers with an one. Receiving and paying bills often leaves interactive HTML bill where they can simply tap or customers questioning the value of the service they click for explanations of their charges, information on receive, and the bill itself is generally business-like and promotions or to pay or dispute a charge. The unclear to the average consumer. Not to mention that interactive email bill is pushed conveniently to your today, a paper bill, or even a PDF, leaves a lot to be customers’ mailbox, giving them the best of both desired in terms of a ‘wow’ user experience. worlds – the convenience of a push communication with the interactivity of digital bill presentment. This will And despite pressure to go green, in reality CSPs help CSPs provide a better billing experience, and haven’t been able to replace the paper bill with drive higher adoption of paperless billing. electronic bill presentment – although many have tried. In fact, a recent Amdocs survey of global service So for all of you billing and charging professionals. The providers found that an average of only 22% of their next time you are in a room and someone brings up customers have gone paperless. This may be due to customer experience management, raise your hands. the perceived convenience of the paper bill mailed They are talking to you. www.amdocs.com

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 31 REAL-TIME CHARGING

Is it sunset for traditional BSS or can happy hour last a little longer? Billing and charging for CSPs now encompasses a wide range of one-time services in addition to flat rate bundles. Traditional systems are no longer fit for purpose, but what is required for CSPs to continue to bill for their own services and charge for the services of others in a real- time, on-demand world, asks Jonny Evans?

ommunications service providers’ (CSPs) Jennifer Kyriakakis, the co-founder and vice president billing processes are becoming increasingly of marketing at Matrixx Software, says: “Billing and complex as they work to support traditional charging in real-time for any service presents a range services side by side with new and of complications for CSPs, from authorising the sometimes unpredictable OTT business service, to delivering it, then tracking it and ensuring C L models – and all in real-time. that it is being billed for correctly.”

32 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 Authorisation isn’t simple The rapidly evolving market means CSPs need to From over-the-top (OTT) service access privileges to remain flexible as they develop billing systems, current data and credit allowances, CSPs need to be observes Timo Ahomaki, the chief technology officer Tecnotree able to accurately query multiple systems in real time of . “There is currently no sensible status and deliver services within agreed SLA parameters. quo available to build rigid contractual structures or IT Handling such queries against CSP, OTT and other systems around,” he says. systems demands lots of interoperability. Deploying support for third-party services is very new “Billing has always been complex. Add in these new to some CSPs: “Some have simply not offered third- services and it’s more important than ever that CSPs party charging as an option, but they may find Jennifer Kyriakakis: have a unified system in place to ensure not just the themselves missing out on any potential OTT business Billing and charging in billing but rating, trading and routing are done in the future,” warns Tony Poulos, market strategist at real-time for any WeDo Technologies correctly,” says Vic Bozzo, the senior vice president . CSPs must ensure any adjunct service presents a for worldwide sales and marketing at Telarix. systems they may deploy don’t cause other range of complications complications in their system. for CSPs Parimal Mohile, the chief architect at Tech Mahindra, advocates the necessity for a real-time charging Facing such a complex mix, some CSPs are choosing mechanism. “In terms of billing, CSPs will move to a to roll out new solutions strategically, says Martin Openet real-time charging mechanism, irrespective of whether Morgan, the vice president of marketing at . they bill the customer in real-time or not,” he says. “In “Increasingly CSPs are going for an adjunct approach the future the charge records will form the basis for and putting a real-time charging system in place to supplying billing intelligence to consumer systems like cater for all data traffic for all customers,” he says. bill formatting and printing, electronic bill presentment “Rated data records are then sent to the billing system and payment (EBPP), self-care, enterprise resource for inclusion on the bill. This enables them to phase planning and dunning. These charge records will be out legacy systems in line with the move all IP services and avoid the risks of high cost, lengthy billing dumped in a big data lake for analytics, business Vic Bozzo: transformation projects.” intelligence and real-time action perspectives. This will It’s more important than also bring in, at the required low cost, extreme billing ever that CSPs have a flexibility which will become the mainstay for all Poulos adds: “CSPs that have not yet undergone unified system in place billing needs.” some major transformation of their legacy back-office will have no choice but to work with adjunct systems – Michelle Nowak, the vice president for product but in the long term, the exercise may not be cost- management of global BSS solutions at CSG effective.” International, all of this capability needs to be available regardless of the service or network type. For Kyriakakis, virtual network operators have “These capabilities need to be network, service and demonstrated that integration of new systems can be event agnostic to support a wider range of services achieved rapidly and cost effectively. “The rapid rollout that add perceived value to the CSPs overall of MVNOs in recent years is proof that integrating new communication services,” she says. systems into a network can be done rapidly and cost effectively,” she says. “The benefits of being able to offer new services to customers and bill for them in Martin Morgan: CSPs can try to meet the future by patching existing CSPs are going for an systems, but this may not be ideal in the long-term, real-time will, over time, offset the initial cost and time of overhauling a billing solution.” adjunct approach and adds Bozzo. “CSPs need to be in a position to not putting a real-time only deal with the issues they have now but also any Some CSPs have implemented separate platforms, charging system in place new innovations the future may bring. In many cases to cater for all data traffic such as for MVNE operations, others have taken the patching existing systems doesn’t solve the problem for all customers but rather creates even more complexity.” chance to create fresh brands to serve specific verticals. “Relatively few, on the other hand, have Mohile warns patching and extending existing managed to successfully combine radically new systems may not be viable, or worthwhile. “CSPs business models with the mainstream business need to atomise the capabilities provided by their processes and IT systems,” says Ahomaki. current systems and aggregate these atomic functions through a common data model into a service layer,” One BSS system to cater for all possible scenarios he says. “Not all systems can provide such seems unachievable. Focusing on core business capabilities and these must be marked for sunset.” needs and remaining open to unforeseen opportunities while collaborating with extremely So, extending existing systems may not always be the innovative partners may be the best way to square this rapidly evolving and complex CSP environment as Michelle Nowak: best way forward, but that’s not to say adjunct Capabilities need to be systems can’t do the job, at least at times. “It business models, customer demand and foundational technologies continue to undergo extensive disruption network, service and depends on if the systems they have are meeting their event agnostic to support and systemic change. needs and how sophisticated they are,” says Bozzo. a wider range of services

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 33 INTERVIEW

Billing-as-a-service benefits beat the capex burden and constraints of in-house systems

Chris Newton-Smith, the vice president of marketing at Redknee, which has just signed up US MVNO EcoMobile to its cloud-based billing and customer care solution, tells George Malim the pay-as-you-grow, success-based model is appealing to CSPs of all types

s communications service providers (CSPs) turn to cloud-based IT, often provided on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis, some are willing to trust on-demand IT to support A services as business critical as billing and charging. Few of the largest CSPs are prepared to jump with both feet into the cloud era when it comes to these systems, but they are willing to engage with them to support specific offerings, or in areas of their business where the accelerated time-to-market offered by cloud systems is appealing.

“I tend to divide the market for cloud and SaaS- based billing and charging systems into a few different categories,” explains Chris Newton-Smith, the vice president of marketing at Redknee. “From a retail perspective, tier one and tier two CSPs have a different approach than tier two and three MVNOs. Larger CSPs want to maintain full control over their core retail businesses, but the others, particularly new entrants, see the benefits of cloud and SaaS services.”

Newton-Smith sees two key areas of appeal for these types of CSPs. “With a lower capex, it is easier to get up and running more quickly, allowing these service providers to focus more on marketing and sales,” he says. “In the retail sector, there is a split between larger and smaller CSPs, but even the larger ones are adopting some of the technologies behind cloud and SaaS. After all, these same technologies are driving the overall trend towards virtualisation, where even the largest CSPs are gaining some of the benefits of a cloud system.”

It’s when we move away from the large CSPs’ traditional heartland – away from their core retail business – that they begin to show a greater L

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 34 willingness to adopt cloud and SaaS systems. “Other business goals. “The issue of focus is important,” areas of the business, such as wholesale, B2B, explains Newton-Smith. “CSPs are looking to focus machine-to-machine (M2M), hosting MVNOs, and their efforts on activities that provide their business even parts of the enterprise market, are all areas in with greatest amount of opportunity, but replicating which CSPs are very open to SaaS models,” adds billing and charging functionality doesn’t achieve that. Newton-Smith. “You can see the trend towards They really want to focus on sales, new services and delivery of IT services as a cloud offering in the their go to market plans.” broader enterprise IT market, but for network operators, the challenge is how to interact in real-time “SaaS gives them the opportunity to free up resources with the other core systems. The technical challenge to focus on what’s important to the business,” he is surmountable, but issues such as service level adds. “The added benefits are that they know the agreements, real-time integration and network system will be continuously upgraded and it has to attributes need to be taken into account.” adhere to service level agreements.”

Cloud for adjunct systems Taking the IT headaches away and moving towards a “For larger service providers, their primary interest in service-based model resonates well with the mood of Chris Newton-Smith: SaaS comes when they realise they can’t do certain most CSPs. “They want to innovate and experiment CSPs are looking to things with their existing systems, such as introduce a and bring new services to market, but if they have to make a large IT investment to do so, it becomes a focus their efforts on new service or address a new market quickly activities that give enough,” he explains. “CSPs of all sizes and in many high risk approach,” Newton-Smith says. “SaaS gives them the means to try new things without committing them the greatest markets use our system because, upon evaluating opportunity their in-house systems, they realise that the time and to a large upfront expense, and that is what’s driving costs involved would be too high for the business cloud and SaaS adoption.” case they are pursuing to actually work. Even for a very large CSP it can make sense to move towards a Follow the business case SaaS approach.” Newton-Smith adds that for those concerned about ceding control of such critical systems to an IT service Elimination of capex is the clear headline attraction provider that this doesn’t have to be a permanent here, but Newton-Smith identifies a series of other state. “It makes sense to go with a cloud or SaaS benefits for CSPs, regardless of their market segment. approach first because you always have the “CSPs like seeing a system up and running in the opportunity to bring things back in-house if the cloud; they like the pay-as-you-grow, success-based business case justifies it,” he explains. model, and they like that they can start prototyping services and launch them to market very quickly,” he In addition, he thinks many of the cultural, technical says. “In addition, the risks associated with cloud and regulatory barriers are starting to recede. “There is based solutions are significantly lower. A new CSP a cultural aspect to deciding whether or not to deploy focused on sales and marketing doesn’t want the a cloud system, but it’s not the prime issue, which is financial risk of building a complete IT stack.” really more about understanding what your starting point is,” he says. “Some CSPs have been in business “Such players often don’t have the necessary for decades and have built up extensive IT assets and experience – especially if they’re an entrant from an they want to get the most out of these assets as industry outside of telco, like many MNVOs,” he adds. possible. Some look at SaaS systems as just another “Worse, in some markets, they can’t even find the set of partners to manage and another system to necessary skills. The workforce just isn’t there. In the invest in that you can’t even see.” US or Europe it’s quite easy, although highly competitive, to get the right people, but in other markets it can be “CSPs have understandable caution to issues such as difficult to recruit people with the right sets of skills, so data protection, which is why they’re testing cloud the idea of using cloud based billing and charging as a and SaaS in areas adjacent to their core businesses,” way to improve operations and share resources is he adds. “These barriers will decrease over time, and appealing. It means you don’t need the same staff in if there’s a good business reason, CSPs will make the place in every point of presence.” investments required. It requires time and experience for people to become familiar with these models, but Even where the skills are available to set up and the drivers are there for more uptake of cloud and operate in-house systems, there’s a potential cost for SaaS – after all, on a personal level, we’re all familiar CSPs to pay in terms of lost focus on their prime with and using cloud services now.” www.redknee.com

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 35 In 1950, 750 Million people lived in cities Today 4 Billion people live in cities Is your city ready for another 2 Billion*…?

Smarter cities survive and thrive Smart suppliers help them do that Frost & Sullivan works with both cities and their suppliers to address the challenges of urbanization and create smart and sustainable market growth Roberta Gamble Partner | Energy & Environment [email protected] +1.650.475.4522

*Six billion people are expected to live in urban areas by 2050, per projections by the United Nations and United States Census Bureau DIGITAL SERVICES

Innovation in the digital Tworld requires letting go

Not so long ago, communications service providers (CSPs) had large IT staffs to manage massive infrastructures, designed to support a small number of products and services sold to large volumes of customers. Now, the dynamics have changed and IT must do more with less staff and stagnant budgets, writes Alam Gill

he uptake of digital services by consumers is complex partner relationships and rapidly launch new staggering and continues to surpass all digital services to seize market share. projections. Today, almost three billion people – that’s 40% of the world’s population – are Gartner’s 2014 poll of CIOs showed conclusively that Alam Gill is senior T using the internet, with many accessing this businesses now face the challenge of straddling a vice president of superhighway of content through their smartphones second era of enterprise IT and a new, third digitalisation international and other communication devices. era – moving from running IT like a business within a managed services, business, into a period characterised by deep at CSG International Nowhere is the growth trajectory more impressive innovation beyond process optimisation, exploitation of than in the developing world, where, according to the a broader universe of digital technology and information, International Telecommunication Union, nearly two- more-integrated business and IT innovation, and a thirds of the world’s internet users – 1.9 billion in 2014 need for much faster and more agile capability. – are from. And while the figures continue to skyrocket, so too do the challenges and opportunities And while there is pressure internally to innovate within for CSPs. As they transform into digital service IT to support new services, Gartner’s CIO survey providers (DSPs), CSPs are faced head-on with the showed that IT budgets are only marginally growing. challenge of managing the two speeds of IT. All of this begs the question: how do CSPs continue to innovate in this rapidly evolving digital world? Can As research firm Gartner puts it, two-speed IT is the cost cutting the legacy environment fuel the conundrum that many IT organisations in telecoms investment required on its own? If so, is that a long and other industries face in today’s accelerated digital term sustainable funding model? world. On one hand, they must continue to optimise and maintain legacy systems that are responsible for There are many questions without straightforward the very fundamentals of the business: from billing to answers, but one emerging response is to give order management, mediation, network management anything that is not a core competency to trusted and beyond. partners.

But they must also focus on implementing new IT Not so long ago, the telecoms industry had large IT

infrastructure and business processes that can deliver staffs to manage massive infrastructures, designed to L a seamless customer experience, manage increasingly support a small number of products and services sold

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 37 DIGITAL SERVICES

to large volumes of customers. They had the CSP. As a result, today’s managed services resources internally – and often complemented by an partnership is becoming re-imagined as more of an off-shore strategy – to manage existing systems and integrated business partnership than the old school add new ones as the business demanded. Their vendor vs customer relationship. teams had unique skillsets so they could support the specialised applications humming along in their At a time when IT organisations are trying to push the infrastructure. pedal to the metal while simultaneously stepping on the brake, the re-imagined managed services Now IT must do more with fewer staff and stagnant partnership provides a viable model that gives CSPs budgets. It’s no wonder that many CSPs are moving to agility like they’ve never had before. Some key benefits a managed services model as they evolve into DSPs. to this model that we are hearing from CSPs are: Managed services has become a viable model for many CSPs as they look to free up internal resources • Lowered capital expenditures and other costs. to innovate new revenue-generating services. With shrinking profit margins and costly rollouts for new digital services, lowering capex continues to be a A study led by Technology Business Research shows big push for CSPs in moving to a managed services the appetite for managed services will continue to model. In fact, nearly 73% of those polled in TBR’s grow – in fact, TBR predicts that the IT outsourcing survey said that reducing costs through outsourcing managed services market in the telecoms industry is was a key driver for shifting to this approach. The expected to exceed US$12 billion by the end of 2016. evidence is clear that lowered capex costs is a real TBR’s research shows the trend toward managed benefit to managed services. With lowered costs, services is growing worldwide, driven by the need to CSPs can implement new services and the systems to innovate faster to retain customers, deepen the variety support them; invest incrementally in other business of products and services, and often to expand the priorities and reinforce their bottom lines. reach of services to new geographic markets. • CSPs want partners in transformation. While Telecoms providers from across the world are also lowering costs is an integral part of managed services, looking for outside experts to offer skill sets that are it isn’t the only one. Managing change effectively is a often in short supply – those needed to optimise, critical component as well while CSPs are manage and maintain existing key systems like experiencing business transformation at all levels – wholesale, retail and enterprise billing, data mediation from business models to people, process and and beyond. Because managed services partners are technology. CSPs say they are looking for experts to often tapped to handle a CSP’s critical systems like not only run core systems, but also to help manage billing, they must be a proven and trusted partner. this wave of change. As a result, they are increasingly After all, if you can’t bill for a new service properly, looking to partners to play this role. And it makes driving a profit becomes nearly impossible. Managed complete sense. Why not entrust the companies that services partners deploy and operate new actually make the platforms to operate, optimise, environments to help underpin their rapid growth into maintain and evolve them? digital services – often the key to future growth for the Through these managed services partnerships, CSPs gain trusted partners who can play a long-term role in supporting their business today while planning for the future and helping to manage future risk.

• Freedom to innovate. A common theme we hear A study led by with our clients and prospective clients is ‘we don’t Technology have time to innovate.’ This sentiment is echoed by Business Research the TBR survey, in which 53% of CSPs surveyed said that the managed services model frees up additional shows the appetite resources within the company to support new for managed initiatives. services will With new services, the ecosystem of partners and continue to grow content continuing to grow at great speed, innovation is critical to the success of a CSP. Time spent on managing existing systems could be better spent on planning for the future, accelerating the rollout of first- to-market services and collaborating with internal stakeholders like marketing and customer service to create a differentiated offering.

It’s clear that it’s a new world, and traditional models are breaking down. In their place, exciting new opportunities are emerging. These new models promise to put CSPs in the driver seat for delivering new services in this digital world – but not without skilled partners as their trusted co-pilots.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 38 It’s time to get your M2M ducks in a row The rise in partner settlement complexity needs to be addressed to ensure IoT success, writes Vi c Bozzo

nalysts are predicting there will be up to one volume/low value M2M transactions be managed trillion potential M2M (machine-to-machine) when many of today’s service providers are using connections by 2020 – a number that more outdated settlement and revenue assurance systems than doubles the size of the telecoms that were built for another era, and often still depend A market today. That’s a lot of growth over the on manual processes? In addition, many revenue next few years, and its growth that isn’t coming from assurance teams are lacking experienced personnel, the traditional set of services such as voice and yet they are about to encounter a tsunami of data that broadband. It’s coming from the connection of things, needs to be audited and validated. Billions of different with communications service providers (CSPs) types of events require rating and analysis; creating new platforms for partnerships with agreements are complex and quality of service enterprise businesses and OTT players that want to requires constant oversight. In such an environment, The author, Vic offer new applications and connected solutions to CSPs need a partner settlement solution that can Bozzo, is the senior their customers. manage new service launches with complex tariff vice president of worldwide sales and plans and revenue-share agreements. marketing at Telarix A partnership explosion New partnerships and connected ecosystems are It’s all about automation popping up like dandelions in the spring time, and as Experience shows that vendors overcharge an all of these various partners scramble to figure out average of 4-9% of the total invoice value, and 50/50 how to best participate in the new M2M economy and settlements of disputes are often agreed to only determine what business model works best for them, because CSPs lack the compelling evidence to win it’s important not to overlook a very important piece – disputes. There is real money at stake, and it’s only partner billing and settlement. Telecoms companies going to get worse as the number of transactions will need a way to manage potentially thousands of continues to climb. new partners and a highly complex value chain. M2M will give CSPs the ability to derive new revenues from The only way around this dilemma is through settlement and interconnect opportunities, and many automation. Billing, settlement, and dispute of these M2M transactions will need to be accounted management functions need to be highly automated for based on usage, with often complex key and designed to mutually support each other. The performance indicators (KPIs), commissions and Telarix solution gives the billing and settlements revenue share deals to account for. process a major revenue assurance boost as it validates data upon receipt, normalises that data, and New complexity, new challenges removes the errors that always occur whenever Traditional telecoms services such as voice are well human hands touch high volumes of data. covered by revenue assurance, however, as TM Traditionally, lack of automation has made auditing Forum states in a recent report, coverage of services one of the most overlooked components of a identified as ‘the future growth engines’ for CSPs, comprehensive revenue assurance strategy, but now such as digital services and IoT, is still low, and further is the time to get your proverbial ducks in a row when investment is needed in these areas. There is no it comes to partner billing and settlement. Ensuring doubt that the increase in these highly complex M2M your back office can manage tomorrow’s front office revenue streams will give rise to new avenues of challenges is the only way to protect your investment revenue leakage. Revenue leakage thrives on as partner complexity and data transactions continue complexity and change, and it can spell huge losses to climb at a frightening pace. The opportunities M2M for companies and affect business profitability. is bringing to CSPs are tremendous, just be ready for The question is, how can all of these new high the challenges. www.telarix.com

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 39 YOU MAKE MONEY WHERE OTHERS DARE NOT TREAD

You use telecom-specific analytics to know what customers want and advanced Service Enablement to create and deliver it, fast. You can manage the cloud and virtual network in real time. You swiftly roll out networks with accelerated plan-to-provision. You let partners use your component-based catalog to build on your assets and increase your revenues. You are an Agile Operator, powered by the Ericsson Agility Suite. And you are changing what’s possible in telecom.

YOU ARE THE AGILE OPERATOR

ericsson.com/ossbss @EricssonOSSBSS June / July 2015 Volume 17 Issue 3 ISSN 1745-1736

Exclusive interview with Razorsight’s CEO, Charlie Thomas

PLUS: How cloud is liberating the telecoms industry from the constrained choices of five-year planned IT economies ■ Ericsson’s Pablo Martinez on why network functions virtualisation is a critical step on the journey towards telco cloud ■ Can telco cloud provide the flexible environment for CSPs to run their businesses efficiently and agilely? ■ Read the latest news, opinion, blogs and features at www.vanillaplus.com INTERVIEW

Charlie Thomas: Some on-demand, burstable services will become the new norm

If your data flows through your fingers, so does your opportunity to participate in the cloud era As communications service providers (CSPs) set out on the road to telco cloud, they’re utilising virtualisation technologies that enable them to reset the economics of their infrastructure cost. Cost economy gains aside, the big strategic question remains how will they grow revenues and overcome significant changes to their business models in the face of increased competition, revenue compression and subscriber saturation. The answer resides in the vast volumes of data passing through CSP networks regarding customer location, activity, preferences and behaviour. Banding together and deriving insights from that data could put them in an enviable position to monetise the impending on-demand era of burstable consumption via the cloud. Charlie Thomas, the CEO of Razorsight, tells VanillaPlus that CSPs are well positioned – if they think differently and move quickly. He suggests that making use of cloud app driven data, coupled with predictive analytics, would enable CSPs to proactively know what users want and when, and enable whole-hearted participation in the cloud ecosystem. Using their knowledge and their infrastructure could put CSPs at the heart of the market, rather than positioning them solely as broadband providers connecting users, app and content providers L

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 42 I think CSPs are in the best place of anyone in the entire ecosystem to use the data to deliver proactive, superior customer experiences

VanillaPlus: What do you see as the key cloud are normally reactive to rapidly changing customer offerings that CSPs are moving towards offering? desires and behaviours so having the right set of analytical tools will become essential in order to Charlie Thomas: They have already migrated to proactively understand changing demands on their some offerings. They have some B2B offerings, networks and the propensity for burstable demand especially in the data centre market, and enterprises emerging at specific times of day or in specific locations. are all moving to VoIP and hosted PBXs as well as looking to move their own IT infrastructure to the cloud VP: To what extent are CSPs in a unique position – often provided by CSPs. to capture, collect, analyse and react in real-time to rapidly shifting consumer and business Some have dabbled in apps by putting up app stores demands and desires? but I don’t think they’ve been very successful. CT: I think CSPs are in the best place of anyone in the They could be in a very good place to play in the entire ecosystem to use the data to deliver proactive, security market. We now hear of security breaches superior customer experiences. They’ll be in a better and hacking that has jeopardised consumer and position even than Google, although Google is now enterprise data. With mobility and cloud becoming moving into some aspects of the network, and of ever more ubiquitous, I see security and protection, course controls the operating system in the majority of such as proactive fraud monitoring, being the sorts mobile devices. CSP’s ownership of the network and of applications that CSPs will be in a unique position access to the data that passes through networks, to offer. provides a substantial opportunity to benefit from being at the epicentre of all the data. The chief executives of CSPs are thinking beyond participating in cloud-based delivery toward providing They can use that data to understand consumption turnkey services and solutions. For example, certain patterns and become much more proactive. They’re in applications – such as healthcare and financial – a better position than anyone when it comes to require constant network quality so quality of service location data. for delivery becomes extremely important with far greater consequences for failure. However, thus far, CSPs have yet to realize the value of this data. They have not demonstrated they can be VP: What do CSPs need to be successful in innovative when it comes to creating exciting new offering cloud services? applications and they tend to move in a me too or herd mentality. Telefónica was an early leader in CT: Some on-demand burstable services will become looking at ways to monetise mobile data and all of the the new norm. Hence, being in a position to manage tier one CSPs have had teams all looking to do this for those will require the ability to react very quickly. CSPs several years. That said, the innovation continues to L

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 43 INTERVIEW

There is no question come from application developers and OTT apps. The device manufacturers and OTT providers, or are they CSPs need to move beyond looking at only their going to participate themselves and layer on value and that, when it comes to subscribers as that relegates them to a closed monetise such? the delivery model, ecosystem. They need an open systems approach CSPs will migrate to that links with all other CSPs in order to deliver the I believe they are in a great position to capitalise but it ubiquity that users demand. For example, if Sprint requires new thinking, new business models and using cloud and there is no offers data driven, targeted based ads to Audi, based the data that today flows right through their fingers. question that they’ll only on the preferences of its 50 million subscribers, it’s missing 95% of the market. CSPs would benefit VP: How does Razorsight complement deliver business greatly by working collaboratively to deliver all- and enable CSPs in the progression towards applications to encompassing insights based on the full ecosystem of all things cloud? users and data driven insights – powered by predictive enterprises analytics – across the full spectrum of networks. CT: We have a range of analytics solutions that are productised for the specific business needs that CSPs CSPs have been very closed and somewhat myopic. have. Our products address business challenges They would collectively benefit from a more open around the delivery of data insights. We provide approach and across all infrastructure, not just their executive insights which deliver key business and own. If they don’t, they risk the OTT providers operational metrics in real-time that reflect network continuing to outrun, outthink and outpace them. consumption and utilisation by both consumers and enterprises. There is no question that, when it comes to the delivery model, CSPs will migrate to cloud and there is When you look at the much broader and on-demand no question that they’ll deliver business applications to arena of cloud service delivery, for example increasing enterprises. That said, the true innovators will fully data capacity just for a big upload – something that is monetise their data to better serve the desires of the burstable in nature – it’s readily apparent that market. Imagine what Google or Facebook would do if predictive insights into available capacity versus they continue to evolve toward the communications demand would be very valuable. services market. The way Razorsight participates is multi-faceted. One VP: Is this a chance for CSPs to finally move way is by helping CSPs understand network away from being network operators and redefine consumption on a real-time basis. The most powerful themselves and their role? products we have are predictive analytics, which we’ve deployed across tier one, two and three service CT: Yes. it really is an ideal time. I believe that this is providers as well as content and OTT providers. One one of those opportune moments for the telecoms example is our predictive product that helps CSPs industry. You can’t argue with the success CSPs have proactively know by customer and market when experienced, but they’re now at another one of those they’re most likely to migrate from TDM to IP. Thus far, inflection points that poses both opportunity and risk. CSPs have been reactive with regard to visibility for Growth has reached a plateau and price compression this migration. is accelerating. We’re seeing massive consolidation on a global basis to offset these trends and this is IP offers greater bandwidth at a more economical increasingly a scale business. price but the rapid shift is hurting the tier one CSPs who haven’t had the analytical tools to understand CSP business models need to shift and shift quickly who is leaving or who is at risk of leaving. and those that do will be in a great position. It’s not enough to hang on to what they have for as long as I see a similar parallel in the migration to all things cloud they can. That approach will result in continued because, without proper analytics tools and insight to customer and market erosion. understand consumption, demand and customer sentiment, CSPs are likely to encounter many They can deliver valuable services to businesses and surprises – much like occurred with AT&T when it consumers and ultimately they have a great introduced the first iPhone. CSPs will benefit greatly by opportunity if they can create, innovate, design and utilising predictive analytics to forecast likely demand develop solutions. The question remains whether they and behaviour with a very high degree of accuracy as www.razorsight.com will rely primarily on network equipment vendors, they accelerate along the path of all things cloud.

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 44 TELCO CLOUD

CSPs wary of cloud as years of limited IT choices come to an end

The cloud is liberating the telecoms industry from the horrors of Soviet style, five-year planned IT economies, but the struggle is just beginning writes Nick Booth

The past is a foreign country, they do things Cloud computing offers all the exciting purchasing Cloud computing differently there. The modern state that choices of the free market. Never mind five-year plans, telecoms operators have evolved into – with cloud computing you can rent five apps in five offers all the exciting communications service providers (CSPs) – nations for five milliseconds each. Every component, T is a perfect example of this phenomenon. from processing power to petabytes, can be rented in purchasing choices of the cloud. the free market When the cloud ushered in a completely different way of working, it created both cultural changes and a The freedom to make small purchasing decisions with wealth of business options so vast that they have yet far more frequency, has liberated decision makers and to be fully explored. If cloud computing is an offering, made for a faster business culture where new projects many CSPs have yet to walk the full length of the get signed off more quickly. counter, because they have so many choices to consider. The elasticity of supply and demand is initially being used to helps CSPs face the universal challenges of Gone is the old fashioned Soviet style centrally managing costs while meeting the demands of their planned IT economy, where committees would have customers, says Guru Grewal, global head of to agonise over platform purchasing decisions, for Virtusa’s telecoms division. systems that had to last at least five, often more, years. If an IT manager got it wrong, they’d be sent to “Cloud creates elastic pay-per-use services like career Siberia, amongst all the clunking grey boxes of infrastructure as a service for lines of business to L proprietary hardware and remote silos of information. consume on demand,” says Grewal. At the same

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 45 TELCO CLOUD

time, it helps them create new business by enabling BSS/OSS functions should be managing, marketing CSPs to crunch masses of consumer data, work out and monetising the entire range of CSP activities, says what the customer wants and deliver those services Gerry Donohoe, Openet’s technical director over a newly created seamless omni channel of personalised customer experience. The agility, faster time to market, breadth of service and lower liabilities will not be achieved without In previous industrial eras, cloud would have been a challenges, warns Donohoe. Unlike typical enterprises machine for slicing and dicing resources and or hyper scale cloud players, CSPs face strict latency rebadging them. Infrastructure, office software and targets and fine-nines availability. “They need to be customer relationship management systems have all engineered into a telco cloud architecture in order to Guru Grewal: been virtualised. achieve carrier-grade [reliability and resilience],” says Cloud creates elastic pay-per-use services Donohoe. like infrastructure as This changed the customer base too, Grewal says. a service The cloud gives small and medium enterprise (SME) On a new front, cloud services could arm CSPs in the clients access to powerful computing – not just for OTT wars with the makers of over the top videos, development but for hosting and product films, music and social media. development. Now a small video player in the UK can work with a games developer in Poland and a social “CSPs can retake ownership of the user experience media expert in San Francisco. They retain the from their OTT rivals by taking the enabling role in advantages of being an SME, such as rapid decision providing all cloud content to the subscribers,” says making and low overheads, and can match the Chris Halbard, the executive vice president and weaponry of their bigger opponents. They can nip in president, international at Synchronoss Technologies. and out of markets, make quick gains and then get out once the bigger beasts enter the competition. The key to this is establishing and securely curating a unique digital profile for each of their subscribers. “In many ways cloud enables SMEs to out-innovate Gathering that personal information means you can their competition and helps them punch above their act as the subscribers’ identity in the cloud, says weight,” says Grewal, “these days business Halbard. By simplifying things for your subscribers, Chris Halbard: applications are designed with the mobile cloud you will win their affections and loyalty in a way that CSPs can retake in mind.” customer relationship management systems never ownership of the user achieved. experience from their The CSP’s business and operational support systems OTT rivals – the BSS and OSS – need to be equally fluent as the The cloud, in other words, sets subscribers free and, cloud market but, for continuity’s sake, many are still as a consequence, they will keep coming back. The rooted in the past. tiny increments of cloud services could create the unobtainable magic quality – customer loyalty – in a The cloud and the attendant hyper automation of way that big old fashioned, authoritarian systems of application development could help CSPs get these management could never match. systems updated faster. Modern cloud-deployed

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 46

EXPERT OPINION

NFV transforms passive CSP value chains into dynamic value constellations

A critical step on the road to telco cloud is network functions virtualisation (NFV). Pablo Martinez explains how the technology is moving communications service providers (CSPs) to an agile environment that enables rapid new service introduction and improved operating margins

The author, s every businessperson knows, there are Pablo Martinez, is two ways to make more money: increase product marketing revenues or decrease costs. Many words director of OSS at have been written about the new services Ericsson A and revenues that network functions virtualisation (NFV) will make possible, thanks to its elasticity and flexible support of new business models and ecosystems. However, very little is said about the second, perhaps more immediate, benefit of virtualisation – its ability to decrease service costs and improve operating margins.

NFV enables the on-demand instantiation of functions in a format that is easier to load balance and scale up Figure 1: Financial value and operational flexibility lead to enhanced business performance through or down. It allows you to move functions dynamically virtualisation across distributed hardware resources in the network, while maintaining service continuity and maintaining or This kind of consideration drives the business case for even improving quality of service (QoS). With that kind NFV. Even if you do not immediately use virtualised of real-time fluidity, virtualisation can be exploited to network functions (VNFs) to offer completely new morph a network automatically. Its functions can be services, you can use them to increase the profitability executed on the nodes running at the lowest cost at of any service, and without increasing prices. any given time, to maximise operating margins. This is an aspect of NFV that is often overlooked. Orchestrating better margins NFV lets you factor in both technical and financial NFV is all about flexibility – making services and optimisation. You can dynamically calibrate the right networks more responsive to customer needs with level of operational flexibility into virtualised functions an infrastructure that is more elastic. But without the to reduce operational costs, improve operating right kind of orchestration, this flexibility may still margins and confidently implement more profitable impair profitability. business models – even for existing services. In turn, by maximising the financial value of services, you VNFs are automatically instantiated to run on specific L maximise business performance. hardware resources based on factors such as

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 48 Figure 2: The virtualised operational environment consists of a closed-loop system

resource utilisation, workload levels and service level into cost calculations. Obviously, NFV orchestration NFV removes agreements (SLAs). But to fully harness the benefits of will require a data analytics-enriched policy virtualisation, a comprehensive type of NFV management capability, programmed with an barriers between orchestration is needed – one that is able to consider algorithmic equation, to make the proper real-time the financial and all aspects of a virtualised function, including the determinations and maintain the specified operational fluctuating costs of running it on any given hardware cost thresholds. technical aspects of resource at a specific time. running networks The complexities of NFV require tight coordination This is the subject of the TM Forum catalyst project with a highly automated OSS/BSS. For this reason, ‘Maximizing Profitability with NFV.’ It addresses the NFV orchestration should be able to work with analytics and policies needed to dynamically OSS/BSS product catalogues in the larger service determine orchestration decisions for well-rounded orchestration framework. This ensures consistency NFV instantiations. The mission of the project is to across all functions, including planning, ordering, delineate an operational environment where VNFs are provisioning, configuration and activation. instantiated and dynamically adjusted according to policies that optimise both business value – minimal NFV as a source of costs, maximum profitability – and customer experience. operational efficiency NFV removes barriers between the financial and As shown in the following figure, this operational technical aspects of running networks. This enables a environment consists of a closed-loop system more cohesive business, where customer experience, consisting of monitoring, mediation, analytics and services and the network are part of one orchestration policy-driven instantiation and restoral. The resulting – capable of optimising business value, such as NFV orchestration considers the technical and operating margins, while coordinating resources, financial metrics that make up the cost, revenue and service quality and lifecycles. The elasticity of QoS aspects of service offerings. Orchestration is virtualisation expands existing value creation systems, optimised against a wide range of financial and transforming them from passive value chains into technical objectives, such as infrastructure operational dynamic value constellations. These may make it costs, network performance and service level possible to operate emerging digital service agreements (SLAs). Policies are structured ecosystems at the lowest possible cost without accordingly. The goal is a level of business agility not compromising service quality. By dynamically moving previously possible, enabled by the inherent flexibility VNFs in real time, even across service provider of NFV orchestration. boundaries, you can comply with and more confidently guarantee SLAs while you also maximise This capability is critical. It is possible to assign operating margins – something not possible with only functions in a way that maintains service quality but is physical functions. economically inefficient at a given point in time. This can result in satisfied customers but an unsatisfactory New product development is widely seen as a source or even negative operating margin on the provided of greater profitability, but it is not the only source. service. Ideally, functions should run wherever Higher profits can also come from a more prosaic operational costs are the lowest, as long as SLAs and source: operational efficiency. This is achievable with other key criteria are also met. Some of this NFV orchestration that allows combined business and information is already monitored by data centres and financial objectives to play a more direct role in the daily other third parties and is accessible to CSPs. For operation of the underlying infrastructure. As a result, instance, the cost of electricity can be monitored in service providers will have more control over their data centre locations and network nodes and factored reputations, branding and financial performance. www.ericsson.com

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 49 VIRTUALISATION

It’s cloud Jim, but not as we know it for CSPs

The twin innovations of NFV and SDN will see communications service providers move away from hardware-defined networks to software defined, virtualised architectures. The move will take several or many years but the end game is telco cloud, a flexible agile environment in which CSPs run their businesses using cloud based software – even for OSS/BSS, writes George Malim

All CSP systems aking such systems as services from third cloud models. “We are not seeing a trend to BSS-as- parties has a series of benefits, among which a-Service in the public cloud for CSPs because BSS must now be speed of deployment and flexibility are key is too complex for a lowest common denominator, engineered for five- attractions but the end game of telco cloud one size fits all models to work,” he says. “However, T seems a distant prospect. In addition, the we are seeing a trend to private cloud deployments of nines – this is where downside for CSPs is a perceived loss of control and centralised systems within a large operator group. For a telecoms providers’ ownership of the software that supports their example, we have helped China Mobile and China businesses. Put simply, CSPs have to look at cloud Unicom to standardise and centralise their BSS needs diverge from differently to other enterprises. across their numerous operations in China, and we are in the process of helping Telenor develop a those of a typical “It’s cloud, Jim, but not as we know it,” says Justin strategy to centralise and standardise BSS across enterprise customer Paul, the head of OSS marketing at Amdocs. “The multiple business units in Europe, using multi-tenancy.” term cloud in the network context is misleading because it makes assumptions that telco networks Others thinks CSPs will target specific systems and are synonymous with IT networks, when in reality they reap cloud benefits where they appear. “CSG has are very different. CSPs will certainly embrace network delivered cloud-based BSS as a service to CSPs for functions virtualisation (NFV) and software defined many years,” says Rob Morrison, director of product networking (SDN) to make their networks more IT management, CSG International. “It enables them cloud-like, particularly in terms of business agility and to re-focus on innovation, to better serve their flexibility in which areas they do aspire to emulate the customers and to do so faster to differentiate IT cloud, but in other areas telco-cloud will have its themselves from the competition. It can stop them own unique identity.” being a software development house for day-to-day applications and processes.” For Gerry Donohoe, the technical director of Openet, it’s the traditional five-nines imperative that sets CSPs Andy Stubley, the vice president of strategy at apart. “All CSP systems must now be engineered for SysMech shares that view. “Some CSPs are already five-nines – this is where a telecoms providers’ needs embracing cloud-based services, and some are diverge from those of a typical enterprise customer,” hosting their own services in their own private clouds he says. “Cloud-based SaaS offerings present a series – the technology is proven, but the commercial and of challenges for the CSP. One such challenge is a operating models are still in their infancy,” he says. CSP’s need to provide low latency, high capacity links to public or hosted clouds. Another is the concern over Tom Griffin, the vice president of systems engineering data security, in particular personal data governed by for EMEA at SevOne, advocates caution and increasingly strict data protection regulations.” acknowledges there is mistrust of cloud propositions among CSPs. “For OSS/BSS systems there’s an Dr Andy Tiller, the vice president of product marketing inherent risk and mistrust from CSPs to deploy off- L at AsiaInfo, thinks BSS is just too complex for public premise,” he says. “They will always be deployed

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 50 Justin Paul: Telco cloud will have its own unique identity

Dr Andy Tiller: BSS-as-a-Service is too complex for one size fits all models to work

in-house even if the management and administration way to balance the capex and opex cost. This is most of them is outsourced.” likely to come in the form of licence flexibility for virtualised deployments than in the form of true SaaS.” There is, in effect, a SaaS line that CSPs won’t cross for some systems. “SaaS is most suited to solutions In spite of their concerns, executives think at least that can be commoditised, and anything the CSP some form of telco cloud will emerge, most like considers as a differentiator will be difficult for a SaaS composing a hybrid situation. “A hybrid cloud and deployment model,” adds Donohoe. “Billing would non-cloud situation will of course continue to exist, at certainly be considered as a differentiator by CSPs least for the foreseeable future,” says Donohoe. “Yet and typically involves significant customisation. the pace at which technologies such as NFV and Instead CSPs are looking to virtualisation technology SDN are progressing will increase the speed at which to better suit their BSS needs. This is because it offers the telco cloud adoption becomes a reality. Proof of some of the benefits promised by SaaS including this comes as many CSPs start to merge and Rob Morrison: lower operating costs and faster deployment, whilst consolidate their network and IT groups, evolving to a Telco cloud can stop still providing control and ownership of the software common cloud-based architecture for both telecoms CSPs being a software development house and infrastructure.” and IT domains.” for day-to-day applications and There’s obvious value in passing on the integration, Morrison warns of conflicting definitions. “This processes upgrade and management burden to a third party depends on how you define telco cloud,” he adds. cloud service provider but CSPs are still cautious of “Outsourcing network infrastructure and operations to the economics of shifting their previous system third parties as a service is already a reality, as it is for operation investments to a monthly, rental model. BSS. If you define telco cloud as only being NFV, then “CSG has found CSPs actually save money by moving this vision is a long way off. Traditional infrastructure to a service based model,” adds Morrison. “When will be in place for many years to come.” entering into such partnerships with customers CSG delivers immediate cost savings to the business and Paul at Amdocs is convinced that telco cloud will continues to deliver value as we help CSPs transform become are reality. “It is not simply the adoption of IT their operations and architecture for the future.” cloud in the network domain, but a unique approach to implementation of cloud principles in a manner that Donohoe thinks a standard SaaS model isn’t going to addresses the core requirements of the robust and work for all CSPs. “A typical SaaS consumption resilient CSP network,” he says. “While we are seeing based model is less than ideal for CSPs that need the rapid adoption of software-defined networking and Tom Griffin: predictable costs over longer time periods and a way some very advanced NFV proof-of-concepts, hybrid For OSS/BSS systems to capitalise investments,” he explains. “However the networks will become the reality for the next five-to- there’s an inherent elasticity required to handle things like intermittent ten years, with only the occasional greenfield CSP or risk and mistrust peak activity or fail-fast innovation, are hampered by early adopter breaking the trend.” from CSPs to deploy the traditional licence models. CSPs need a better off-premise

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 51 DIARY

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Super Mobility Week Network Virtualisation Forum Cloud Latin America 9-11 September, 2015 15-17 September, 2015 1-2 September, 2015 Las Vegas, USA Madrid, Spain Sao Paolo, Brazil Organiser: CTIA Organiser: Informa Organiser: Informa www.ctiasupermobility2015.com networkvirtualizationeurope.com latam.cloudworldseries.com Telco Big Data Summit @ LTE Voice Summit 2015 Super Mobility Week 29-30 September, 2015 9 September, 2015 London, UK Organiser: Informa Las Vegas, USA voice.lteconference.com Organiser: Informa usa.telcobigdata.com

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The cloud could make us all less pretentious Cloud computing could change meeting cultures and time wasting at the clients’ expense, writes Nick Booth

echnology always has unintended This has changed the dynamic of meetings consequences, many of which are terrible but completely. Once a gathering of telecoms executives often they are brilliant. The cloud could was a place where it was important to be seen and unexpectedly change some horrible social heard. My experience of creating a channel study for T attitudes. a large British telecoms company indicates that everyone in a big corporation feels they must Technology changes us in ways we don’t anticipate. contribute something in every meeting – or risk Historians have identified the invention of glass, for corporate social death. The fact that these example, as the catalyst for massive strides in the interventions multiply the complexity of the project is advance of civilisation. Letting light in on homes, pubs the least of their worries. So projects could take ten and work buildings allowed the population to see their times longer and cost ten times as much, but it didn’t The author, way to create cleaner environments, which cut matter because somebody else was paying. Nick Booth, is a contributor to disease and gave them more hours in the day when VanillaPlus and a they could function more usefully. By cutting death A telecoms engineer – who didn’t know he was technology journalist rates and raising productivity alone, glass had a speaking to a journalist – once told me how he’d fundamental role in fomenting the industrial revolution. spent a day at a Harley Street clinic, playing solitaire Its other roles in the creation of machinery are too on his laptop and listening in to patient phone calls. numerous to go into here but the point is that glass He was stringing out the job by looking busy. Fixing a created changes in society that its inventors would PBX was the work of minutes, but he had to stay on have never dared to dream of. the premises to justify the massive fee the client was going to be charged. On the other hand another product of silicon, the Cloud computing has changed that social dynamic. computer, has had mixed effects on our culture. If – Payment by results means that nobody wants to be as some Latin scholars insist – education is about the one who extends meetings longer than they need bringing out our qualities, then social media seems an to. Anyone who wants to modify the project will need awful side effect of the IT revolution. It seems to bring to be absolutely certain that they are contributing an out our basest instincts and has inspired us to improvement. Once, a development meeting was like become a community of pugnacious trolls. Who could a long leisurely lunch. Now they’re conducted with the have predicted that something with a cute name like urgency of half-time team talks – everyone is on their Twitter would be a modern Pandora’s box? feet and the basic realities are discussed.

Cloud computing is another technology whose name The cloud has also changed the nature of applications. gives it lovely fluffy associations. This issue, we make Some traditional office apps, for example, were offered the argument that this technology liberates CSPs in much more basic form once Microsoft began from the tyranny of centralised, rigid, planned selling them on the cloud. We don’t need 95% of the economies and gives them access to a vibrant, fast stuff in most applications anyway. Whatever doesn’t moving free market economy for IT resources. add – according to the editing mantra – detracts. However, there is another consequence of the cloud A telecoms engineer – which I’m far more excited about. I’m indebted to Now that there’s a mutual incentive, between clients who didn’t know he was Mark Edwards, the CEO of billing company MDS, for and CSPs, to get the job done as quickly and pointing this out. The cloud could civilise the efficiently as possible, everything is starting to change. speaking to a journalist executive classes. Often the cloud provider will try and coach the client – once told me how to keep things simple, which would never have When companies like MDS offer their services to happened in the days when fees were based on the he’d spent a day at a clients, the model of delivery changes. Since they get amount of work that could be created. Harley Street clinic, paid on a pay per use model, that concentrates everyone’s minds. Since MDS doesn’t start earning Some CSPs are changing faster than others. That playing solitaire on his money until the system is up and running, everyone is telecoms engineer I met at the parents’ evening? laptop and listening in to incentivised to get the job done as quickly and Judging by his van, he’s still in a job. I wonder how efficiently as possible. long he’ll be playing solitaire though. patient phone calls

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I JUNE / JULY 2015 53 BILLING OVER THE CLOUD: THE FASTEST WAY TO MONETIZE NEW DIGITAL SERVICES

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