VanillaPlus Magazine June-July 2012 Edition

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ISSN 1745-1736 DRIVING

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TALKING HEADS

Neuralitic COO says big data is in CSPs’ DNA – they can use it to compete with the internet giants

MANAGED SERVICES How far is too far?

OPERATOR CASE STUDY Order fulfilment in the cloud at O2 Business

PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIFTS M

CLOCKING OFF!

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Who pays for consumption?

The perils of me-too differentiation

PLUS! WeDo splurges on Connectiv for US expansion • 4G hubbing hots up • Networks teeming with streaming • Going Dutch: KPN and Vodafone choose system suppliers • Who’s doing deals in The Contract Hot List • What’s on when – Read the latest OSS & BSS news online now at www.vanillaplus.com

A new name, a new look, a new direction.

CSG and Intec are now CSG International.

With our recent acquisiƟon of Intec, CSG InternaƟonal is now a globally focused leader in helping clients ĂĐĐĞůĞƌĂƚĞ ďƵƐŝŶĞƐƐ ʹ ĂŶLJǁŚĞƌĞ͘ At the core of our union is a transformaƟonal partnership. As a combined enƟty, we now oīer our clients an unprecedented set of business support soluƟons and services to help them capitalize on dynamic market changes and opportuniƟes. With more than 25 years of experience, and serving over 500 customers in 24 countries, CSG is even beƩer posiƟoned to help businesses accurately capture, manage, generate and opƟmize revenue, strengthen customer relaƟonships, and exploit emerging opportuniƟes. We are commiƩed to long term partnership with our customers and believe collaboraƟon and communicaƟon are an integral part of helping our clients achieve success. We invite you to proĮt from our experience. Visit us at: www.csgi.com

www.csgi.com © 2011 CSG InternaƟonal, Inc.

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IN THIS ISSUE

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TALKING HEADS Louis Brun, chief operating officer and founder of Neuralitic

16 MANAGED SERVICES

22 EVENT REPORT: MACH INSIGHTS 2012

Since 2007, Neuralitic Systems has been a leading provider of mobile data intelligence solutions, holding as its mission to help mobile operators unlock the value of their data to understand subscriber behaviours that influence data service adoption. SevenFlow, the Neuralitic solution, turns massive amounts of unstructured data into compact and usable data sets, ready for use by multiple applications. By transparently extracting and analysing 100% of data usage from 100% of data subscribers on a wireless network, it provides a 360-degree view of subscribers’ and roamers’ mobile journeys. SevenFlow is specifically designed for mobile data and does not require lengthy and custom integration work. It has an optimised process for extracting, transforming and storing mobile big data.

The company draws its expertise from employees in a variety of fields related to its core business, including IP infrastructure, business intelligence, high-throughput databases, dimensional data modelling, mathematics and wireless network engineering. www.neuralitic.com

EDITOR’S COMMENT George Malim asks who should pay for network usage?

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COMPANY NEWS WeDo Technologies’ acquisition of Connectiv Solutions and Syniverse launches LTE roaming hub

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MARKET NEWS Survey finds CSPs expect accelerated bring your own device demand

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COMPANY NEWS Orga Systems launches end-to-end interconnect billing system

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CONTRACT NEWS Ontology announces two South African wins; Dutch operators make vendor selections

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PEOPLE NEWS Etisalat appoints chief procurement officer, Jason Bandy explores how you can keep up with technical developments

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THE CONTRACT HOT LIST VanillaPlus’s round up of the major contracts recently announced worldwide

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TALKING HEADS Louis Brun, chief operating officer and founder of Neuralitic says big data is in CSPs’ DNA and they should use mobile data intelligence to enable new revenues

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MANAGED SERVICES George Malim explores how far is too far when it comes to outsourcing BSS and OSS

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EXPERT OPINION: MANAGED SERVICES FOR CRITICAL PROCESSES Robert Machin says that ultimately it all depends on trust

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CASE STUDY Inside O2 Business’s CloudSense order fulfilment deployment

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EXPERT OPINION: CLOUD BROKERAGE John Frame explores how brokering SaaS applications allows CSPs to deliver personalised business bundles

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EVENT REPORT: MACH INSIGHTS 2012 Alun Lewis reports from Prague on MACH’s customer event

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DIARY Where to go and what to see

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CLOCKING OFF! Nick Booth decries CSPs’ me-too differentiation attempts

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EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Who pays for consumption?

Psychological leaps required

George Malim, Editor: VanillaPlus

A lot of the attention has been around how CSPs can monetise their networks effectively in order to develop sustainably profitable businesses. At Management World 2012 in Dublin, that was as much on the agenda as ever but there are intriguing glimpses of how attitudes are changing to encompass other ways of paying for bandwidth consumption than simply making users pay more for their megabits.

Throttling bandwidth usage is obstructive to the user experience and detrimental to CSPs' opportunity to generate profits. However, we are now entering a phase of the market’s development in which that throttling also has the potential to damage the performance of other businesses.

John Aalbers, chief executive, Volubill

Dan Baker, Research Director, Technology Research Institute

Martin Creaner, president, TM Forum

Andreas Freund, VP Marketing, Orga Systems GmbH

Louis Hall, chief executive, Cerillion Technologies

Gabriel Matsliach, general manager, BSS Product Line, Comverse

Pat McCarthy, VP of Global Marketing, Service Delivery Solutions, Telcordia

Simon Muderack, COO, Tribold

John Rainger, vice president, EMEA, CSG International

Mac Taylor, CEO, The Moriana Group

Chris Yeadon, director of Product Marketing, Ericsson

Dr Reinhard Zuba, CMO, Vipnet (Telekom Austria)

I have heard examples of organisations such as YouTube being potentially interested in subsidising consumption of its video. It could, for instance, pay for its users to engage a ‘turbo’ button to increase their bandwidth to download a high definition video on the move with guaranteed quality. YouTube, of course, makes the money back – and more – through the advertising revenue it derives.

Another scenario put forward by Ericsson would see companies such as travel services provider Expedia looking to subsidise roaming for its customers. An Expedia customer would be offered a cheap or free roaming deal and Expedia would offer further services, knowing that the user is in a particular location and receptive to relevant cross-sell and up-sell offers.

“People like Expedia might be willing to pay for consumption,” explained Martin Sundblad, director of portfolio management at Ericsson. “They know they lose the opportunity to support [their customers if they switch off roaming].”

That opportunity could involve selling of services such as travel insurance, restaurant bookings, entertainment tickets and a raft of other travel and location-specific propositions. “We can do it,” said Sunblad’s colleague Peter Briscoe. “It’s not technically difficult.”

Critically, both believe there are a large number of willing partners keen to participate in this revived type of communications value chain. It’s a psychological leap for CSPs but it could be just the step needed to create the sustainable telecoms business of the future.

VanillaPlus is distributed free to selected named individuals worldwide who meet the Publisher's terms of Circulation Control. If you would like to apply for a regular free copy supplied at the Publisher's discretion visit www.vanillaplus.com If you do not qualify for a free subscription, paid subscriptions can be obtained.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, stored, published or in any way reproduced without the prior written consent of the Publisher © Prestige Media Ltd 2012

Enjoy the magazine George Malim

EDITOR George Malim Tel: +44 (0) 0208 292 4036 george@vanillaplus.com DIGITAL EDITOR Nathalie Bisnar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 808690 nathalie@vanillaplus.com

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Cherisse Draper Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897646 cherisse@vanillaplus.com BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Mark Bridges Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897645 mark@vanillaplus.com

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Charlie Bisnar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 844017 charlie@vanillaplus.com PUBLISHER Jeremy Cowan Tel: +44 (0) 1420 588638 jc@vanillaplus.com

CIRCULATION Circdata Tel: +44 (0) 1635 869868 PUBLISHED BY Prestige Media Ltd. Suite 28, 30 Churchill Square Kings Hill, West Malling Kent ME19 4YU, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897645

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DESIGN Jason Appleby Ark Design Consultancy Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1787 881623

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WeDo Technologies acquires Connectiv Solutions to target North America

Rui Paiva: North American expansion

WeDo Technologies has announced the acquisition of Connectiv Solutions, which provides management of telecoms network usage expenses. The deal will strengthen WeDo Technologies’ presence in North America.

Connectiv Solutions, which is based in the US, assists wireless and wireline carriers to maximise the efficiency of their networks; enabling them to simplify vast and complex data streams and identify cost saving opportunities. It delivers these services through four major business segments; traffic management, interconnect management, revenue assurance and managed services. The companies claim there is no customer overlap and WeDo Technologies expects the deal to deliver strong upsell and

cross-sell opportunities for both companies’ offers. Connectiv Solutions has more than 10 customers in the US and four of the top 10 wireless operators in the country are Connectiv Solutions’ customers.

Although financial terms were undisclosed, Connectiv reported revenues of close to US$8 million and a headcount of 35 people for FY2011. will provide a solid foundation for WeDo Technologies to build upon within North America.

Rui Paiva, WeDo Technologies’ CEO, said the acquisition will enable WeDo Technologies to build its North American presence. “One of our strategic ambitions was to become a major player in the revenue assurance and fraud management space in North America both on SaaS and managed services business models,” he said. “This deal with Connectiv Solutions enables us to realise these ambitions.”

Syniverse establishes LTE hub for full IMS and LTE interworking

Jeff Gordon: Ready for LTE and roaming

Syniverse has launched its LTE Hub, a one-stop exchange that delivers LTE and IMS interoperability and interworking, 4G clearing and settlement, nextgeneration customer care solutions and advanced messaging gateway capabilities.

“Around the globe, operators are making tremendous progress rolling out LTE networks,” said Jeff Gordon, president and CEO of Syniverse. “For end users, the most important factor is that these networks interoperate with each other and interwork with supporting Wi-Fi and legacy cellular networks to offer the ubiquitous coverage to which mobile users have become accustomed. For operators, this means they must take steps to deliver full-service 4G

interoperability and interworking today to deliver advanced services well into the future.”

Activity around LTE hubbing and IP exchanges (IPX) is starting to accelerate as LTE comes to market and more and more traffic is carried over IP technology. The industry is going through a landgrab phase as exchange providers seek to attract large numbers of CSP customers, thereby making their exchanges more attractive to CSPs. In addition to Syniverse, IP Exchange providers include BICS, BT Global Telecom Markets, Sybase 365 and others, although Syniverse would argue that the establishment of its LTE Hub goes beyond the standard IPX concept because it integrates 4G with customer care solutions and other functionality such as LTE roaming, video calling and messaging support. Syniverse claims its IPX solution now connects more than 80 CSPs.

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Alcatel-Lucent offers managed customer experience service Alcatel-Lucent has introduced a new managed service for CSPs that it claims will allow them to assure consistent quality of service for their subscribers.

Drawing on Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Solutions portfolio – launched in February – as well as patentpending methodology developed by Bell Labs, the new managed service will monitor and improve aspects of a consumer’s experience that have the most impact on their satisfaction with the service provider.

The Bell Labs methodology used by the new managed services takes a unique approach to determining the most accurate and reliable indicators of customer satisfaction, which can be customised for each individual service provider.

CSG launches new version of Singleview CSG International has announced a new version of CSG Singleview, its real-time, convergent customer management, charging and billing solution for communications service providers (CSPs) as well as companies in other industries, such as financial services, who require highly flexible and advanced billing and customer management capabilities.

Singleview is in use at more than 60 wireline, wireless, IP carriers, Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) and financial services providers including Mastercard, XO Communications, SingTel Optus and Hutchison 3G properties across the globe.

“Singleview’s ability to adapt to the needs of market-leading companies is what has made it a world-leading charging and billing solution that helps a variety of service providers to adapt quickly and easily to unpredictable future demands,” said Jennifer Fellows, vice president of product management at CSG International. “Unlike competing systems, Singleview can support change without costly customisation, through an innovative architecture proven in industries as varied as financial services, transport and logistics, as well as in telecommunications.”

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Amdocs Survey finds CSPs expect accelerated BYOD demand N E W S U P D AT E

66% of marketers see a need for data scientists to manage big data Aprimo, a Teradata company that provides cloud-based integrated marketing software, has found that 66% of attendees at its 2012 Marketing Summit feel the need for data scientists to help them manage big data.

500 Summit attendees were polled at the event and, while 38% said they already incorporate data-driven insights into their marketing decisions, they find it difficult to gather and integrate.

More worryingly, the survey found more than half are not engaging with big data because they simply don’t know where to start.

“Driving value from data can be transformational for businesses,” says Jeff Chamberlain, vice president of marketing at Aprimo. “Insight from customer data allows for better customer engagement and targeting, which leads to increased sales and ROI. However, with expanding sources and usage, the data management model together with the business functions it serves - is changing fast: marketers need fast and easy access to more, as well as good quality data. Data is getting bigger due to multi-channel customer interactions, but by the same token, consent for data usage is getting harder. It can therefore be challenging for marketers to know how to best derive optimal business value from their data.”

Eight times more mobile social media in 2016 In 2016, mobile phone users will, on average, consume 6.5 times as much video, over eight times as much music and social media, and nearly 10 times as much games as in 2011 according to the latest forecasts from Informa Telecoms & Media.

There will be a big upsurge in traffic for most mobile data services over the next five years, largely driven by the spread of smartphones and a 23% increase in the number of mobile users. In 2016, the average mobile user will be browsing six times as many web pages and downloading 14 times as many megabytes of applications on their handset as in 2011.

Text (SMS) and picture (MMS) messaging traffic will continue to grow, but at a much slower pace than most other mobile data services. On average, mobile users sent 118 SMS and two MMS a month in 2011, compared to the 146 SMS and four MMS they will be sending in 2016.

Amdocs has announced the results of a global survey that explores the growing demand for bring your own device (BYOD) support from business customers and the system implications this has for service providers. The survey, conducted by analyst firm Heavy Reading, highlights the need for converged business and operational support systems (B/OSS) to provide an end-to-end view of the customer, linking personal and business personae for a unified customer experience.

“BYOD has been gaining momentum as consumers want to bring their favourite smartphones and tablets to work and, with enterprises anticipating benefits such as increased productivity and employee satisfaction, we surely expect this trend continue to grow," said Ari Banerjee, senior analyst at Heavy Reading. “But BYOD creates new complexities for both the enterprise and the service provider who must support features such as device care, bill split, security, shared loyalty and data plans and differentiated quality of service. If service providers can overcome the technological challenges of providing these features, the enhanced customer

experience will lead to huge gains in customer satisfaction and loyalty.”

The research found that the majority (73%) of service providers expect to see a 10-25% increase in BYOD device requests from business customers in the coming year due to the recognised benefits for businesses. Cost savings, employee satisfaction and increased productivity are cited as the primary benefits of BYOD for service providers’ business customers, with almost half of service provider respondents believing that BYOD will decrease costs and increase productivity by 10-25% for these customers.

“The business segment represents huge revenue potential for service providers, and to capitalise on this market they will need to offer tailored and competitive offerings, including BYOD,” said Rebecca Prudhomme, vice president of product and solutions marketing for Amdocs.

“By converging BSS and OSS, service providers gain a unified customer view required to support BYOD requests, such as creating hybrid plans and offering device support, ultimately simplifying the customer experience.”

Mobile networks teeming with streaming, says Sandvine report Sandvine has released its Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H2012 report based on data from a selection of Sandvine’s 200 customers in North America, Europe, Middle Dave Caputo: East and Africa, Video trends Caribbean and Latin uncovered America and AsiaPacific. Key findings include that YouTube is the largest source of mobile video traffic in every region examined, accounting for as much as 25% of network data and no less than 12%, in North America, video and audio streaming make up more than half of mobile data traffic, led by YouTube, Pandora and Netflix, and instant messaging applications like WhatsApp continue to enjoy widespread adoption while eating into

SMS revenue; for example, on an Asian mobile network serving one million subscribers, an average of 7.6 million WhatsApp messages were sent per day “Aggregate reports like our Global Internet Phenomena shed light on the internet as a whole and inform operators on trends relevant to their business,” said Dave Caputo, cofounder, president and CEO of Sandvine. “However, the real value for our customers is to take an internal census of data and trends on their own networks. Armed with detailed network data we work with our customers to develop tailored service offerings, traffic policies and usage plans.”

“Region by region, network by network and device by device, the need for video quality metrics is consistent across the board,” added Caputo.

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Orga Systems launches end-to-end interconnect billing Orga Systems has released OS.Interconnect, an endto-end interconnect billing solution developed to help CSPs manage their Ramez Younan: interconnect business.

With a fully integrated Prepare for new models suite of interconnect management tools it is designed to prevent wasted revenues by ensuring every call is captured, rated and invoiced correctly. Using OS.Interconnect, Orga Systems estimates it can help CSPs maximise interconnect margins up to a double digit number.

OS.Interconnect responds to the needs of CSPs by providing a way of managing a multitude of trading partners and a wide range of network technologies. It

gives CSPs streamlined control and with Orga Systems’ interconnect technology; calls can be tracked from any network provider and termination point. With OS.Interconnect, CSPs get everything from end-to-end efficiencies, consistent data handling to easy-to-use interfaces and automation of repetitive tasks, reducing the risk of human input errors.

“CSPs need an agile product platform and a responsive vendor partner. End-toend control helps service providers maximise their revenue streams, reduce costs and offers a depth of interconnect management other vendors can’t match,” says Ramez Younan, CEO of Orga Systems. “OS.Interconnect gives CSPs full control of their interconnected business needs. We want to fulfil business demands by preparing our customers for new settlement models and partnerships.”

Arieso extends solutions to support multi-technology LTE networks Arieso has launched the latest generation of its ariesoGEO performance engineering solution. ariesoGEO now supports GSM, UMTS and LTE technologies within a single platform and automates optimisation between these layers.

Designed to help mobile network operators solve performance challenges, ariesoGEO provides valuable insights into the network as experienced by customers. These insights allow operators to manage network planning and performance more cost effectively, while delivering previously unobtainable insights into customer experience.

With the roll out of LTE gathering momentum, high value customers with the latest devices are beginning to interact with a complex multi-layer network. How those layers – 2G, 3G and 4G/LTE – work together is becoming critical in defining the customer experience. To meet this challenge,

ariesoGEO is the first enterprise geolocation solution that includes the ability to automatically optimise between technology layers based on measured coverage, a capability previously unavailable.

“There really is no such thing as an LTE subscriber. LTE devices will use the UMTS and GSM layers of the network as well, putting operator engineering teams under greater strain. Increasing complexity demands new thinking and new approaches to managing and optimising networks,” said Shirin Dehghan, CEO, Arieso.

“By extending our capability to cover LTE networks, we’re able to provide operators with a comprehensive solution that starts to automate the optimisation of existing and future network evolutions, solving complex integration challenges. It’s a real industry first.”

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Clarity releases Business Quality Manager Clarity Business Quality Manager (BQM), which extends the concepts and processes used in service quality management, to the measurement of key processes across the entire telecommunications business, is now available. Clarity BQM provides sophisticated data aggregation and presentation tools to help operators make real-time decisions in order to measure and improve key business performance KPIs, such as customer experience, service quality, network efficiency and operational efficiency.

“Clarity, with its understanding of the network provisioning and assurance processes along with the tools to map the network to the customer service, provides the foundation for a broad view of the business” said Christopher Smith, chief operating officer at Clarity.

“The Clarity solution, working in conjunction with key systems such as CRM, probe and mediation solutions, enables operators to monitor the customer experience from many viewpoints including the device, service and network, so that it can be proactively managed.”

Sigma Systems unveils Cloud Service Broker Sigma Systems has announced Sigma Cloud Service Broker, an integrated SaaS service fulfillment solution for the selection, provisioning and management of SaaS services and applications.

The Sigma Cloud Service Broker platform is designed to reduce costs, remove operational silos and reduces overall capex and opex by providing a single-sourced and deployed architecture for managing all onnetwork business services, including VoIP and high-speed broadband, as well as cloud-based SaaS services. The Cloud Service Broker enables communication service providers to extend value-added SaaS services to their small and medium business (SMB) customers in a scalable, repeatable and economic manner.

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CSL Hong Kong selects The Now Factory to optimise customer experience The Now Factory has announced that its Mobile Moments Vantage system has been selected by CSL, the Hong Kong mobile CSP, to provide real-time visibility into mobile data usage, helping optimise the customer experience and increase operational efficiencies.

CSL is the leading mobile operator in Hong Kong with over three million subscribers and delivers an innovative range of voice and data services. The company selected Mobile Moments Vantage to gain greater visibility into how its customers experience mobile data services, identify the root cause of performance issues that may occur, and provide the necessary answers to optimise the customer journey in real time across its LTE and UMTS networks.

Christian Daigneault, chief technology officer at CSL, said: “The customer is at the heart of everything we do at CSL. The Now Factory will enable us to understand more clearly how we engage with our customers, and what we can do to deliver an exceptional level of user experience for all our mobile data services.�

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Sprint's Network Vision programme to use NetCracker TOMS suite Sprint is to extend the footprint of NetCracker's Telecom Operations and Management Solutions Suite across its Network Vision programme. As a component of the programme, NetCracker will provide a consolidated, centralised means of managing and provisioning Sprint's new mobile infrastructure. The systems will enable Sprint to streamline its provisioning processes, increase operational efficiencies, reduce fallout, and retire a number of legacy systems.

Once fully deployed, NetCracker will deliver multiple benefits to Sprint, including reduced opex, enhanced QoS and a streamlined operations support system footprint.

Sprint's Network Vision Programme is an innovative, next-generation network designed to enhance voice quality and data speeds for Sprint customers across the United States. When fully operational, Network Vision will consolidate multiple network technologies into a unified, seamless, high-performing network.

"We have been working with NetCracker for over five years," said John Harrison, vice president of network supplier

performance management at Sprint.

"We have collaborated on numerous, complex, multi-phase projects and NetCracker continues to provide us with leading-edge solutions that have helped us improve internal operations and enhance our business."

Andrew Feinberg, president and CEO of NetCracker, added: "We see participation in Sprint's innovative Network Vision programme as a testimonial to our commitment and contribution over the last five years. Sprint's approach to network and business transformation sets a high standard in the industry and we are proud to be a part of their ongoing mission."

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Ontology Intelligent 360 semantic search deployed at Vodacom and Neotel in South Africa Ontology Systems, a provider of semantic search provider for enterprise data alignment, has announced that Vodacom SA has Benedict selected Ontology Enweani: Vodacom has a Intelligent 360 to unified view enhance its service assurance operations.

Ontology Intelligent 360 provides a unified view of Vodacom's transport network topologies in relation to customers' services. This enhances their service assurance processes by improving the speed and consistency of network management information about disparate Operations and Business Support Systems.

Ontology Systems' CEO, Benedict Enweani commented: "We are delighted that Vodacom SA has chosen Ontology Intelligent 360.

Ontology has rapidly provided Vodacom with a unified model of physical and logical network

resources, services and customers without the need for a large upfront design effort and hefty on-going cost of change."

Ontology has also announced that Neotel, South Africa's first converged telecoms network operator, has extended its use of Ontology Systems to deliver Ontology Intelligent 360 for an aligned view of services. Built from underlying OSS/BSS data, the solution will help improve customer experience, reduce billing and provisioning errors and reduce cost by freeing up stranded assets.

Phinda Ncala, Neotel's CIO commented: "Ontology has already proved a valuable tool for Neotel and we are pleased to extend our use of Ontology to help improve our service management. The SaaS deployment option provides Neotel with a low monthly cost and we are looking forward to this solution helping us to recognise even more benefits for our business and customers."

Vodafone Netherlands to deploy Amdocs Business Support System Vodafone Netherlands is to deploy an Amdocs Business Support System solution (BSS) based on Amdocs’ Customer Experience Systems (CES) portfolio.

The system enables telecoms companies to interact with customers on sales and services related queries, covering processes such as ordering, provisioning, fulfillment and invoicing.

Vodafone Netherlands will it across all customer channels in a phased approach over the next few years.

“We expect this agreement to enable Vodafone Netherlands to enhance our customers’ experience across all channels,” said Ben Kocken, head of experience, transformation and

capability at Vodafone Netherlands.

Brian Shepherd, group president for Amdocs, added: “This agreement is testament to our deepening relationship with Vodafone. Amdocs is committed to delivering more value to Vodafone as it further enhances its operational efficiencies.”

This deal builds on the relationship between Amdocs and Vodafone which had previously signed a global license and maintenance agreement effective from October 2010. This global license and maintenance agreement enables Vodafone local markets to buy Amdocs products and services under pre-agreed terms.

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KPN chooses Comarch for outsourced fulfillment automation Comarch has supported KPN in the migration of its Fulfillment Automation System to the new version (2010 R2) of Microsoft BizTalk server and its transfer to the Comarch Data Center in Krakow.

In addition, during the migration of the platform, existing errors were detected and retrieved. Comarch is also responsible for the maintenance of KPN’s Fulfillment Automation system.

“We are very happy to have been chosen by KPN as a reliable business partner for outsourcing. We believe that our hosting services will help KPN optimise operational costs and support them in offering innovative services,” says Joanna Słowińska, business development director Benelux and a board member of Comarch.

Lebanese operator Alfa selects Astellia for network optimisation Alfa, the Lebanese mobile operator managed by Orascom Telecom, has chosen Astellia, to deliver a complete vendor-independent 3G+ monitoring solution which will highlight the quality experience of Alfa’s subscribers and offer enhancements to the operator’s enhancements on network capabilities.

“This partnership comes in line with the national quality of service (QoS) network plan for 2012 which has set concrete targets. Astellia’s 3G+ monitoring solution will allow us to proactively address any quality problems on our 3G+ network and analyse hidden network issues,” said Assaad Abousleiman, Alfa’s chief technology officer. “This will enhance the efficiency and performance of our network and result in offering our entire base of subscribers of 1.7 million with a first class quality of experience (QoE).

We are confident that Astellia will lead the project successfully and allow us to address all requirements within the set timelines.”

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Sunrise deploys Orga Systems’ real-time charging and billing platform Sunrise, the largest private telecoms provider in Switzerland, has started to upgrade to Orga Systems’ OPSC Gold real-time billing and charging platform to enable full monetisation of prepaid voice and data services as well as supporting Sunrise’s customer loyalty strategy in the prepaid sector. Sunrise will also deploy Orga Systems’ Next Generation Control Point (NGCP), 3GPP compliant, real-time data charging to support growing demand for data services. The new systems will be rolled out in the first quarter of 2013.

Orga Systems has a 13-year relationship with Sunrise and has helped it to manage charging for their subscribers. Sunrise has now upgraded to OPSC Gold to access a real-time convergent platform for voice and data services. The mobile operator decided to migrate to OPSC Gold because Orga Systems fulfilled all its requirements and has proven itself a reliable and long-term partner.

Astellia wins H3G Austria optimisation deal Austrian mobile operator Hutchison 3G (H3G) has chosen Astellia to be the supplier for its end-to-end mobile broadband network monitoring and optimisation.

Over the last ten years Astellia has been providing H3G with performance intelligence to optimize its UTRAN network. With this new contract, Astellia will extend its monitoring to H3G’s core network. This will hereby give H3G a holistic view of its 3G network efficiency and play a key part in ensuring seamless premium service quality delivery.

Astellia’s non-intrusive, vendorindependent Core PS monitoring solution provides H3G advanced end-toend service analysis and fast troubleshooting of QoE issues. In case of a customer complaint related to poor quality of service, the H3G Customer Care team can, in a matter of seconds, access any subscriber’s activity and precisely understand the conditions experienced by the end-user and identify the root contributors to the experience degradation.

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Omantel selects Aito for customer experience analytics Omantel has selected Aito Technologies’ customer experience analytics solution, Aito CEA, to provide greater insight and intelligence into its customer usage.

Anssi Tauriainen: Understand the customer lifecycle

Using Aito CEA, Omantel intends to gain a better understanding of the customer lifecycle and ultimately deliver a superior customer experience. Omantel selected Aito CEA for its ability to quickly and easily unify the business, customer and network traffic data and provide centralised, easy-to-use real-time analytics out-of-the-box.

By using Aito CEA, Omantel is expected to gain a better understanding of the customer lifecycle and ultimately deliver a superior customer experience. Aito CEA help Omantel obtain insights into: market trends, such as market segments, market share and market growth; customer trends, such as usage patterns, customer segments, profitability and

churn; service usage patterns, offers and campaign performance; and network statistics, utilisation and device information.

Jalal Hussain Abdullatif, manager of Business Intelligence at Omantel’s Corporate Strategy Unit commented: “Great customer experience is at the very heart of our business and we strive to provide the best possible service and the most attractive products to our customers. The choice of Aito CEA will enable us to achieve this through analysis of a broad combination of data and obtain insights into market, customer, service and network trends resulting in improved customer experience and reduced churn.”

Anssi Tauriainen, CEO of Aito Technologies, added: “As Aito continues to expand rapidly across the globe we are delighted to be selected by Omantel, a leading telecoms operator in the Middle East, to provide deep and broad understanding of their customer lifecycle.”

dtac offers global Wi-Fi data roaming based on iPass system iPass has launched the dtac wifi roaming solution from dtac, a mobile network operator in Thailand. iPass Open Mobile Exchange (iPass OMX) and the iPass Mobile Network provide the technology underpinnings for the new dtac package from Deutsche Telekom's Wi-Fi Mobilize offering.

With more than 23 million subscribers, dtac is now enabled to offer its customers a seamless global Wi-Fi service on Android smartphones and tablets along with the iPhone and iPad. "dtac leads the roaming market with a peace-of-mind experience strategy in 2012, by launching a data roaming service for our customers when they travel," said Petter Pedersen, division head - Corporate & International Business, dtac. "Our smartphone travelers can access internet abroad with no more bill shock from the new data

roaming offers for all roaming networks used in 50 countries, and enjoy fast speed with unlimited volume from dtac wifi roaming in 120 countries worldwide.”

Holger Magnussen, senior vice president of Deutsche Telekom's International Carrier Sales & Solutions, added: "Deutsche Telekom's Wi-Fi Mobilize solution is enabling frontrunners like dtac to offer a reliable data transmission complement to 2G and 3G mobile data networks at a reasonable price. dtac is delighted about the fast and easy implementation of Wi-Fi Mobilize and the solution fits perfectly to their current initiative to extend their own national wireless network. dtac customers using the Deutsche Telekom Wi-Fi roaming service benefit from the simple access to a growing footprint of over 780,000 hotspots in 120 countries around the world."

Sponsored by:

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Welcome to our regular Jobs column, brought to you by Identify Networks, Sponsors of People News

The speed with which new technologies are now evolving could impact on your career more than you think. Just ask yourself: Will the technical skills you have today be more or less valuable in five years time?

Jason Bandy

We all need to keep ahead of the competition if we want to earn top rewards. We all need to develop a learning plan and improve our cross-functional skills. It’s important to recognise that your strength – for example, your technical specialism – may well become your weakness if you don't evolve. It's vital that we do our homework and identify the technology trends that are impacting our particular industry and then jump aboard. Get involved – small steps in the right direction will eventually get you there. It doesn't matter if your current employer doesn't have the scope to expose you to tomorrow's hot technology. The smart folks out there – your competitors – aren't waiting around for knowledge to be thrown at them; they are proactive and putting in the man hours to develop their knowledge, regardless of what's on offer at the office.

You too can do the same. There are webinars, online tools, training courses, blogs, forums, networking events, social media groups, seminars and conferences where you can engage with like-minded people, improve your understanding and build a network within these new fields. Proactive, engaging people find it pretty easy to market themselves, so announce to others what it is you are interested in, demonstrate how proactive you have been, how passionate you are and doors will open. People don't suddenly get promoted, they just finally get rewarded for doing what they have typically been doing for a long while. Those with an active, intellectual curiosity and an enthusiasm for the unknown are more likely to stay at the cutting edge of technology and reap the rewards. The message is: with some forethought and planning we can all stay tech savvy, develop our professional skills, build our networks and only then will we truly maximise our earning potential.

Jason Bandy, Director, identify Group Ltd jason.bandy@identifynetworks.com Mobile: +44 (0) 750 001 3084 Tel: +44 (0) 845 370 2900 www.identifynetworks.com

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Roland Haidner takes over as head of M&A at Telekom Austria Group Roland Haidner has been appointed director of mergers and acquisitions for the Telekom Austria Group. Haidner who was previously CFO of Vip mobile – Telekom Austria’s Serbian Roland Haidner subsidiary – has been overseeing M&A activities for the group since early 2012. His role will cover all seven Central and Eastern European markets in which the Telekom Austria Group has a presence.

“My objective is to continue to find and pursue initiatives that will deliver value for the Telekom Austria Group – be it via acquisitions, partnerships or through the ongoing assessment of the group’s existing portfolio,” said Haidner. “My team and I look forward to meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities offered by the telecom industry in the CEE region.”

Before this appointment, Haidner had been a member of the management board of both Mobiltel in Bulgaria and Vip mobile in Serbia. While he was CFO at Vip mobile the company was awarded a third mobile license in Serbia in 2006, which has since made a positive contribution to Group EBITDA since 2010.

Currently, the Serbian mobile operator has a customer base of over 1.6 million mobile subscribers and a market share of 16.1%.

Etisalat establishes digital services unit, appoints Khalifa Al Shamsi leader

Khalifa Al Shamsi

Etisalat Group, the CSP with operations in 17 markets across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, has appointed Khalifa Al Shamsi as chief digital services officer for Etisalat Group and its newly established Etisalat Digital Services Unit.

The new division which will focus on various industry verticals such as machine-to-machine (M2M), cloud services, commerce, digital advertisement, advanced communications, digital entertainment, and video services aims to boost the group position in the digital eco-system and driving innovation and advanced services to the group customers across all areas of operation.

Al Shamsi joined Etisalat as a graduate trainee 19 years ago, over the course of which he has held various senior managerial positions within Etisalat UAE demonstrating remarkable performance as senior vice president of marketing – consumer in 2009.

Obaid Bokisha

Etisalat Group has also promoted Obaid Bokisha from senior vice president – mobile networks, Etisalat Group, to his new position as chief procurement officer. The new appointment will support Etisalat Group’s strategic business for the UAE and across its 16 other markets.

Bokisha will be in charge of all major contracts and agreements for the Group across all of its’ regional and global markets.

Commenting on his appointment, Bokisha said: “I am extremely honoured to be entrusted with such an important role at Etisalat Group, one that will establish our future expansion across key markets around the world. I look forward to delivering outstanding results, placing the group’s operation on the world map in a bid to become one of the top ten telecoms companies in the world.”

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VanillaPlus Hot List: June/July 2012 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" <editorial@vanillaplus.com> Vendor(s)

Client, Country

Product / Service (Duration & Value)

Awarded

Agama Technologies

Canal Digital Kabel, Norway

Agama digital TV monitoring solutions for end-to-end quality assurance on nationwide cable service

Alcatel-Lucent

Telenor Group

Alcatel-Lucent Digital Media Store cloud-based one stop shop to provide customers with access to music, apps, video and ebooks

6.12

Allot Communications 3, UK

Deployment of Ortiva wireless internet video optimisation gateway (iVOG) to optimise network cost and quality

6.12

Amdocs

Tata Communications, India and North America

Deployment of Amdocs Resource Manager to consolidate network inventory

5.12

Amdocs

Vodafone, Netherlands

Amdocs Business Support System solution based on Amdocs Customer Experience Systems portfolio deployed across all channels

5.12

6.12

Amdocs

Sprint, USA

Amdocs Smart Agent Desktop to enhance customers' experience while streamlining call centre operations

5.12

Astellia

Alfa, Lebanon

Extension of existing partnership to deliver complete, vendor independent 3G+ monitoring system

6.12

BICS

Espresso Group, Africa Roaming hub services across Africa for sub-Saharan CSP

6.12

Cerillion

Truphone, global

Five-year contract for convergent CRM and billing system in three countries, expanding to eight

6.12

Cerillion

yuMobile, Kenya

Contract extension to support growth plans of Essar Telecom unit with Cerillion CRM Plus, Service Manager and Interconnect Manager

5.12

Comarch

KPN, Netherlands

Migration of fulfilment automation systems to new version and transfer to Comarch data centre in Krakow, Poland

5.12

Comverse

M1, Singapore

Upgrade from Comverse Kenan to Comverse ONE to support new services with real-time rating and charging

6.12

EBPSource

Virgin Media, UK

Mobile ebilling system for 1.5 million mobile contract subscribers

5.12

FTS

Vodafone, Iceland

FTS Leap Billing end-to-end customer care solution to enable flexible charging

5.12

Huawei

Telefónica, UK

Five-year managed services agreement to plan and manage core transmission, mobile access and core network build

5.12

MACH

France TelecomOrange, global

MACH Subscriber Performance Manager to help grow roaming revenues through granular reporting of subscriber behaviour

5.12

Metratech

PT Infinys System, Indonesia

Deployment of Metratech Metanga, multi-tenant, cloud-based billing and revenue management application

5.12

NetCracker

Allstream, Canada

Deployment of NetCracker Price Quotation Management and enterprise-wide Product Catalogue as part of BSS transformation programme

5.12

NetCracker

Sprint, USA

Extending usage of NetCracker's Telecom Operations and Management Solutions suite (TOMS) as part of Sprint's Network Vision programme

5.12

The Now Factory

CSL, Hong Kong

Deployment of Mobile Moments Vantage system to provide real-time visibility into mobile data usage

5.12

Ontology

Neotel, South Africa

Deployment of Ontology Intelligent 360 semantic search system for enterprise data alignment

6.12

Ontology

Vodacom, South Africa Deployment of Ontology Intelligent 360 semantic search system to enhance service assurance operations

5.12

Sybase365

Globe Telecom, Philippines

IPX voice service to support trans-operator interconnect services globally for Filipino mobile operator

5.12

Syniverse

BTC, Bahamas

Multi-year contract makes Syniverse the preferred roaming, messaging network and real-time intelligence provider to Bahamas Telecommunications Corporation

5.12

Tecnotree

DNA, Finland

Interactive Voice Response system to consolidate all customers care IVR services onto a single platform

6.12

Tecnotree

Tango, Luxembourg

Voice messaging solution based on Tecnotree Agility call completion product

6.12

VOSS Solutions

Inteliquent, global

VOSS technology provides Ineliquent and its channel partners with a concise dashboard view of its Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution environment

6.12

Truphone chooses Cerillion CRM and billing for global service Truphone, which provides a global GSM service, has signed a five-year contract with Cerillion Technologies for its convergent CRM and Billing solution. The new system will support Truphone’s existing presence in three countries and expansion into a further eight territories over the next year.

Cerillion is implementing the Revenue Manager, CRM Plus, Service Manager, Output Streamer and Information Manager modules from its pre-integrated product suite, and will perform a migration from Truphone’s legacy system. The new multi-country solution from Cerillion will enable Truphone to rapidly launch into new markets using a single centralised system, providing close integration with Truphone’s unique technical developments to enable the simultaneous management of a single GSM service across multiple network operators.

“Truphone has a simple premise for customers, but under the

hood there is enormous complexity - in tariffing, in billing and in operations. We conducted a detailed competitive RFP and Cerillion emerged as the clear winner – it has the scale and strength to handle the complexity of our offering, and the flexibility to help us enter new markets quickly and efficiently,” says Colin Windsor, Chief Operating Officer, Truphone. “By working with Cerillion we will be able to maintain a single product catalogue across multiple markets, and support customers from multiple countries and their associated currencies and local data within one system deployment.”

“Cerillion is proud to be working with such an innovative player in the mobile market,” commented Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies. “Truphone are the pioneers of a truly global mobile world in which customers can make and receive calls, messages and data services worldwide within one monthly bundle, and we are delighted to be supporting them in their on-going growth.”

Sponsored by:

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CSPs must extract intelligence from big data to compete with internet giants Managing subscriber data is part of CSPs’ DNA, they just need to apply it to mobile data so that they can effectively monetise its potential. Here, Louis Brun, chief operating officer and founder of Neuralitic, a provider of big data and mobile data intelligence solutions that was established in 2007, explains how mobile data intelligence enables new revenues and improves marketing and segmentation.

VanillaPlus: Neuralitic is a relatively new company; please tell us why you established the company and how the company has developed?

Louis Brun: I’ve been working in the mobile data market for 15 years so I can see how data evolves. In 2006, when the technologies were preparing for data and 3G, it became clear to me that operators didn’t know what data would be all about. They’re good at bundling minutes and messages but the complexity of data wasn’t something they understood. I then recognised an unmet need for a solution intended for understanding what customers could do with the mobile data that was available to them.

Previously, solutions for CSPs had always been built for the network and were technologically oriented. Today, however, if CSPs want to compete and not be pushed into the corner by the internet giants that have built their businesses around data analytics, they need to start with mobile data intelligence to understand the trends and behaviours of their users. That is why we built a uniquely engineered solution that could understand 100% of what customers are doing with mobile data, with 100% visibility.

VP: Can you explain more about what you mean by mobile data intelligence?

The mobile data market is growing very fast and requires a tight integration between acquiring the information and understanding it. This is further supported by the storage of this information at different granular levels over a long period of time.

VP: How would you summarise the challenges facing CSPs? LB: Mobile data is quite a challenge for CSPs. We’ve been working with them for more than five years and we’ve seen firsthand how it presents a whole new set of data that they’re not used to dealing with. It’s clearly an unfamiliar environment and it’s no help that data traffic is constantly evolving. Subscribers use apps, which are launched on a daily basis, and mobile operators need to be increasingly proactive with regard to this trend. This is an operational challenge for CSPs rather than a technical one; they have a lot of experience in managing structured data but unstructured data is where the bigger challenge lies. It’s for this reason that solution providers need to stay close to their customers to make sure they have the tools and knowledge to make optimal use of the data they generate for subsequent enrichment.

VP: There is a lot of talk about big data and how CSPs can transform themselves by monetising that information. What is the

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LB: Mobile data intelligence is basically business intelligence focused on the mobile data side of the CSP business. It allows mobile operators to understand how customers use the various mobile services that are available to them.

Browsing, the consumption of applications

(apps) from iPhone, Android and other operating systems, in addition to data services such as instant messaging or peer-to-peer communications, also need to be taken into account.

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Big data in telecoms is really about improving the marketing mix, creating efficiencies and segmentation, but also using it to create new revenue sources

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impact of big data on you and your customers?

LB: Big data for us is more than simply storing massive amounts of information. CSPs need to take the example of over-the-top (OTT) players when it comes to making use of analytics and require the resources to analyse the massive volume and variety of data. CSPs that tackle big data have the upper hand in being proactive with regard to the trends that they notice, not only for their own benefit, but for their customers’. This hands-on approach is far more valuable in today’s constantly evolving mobile world, in comparison to storing the data and analysing it at a later point.

Big data in telecoms is really about improving the marketing mix, creating efficiencies and segmentation, but also using it to create new revenue sources. Ultimately, this is the biggest challenge, and we are working hard to help operators monetise their data. We think they have a very large role to play in mobile advertising and marketing and, if they want to take full advantage of this opportunity, they need to refine their handling and management of big data.

VP: What do you think makes a solution provider stand out in the big data analytics domain?

LB: Firstly, as a solution provider, we have built a product around deep mobile expertise so we’re not coming from an IT background. Making sense of the massive volumes of data that have been extracted is the big challenge, and one that business intelligence solution providers underestimate in telecoms. The expertise that Neuralitic brings to its customers is that we have productised what is normally a lengthy and complex systems integration project. Ease of use is the key consideration for CSPs because mobile data is about the business side of the CSP organisation, not the network side and marketing needs to have access to the right tools to understand and present this data. It must be put in usable formats at the centre of the business, in an evolutionary and flexible framework that can cope with the fast-changing environment of mobile data.

VP: How does your solution help your customers generate ROI? LB: We help our customers in two areas. First, we help them improve insight into current revenue models so that they can identify how to improve their marketing mix; determining their product, pricing, distribution and promotional strategies, which enables them to serve their customers more effectively. We also help them improve the efficiency of their marketing campaigns using micro-segmentation to better target customers.

Another area in which we help customers generate ROI is by creating new sources of revenue. In the next 12 to 24 months, the

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greatest challenge for CSPs will be in their willingness to introduce new business approaches that will rival internet players.

Monetising the subscriber data they hold is something they’ll have to do. We believe CSPs will become the first players to make use of subscriber information. For example, Neuralitic has developed a solution that enables CSPs to make use of the intelligence they hold to play a key role in the advertising market and create a very significant source of revenue from that.

Ultimately, this will lead to the transformation of their revenue model. There is a lot of attention being given to this area, as we have seen at this year’s Mobile World Congress and CTIA events.

CSPs now see it as a space that they don’t have to surrender to internet giants.

VP: What trends are you seeing in the market and are there any regional differences?

LB: From a CSP perspective, we see emerging markets as being very open and proactive towards solutions like ours. One of the big differences between the North American and European markets and emerging markets is that emerging market users don’t generally have access to the internet from home, so operators know the importance of having the appropriate infrastructure that enables their users to have mobile data access, regardless of location. It’s key to their growth so there is a lot more interest and opportunity in monetising subscriber data in those markets especially in the areas of mobile advertising and mobile commerce.

VP: The market for big data and analytics is served by a combination of wellestablished vendors and a series of smaller, niche players. How do you see this situation evolving over the next few years?

LB: The good news for the smaller players is that the large, established vendors are the ones spreading the message about the importance of big data and analytics, giving the niche players the opportunity to address CSPs’ needs.

Neuralitic has a proven solution deployed in North America, Asia and Europe and in the coming years, we predict that there will be great relationships and partnerships built between the bigger vendors and specialists like us. The big players will take charge in carrying the message forward, while the small players will be the ultimate solution providers.

The challenge today is that there is a lot of talk about big data and mobile data intelligence. A lot of businesses are positioning themselves to gather and store big data and generate reports, but having a system to achieve that and support it for tens of millions of subscribers is very complex. We have achieved that at Neuralitic, but it took us five years to get here. Managing subscriber data is part of CSPs’ DNA, they just need to apply it to mobile data so that they can effectively monetise its potential. Proven solution providers like Neuralitic will enable them to do that.

The good news for the smaller players is that the large, established vendors are the ones spreading the message about the importance of big data and analytics, giving the niche players the opportunity to address CSPsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs

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MANAGED SERVICES

How far is too far when it comes to outsourcing OSS/BSS? CSPs of all types are turning to managed services in their OSS/BSS. Vendors would argue managed services are suitable for all functions and the opex reduction and time to market acceleration are attractive to CSPs. Here, George Malim assesses attitudes to managed services and explores just how far managed services should go within a CSP’s operations.

Akil Chomoko: CSPs willing to relinquish perceived control

Ben Bannister: Feasible to run with no in-sourced BPM

“There are three central concerns most often raised by CSPs when determining whether to invest in managed services,” says Akil Chomoko, head of product marketing at Volubill. “The first is supposed latency or performance problems that may be caused by remotely hosted systems.

The second is the fear of improper management of business requirements; that by relinquishing control of their platform CSPs also relinquish the ability to quickly make changes necessary to keep customers happy. Finally, there is the neverending and ever-valid concern over security. Data separation, translation technologies and security system play a huge role. They need to be an embedded part of the fabric of a managed – and hosted solution for success.”

CSPs have been adopting managed services for many years, though. Alam Gill, senior vice president international of managed services at CSG International, points out that outsourcing BSS functions has become routine. “A lot of North American CSPs moved to that operating model including Sprint, Nextel, AT&T and Bell

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Canada,” he says. “Those are major brands that for a long time have bought services on an outsourced basis. European CSPs in particular come from a background of self-sufficiency and brought in systems integrators to compliment that but they are coming round to this.”

OSS, however, has lagged, says Gill, partly because the OSS arena itself tends to follow behind billing in terms of the pace of its transformation. “OSS is less clear,” he points out. “In most cases it’s pretty messy and there are a lot of homegrown applications so in itself the landscape is complex.”

Rob Smith, director of market development at MDS, also sees managed services uptake accelerating and doesn’t see the need for an upper limit, provided control is preserved. “I don’t believe there are boundaries where outsourcing is concerned,” he says. “The key is that CSPs must retain control of the customer experience.”

Ultimately it’s a case of horses for courses. Some operators may be able to maintain control and manage their businesses with nothing insourced, while others may find it culturally or structurally impossible, perhaps because they have large contracted workforces, to adopt managed services even for small projects.

“It comes down to what level of interest a CSP has in the way that they run a particular part of their business,” says Ben Bannister, product marketing director at MACH. “It might be quite feasible to run a CSP business with little or no

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Trust used to be the key word associated with managed services and CSPs frankly didn’t have much of it. While they’d allow network equipment vendors to manage a bit of radio access for them, OSS/BSS was sacrosanct and central to the core of their being, an untouchable from a managed services perspective. Now, though, as the market has changed, so have CSP attitudes. Managed services providers have raised their game, CSPs have tried managed services, most notably in BSS in the US, and the business case makes outsourcing OSS attractive.

in-sourced business process management at all.”

Smith thinks managed services providers’ propositions have matured to the extent that CSPs can adopt such services wherever they like in their business, regardless of the nature of their operation. “Managed services are incredibly flexible and scalable, and thus are suitable for all, from MVNOs and cloud players to tier ones looking to regain agility and cost-efficiency in a dynamic and competitive market,” he adds.

Chomoko is more cautious: “Managed services are suitable for all tiers; however different tiers require different needs,” he says. “We have seen requirements for managed services for tier one players like Bharti and MTN – both currently use IBM – who need to manage complexity, to tier two, three and four players that want low cost, speed to market and reduced risk. Again, the flavour of the managed service matters.”

isolate and focus on particular business process areas is the critical requirement.”

Gill agrees: “I think two things will evolve,” he says. “The first is that in a typical existing estate the ability to move towards business outcomes rather than traditional buying of IT service delivery is a critical distinction. The second thing is that we’ll see a desire, particularly among CSPs with more than one asset, to consolidate [systems and suppliers]. A large group might have 25 or 30 different operating companies so the ability to do things quickly and consistently across multiple geographies can be delivered by moving to cloud-based platforms. That’ll be much better than trying to go through a cycle of 25 different developments.”

Gill also points out that tier one CSPs are not necessarily tier one operators in all of their markets and units so there is plenty of scope for tier ones to trial managed services at their smaller properties and get comfortable with the concept before, perhaps, extending it throughout their business.

That will see attitudes continue to change as CSPs recognise the changed market dynamics and prepare to relinquish their grip on the back office to managed services providers.“CSPs are beginning to seriously consider the outsourcing option as a means to improve agility and costefficiency,” says Smith. “That said, it is not about relinquishing control; a credible managed service provider will remove complexity and cost and provide the CSP with greater control and flexibility.”

Tier ones, though, would have greater difficulty in writing off years of sustained investment in bespoke, in-house developed systems to adopt a fully managed services approach to their operations. “With huge investment in very complex OSS/BSS infrastructure, the larger established telecoms companies would probably have considerably more difficulty migrating all of this across to a managed service environment, although some of the large managed service contracts in the industry can encompass just this sort of activity,” says Bannister. “The ability to

That willingness to oursource is partly because OSS/BSS is now seen as a less effective means of differentiation by CSPs. “They don’t see them as quite the differentiator that they used to,” says Chomoko. “They are therefore willing to relinquish some modicum of perceived control over them to increase their focus on service innovation. For the next five years there will be less of a focus on how OSS/BSS can be tweaked and optimised to save money and much more of a focus on how to use systems to create new sources of cash flow.”

Smith thinks managed services providers’ propositions have matured to the extent that CSPs can adopt such services wherever they like in their business, regardless of the nature of their operation

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SERVICES

EXPERT OPINION:

Taking care of business - what’s driving managed services in the telecoms sector?

As the industry steers an uncertain course through the turbulent waters of fast-evolving technology and insurgent competition, many carriers are considering strategies which will not only protect their margins but also mitigate the risk inherent in new initiatives. Here, Robert Machin says that while managed services may look like part of the answer, does it really make sense in the long term to hand business-critical processing over to a third party?

Robert Machin is product marketing director, EMEA, at CSG International

Managed services are already proving to be of

Businesses typically get interested in managed services and outsourcing for a number of reasons. Mature companies may be interested in outsourcing well-established, well-understood processes that provide little competitive differentiation. Startups are more likely to be interested in managed services – not only because they have little or nothing to outsource, but because their focus is much more on business functions and quick business success. By definition, they’re at a risky point in their development, budgets are tight and operational skills are likely to be stretched. Sinking investment into OSS and BSS can seem less attractive than paying another organisation to carry out key business functions as the company grows. Operational costs (opex) might be higher, but importantly, the capital expenditure – and the time – needed to get off the ground could be close to zero.

In fact, for both mature businesses and startups, whether we are talking about outsourcing or managed services, many benefits are similar, and can seem particularly attractive in uncertain economic conditions.

They include: predictable costs, access to advanced solutions that can scale up and down as required, and the ability to apply more effort to running the business than to running IT.

great interest to Changing perspectives the telecoms That change of focus – from IT processes to

business outcomes – typically comes into play

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When we look at managed services, we see different trends emerging. On a large and complex managed service engagement, the customer will want to be confident that the software is sufficiently resilient to meet future demands. They will also be much more interested in working with the provider to exploit the potential that the software offers to their business.

This attitude is mirrored by a clear drift away from traditional SLAs (service level agreements) in managed services and towards business-oriented metrics - ‘BLAs’, or business level agreements. Properly defined, these encourage a partnership approach, where both supplier and customer benefit from real improvements in business outcomes – in increased leads, for example, fewer faults, shorter resolution times and so on – a real sharing of benefits, but also a way for the customer to mitigate the risks inherent in new ventures and initiatives.

Managed services and CSPs Managed services are already proving to be of great interest to the telecoms industry. Many mature service providers are facing revenue challenges; managed services offer a way not only to save cost, but also to free up some of their bright minds to think about new

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outsourcing – the customer will be less interested in the software products that are underpinning the service than in the processes that will be supported, performance criteria, outputs, quality metrics and so on.

business initiatives. Many are already allowing network equipment vendors to deploy and run their equipment and don’t find it a great stretch to apply the same philosophy to business operations.

Telecoms also continues to see new entrants, including some very different kinds of players in mature markets, interested in the opportunities rising around, for example, embedded communications and M2M applications, but less interested in the cost and effort of setting up IT to run non-core supporting systems. Businesses like these are attracted by the idea of a partner that will take care of the grunt work, not least because if things don’t work out as planned – for good or ill – they can either ramp up quickly or get out easily.

Pick and mix – what really lends itself to managed services?

With the exception of business strategy – the source of the company’s identity and differentiation – virtually anything else can be managed by a competent partner.

Historically, there has been a tendency to think that many OSS and BSS processes couldn’t be outsourced or externally managed, because they were low-latency, or too tightly integrated with the network. They weren’t like, say, invoicing runs, where you could ship the data out and have someone else print and mail the bills. But that’s changed. Managed services don’t always need to involve the use of remote data centres – if proximity is a concern, managed services can be provided from within a customer’s premises with both data and applications hosted locally. Alternatively, services can be run from remote data centres, saving the customer costs on platform and other infrastructure elements, but still allowing them as much access as they need to their own operations.

Overcome barriers to entry Naturally, customers worry about loss of control over business-critical business systems that have a significant impact on revenue and the customer experience.

Depending on the model, however, there’s no need for the customer to lose control at all.

They can have as much interaction with the

applications as they feel they need, supplemented by the protection of contracted service level agreements and regular audits, tied into penalties if things should go wrong.

This can give a greater sense of control than an in-house operation where service levels aren’t often so clearly or explicitly stated and business continuity may depend on best effort.

Customers can also assure themselves that the facilities which will handle their data and processes are at least as secure as they would demand of their own in-house processing – if not more so. In fact, given the lengths to which managed service providers will go to assuage customer doubts, this can be a highly cost-effective way of increasing security of business critical data and the general professionalism of the IT functions supporting their key business processes. Managed service providers depend for their survival on demonstrating highly robust, secure environments – many will offer on- and offsite data storage, biometric access control, guaranteed power backup, high levels of redundancy and availability and more.

Customers can also assure themselves that the facilities which will handle their data and processes are at least as secure as they would demand of their own in-house processing – if not more so

Security is also closely related to regular and easy communications with a managed services provider. Any professional organisation will have a methodology that assigns clear roles and responsibilities, defines KPIs and escalation protocols and provides many other safeguards. Sounds very formal – and it is – but that’s what creates trust in the customer’s mind and leads to an easier relationship.

It’s all about trust In the end, managed services depend on trust – “Can I trust you to run significant parts of my business, on which my success depends, as well as I could run them myself? Will you take as much care of my customer’s data as I would?” Valid questions, but if the relationship is tightly defined through rigorous frameworks, if BLAs are agreed which are tightly integrated with business metrics, then these commercial and technical safeguards engender lasting trust between the client and the managed service provider, clearing the way not only for real saving and efficiencies, but for partnerships which can make a lasting difference to business success.

VANILLAPLUS JUNE/JULY 2012

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CASE STUDY

When UK mobile operator O2 Business decided to roll-out a new strategy to serve the ICT needs of business customers it needed to upgrade it systems and processes.

Here, the company’s Ricky Mortimer, explains why it chose cloudbased systems from CloudSense

We needed to eliminate manual processes to improve efficiency and better connect customers with staff to create a joined-up social enterprise

With 22 million customers, O2 UK provides services to consumers, small and medium businesses, public sector organisations and enterprise customers. O2 is proud of its mobile heritage, but now provides an extensive range of fixed and mobile, voice and data communications services and it has entered a number of new markets including ehealth, mobile wallet, IT services and media.

O2 Business is evolving and transforming and the CSP is rolling out it’s Joined up Business (JUB) strategy which is centred on helping British businesses get the most out of their ICT. Joined up Business is about joining up customers’ communications, their IT, people and companies to customers.

The company decided to develop a multichannel, multi-product sales and service platform to underpin its vision and plans. O2 Business chose CloudSense to help build a new sales and service platform that will enable it to join up with its customers, channels, employees and partners.

Ricky Mortimer, E-Enablement programme manager at O2 Business, explains; “We want to encourage fresh thinking and new possibilities for our company and were therefore looking for a technology solution that would support us on that journey. Fast-changing technology presents new opportunities but it also means fresh business challenges, such as streamlining and speeding up our processes, making the most of our IT infrastructure and handling ever-growing amounts of data while controlling costs and maintaining service levels.”

“Rising to these challenges means that we needed to eliminate manual processes to improve efficiency and better connect customers with staff to create a joined-up social enterprise,” adds Mortimer. “We knew that, if we could achieve these objectives, we could significantly speed up our time-to-market for new products and services while also enhancing our responsiveness to customers and the market. We also believe as a company that if we can implement these kinds of changes in our business, we can learn and pass on this experience and expertise to our customers.”

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O2 Business selected CloudSense running on Salesforce for three key reasons. First, the company demonstrated innovation both in its engagement model and the solutions it offered, showing that it could support O2’s business goals. Second, a cloud computingbased model best reflected the company’s Joined up Business strategy while reducing development costs and accelerating time-tomarket. Finally, CloudSense demonstrated that it could open up new opportunities to accelerate innovation and unique go-to-market propositions for O2 UK. Mortimer explains the selection process; “CloudSense was the only vendor which would allow us to run a 100% native Salesforce environment and had a compatible business culture,” he says. “CloudSense proved early on that it is the sort of company that would fit well with our business, not least because the team was immediately willing to co-locate resources.

CloudSense demonstrated the agility and business focus we required so it was an easy decision.”

The deployment has seen CloudSense integrate its order management stack into the Salesforce platform. Including applications such as CS ClickApprove, CS Configurator and CS Orchestrator, the solution was designed to help O2 Business extend its lead prospect capabilities to include its product catalogue, order management and its price and quoting engine.

With the CloudSense stack, O2 Business can now carry out electronic approval for contracts and enable end-to-end fulfilment through the cloud.

“As our customers evolve and change their buying and service expectations, we have been able to increase our responsiveness and provide a better online experience as a result of the implementation,” says Mortimer. “CloudSense has enabled us to manage additional complexity effectively and get more out of infrastructure, enhancing the customer experience in a way that means that the organisation is able to grow profitably. At the same time the solution has enabled O2 Business to drive out cost from its core business processes.”

CLOUD BROKERAGE

EXPERT OPINION:

CSPs see bright results from cloud efforts Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are constantly looking to bring new offerings to market that drive strong ARPU, reduce customer churn and have rapid time to market.

Brokering SaaS applications in combination with existing on-network services allows CSPs to deliver personalised business bundles – combining both on- and off-network services – it’s the programme to watch in 2012, says John Frame CSPs today are placing strong emphasis on cloud service brokerage offerings and for good reason. Cloud brokerage increases business customer ARPU and reduces churn by being the source for existing on-network services in combination with the multitude of software-as-aservice (SaaS) solutions available to businesses today – all with a unified administration, singlesign-on (SSO), in one bill and one place to direct questions, issues and needs.

While including email, conferencing or security services alongside on-network services has been done for years, the idea of cloud brokerage to businesses as a specific programme, where the provider owns the user experience and provides a selection of self-administered solutions to the business is newly emerging. Cloud efforts are underway at a number of providers so 2012 looks to be the year for cloud brokerage to take hold.

The SMB opportunity Small and medium businesses, especially in the 20 to 50 employee range, are looking for a trusted advisor when it comes to IT. They are looking for someone who they will answer the phone when they call, someone they know will provide accurate, one-source billing and someone who can recommend the best solutions for their business based on the experience of other companies similar to theirs.

CSPs are quickly becoming an important channel for the delivery of services to this market. They can deliver both on-network services along with high-value, off-network, SaaS applications to SMBs, becoming the trusted advisor the SMB needs.

Unified back office solutions Sigma Systems has solved CSPs’ provisioning and order management challenges for more than a decade. Throughout this time, the business and operational models for CSPs have changed drastically, as these organisations strive to reduce capex and opex, while seeking to offer

new services that will differentiate them from their competition and ensure customer retention.

Brokering cloud services shifts the business and operational models for CSPs yet again.

As great as the cloud brokerage opportunity is, CSPs must ensure their back office is equipped to manage the complexities of off-network and hybrid solutions. While siloed approaches to provisioning on-network services may have been good enough in the past, the emergence of brokered SaaS solutions, unified into packages that combine on-network services with SaaS services along with demand for other personalised services, are forcing CSPs to seek OSS that can be easily integrated with existing business and operational support systems (B/OSS) and core network services. In so doing, service providers will have the opportunity to make use of their intimate knowledge of their customers across all services to provide an unprecedented, unified experience that creates valuable packages that are unique in the market.

As great as the cloud brokerage opportunity is, CSPs must ensure their back office is equipped to manage the complexities of offnetwork and hybrid solutions

Selecting the best cloud vendors Each SaaS vendor that you put in front of your customer reflects on your brand; by selecting each of these vendors well, your brand is enhanced as they are rolled out. So with thousands of SaaS vendors on the market of all shapes and sizes, each vying for the attention of your SMB customers, selecting the right SaaS vendors to partner with is the last key ingredient to a successful cloud service brokerage programme.

The fastest way to market with the least risk is by working with a cloud brokerage vendor who has selected SaaS vendors that understand the needs of CSPs, with systems that easily integrate into B/OSS and whose services differentiate and compliment your on-network services to SMBs. John Frame is director of product management at Sigma Systems, in charge of its Cloud ServiceBroker™ OSS offering that is being explored by service providers worldwide.

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MACH INSIGHTS USER GROUP REPORT

Roamers converge on Prague for a radar check Well over a hundred roaming, fraud and interconnect executives from mobile service providers around the globe recently met in Prague at MACH’s annual Insights user group conference. Spread over two and a half days, the event brought together industry experts, independent consultants, MACH specialists and attendees from some of the company’s 650 operator customers to share experiences from their different perspectives. Here, Alun Lewis reports from the event.

For MACH’s CEO, Morten Brøgger, his passionate message behind the whole conference was: “Ultimately, it’s all about enlightenment – getting our communities together so that different voices can be heard and share in what is an increasingly complex and interconnected technical and business environment. When we plan these events, we hope that all those that attend will be able to go back to their companies with their existing expertise enhanced and broadened.”

The structure of the different sessions across the days reflected the very deep concerns within the wider industry on a number of issues – both tactical and strategic – with solutions being proposed both by service provider presenters and MACH experts themselves.

L

The event began with debate around the political forces currently at work in the European Community to drive down charges for international data roaming to eliminate bill shock and the possible knock-on effect this might have on tariffs in other

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regions – or the threats and opportunities posed by direct WiFi-enabled international internet access to traditional mobile business models.

Data roaming charges a tax

service support that a cloud and managed services solution can bring, especially in the one-to-many model that we implicitly support, then they’ll be able to deal with the nearexponential growth of data services that we face.”

Continuing this theme of the impact that growing volumes of data traffic were going to have on so many aspects of the industry, one of the recurring issues of focus for both MACH and attendees was around how best to monetise this trend for all concerned. MACH’s Brøgger said: “Regulation is only one aspect of this issue, though it will also inevitably act as a major catalyst in driving changes to pricing across different markets. We also have to understand the dynamics at work amongst our customers and come up with models that are appropriate to their needs as well as ours as an industry. For a younger generation, having become so used to so much of the internet as effectively free, they will simply see high data roaming charges as a tax on what they want to achieve.”

Roaming and interconnect for LTE

One of the key enablers of this move in MACH’s view is to exploit the potential of cloud-based environment – as exemplified by its Embrace offering as explained by the company’s CTO, Lokdeep Singh, in his presentation. Under the Embrace banner, MACH is consolidating into a cloud-based environment a whole portfolio of functions and services including service delivery with real-time charging, bill-shock protection and data offload support; roaming, interconnect billing, content partner management and financial settlement; fraud detection, revenue assurance and legal data retention; mobile messaging for P2P and A2P services and brokerage; plus an integrated business intelligence, operational reporting, predictive analysis and portal-based self-management solution.

The second, this time in a presentation from Motorola, focused not just on the impact of LTE on roaming and interconnect issues – another common theme throughout the event – but specifically on how the recent international standardisation decision to use LTE to deliver broadband services such as video to emergency services will affect both the network and the back office. With public authorities in most parts of the world being short of cash, it’s not feasible for the emergency services to build their own wide area LTE networks specifically for their own use. The result will therefore be that public and emergency services will have to share networks and that secure and high-reliability roaming will have to take place between current TETRA/TEDS networks and the new public/private LTE systems.

“The systems and processes that have built up over the last few decades to handle interconnect and roaming are no longer sufficient to face either the challenges of tomorrow – or even, really, today,” emphasised Brøgger. “Many service providers are realising that meeting these challenges in traditional ways would soak up the whole of their IT budgets for the next two years or even more. If, however, they take advantage of the kinds of economies of scale and breadth of

Read most industry headlines, and issues like these seem incredibly arcane and esoteric. For companies like MACH – and the service providers and billing, roaming and interconnect executives who rely upon a deep understanding of the wider implications of new legislation or incremental technology shifts to do their jobs effectively – events like Insights provide an invaluable platform to anticipate that one inevitable of our industry – constant change.

In terms of the specific – and imminent – future challenges, two main ones were highlighted by both external speakers and in many side discussions between attendees.

The first concerns the impact that M2M communications is going to have on the back office functions of service providers, with one speaker focusing on the need to recognise the difference between high-value fleet type M2M services where connectivity is part of a wider product offering, and high-volume, noncritical, telemetry type services – and either achieve a sensible balance between the two or choose to specialise in only one.

Morten Brøgger: Regulation is only one aspect of the roaming issue

The systems and processes that have built up over the last few decades to handle interconnect and roaming are no longer sufficient to face either the challenges of tomorrow – or even, really, today

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Upcoming Events Customer Experience Management in Telecoms: UK Summit 16-19 July, 2012 London, UK Organiser: iqpc www.cemintelecomsuk.com/Event.aspx?id=712762

IBC 2012 6-11 September, 2012 Amsterdam, Netherlands Organiser: IBC www.ibc.org IBC is the leading forum for the electronic media and entertainment industry attracting over 50,000 professionals from more than 160 countries and combines an internationally renowned conference with a first class exhibition featuring the latest media technology innovation.

The IBC Conference attracts the highest calibre of speakers from across the globe: influential professionals in their field who deliver thought provoking insight through a series of conference sessions, master classes and panel discussions. With over 300 inspiring speakers and more than 60 sessions, the IBC2012 Conference is leading the media and broadcast industry through innovation and debate.

This year promises another world class line up of keynote speakers including: Mike Darcey, COO, BSkyB; Mark Hollinger, CEO & president, Discovery Networks; Kevin Mayer, executive vice president, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, The Walt Disney Company; Roger Mosey, director of London 2012, BBC; Brian Sullivan, CEO, Sky Deutschland and Miles Young, CEO, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. Together they will lead discussion on the hottest topics affecting the industry now, including connected TV; the cloud; social media; sport; transmedia, broadcast delivery and workflow, enabling delegates to evaluate the challenges and formulate a roadmap for the future.

The conference programme is structured around three distinct pillars; the business of broadcasting and media, content creation and innovation and advances in technology. Delegates can target specific areas of interest via these carefully constructed streams alongside the free Industry Insight sessions. They will learn how business models will change as the result of new innovation in technology and extend their knowledge through attending IBCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highly respected Technical Papers and Posters. The conference is designed to allow delegates to build their own programme by selecting the sessions most relevant to them, ensuring they benefit from the content tailored to their requirements. Participants will come away from the IBC Conference inspired to lead their business to success, better informed on the current state of the industry and with a deeper understanding of its future developments.

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SDP Global Summit 2012 12-13 September, 2012 Rome, Italy Organiser: Informa www.sdpsummit.com

LTE Asia 2012 18-19 September, 2012 Singapore Organiser: Informa asia.lteconference.com

TM Forum Africa Summit 2012 18-19 September, 2012 Johannesburg, South Africa Organiser: TM Forum www.tmforum.org

Carriers World 2012 24-26 September, 2012 London, UK Organiser: Terrapin www.terrapinn.com/2012/carriers-world

Customer Experience Management in Telecoms 24-27 September, 2012 Prague, Czech Republic Organiser: iqpc www.cemintelecomseurope.com /Event.aspx?id=751564

Mobile Broadband World 2012 24-26 September, 2012 London, UK Organiser: IIR mobilebroadbandworld.com/

Telecom World Congress 2012 24-26 September, 2012 London, UK Organiser: Terrapinn www.terrapinn.com/2012/telecom-world-congress

OSS BSS World Summit 2012 25-26 September, 2012 London, UK Organiser: World Media Online www.ossbssworld.com

CLOCKING OFF!

CSPs’ and the me-too differentiation conundrum Telecoms may be converging with IT, but please, CSPs, don’t sacrifice your big advantage – your no nonsense engineering genius – in a quest to be as differentiated as your competitors, says Nick Booth.

One of the oldest rules of business technology is that a bad process only gets worse if you automate it. Telecoms has been pretty exempt from this, as it’s always been a no nonsense industry. Anyone who has reported on both the telecoms and computer industries could tell you that they were always worlds apart.

Telecoms for example, never needed to keep reinventing itself but computing, sorry data processing, sorry information technology, is constantly giving itself an image make-over.

Why? I couldn’t possibly say, without upsetting someone. But put it this way. The telecoms industry has no equivalent of the old IT industry maxim: Garbage in equals garbage out. When choosing a telecoms system, people didn’t constantly have to be warned that “a chaotic organisation, plus a computer, equals computerised chaos.”

Telecoms specialists were always a credit to their vocation, because they achieved what all great engineers must do: they hid the complexity from the end user and gave them a system that was so easy to use, and yet so powerful, that the users felt like geniuses.

IT, on the other hand, has a long history of doing exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to achieve. Take customer relationship management systems. I’ve never liked the sound of them. They emerged just as the incidence of automated, tea-time interrupting, unsolicited phone calls began to breach the defences of my telephone preference service.

It turned out that CRM and these awful phone pests were related. The marketing managers I spoke to by day described CRM as “holistic, light-touch opt-in systems that improve services to customers.” Victims of these calls used much cruder terms to describe the experience. The only printable description is ‘customer stalking systems’, which is appropriate, because if any bank thinks it has ‘a relationship’ with its customers, then it’s the type of relationship that usually ends in a restraining order.

The telecoms industry has managed to avoid

most of its IT counterpart’s delusions of grandeur. Now, sadly, some of the influence of the IT industry is rubbing off. I blame convergence.

One of the consequences is that new systems are becoming a double-edged sword. If you are not careful, or if certain systems fall into the wrong hands they’re as likely to hurt you as they are to help you.

Take conferencing. The marketing of conferencing systems has always been a contradiction. For decades video conferencing companies tried to convince the press that they could save people from having to travel to meetings – by inviting them to commute into their offices for a demo. This usually turned out to be a demonstration that they don’t work.

Collaboration systems are another communications tool that can achieve the opposite of their promise. In theory, they allow people to work together on a project online. The range of options they offer helps people to make more flexible use of their time and the quality of input increases. That’s the general idea. In practice, the heady cocktail of options can soon intoxicate even the most sober executive.

Few can resist the temptation to interfere with their colleagues’ efforts. When the pressure is off them, everyone becomes an expert on how their team mates are going wrong. On the other hand, it’s not unknown for a project to be put on hold for days while the person who’d been delegated to insert a missing full stop to the document comes back from leave. The buck started moving when Microsoft introduced Track Changes and new communications tools have made buck passing a global phenomenon.

The author, Nick Booth, is a contributor to VanillaPlus and a technology journalist.

The telecoms industry has managed to avoid most of its IT counterpart’s delusions of grandeur

Users are faced with too many bewildering options now. We’re often spoilt for choice. We must all attend to so many channels of communication there’s never any time for a decent conversation.

We need some telecoms engineers to come and configure the systems for us, and give us something simple to work with again.

To much attention to me-too differentiation makes everybody the same, after all.

VANILLAPLUS JUNE/JULY 2012

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Explore the African Market

SUMMIT

September 18-19, 2012 Hilton Sandton, Johannesburg,

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TM Forum’s Africa Summit addresses the key business and technical issues that service providers in Africa face over two productive days. Explore the latest trends in the African market (LTE, cloud, VA AS and more) and discover how you can seize growth opportunities and succeed by adoptingg more effffective business, IT and operational strategies through practical use cases of TM Forum best practices and standards, including Frameworx.

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BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE / JULY 2012 D R I V I N G

P R O F I T S

F O R

C O M M U N I C AT I O N

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TALKING HEADS

Amdocs’ Guy Hilton explores what omniconvergence means for CSPs’ billing and charging CHARGING Are billing skills CSPs’ means to demonstrate their digital value?

COMMENT Look in every direction for new opportunities

OPERATOR CASE STUDY Billing for IaaS at Tata Communications

S E R V I C E

P R O V I D E R S

blog-led website and quarterly magazine for machine to machine communications the latest news, reviews and insights in the world of M2M

M2Mnow.biz Profit from a world of connected devices

COMMENT

Look in every direction to enable new opportunities It’s a brave new world, this era of omniconvergence in which all the traditional activities of the CSP market – voice, data, fixed and wireless – collide with the new digital economy of over-the-top (OTT) services, nonlinear video consumption, app downloads, ebooks, mobile payments, money transfer and many others. CSPs have to move way beyond subscription-based charging and look at one time payments, how they interface with third parties and how they manage and assure the revenue streams that accrue.

As Guy Hilton explains on pS5, we’re well past simple metering or CSPs purely looking to bill for their own services. They’ll be bringing a series of complex, sometimes interlinked, service propositions that use their own and other infrastructure, along with the intellectual property and services of others. They’re in pole position to be the enabler of monetisation for all in the value chain and it could be the critical value add, in addition to providing the delivery mechanism in the form of the network, that the CSP industry has been seeking.

To do, that CSPs’ billing and charging will have to rise to a new level of multi-directional, multi-party functionality all the while maintaining the accuracy at great scale that telecoms billing has historically been good at. The situation becomes even more complex when you turn your attention to the enterprise market. Bringing large-scale business software to small and medium enterprises is one new service element and markets like machine-to-machine communications are another. All will need to be charged for and the systems to enable that will have to work in all directions, at minimised cost and huge throughput.

CONTENTS S3

Introduction and contents

S5

Talking Heads

Guy Hilton, director of product marketing in Revenue Management Division of Amdocs, explains how the era of omniconvergence is impacting on CSPs approaches to billing and charging

S8

Billing across the digital value chain

BSS enables CSPs to prove their value, says Nick Booth

S10 Operator case study Inside Tata Communications’ billing for IaaS deployment

Supplement Cover:

No one said this would be easy, but it is billing and charging that will be the critical enabler for CSPs to move their businesses forward from being simply the distribution network provider to being the business enabler of the digital value chain.

Enjoy the supplement

George Malim, Editor, VanillaPlus

Amdocs is the market leader in customer experience systems innovation. The company combines business and operational support systems, service delivery platforms, proven services, and deep industry expertise to enable service providers and their customers to do more in the connected world. Amdocs' offerings help service providers explore new business models, differentiate through personalised customer experiences, and streamline operations. Amdocs has over 19,000 employees and serves customers in more than 60 countries worldwide. For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.

VANILLAPLUS BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE/JULY 2012

S3

VanillaPlus Video Talking Heads Reach a global audience with your interview streamed from www.vanillaplus.com

For more information contact: cherisse@vanillaplus.com Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897646

TA L K I N G H E A D S

Welcome to the era of Omniconvergence Guy Hilton is director of product marketing in the Revenue Management Division at Amdocs. Here, he explains what ‘Omniconvergence’ means for CSPs as they get to grips with their revised role in the widely distributed digital value chain. Convergence has so many dimensions to take into account and so many impacts on CSP systems that the era of omniconvergence is one of great challenges but also enormous opportunities.

VanillaPlus: We heard Amdocs discuss the era of Omniconvergence, could you please explain what is entails?

Guy Hilton: Convergence is certainly not a new topic in the world of BSS. What has changed, however, are the new dimensions of convergence that service providers have to contend with. Convergent experiences today are not just about bundling wireless and wireline services together in a single offer or the ability to deliver communication services across pre-paid and post-paid customers.

Service providers are dealing with new dimensions of convergence that are changing consumption, pricing and business models at a pace that no-one could have predicted.

Omniconvergence represents the multiple dimensions of convergence that are driving consumer experiences today such as over-thetop (OTT) players, smart devices, rich services and super-fast access technologies. Consumers expect a seamless, immediate and personalised experience across any device, network or payment method and service providers need to solve the challenges of Omniconvergence to deliver such an experience.

Users can interact

VP: Can you provide some examples of Omni experiences in action?

of whether the

GH: The examples below highlight the changing nature of the communication market with the introduction of new experience providers and business models:

using is a

Let’s start with Starbucks. Starbucks mobile pay was released in the US market back in January 2011 and within a year Starbucks was processing over 26 million mobile payments. 15 months after launch that figure has doubled to 42 million mobile payments and in early 2012 Starbucks rolled the service out in the UK and Ireland.

Starbucks clearly understands the power of the mobile consumer experience and how connected smartphones can drive a personalised, contextual experience.

tablet or notebook

with friends and family regardless device they're smartphone, feature phone, computer.

Guy Hilton, Amdocs

Consumers can use the mobile app to load money on to a digital Starbucks Card and present a 2D barcode to pay-by-scan at the register. The app allows users to reload their mobile card, track loyalty stars earned in the My Starbucks Rewards program and share their location and favourite drinks via Facebook and Twitter.

Utilising the phone’s location capabilities, the easy-to-navigate store locator points you to the closest store and lets you search by amenities.

The question for service providers is where they fit into this value chain. Are they able to enhance

L

In the era of Omniconvergence, new experience providers, devices, access technologies and services are creating a more dynamic customer experience than ever before and service providers must keep up with growing customer expectations; the expectation of a realtime, intuitive consumption experience regardless of device, access technology or service being consumed. Furthermore, the

expectation that services are priced, bundled, and charged for simply and intuitively so that understanding what you are paying for is just as easy as using the service.

VANILLAPLUS BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE/JULY 2012

S5

TA L K I N G H E A D S

The pace with which new services, applications and experiences are becoming available to consumers is only going to get quicker and service providers will need to focus on speeding innovation and get new products, pricing models or partnerships into the market as quickly as possible.

In order to deliver the kind of flexibility across next generation services, devices and business models, service providers need to move away from the traditional siloed view of IN and IT solutions. Things are no longer only a ‘network issue’ or a ‘business issue’. They are part of the same experience that needs to be delivered to customers.

the Starbucks experience further? Can they allow Starbucks customers to charge up their Starbucks Mobile Pay via their pre-paid balance?

Could they enable premium Starbucks content such as video clips that are sponsored by Starbucks?

Another interesting example is Samsung.

Samsung has progressed from a device manufacturer to a full platform provider. They produce a range of connected smart devices from smartphones to tablets to smart television sets. Samsung clearly understands the power of a cross-device experience and recently introduced their own ChatOn application which allows users to communicate with friends and family on an unrestricted platform. They can send text messages, chat in groups, broadcast messages, as well as share pictures, videos and other multimedia content with friends and family.

Service providers realise that there is an urgent need to differentiate specifically around data services offerings and provide a more intuitive experience

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VP: Omniconvergence is no longer just about converging pre-paid and post-paid, business and consumer or fixed and mobile users, it's about many other forms of convergence, some of which are not traditional telecoms topics. What challenges does the convergence of 'everything' present to CSPs billing and charging systems?

GH: One of the first challenges that Omniconvergence introduces is business agility.

VANILLAPLUS BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE/JULY 2012

Service providers also need to decide how to approach data services in order to offer a differentiated experience to both consumers and partners. If there is a realization that consumers are driven by new devices and services, then service providers must think how they can deliver the most value to experiences across such devices and applications. This means launching differentiated data services that focus more on the value of the data experience rather than the volume of data on offer. This shift from access to experience requires far greater integration of network information and business insight. Network policy, for example, has to evolve from purely restricting or controlling data flow to enabling new data experiences such as dynamic data passes, shared wallets, real-time discounting, and others.

Charging for services (voice, text messaging and data) in real-time is already a de facto standard in the industry as is policy control. The challenge still lies in defining how policy and charging should integrate in real-time since this has traditionally been handled in an offline fashion impacting service provider agility to respond to network or user initiated scenarios. Another challenge is how to enable real-time subscription management that allows users to change or update offers on the fly while distributing the relevant information across customer data stores, charging and policy engines in real time.

Finally, service providers need to extend their traditional capabilities beyond traditional lines of business and partners and into the realm of OTT players, where new relationships and value propositions can be monetized. As OTT players continue to gain momentum in the market, service providers will need to offer the same real-

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to customers

The key takeaways for service providers are that cross-device experiences are an integral part of the world of Omni Convergence. Smartphones as we know them today only hit the market five years ago, while tablets in their current format were launched barely two years ago. This new dimension of cross device consumption is an immediate challenge for service providers as they look to launch shared data plans across devices as well as intelligent network and business policies across devices.

What is needed is a more holistic, integrated approach from network to revenue, bringing together core network, service delivery, charging and business layers. This integration across the various business and network components will be a key success factor for companies that want to compete successfully in the era of Omniconvergence.

time experience to external systems and the Internet web domain where a multitude of other service and content players are available. They will need to support industry initiatives in this area and support real-time interfaces to core assets via APIs & web services.

VP: Omniconvergence accelerates the erosion of traditional linear billing models in which the CSP provided metered capacity on its network infrastructure to its end users. Now, billing and charging needs to support the convoluted value chain in which services are provided to the customers of CSPs' customers and third parties are entitled to revenue share. Are CSPs ready for this?

GH: Though in the short term, the value chain might seem convoluted, service providers have core assets that can be leveraged to create significant value in the forming value chain that now encompasses OTT players as well. I agree with your assumption that traditional linear charging and billing models need to evolve to include more than just the end user, but I think that service providers have the ability and assets to do so. Let me give you a couple of examples, bearing in mind that not all OTT players were born equal and there are plenty of OTT players who are looking to gain more visibility and traction with consumers: Rich mix of business models Service providers can offer a rich mix of business models and develop different working models with different OTT players based on context.

They can Bundle OTT services into their offers and packages and offer in conjunction with OTT Players Zero charge services where can end user does not pay for the data to use the service but rather the OTT player, thus increasing the reach of OTT players.

Strong customer relationship They can leverage on their strong customer relationship and their in depth knowledge of subscribers Billing, payments and collection history. They can offer OTT providers capabilities such as mobile payments or carrier billing to simplify the experience of the end user.

Furthermore, they can assist OTT players in offering a more personalized experience which increases consumption and in turn increases revenues.

information to OTT partners so they enjoy better business insight and can optimise their offers and business models to maximise investment.

So, all in all, I think that service providers have many core assets that can ensure they play a significant role in the newly-formed value chain.

VP: How critical do you see CSPs' omniconvergent billing and charging capability being to achieving their goal of becoming an integral part of the digital value chain? Are CSPs the best placed organisations to provide the billing and charging capabilities the omniconvergent era requires and if so, why?

Service providers can offer a rich mix of business models and develop different working models with different OTT players based on context

GH: I think that making all the above take place and doing so in a cost-efficient manner requires a holistic approach from network to revenue.

From a revenue management perspective you would need a charging and billing system that removes cost and time barriers to your business through integration of core real-time products in a single solution, not only charging and billing but also Policy Controller and a Service Platform.

It has to simplify and accelerate the creation and monetization of new services via a single service definition framework and enhance the customer experience with real-time insight and control of service consumption across any device and access technology.

Such a system would by default be required to reduces the potential complexity with a holistic view of customer, product, business and network policy parameters and enable the business agility to react quickly to new ideas, trends, business models and the like.

This is what we offer in Amdocs and we have seen the impact such an approach has on service providersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; business agility and innovation capabilities. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a new world out there and we are working to enable service providers to continue and offer the best customer experience and differentiate through innovative offers that address the Omniconvergence era.

Network resources & insight Once of the most common examples we hear a lot these days is harnessing the Network Resources & Insight and offering those to OTT providers. The classic most discussed example is HD video on demand as an upsell opportunity which in turn enables revenue share between participating parties.

Performance analytics And last but definitely not least is performance analytics. The ability to externalise insights and

VANILLAPLUS BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE/JULY 2012

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BILLING ACROSS THE DIGITAL VALUE CHAIN

Billing capability lets CSPs demonstrate third party value With call revenue shrinking and OTT players eating their lunch, CSPs need to prove their relevance. Billing systems offer the key to proving their worth because they enable services to be charged for. Unbillable services are just hobbies, finds Nick Booth

In the not too distant future, you will be able to walk into a phone shop and demand a refund on a purchase that didn’t quite go through on your mobile phone. Once you’ve explained that the payment system slowed everything down, and that the reasons for the delay aren’t your concern and that you’re legally entitled to a refund – under legislation covering credit card transactions – you enter a new world of pain: Finding out who owns the credit card. Will it be the vendor? Or the mobile operator? Or a third party?

Caroline Bloomer, OSS/BSS and billing consultant at Laurinus uses this nightmare scenario, to illustrate how complex the billing challenges are about to become for CSPs in the very near future. They have to get there quickly as others are moving in, but haste could bring disaster too. The attempt to make a quantum leap of sophistication could plunge CSPs over the edge, she says. “The billing systems of many CSPs are already falling over themselves, as a result of the complexity,” warns Bloomer.

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The questions arising from contactless payments, hosting of the software and ownership of these financial services products can be considered later. But first there is another important step to be made in the evolution of

VANILLAPLUS BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE/JULY 2012

The distinction between pre- and postpaid customers needs to be done away with if CSPs are to achieve some sort of cohesion. “In CSPs postpay and prepay were always handled by different departments, which meant they had different disciplines,” says Gordon Rawling, director of marketing at Oracle Communications, “they need to be brought together.”

A unity of purpose should infuse these joint departments, whereby they judge any form of content over whether it is billable or not. “Many service providers are launching services because they feel obliged to by fashion, even though they are unable to monetise them. If you can’t charge for them, they are effectively hobbies,” says Rawling.

The value of all services should be defined by whether they are chargeable, he argues. In turn, that chargeability is defined by whether the service can be analysed by the billing system, as the service is being used by consumers, and options given to the consumer in real time. If, in the space of milliseconds, an upsell or a cross sell can be inserted, than you can make all the difference between having a flexible chargeable service and a loss leader. If a customer is watching video and nearing their limit, for example, a billing intervention might be able to offer them a compromise that will keep them happy – such as pause and play later at no extra expense – and satisfied – such as pay now to see the end of the video. Today’s option is to cut them off when their money runs out.

“A good billing system will be able to offer options that keep their level of service up and keep the costs of operation down,” says Rawling.

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A unity of purpose should infuse these joint departments, whereby they judge any form of content over whether it is billable or not

The CSPs must continue to evolve, however, because new competitors are using billing to take their revenue. “When Starbucks launched its pre-paid card and then migrated it to a messaging app, it cut out the service providers and revenues went directly to credit card providers instead,” says Guy Hilton, product marketing director at Amdocs. For CSPs to compete they must create one method of billing, from one central engine, that covers the whole gamut of technologies and devices.

billing and charging.

This capacity for real-time actions is the holy grail for billing service providers. Gartner Group research recognises three companies in its Magic Quadrant of billing and charging providers: Amdocs, CSG International and Tecnotree.

CSG International allows traffic and events to be rated and processed immediately for all customers, allowing balances, credit statuses and other financial indicators to be monitored in real-time for all customers.

“A billing system needs to deal with pretty much anything that’s thrown at it and to use a wide variety of data as criteria for charging,” says Robert Machin, director of product marketing in EMEA for CSG International. That means creating a convergent, flexible collection and processing machine that isn’t hardcoded to assume a particular kind of event record, but which can be configured to adapt.

There is only one way to achieve true convergence, argues Marcos Malzone, Redknee’s director of business line management, and that is to deploy a purpose built convergent billing platform. Not a patchwork of result of acquisitions, as is the case with many BSS players.

“That doesn’t mean CSPs need to go for a bigbang approach and replace all legacy systems,” Malzone concedes. A step-wise approach, that uses a versatile billing platform on top of a modular architecture and open interfaces, can help CSPs to replace the legacy by phases. “Start with those areas that can yield the results first, such as new revenues or cost reductions,” he says. “Then move to others areas which are less impactful.”

That’s not to say legacy systems are totally

useless. They still have a part to play, even in new services such as machine-to-machine communications for use in cars.

Operators can still deliver, and charge for, different levels of network experience, and can provide the technological smarts needed to build that network technology into new kinds of propositions for different kinds of customers. So while a retail customer, for example, may not value call minutes so much these days, they might be interested in having something in their car that will anticipate a breakdown, or monitor their driving to give a discount on their insurance for good driving behaviours.

A billing system needs to deal with pretty much anything that’s thrown at it and to use a wide variety of data as criteria for charging

“If I’m BMW, or Aviva Insurance, I may want to offer such a service to my customers and I know that the CSPs is probably the best partner for the job, as it can provide the network connections, collect the transactions and notify me in real time of customer issues. That leaves room for both of us to make money,” says Machin.

There’s an almost infinite opportunity for CSPs, systems integrators, device manufacturers, enterprises and other entities to work together and create valuable propositions, he says.

As the likes of Apple and Google eat into the CSPs’ revenue, their challenge is to become more relevant to consumers and get a higher share of their spend. Which means access to more and new types of transactions, such as M2M traffic, mobile heath and mobile payments.

CSPs need to add value to these transactions so they can claim a fair share of revenue. This means they need a convergent billing solution that allows them to take these transactions and process more attributes - such as location, device type and QoS. But, as Bloomer points out, these new systems bring new challenges.

VANILLAPLUS BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE/JULY 2012

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CASE STUDY

Inside Tata Communications’ billing for IaaS deployment Tata Communications’ global network provides connectivity to over 200 countries and comprises nearly one million square feet of data centre and collocation space worldwide. Here, VanillaPlus explores its deployment of a new billing platform to support its infrastructure as a service (IaaS) propositions

Tien Tzuo: Carriers need to adapt to the changing world of smart devices

Tata Communications recently set out to differentiate itself from its competitors by offering a fully automated, self-provisioned payper-use computing and storage solution, providing enterprise-scale cloud computing to businesses worldwide. This service, called InstaCompute, required a billing partner that was quick to market, flexible and scalable. Tata Communciations chose Zuora, the provider of subscription billing, commerce and finance in the cloud.

“When Tata Communications decided to get into the Infrastructure as a Service space, it was our strategy to combine our traditional hosting services with our networking services which encapsulate IP transit services, MPLS services and combine with compute [capability],” explains Matt Leonard, cloud computing product manager at Tata Communications. “These three things together provide a differentiator for us in comparison to other businesses.”

Tata Communications was keen to push its InstaCompute offering to market quickly in order to be ahead of the game in capturing the attention of the enterprise market. But Tata’s team realised that its existing payment infrastructure was not adequate enough to accommodate this new service line. This created the potential inconvenience associated with a lengthy system overhaul, which threatened to be time consuming, particularly in a period when all CSPs are looking to move swiftly into potential new revenue-streams.

To avoid this overhaul and the deceleration in time to market, Tata engaged Zuora to enable it to deploy its new cloud services. Today, subscription billing is a universal requirement.

Cloud, social and mobile technologies are creating entirely new ways for businesses to connect and serve their customers where they subscribe to recurring services rather than buy products. In line with this new approach to business, Zuora was able to offer a metered, cloud-based payment system as part of its subscriptions platform offering.

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VANILLAPLUS BILLING SUPPLEMENT JUNE/JULY 2012

Some of the features of Zuora’s platform include the ability to sign-up online, daily usage rating, calculations to process over 70, 000 transactions each day and a pay-per-use charging model to support billing in multiple currencies. These were all features previously unavailable to Tata Communications and offer ease of use to a customer base which is both global and increasingly mobile.

Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo believes that for CSPs, this adaption to meet the changing environments and demands they face is crucial to defining their futures: “Carriers need to adapt to the changing world of smart devices,” he says. “They need solutions that bring the power of the cloud to communications. This will enable service providers to price and package any communications service, manage customer interactions everywhere, bill and invoice customers in real time and make decisions based on subscriber analytics.”

With the deployment of Zuora’s bespoke metering and billing engine, Tata Communications can now offer any cloud proposition it decides to. Beyond that, it can now automatically generate region-specific invoices in multiple currencies and offer customers complete self-service with the ability to view storage usage 24/7 online in real-time.

Another key factor in the success of the deployment was the speed with which it was delivered. Tata Communications was able to deploy Zuora’s enterprise subscription billing platform in just 60 days, enabling it to cut its time to market in half.

Leonard adds: “We basically got Zuora up and running in two months, which was extremely fast for us. Especially compared to what it would take for us to modify our internal billing systems.”

The solution offered by Zuora enabled Tata Communications to deliver a flexible, cloudbased payments system, crucial to the success of InstaCompute. This was also delivered in a timeframe that allowed Tata Communications to be ahead of the game in offering its customers the multi-play packages crucial to the future of telecoms companies.

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