SPOTLIGHT
CSPs must deliver data experiences David Sharpley is vice president of business and products for Amdocs’ newly created Data Experience business unit. The unit was launched following Amdocs’ acquisition of policy management specialist, Bridgewater Systems in August 2011. Here, he tells George Malim, editor of VanillaPlus, why the new unit has been developed, what it offers and how it provides communications services providers (CSPs) with new opportunities to bring innovative propositions to market rapidly. VanillaPlus: Bridgewater Systems is now part of Amdocs’ new Data Experience business unit. Please can you explain why the focus has been put on Data Experience and what the unit hopes to achieve? David Sharpley: From our perspective, CSPs’ customers, whether they be consumers or enterprises, aren’t buying a data plan any more, they’re buying a data experience. That means they’re not interested so much in how much bandwidth they receive as part of that plan, they’re interested in having experiences such as their social networking applications being always-on, seamless transition to Wi-Fi and so forth. That’s why we’ve created this unit and our objective is to provide a new set of solutions to enable CSPs to deliver the data experiences their customers demand. VP: Why is the Data Experience relevant to CSPs?
!
DS: Everything is about mobile data now and the reality is that wherever a user is – whether in a café, an office, at home or on the road – they have become reliant on the applications they use and
VANILLAPLUS DECEMBER/JANUARY 2012
19