BILL & CHARGE - The global voice of Telecoms IT€¦ · emerging challenges, like rapidly rising encryption of video and data traffic, which pose management challenges that can negatively

PLUS: Cerillion floats on AIM ■ Vasona wins series C venture capital funding ■ Openet Weaver free NFV software released ■

Astellia launches Flex user plane monitoring ■ Comarch consolidates network inventory systems at T-Mobile Austria ■ DigitalRouteputs Hi3G on track for Wi-Fi calling ■ Bhutan Telecom selects Ericsson for BSS transformation ■ Kachlon appointed chief executiveat FTS ■ New chief scientist for Guavus ■ Read the latest news, opinion, blogs and features at www.vanillaplus.com

T H E G L O B A L V O I C E F O R B / O S S

BILL &CHARGE

April / May 2016Volume 18 Issue 2

■ ANALYST REPORT Analysys Mason finds that changed user behaviour means changed billing for CSPs

■ TALKING HEADS MATRIXX’s Dave Labuda on why digital transformation is no longer just an IT project

■ DIGITAL SERVICES Are billing systems a bottleneck?

ISSN 1745-1736

Will charging capability enhance CSPs’roles in the digital ecosystem?

THE GLOBAL VOICE FOR B/OSS

.aswww omo.cfsiain

4 EDITOR’S COLUMNGeorge Malim sees CSPs keep digging as they enter the digital world

5 INDUSTRY NEWSCerillion floats on UK’s AIM market, Vasona secures series C funding ofUS$14.6m

6 MARKET NEWSMATRIXX wins PLDT deal plus investment, Aria Networks wins artificialintelligence patent

7 PRODUCT NEWSMycom OSI releases ProAssure digital services management platform,Astellia launches Flex user plane monitoring system

9 CONTRACT NEWSHi3G selects DigitalRoute mediation, Comarch scores T-Mobile Austrianetwork inventory deal

10 THE CONTRACT HOT LISTThe latest vendor deals listed

12 PEOPLE NEWSWho’s on the move

13 INTERVIEWMario Nolla explains why data analytics can change the game for CSPs inthe digital era

16 EXPERT OPINIONRobert Machin bemoans that CSPs may have only have five years left intheir current form

19 VANILLAPLUS BILL & CHARGE INSIGHTOur VanillaPlus Bill & Charge Insight report starts here with 24 pagesexploring how CSPs are looking to their BSS to demonstrate theirrelevance and value in the digital value chain.

The Insight contains a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firmAnalysys Mason and includes features and interviews to help you gain awider understanding of the challenges and opportunities that CSPs have tocontend with as digital service provision takes off

44 EVENT REPORTJeremy Cowan reports from Shenzhen, China on Huawei’s 13th GlobalAnalyst Summit

46 WHAT’S HOT ON VANILLAPLUS.COMThe cream of this issue’s online content previewed

47 DIARYWhere to go and what to see

48 CLOCKING OFF!Nick Booth is quite happy to let the mail pile up

36

CLOCKING OFF!

3

IN THIS ISSUE

Dave Labuda on why BSSisn’t an IT project anymore

Will charging enhanceCSPs’ roles in the digitalecosystem?

BILL &CHARGE

EXPERTOPINION

38

48

PRICING &ROAMING

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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

C O N T E N T S

etting aside thoughts of 1980s computergames, there is an inevitability about digitalbecoming the word to describe services,content and applications delivered overnetworks. After all, these aren’t physical

services or products and terms such as weightlessgoods or adding an e in front of everything are tooclunky for regular use with anything approaching astraight face, so digital it is.

Beyond acknowledging that this is a digital worldcomposed of digital commerce, making up a digitalvalue chain, supporting digital ecosystems thatservice digital tribes who work in digital businessesand live in digital homes in which they enjoy digitalexperiences, it doesn’t really matter what labelsdigital is appended to – even for service providers,who, of course, are now digital service providers.

What’s important about adding the word digital iswhat it signifies and I think that ultimately comesdown to a notion of novelty. Digital shouldn’t betaken literally to mean non-analogue, instead itshould be taken no more seriously than adding an iin front of phone or an e in front of commerce. It’sa descriptive tag, a little marketing graffiti, ashorthand for a new way of doing things.

Digital, in this definition, meanscollaborative, flexible and agile. Itdescribes a world in which companiescan compete with each other at thesame time as being partners in otheraspects of their businesses. It suggests asituation in which organisations canrespond to shifting demands instantly,rapidly breaking down current structures andreforming quickly into something else.

Yet, in this digital era, some fundamentals remainrigidly traditional. Perhaps most important among

these is that providers of content, services andapps and the providers of the delivery mechanism,the network, need to be paid. It doesn’t matterhow the business model is constructed or whichorganisation pays which or how revenue isapportioned or shared, a common factor is theneed for accurate, rapid and demonstrably faircharging for the consumer and the participantsinvolved in delivering the service.

This could still be CSPs’ strongest opportunity.They know how to charge, they know how toapportion revenue and they know how to controlcredit. The question then remains one of whetherCSPs can use this capability to become more thannetwork and charging providers and become trulydigital service providers, thereby gaining more ofthe revenue available in the digital ecosystem.

Enjoy the magazine (whether on paper or our digitalissue!)

George Malim

C O M M E N T

EDITORGeorge MalimTel: +44 (0) 1225 319 [email protected]

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR & PUBLISHERJeremy CowanTel: +44 (0) 1420 [email protected]

HEAD OF BRANDMark BridgesTel: +44 (0)1622 669 [email protected]

DIGITAL SERVICES DIRECTORNathalie MillarTel: +44 (0) 1732 [email protected]

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTORCherisse JamesonTel: +44 (0) 1732 [email protected]

DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC PLANNINGCharlie BisnarTel: +44 (0) 1732 [email protected]

DESIGNJason ApplebyArk Design Consultancy LtdTel: +44 (0) 1787 881623

PUBLISHED BYPrestige Media Ltd.Suite 138, 70 Churchill Square, Kings Hill,West Malling, Kent ME19 4YU, UKTel: +44 (0) 1732 807411

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EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Louis Hall, chief executive,Cerillion Technologies

David Heaps, senior vicepresident, Strategy, CSGInternational

Laurent Leboucher. vicepresident of APIs anddigital systems, Orange

Martin Morgan, vicepresident of Marketing,Openet

Simon Muderack, senior vicepresident for Marketing andAlliances, Sigma Systems

Chris Newton-Smith, chiefmarketing officer, Redknee

Justin Paul, head of OSSMarketing, Amdocs

Aileen Smith, Head ofecosystem development,Huawei Service ProviderOperations Lab

Chris Yeadon, director ofProduct Marketing, Ericsson

Dr Reinhard Zuba, CMO,Vipnet (Telekom Austria)

© Prestige Media Ltd 2016

Will CSPs use digital to dig outof their commoditisation hole?It’s an odd phenomenon that a word associated with cheap watches, your desk calculator and earlyforms of computing has become synonymous with all forms of network-based activity but we arenow firmly in the era of digital everything, writes George Malim

S

4 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

George Malim,editor, VanillaPlus

www.csgi.com

Cerillion, the billing, charging and CRMsoftware provider, has achieved aquotation on the AIM market in the UK.

Dealings in the shares began on 18 March2016 and the company’s marketcapitalisation at admission to AIM was£22.4 million, with a placing price of 76pper share. Shore Capital acted as thecompany’s Nominated Adviser and solebroker. Established in 1999 following amanagement buyout from Logica, Cerilliondevelops, installs and supports billing,charging and customer relationshipmanagement systems, predominantly tothe telecoms market. The business has aglobal customer base, across 40 countriesand its customers include Cable &Wireless, KDDI and MTN.

Cerillion has reported revenues of £14.0m,

EBITDA of £2.9m and profit before taxationof £2.1m for its financial year ending 30September 2015. The company hasgenerated £8.5m cash over the last sevenyears. It intends to declare a maideninterim dividend and pay out between athird to half of the group’s free cash flow asdividends each year.

“Cerillion has established itself as a leadingprovider of billing, charging and CRMsolutions to the telecoms industry, with aglobal spread of customers who rely on oursolutions to provide this critical function,”said Louis Hall, the chief executive ofCerillion. “The company’s admission to AIMrepresents an important milestone for thebusiness, helping to increase our profileand improve our market positioning. As welook forward, we intend to grow thebusiness, principally organically, winning

new customers for our core enterpriseproduct suite. At the same time, wecontinue to innovate to meet the evolvingrequirements of our customers. Our newerproducts, especially our convergentcharging solution and our SaaS-basedbilling platform, reflect this level ofinnovation and open up further growthopportunities for the business.”

Cerillion successfully floats on UK’s AIM market

Vasona Networks has announced aUS$14.6 million series C funding round,bringing total funds raised by the companyto US$48 million. The financing builds onglobal momentum that has seen thecompany’s solutions used by tier-one mobilenetwork operators in four of the world’slargest cities, including announced use byTelefónica UK in its London O2 system.

The additional venture capital supportsthese deployments and drives ongoingresearch and development efforts, such asextension of Vasona Networks’ activity inthe emerging edge computing movement.Participants in the funding round includeBessemer Venture Partners, New VenturePartners and NexStar Partners.

“Vasona Networks is succeeding withsolutions that improve the bottom line formobile network operators at a time whenbudgets are under heavy scrutiny andcompetition is stronger than ever,” saidBob Goodman, a partner at BessemerVenture Partners and member of VasonaNetworks’ board of directors. “This newfinancing underscores Vasona Networks’mobile edge leadership and provides afoundation to continue bringing innovationsto market, expand deployments andpursue new opportunities.”

Vasona Networks’ says its systems areachieving field results that demonstrateperformance benefits for video andinteractive social media apps during

congestion, and substantial reduction ofservice latency. The company is alsoworking with customers to addressemerging challenges, like rapidly risingencryption of video and data traffic, whichpose management challenges that cannegatively impact network efficiency.

“We are working with the world’s topmobile network operators on pressing andemerging needs, including the constantpursuit of better mobile experiences,” saidBiren Sood, the chief executive of VasonaNetworks. “As operators turn their focus toedge-based traffic management for themost value, flexibility and control, ourcapabilities best meet business andnetwork demands in any market.”

Vasona Networks adds US$14.6 million in venture capital backing

I N D U S T R Y N E W S

5VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

Louis Hall: Admission to AIM is an important milestonefor Cerillion

SPONSORED BY:

Openet, a supplier of real-time BSS(business support systems), hasannounced the global availability of itsfree of charge VNF Lifecycle Managersoftware. Openet’s NFV software, namedWeaver, is now available to CSPs,system integrators and VNF/NFVvendors as a community edition.

NFV will see the need to manage carriergrade production solutions acrossdistributed systems at scale. These multi-vendor solutions will also feature a rapidevaluation of features and functions inVNF services leading to significantoperational complexity. Weaver helpsreduce this complexity.

Weaver works to upgrade softwareand/or configurations within the existingVM (virtual machines) instead of simplycreating new VM instances. This is key tosupporting efficient in-service VNFmanagement, and greatly reduces theoperational time and complexity.

Deployments that manage VNFs only atthe VM level operate with coarse controland significant blind spots. Weaver, incontrast, provides superior fine graincontrol and visibility over the deployedVNFs, resulting in deployment that is notonly faster but also more robust and lesserror prone.

Michael O’Sullivan, the global vicepresident of engineering for Openet said:“Our goal with Weaver is to drive theadoption of NFV within the operatorcommunity, and since our originalannouncement we’ve had anoverwhelmingly positive response.”

“For operators, managing multiple VNFsfrom different vendors using bespokeVNF managers is complex, and not inany way cost efficient,” he added.“Software such as Weaver can helpthem successfully manage multipleVNFs at scale, avoiding potential vendorlock-in.”

Openet’s Weaver free NFV software now available

MDS enhances managedservice with Cyber EssentialscertificationMDS has announced that its ManagedService been awarded Cyber Essentialscertification. Cyber Essentials is a new UKgovernment-backed and industry-supportedscheme that guides businesses in protectingthemselves against cyber threats.

The certification further enhances the MDS’accreditations, having received TM ForumFrameworx Conformance certification inDecember 2015. With data assurance andsecurity at the forefront of many MVNOs’agenda, MDS has reinforced its credentials,with independent testing by two respectedbodies.

The Cyber Essentials scheme was developedby UK government and industry with two clear

purposes in mind. The first is to provide aclear statement of the basic controls allorganisations should implement to mitigatethe risk from common internet based threats,within the context of the government’s 10Steps to Cyber Security. Secondly, throughthe Assurance Framework, Cyber Essentialscertification offers a way for organisations todemonstrate to customers, investors,insurers and others that they have takenthese essential precautions.

Aria Networks awardednew AI patentAria Networks has been awarded a newpatent from the United States Patent &Trademark Office. The patent relates tonetwork capacity management of traffic overtelecoms networks, including datacommunications. It introduces a capacity

computation engine, driven by ArtificialIntelligence (AI), which interfaces with anetwork optimisation evolution engine todetermine optimum paths for traffic in amulti-layer network.

Defining network topologies has traditionallybeen costly and time consuming. Whilstmodelling tools are available, they are onlyeffective if a network can be made to fit thecriteria defined by the toolbox. Aria Networks’patent granted capacity computation engineenables network service providers to combinecomputing power, memory, storage andservices on demand to create the mostefficient network orchestration againstmultiple – and often conflicting – criteria suchas quality of service and cost. An unnamed“major European telecommunicationsservice provider” is already said to beimplementing this patented functionality.

NEWS IN BRIEF

M A R K E T N E W S

SMART Communications,a wholly-owned subsidiaryof the Philippine LongDistance TelephoneCompany (PLDT), hasselected MATRIXXSoftware’s real-time

Digital Commerce platform for its mobilebusiness. Subsequently, PLDT hasinvested in MATRIXX through itsinvestment arm, PLDT Capital.

SMART Communications, the country’slargest mobile network, is deploying theMATRIXX platform to deliver an array oflifestyle services and content that can beindividually purchased and customised.SMART’s customers will have the freedomto manage their mobile account usage andspend, tailor services and choose sachet-

sized packages based on their preferencesand budgets.

MATRIXX provides a real-time DigitalCommerce platform for creating andmonetising content and services. SMARTCommunications chose MATRIXX becauseit needed a real-time, customer-centricplatform that could jump-start entry intothe digital market without a lengthy ITproject. MATRIXX installed and integratedthe solution within weeks, allowing rapidtime-to-market for future servicepropositions that will capture wallet-shareand customer loyalty in a dynamic, fast-paced market.

Winston Damarillo, chief strategy advisor atPLDT and the co-managing director ofPLDT Capital, said: “Evolution of the telco

into a digital service provider requiresviewing the customer through a differentlens, in order to identify new ways ofserving them. We’re transforming thecustomer experience, and we choseMATRIXX Software because its technologyand performance is unmatched, and they areable to help drive the PLDT Group’s digitalvision more rapidly than anyone else.”

Dave Labuda, the founder, CEO and CTOof MATRIXX Software, added: “The PLDTGroup continues our model of prestigiouscompanies that are investors as well ascustomers. It is genuinely changing thegame in Asia when it comes to digitalservice innovation, and we’re excited tohelp deliver outstanding experiences tocustomers of its wireless service provider,SMART Communications.”

www.csgi.com6 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

SPONSORED BY:

Dave Labuda:Deal continues ourcustomers asinvestors model

MATRIXX wins funding from PLDT and suppliesSMART unit with digital commerce platform

TIBCO announces MDM 9.0TIBCO Software has announced the latestedition of its master data management (MDM)solution, MDM 9.0. With this release,companies can now intelligently ingest virtuallyany type of digital data to provide a real-timeview across an omnichannel business. With areported 50% performance increase overprevious versions, TIBCO MDM 9.0 is claimedto enable companies to capitalise onopportunities, develop stronger customerrelationships and avert potential issues.

“In the digital business era, having access to areal-time consolidated view of theorganisation, including customers andproducts, directly contributes to a company’sability to take advantage of opportunities thatimprove the customer experience, increase

cross-sell or up-sell opportunities, and refineoperational efficiency,” said Matt Quinn, theexecutive vice president of products and chieftechnology officer of TIBCO. “With MDM 9.0,companies can get to that single, integratedreal-time view across their physical and digitalbusiness much faster, enabling them to seizeopportunities more quickly and easily.”

EXFO helps network vendorswith new lab systemEXFO has launched its new lab solutioncomprising the LTB-8 Rackmount Platform,the FTBx-88200NGE Power Blazer 100GMultiservice Test Module and web-basedmulti-user interface, EXFO MultiLink.With the goal of helping network solutionvendors to innovate faster and test more

efficiently, the LTB-8 is a scalable, compactplatform offering the industry’s best 100G portdensity to maximise valuable shelf space whileminimising costs. The eight-slot configurationsupports simultaneously testing of eight 100Gmodules supporting multiple interface testcombinations.

The platform delivers a full suite of lab testingfeatures developed for system design,development and deployment testing. LTB-8remote access is supported via EXFOMultiLink. EXFO MultiLink is a unique lab testmanagement system with a multi-userinterface that offers remote access to multi-modules, multiplatform across multiplelocations. It is the only true web-basedinterface that enables this capability, thecompany claims.

NEWS IN BRIEF

www.csgi.com

Mycom OSI has launched ProAssure, aproactive digital services managementplatform that monitors native, OTT and IoTdigital services in near real-time, identifiesservice performance degradations andprovides root cause analysis.

ProAssure is at the heart of Mycom OSI’sExperience Assurance and Analytics (EAA)solution blueprint, launched at MobileWorld Congress. EAA enables CSPs tomanage digital services in highlyautomated virtualised networkenvironments, and especially the digitalexperience of its corporate customers andInternet of Things (IoT) partners. Severalkey network operator challenges are

addressed with EAA including managingthe customer experience, evolving tonetwork virtualisation (NFV) and exploitingthe digital/IoT opportunity.

“The virtualisation of the network combinedwith the explosion in IoT opportunities isdriving digital transformation into the veryheart of the operators’ core systems,” saidMounir Ladki, the president and chieftechnology officer of Mycom OSI.“Traditional OSS boundaries are collapsingwith operators now challenged to take aholistic view of their network and services,bridging assurance, fulfillment,orchestration and IoT networkmanagement. By enabling near real-time

monitoring ofnative, OTTand IoT digitalservices,ProAssure isalso openingup newopportunities inexperienceassurance andAnalytics bygiving bothnetwork andcustomerservice teams asingle view oftheir network.”

Mycom OSI releases ProAssure digital services management platform

P R O D U C T N E W S


Astellia has announced an intelligent trafficload balancer for its flexible user planemonitoring and troubleshooting solution,called Flex.The product has beendeveloped in response to communicationsservice providers’ (CSPs) needs for moreflexible, scalable and future-proofmonitoring solutions. Astellia says Flex isan important milestone within its nextgeneration monitoring offerings thataddress the industry’s migration towardsNFV/SDN. Flex is available as software,

running on commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS)hardware, which the company claimsreduces the required hardware footprint by40%. Flex intelligently load balances trafficacross different soft probes to ensuremonitoring stability.

In order to reduce user plane monitoringcosts and improve scalability, Flex cantarget user plane traffic based on criteriasuch as IMSI, mobile app, APName, QCI,geographical areas, handset and IP address

while still generating QoS information –throughput and volume – for every subscriber.

“User plane analysis is valuable andimportant for CSPs to understand networkusage and customer experience,” saidCedric Arnaud-Battandier, the chiefmarketing officer at Astellia. “Flex allowsthem to control their user plane monitoringbudget by selecting full or on-demanddeep packet inspection analysis and investas they grow.”

Astellia launches Flex user plane monitoring product

Mounir Ladki: Traditional OSSboundaries are collapsing

SPONSORED BY:

Learn more about CSG at TM Forum Live! 9 - 12 May, Nice, FranceVisit CSG stand #308

Netcracker winsVivo activation dealVivo, the largest communications serviceprovider in Brazil, is upgrading Netcracker’sActivation Manager system to streamline theprocess of bringing innovative new services tomarket. The upgraded solution’s newerfeatures will support Vivo’s long-term businessgrowth strategies and reduce total cost ofownership.

Vivo is the leading CSP in Brazil, offering fixed-line and mobile voice, television andbroadband services to nearly 3,400 citiesacross the country.

“Quickly configuring, provisioning and managingnew services is a critical factor in being able tooptimise customer experience and succeed ina marketplace that is constantly changing andinnovating,” said Christiane Edington, directorof IT at Vivo. “As the industry evolves, it is

important that we remain ahead by providingthe channels that our customers demand andensuring that our services are deliveredeffectively. By continuing our partnership withNetcracker, we are confident in our ability tohit these benchmarks.”

Bhutan Telecom agreesBSS transformationcontract with EricssonEricsson has signed a Business SupportSystems (BSS) transformation contract withBhutan Telecom, Bhutan’s largest CSP.Under the terms of the agreement, BhutanTelecom’s complete billing systems will betransformed into a convergent environmentsupporting mobile, fixed line and DSLbroadband subscribers. As a result, BhutanTelecom will be able to launch promotionsand notifications, product and service cross-bundling, cost-control for postpaidsubscriptions and service personalisation. The

CSP will be able to design and offerpromotions and campaigns in real-time and inaccordance with subscribers’ interests, whilemonetising ongoing growth in data traffic.

Ericsson will be responsible for design,deployment and systems integration of thesolution. The convergent charging solution,based on Ericsson’s BSCS iXR4 offeringtogether with data monetisation features suchas PCRF will be integrated with BhutanTelecom’s existing infrastructure. BhutanTelecom will migrate its subscribers onto thenew platform by the third quarter of 2016.Tshewang Gyeltshen, the chief executive ofBhutan Telecom, said: “We are delighted tofurther strengthen our partnership withEricsson. This transformation will help us tostandardise and modernise our billingsystems. We will be able to introduceinnovative offers for our customers, and at thesame time manage differential chargingoptions effectively.”

NEWS IN BRIEF

www.csgi.com

DigitalRoute’sMediationZone product isbeing deployed by 3 inSweden and Denmark,which trades under theHi3G brand, to supportthe launch of thecompany’s Wi-Fi callingservice across the twocountries’ domesticmarkets.

DigitalRoute is delivering the Entitlementcomponent, which involves the end-userbeing entitled to access specific functionsfrom within the handset. 3 is the first CSPin Sweden and Denmark to offer Wi-Fitelephony by default, with automaticconnection to the wireless network when

the mobile signal is weak. The service itselfhas no additional charge and is available toall customers with fixed pricesubscriptions.

DigitalRoute’s MediationZone softwaresupports 3’s rapid launch of the new serviceby providing benefits including efficientintegration with the other systems involved.

DigitalRoute’s solution enables a gatewayfor CSPs that want to access individualfunctions for specific devices, such assynchronising certain online services withsupporting applications like CRM andbilling. It also enables tethering limitationsand control for VoIP and VoWF services.3’s new service provides an importantadvance in the mobile marketplace. “We

know there are Swedes who haveproblems with their indoor coverage andtherefore we have worked intensively withboth technology vendors includingDigitalRoute and handset manufacturers tolaunch Wi-Fi calling,” said NicholasHögberg, the chief executive of 3 Sweden.

DigitalRoute CEO Johan Bergh added: “Ourwork with 3 provides another proof point thatadvanced data integration and managementtechnology is key to enabling innovationwithin the telco service market. Oursoftware’s ability to converge functionalitythat includes aspects of traditional mediationwith policy control and usage managementin one horizontal solution underlines thegrowing value of DigitalRoute as a partnerto the innovative service provider.”

Hi3G selects DigitalRoute MediationZone to support Wi-Fi calling

C O N T R A C T N E W S


T-Mobile Austria, the second largestmobile provider in Austria with more thanfour million customers, is to implement theComarch Network Inventory system toprovide a comprehensive view of itsnetwork and enable more efficient networkmanagement.

Comarch will be responsible for thesystem’s implementation and integration.In addition to the Network Inventory system,Comarch’s Auto-Discovery & Reconciliationmodule will be implemented to ensureautomated handling of any discrepanciesbetween the data in T-Mobile’s inventory

system and the real state of its network.

“They say your decisions are as good asyour information,” said AthanasiosAvgeridis, the senior vice president ofoperations technology at T-Mobile Austria.“This is why we believe that superbnetwork management and planning startswith the accuracy of the inventory data. Amodern inventory tool, like ComarchNetwork Inventory, will therefore not onlyhelp us see the complete view of ournetwork in a single place. Ultimately it willalso help us optimise network investmentplans, improve our reporting, resolve any

network issues faster and in the end –improve our customer experience.“

Comarch has been a partner for theT-Mobile Group since 2006. Throughoutthe years various projects have beenrealized in both the BSS and the OSSdomain for the Group’s subsidiaries invarious European countries, includingGermany, Austria and Poland. The NextGeneration Network Inventory projectcarried out with T-Mobile Austria is the nextstep towards strengthening thecooperation between the companies,says Comarch.

Comarch to consolidate network inventory at T-Mobile Austria

Jonah Bergh:Advanced dataintegration andmanagementtechnology is keyto enablinginnovation withinCSPs

SPONSORED BY:

www.csgi.com1 0 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

SPONSORED BY:

H O T L I S T

VanillaPlus Hot List: April 2016

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" <[email protected]>

Three Ireland has entered into a five-yearmanaged services contract with Amdocsto transform its IT infrastructure, and delivercustomer experience innovation across alllines of business. The contract, worth €65mwith Amdocs, includes the integration offormer O2 IT systems, the elimination ofduplicate IT costs and the delivery of aworld-class customer experience throughinnovative and digital services.

This investment is in addition to Three’spreviously announced network investmentof €300 million, which is well-underway indelivering a superfast 4G network forThree’s two million customers. The overall

investment is set to ensure that Threecontinues to be an innovative and costeffective telecoms provider both now andinto the future.

Robert Finnegan, the chief executive ofThree Ireland, said: “This €65 millioninvestment is the next step in what is anexciting journey for Three as we continueto deliver on the promises we made whenwe acquired O2 in 2014. At that time wepromised two new MVNOs, which we havedelivered. We promised new jobs, whichwe delivered by creating 100 new roleswhen we transferred customer care calls toLimerick from Mumbai. We also promised

innovation and delivering the bestexperience for our customers and that iswhat this project will achieve.”

Eric Updyke, the group president of SystemsIntegration and Operations at Amdocs,added: “Our industry is changing rapidly andin this fast-moving digital world customersexpect new services and capabilities atunprecedented speed. Our software andservices will provide Three Ireland with acomprehensive, digital experience solution,using customer data, digital interactionsand new engagement channels to capturethe world of digital immediacy and rise to anew level of customer experience.”

Amdocs wins €65m managed services deal with Three Ireland

Vendor(s) Client, Country Product/Service Date

Amdocs Three, Ireland Agreement of five year managed services contract to transform IT infrastructure and deliver customer experience innovation 3.16

Anritsu O2, Czech Republic Expansion of service assurance systems provision deal with the addition of Anritsu MasterClaw 3.16

Comarch T-Mobile, Austria Comarch selected to provide next generation network inventory system plus Comarch Auto-Discovery & Reconciliation product 3.16

CSG International Sony Home CSG Ascendon digital services platform selected to power Sony’s new ULTRA 4K streaming service 4.16 Entertainment, global

DigitalRoute Hi3G, Denmark and Sweden Deployment of MediationZone product to support CSP’s Wi-Fi calling offering 4.16

Digital Route Vodacom, South Africa Extension of agreement to supply DigitalRoute MediationZone for next three years in support of BSS transformation 2.16

Ericsson NTT DoCoMo, Japan Launch of multi-vendor NFV solution using Ericsson’s Open NFV platform 3.16

Ericsson Bhutan Telecom, Bhutan Ericsson to transform CSP’s billing systems into a convergent environment for fixed and mobile 3.16

Ericsson Telefónica, global Ericsson selected to support CSP’s UNICA virtualisation programme, starting with NFV deployment in Germany 2.16

Ericsson Telefónica, Colombia Deal to supply first commercial virtual network for VoLTE services in Colombia 2.16

Ericsson Vodafone Group, global Ericsson Expert Analytics selected by Vodafone as strategic system for CEM across operations in 22 countries 2.16

Ericsson Swisscom, Switzerland Ericsson chosen to transform core network with deployment of telco cloud infrastructure and virtual network functions 2.16

Ericsson STC, Saudi Arabia Deal agreed to supply OSS/BSS including Ericsson Charging System 2.16

Fortumo Viettel, Vietnam Launch of carrier billing on Google Play for Vietnam’s largest mobile operator 3.16

Hewlett Packard Swisscom, Switzerland HPE to work with Swisscom to deploy new virtual network functions using HPE OpenNFV solutions 2.16Enterprise (HPE)

MATRIXX Software SMART Communications, PLDT subsidiary selects MATRIXX to provide real-time Digital Commerce Platform 3.16 The Philippines

Netcracker Technology Vivo, Brazil Upgrade of Netcracker Activation Manager to streamline innovative services introduction 4.16

Netcracker Technology TOT, Thailand Implementation of Netcracker Convergent Billing to consilidate CSP’s prepaid and postpaid mobile rating, charging and billing processes 2.16

Netcracker Technology T-Mobile, The Netherlands Deployment of Netcracker Product Management to obtain centralised view of product catalogue 2.16

Netcracker Technology BT, UK Expansion of relationship for revenue and billing management technologies and professional services to support digital transformation 2.16

Netcracker Technology SmarTone, Hong Kong Upgrade and extension of relationship covering Netcracker Revenue Management plus systems integration and professional services 3.16

Netcracker Technology Telefónica, Germany Extension of use of Netcracker Revenue Management to simplify and accelerate rating and billing processes for B2B operations 3.16

Sigma Systems Mobistar, Belgium Selection of Sigma Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) system to streamline purchase process across consumer and enterprise markets 3.16

www.csgi.com1 2 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

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FTS, a provider of billing, charging, policy control andpayment solutions, has appointed Avi Kachlon aschief executive. Kachlon brings more than 20 years’experience in the telecoms and software industries toFTS. Having previously spent many years at Amdocsas vice president of Customer Delivery & Services, hehas extensive expertise in the telecoms billing, CRMand policy control markets.

Prior to Amdocs, Kachlon held senior managementpositions at various global and Israeli companies,

acting as COO at Matrix Global and holding various positions atAmdocs and Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank.

“I am honoured to be joining FTS and to have the opportunity to be atthe forefront of innovation in the BSS industry. I look forward to utilisingmy experience to grow the company’s business within the telecomssector and beyond, and to further strengthen relationships with ourcustomers,” said Kachlon. “I am excited to work alongside FTS’experienced employees and dedicated partners around the world tocreate greater value together as we focus on existing and new markets,including digital service providers, MVNOs and the IoT sector.”

FTS appoints Avi Kachlon as new CEO

Avi Kachlon: Will look to DSPs,MVNOs and theIoT sector forgrowth

Brite:Bill has announced that Aaron Fullen has joined as global headof sales, providing executive leadership to the company’s growing salesforce. Fullen is a senior sales leader with a wide range of experience inthe technology sector, most recently serving as head of sales, NorthAmerica at SundaySky, the personalised video platform provider,where his teams grew annual bookings by more than 750% during hisfour year tenure.

Prior to SundaySky, Fullen held senior positions at LivePerson where hewas instrumental in growing revenues from US$17m to US$145mduring his seven year tenure, and CA, where he led the company’sefforts with BellSouth and Cingular Wireless. He brings to Brite:Billdirect knowledge of building and scaling high-performing salesorganisations.

Commenting on the appointment, Alan Coleman,the chief executive of Brite:Bill said: “We are delightedto welcome Aaron to the team. This is a key positionfor Brite:Bill and Aaron’s expertise in focusing oncustomer needs and driving high performance will bekey as we continue to scale and grow the business.”

Fullen added: “I am incredibly proud and excited tobe joining Brite:Bill. Our technology solves one of thelargest problems impacting Global 1,000 firms in away that’s cost effective, low risk and customer-centric. Our job is to build the team that takes thistechnology to the world, to the great benefit of brands and theircustomers.”

Brite:Bill hires new global head of sales

Aaron Fullen: Brite:Bill solvesthe largestproblemsimpacting Global1,000 firms

Guavus has appointed Dr. Roger Brooks, an expertin analytics based on large-scale machine learning, asits chief scientist. Brooks joins from HP Softwarewhere he focused on advancing the use of datamining to help businesses strengthen IT operations,engineer new products, optimise marketing anddeliver real-time personalised content.

“We are delighted to add Roger to our team,” saidAnukool Lakhina, the chief executive and founder ofGuavus. “His real-world experience in using analyticsfor actionable insights will bring value to ourcustomers who are looking to drive costs out of theirbusiness, generate new revenue streams and

transform into data-driven businesses.”

Brooks has held various executive positions including an eight-yeartenure at Hewlett-Packard, most recently as chief architect in the newHP Software. Prior to that he was distinguished technologist and chiefscientist in HP’s Marketing Optimization business, where he was

responsible for marketing analytics. He also served as CTO forApplications at HP Autonomy, driving innovations for next-generationproducts.

“Guavus is pioneering the use of analytics to provide extremely precise,contextual insights that translate directly into action. This results inbetter customer experiences, more personalised care and moreefficient network operations,” said Brooks. “I look forward to workingwith the Guavus team to help our customers exploit their data byutilising our unique multidisciplinary science.”

Pirjo Tuomi has also joined Guavus as vice president of sales for thecable sector. Tuomi will head Guavus’ cable global sales team, workingclosely with CSP customers around the world.

“Pirjo is a great asset for us as we advance our global cable salesstrategy,” said Lakhina. “Our company is experiencing explosivegrowth of our analytics products and Pirjo’s appointment will help usbuild on our forward momentum and enable Guavus to sustain thisrapid growth and new customer acquisition.”

Etiya, a provider of CRM, catalogue-driven B/OSS, social CRM and bigdata analytics, has hired Apostolos Kallis as senior vice president ofbusiness development. Etiya has offices and customers in Canada,Singapore, UK, Azerbaijan and Turkey. With the appointment of Kallisthe international team gains a senior executive in the telecoms and ICTindustry and strengthens Etiya’s fast international expansion.

Kallis has been a member of the TM Forum’s senior leadership teamand responsible for its global sales and account teams. Over the last 13

years he was a key part of growing the TM Foruminto one of the world’s leading trade associations withover 1,000 members in over 100 countries. He hasalso been supporting a number of companies as anadvisor through his own consulting practice workingwith both start-ups as well as more maturecompanies on international expansion, partnering andgrowth.

Brooks joins Guavus as chief scientist, Tuomi to lead cable industry sales

Etiya appoints Kallis to lead business development

Dr. RogerBrooks: Contextualinsights translatedirectly into action

P E O P L E N E W S

Apostolos Kallis: Appointment setto strengtheninternationalexpansion

1 3VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

The author, MarioNolla, is senior vicepresident of Analyticsand Consulting atFlytxt

As communications service providers (CSPs) struggle with their transition from CSPs to digitalservice providers (DSPs) it’s clear their business needs to be about far more than the network. Infact, it is CSP data – and, critically, the capability to derive insights from it – that will enable themto take their place in the digital era, writes Mario Nolla

anillaPlus: In the telecoms industry, thereseems to be a renewed focus aroundanalytics. As someone who has workedon both sides – CSP and vendor – how doyou look at this trend?

Mario Nolla: Historically, CSPs have used analyticsextensively to run their businesses. However, whenthe environment gets challenging, objectives getharder and resources get constrained, you will alwaysfall back on proper planning and analysis to achievethe desired goals. With CSPs now exploring newermeans of increasing revenues and optimising margins,analytics has gained centre stage again – althoughexpectations from analytics function are different now.Analytics is perceived as a game changer for CSPs inthe digital world. The sudden rise of c-level dataexecutives is evidence of how CSPs are warming upto the cross-industry trends that are driving a shift indigital business.

CSPs now wish to move beyond traditionaldescriptive and exploratory analytics, which weremainly used for postmortems of business decisions,to advanced analytics and machine learning-drivenautomated decision making. These new big dataanalytics technology platforms are improvingpersonalisation at a transformational scale by allowingCSPs to manage customer expectations in the verymoment of truths.

The other expectation involves breaking down thetraditional silo-based decision making. Instead ofhaving fragmented data management and analytics,specific to different business units such as marketing,network and so on, big data analytics is allowing theCSPs to have a single view of customers and thebusiness. It is allowing them to bind tightly togethertheir operations and customer expectations. Analyticshas the calibre to be the nerve-centre in the digitaleconomy. This is possible through providingenterprises with consumer insights that enable themto make much more informed decisions that can

generate higher incremental business value. It’simportant to understand that success in this newdigital world not only depends on a CSP’s ability toknow their customer holistically but also withreference to different contexts. This means going wellbeyond traditional data sources and integrating othersources such as location, devices and over-the-top(OTT) data, as well as acquiring the ability to makesense of customer actions in real-time. There is alsoan increasing regulatory pressure on data privacy andsecurity, which again modern analytics systemsshould cater to.

VP: The competitor landscape of CSPs isshifting. How do you see them adapting to thisnew world of customer experience?

MN: Today, digital disruption has put almost allenterprises on the same footing when it comes tocustomer ownership. This means CSPs are going tohave new competitors, especially when they movebeyond their core services to offer digital lifestyleservices like mobile payment, m-commerce andothers. Every service and process in the digital realmdemands customer-centric thinking and execution soa deeper understanding of a customer’s persona andtheir changing needs is a must. However, the realchallenge of managing customer experience is not inthe analytics part. That is a relatively easier part to fixwith the proper analytics tools and team. The harderpart of it is to be able to do all the operationalchanges that are necessary to bring those insights atthe right time to the right person. For example, howdo you make the insight available to the agent in frontof the customer in the moment of truth? That is thehardest part.

Empowering the last mile brings its own set ofchallenges to the CSPs as they won’t have muchcontrol in the traditional sense. In many of the marketsthat we work, some divisions of our CSP clients arecontracted out to franchises, especially sales anddistribution and customer care. Providing that much

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Data analytics is a game changerfor CSPs in the digital era

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1 4 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I APRIL / MAY 2016

I N T E R V I E W

information and power to the channel executives and touchpoint personnel is asensitive proposition for CSPs. However, many CSPs are increasingly looking atshifting the focus from indirect channels to direct channels in order to have morecontrol over the customer experience. Here again, if decision making can beautomated across touch points, and channels are backed up with a deeper enterprise-wide view of the customer, CSPs can nail it down without making drastic changes totheir current processes. Analytics needs to be seen as an enabler for better decisionmaking and not as a change agent for overhauling the processes.

VP: What are the skillsets required to get analytics right? How does Flytxtsupport CSPs in creating business value through analytics?

MN: We’ve talked about how expectations from the analytics function are changing forCSPs so traditional analytical tools and practices may not be enough. The focus ofCSPs has clearly shifted from IT-led reporting to business-led self-service analytics.

Flytxt’s mission is to liberate CSPs from worrying about how to get analytics right andallow them to just focus on business strategies. We take it upon ourselves to providethe required technology, business applications and services and help them transform

their underlying data asset to significant business value through advancedanalytics.

Internally, we have evolved an analytics practice cutting acrosstechnology, business consulting and operations teams. There is a

continuous focus around creating suitable analytical models for thetelecoms business environment, utilising advanced machine

learning algorithms. We call this packaged analytics. Theobjective is reducing the time taken to create and deploy a

model that can help in solving CSPs’ specific businessproblems like churn mitigation, fraud detection, bandwidthutilisation and others. This calls for data scientists anddecision scientists working together. However, you maystill need some kind of fine-tuning when you deploy themodel in live environment. But again, we are talkingabout a two to three week kind of time frame fordeploying a model in place compared to months witha traditional approach.

Decision scientists use Flytxt’s packaged analyticsmodels for self-serve analytics and data discovery.The evolution of Flytxt's Big Data Analytics platform

into a self-service platform for end users like decisionscientists, the IT operations team and data scientists offers

significant benefits to these end users in terms of productivityimprovements, faster decision making and optimal realisation ofeconomic value. Measurable economic value through faster andefficient decision making is the end goal of Flytxt’s analytics andconsulting practice.

VP: What are the barriers CSPs face in adopting analyticscapabilities?

▲

IN ASSOCIATION WITH FLYTXT

There is a continuous focus around creating suitable analytical models for the

telecoms business environment, utilising advanced machine learning algorithms.

We call this packaged analytics


MN: The major challenge in adoption of analytics isthe alignment of overall operational processes with theanalytics objectives. Analytics gives actions andrecommendations, which still need to be executedwithin the window of relevance to realise desiredbusiness impact. The exponential growth in thevolume, variety and complexity of data, has changedthe paradigm of deriving business value fromanalytics. To meet the time-to-insight demands oftoday's competitive business environment, CSPsneed to democratise analytics with self-servicecapabilities.

Another aspect is ensuring the quality and reliability ofdata. CSPs have built the traditional data warehousein a Frankensteinian approach as the business wasgrowing organically or through mergers andacquisitions. And still data analytics teams spend a lotof time reconciling different definitions of keyperformance indicators (KPIs) across various analyticssystems. It has to give way to a more nimble footedapproach, where required data for analytics can beintegrated and accessed in a short time. Thanks tothe capabilities of new age analytics tools, the barriersof consumer privacy and data security seem to be nolonger a show-stopper now.

VP: How do you see the analytics landscapeevolving in the next few years?

MN: What analytics delivers to the CSPs is the abilityto make smarter decisions faster. Its scope couldextend from in the moment of truth decisions taken oncustomer touchpoints, to the strategic decisionsmade by the CxOs. There are two important sides tothe evolutionary landscape. On one side, anincreasing emphasis will be laid on the ownership ofthe analytics function and on the other side the usageof insights from analytics will become widespreadacross departments and functions.

As analytics is fast emerging as a core competencyand competitive differentiator for CSPs, its importancehas risen to the executive level. CAOs (chief analyticsofficers) and CDOs (chief data officers) are emergingas senior business executives responsible for creatingthe analytics strategy to drive digital businesstransformation. In the near future, these executives willbe seen directly reporting to the CEO with anorganisation-wide executive authority for data andanalytics, having a clear mandate to foster

collaboration across departments in making smarterand faster decisions.

On the usage aspect, the progression of analytics intothe future will be guided by how the analytics practiceis adopted by multiple teams for different objectives.The evolution of self-service analytics tools will allowpeople with very little knowledge of analytics to useadvanced analytics and gain benefits from them.However, the need for specialists will not go away, infact that will rise further to ensure they manage andprovide the whole infrastructure and foundation fordecision making across the organisation. Use caseswill extend beyond the telecoms business to digitalbusiness and the connected world, creating newbusiness models and partnerships for CSPs.

VP: Can you elaborate on some of those analyticsdriven monetisation opportunities for CSPs?

MN: CSPs have predominantly focused on customervalue management (CVM). It has given themmeasurable revenue uplift as analytics improved theirability to micro-segment the customer base and topersonalise offers and services over touchpointsacross customer lifecycle. We are definitely seeing usecases like contextual marketing and churn detectionmaturing across the markets. With new customerengagement channels emerging like social media, aset of new use cases like social network analysis andsentiment analysis are showing lot of promise. Wealso expect the other departments and functions totake a cue from marketing and increase their analyticsfocus for operational and strategic decision making. Itcould find applications across optimising networkutilisation, customer care efficiency as well the salesand distribution network.

In the future, analytics will transcend the realm ofinternal business workflows to enable CSPs toprofitably participate in the digital economy by offeringinnovative digital services on their own or inpartnership with other enterprises.

The economics of data monetisation is changingdramatically with new business models predicated onnew data sources and external monetisation use cases.Some use cases involve scenarios where consumer datais analysed to extract insights that can be monetisedwith other verticals, such as advertisers, the healthcareindustry, transportation players, governments and retailers. www.flytxt.com

In the future, analytics

will transcend the

realm of internal

business workflows to

enable CSPs to

profitably participate in

the digital economy by

offering innovative

digital services on

their own or in

partnership with other

enterprises


The author, RobertMachin, is director ofproduct marketing forEMEA at CSGInternational

EXPERTOPINION

We know that telecoms is on the point of radical change – but which way will the cards fall for the industry? The shapeand quality of communications service providers’ (CSPs’) business systems – and how those systems change over thenext five vital years – will be a decisive factor, writes Robert Machin

s must be clear by now to anyone whoworks in the industry, telecoms is on thecusp of radical change – in terms of itstechnology, the products and services that itoffers, and perhaps more importantly, in

terms of the business models that make it profitable.Telecoms is changing its fundamental shape – from abuoyant, highly remunerative industry, dominated by arelatively small number of large players working withinregulated national frameworks, to a digital servicesbusiness where if CSPs choose to compete, they willdo so on a much more open, global playing field,taking on powerful internet giants and an unceasingtide of smaller digital native organisations.

The coming five years will see CSPs redefine their rolein this emerging digital economy. Developing anddelivering new kinds of content and services will beonly a part of the challenge. More significant, wesuspect, will be the industrial internet and the gradualemergence of 5G networks that will make connectivitytruly ubiquitous. These will radically change the waywe use communications and IT in many industryverticals.

The good news is that in this fast-changing world ofinternet-based services and digital transformation,telecommunications will be a key enabler. Machine tomachine communications and the Internet of Thingswon’t work without networks. The bad news is thatCSPs will find that their traditional strengths – such asnetwork ownership and reach, engineering rigour and

standards compliance – will count for less. Instead,like every other kind of digital business, they will live ordie by the strength and appeal of their valueproposition to the market, the speed with which theycan refresh and improve that proposition, and thequality of experience that they can offer to customersand partners. In this they will be going head-to-headwith some much younger and leaner competitors.

Traditional network services such as voice and dataconnectivity and pay-tv services will of coursecontinue to be important. They will have a long tail ofrevenue, and the physical networks that enable themwill continue to be vital – but there’s little doubt thattraditional telecoms and cable business models face aslow decline in terms of revenue. Future profitabilitydepends on finding success in the digital economyand in particular, a significantly monetisable role in theindustrial internet.

Where now for BSS?Many CSPs are now facing a dual challenge – to slowthe decline in profit from their traditional businesswhile accelerating the growth in new digital revenue –and must respond with a correspondingly balancedstrategy. This strategy must defend vulnerablemargins in their communications services, whileimproving agility and market responsiveness in theirfuture business.

It would be tempting to spin traditional and futurebusinesses off into separate silos, and treat them as

A

Five years– is that all we’ve got?

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH CSG INTERNATIONAL


the very different businesses that they are – but thiswould be ill-advised. Although the operational demandsof telco past and telco future will significantly differ,many functions will be common and if CSPs are tomaximise their natural advantages, those functionsmust be integrated around key business entities – inparticular the customer, to optimise the quality ofcustomer experience, and the product catalogue, thatwill allow compelling offers, mixing network and digitalservices, to be built and delivered.

CSPs don’t need to set up a completely different setof business support systems. What they do need is adifferent kind of BSS – one that combines the real-timeagility needed to meet the demands of today’s onlinecustomers with the performance needed to processand securely monetise very high numbers of networkand digital transactions. One that allows new andmore efficient ways of managing the back and frontoffice – out of the cloud, for example, or as a managedservice that will align operational costs with newrevenues, improve strategic focus on future revenue,and mitigate the investment risk of new ventures.

The future is unwrittenSome tough questions need to be addressed. Is yourBSS powerful enough to deal with the baselineperformance demands of present and future services,responsive enough to give your customers anunbeatable online experience and resilient enough tolet you anticipate the as-yet-unwritten demands of astill-evolving business with a high degree ofconfidence? How CSPs answer these questionscould go some way to defining what kind of role theywill be playing in the digital economy in five years.

Notwithstanding the many challenges arising fromchange and transformation, there has never been amore exciting time to be in IT and communications,and CSPs are perfectly placed to take advantage ofemerging opportunities – but only if their supportingsystems allow them to do so. We believe that if theright choices are made, there are many ways for CSPsto move towards future profitability while maximisingthe lifetime revenue of their hard-won legacy – buttime is starting to run out for those choices to be made. www.csgi.com

CSPs don’t need to set

up a completely

different set of business

support systems. What

they do need is a

different kind of BSS

s R y’elecom – The IndustrID TRAecea eDo Tearn how WL

raud Managenue Assurance and FvLeading Rechnologies can help.

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CONTENTS22 TALKING HEADS: BSS FOR DIGITAL COMMERCE IS A BUSINESS IMPERATIVE, NOT AN IT OR NETWORKING PROJECT MATRIXX’s Dave Labuda says the functionality previously covered by the BSS domain is no longer about IT or the network. Instead, the responsibility for digital transformation is moving to chief digital officers

25 BILL & CHARGE ANALYST REPORT Our specially-commissioned analyst report, authored by John Abraham, a senior analyst at Analysys Mason, examines the changing status of billing and charging

36 EXPERT OPINION Andy Tiller introduces Phase 3 of the partnerships-based business model

38 BILL & CHARGE Nick Booth finds there’s not situation that can’t be made worse by an old bill

40 EXPERT OPINION Andreas Gabriel advocates CSPs engage in B2B2x business models to capitalise on new growth opportunities

42 PRICING & ROAMING Jonny Evans tries to connect price charged with value received

22TALKING HEADSDave Labuda

36EXPERT OPINION

38BILL & CHARGE

42PRICING & ROAMING

VanillaPlus Insight April/May 2016


Dave Labuda is the founder, chief executiveand chief technology officer of MATRIXXSoftware, the provider of systems that enabledigital commerce. Here, he tells George Malimthat the functionality previously covered by theBSS domain is no longer about IT or thenetwork. Instead, the responsibility for digitaltransformation is moving to chief digitalofficers who are specifying systems to enablenew digital business models and brands

anillaPlus: Where did MATRIXX Software comefrom, and where are you going?

Dave Labuda: MATRIXX was born out of a cultureand mission that started decades ago. I’ve been in

the Silicon Valley for 30 years now and I’ve really enjoyedbuilding software that solves real problems and providesreal value. I’ve assembled a team that’s been workingtogether for 20 years, having got into telecoms BSS withPortal Software before starting MATRIXX.

We’ve watched the mobile industry develop. When theiPhone came out we realised it wasn’t a phone, it was awindow to the world and we recognised that would presenta generational shift to the telecoms industry. Just like in the1990s, with the emergence into the mainstream of the fixedinternet, there was an opportunity for us to get involved in agenerational change in consumer behaviour. Ouropportunity was that mobile device makers focus on themarketing and sales elements of the device but tend tounderestimate the problems behind the curtain.

We recognised that managing a network of 100 millionsmart devices was going to be much more difficult thanpreviously thought so we worked to create a nextgeneration platform and experience. In terms of wherewe’re going, our focus is on building more and more piecesof the platform to enable an end-to-end experience forcommunications service providers’ customers.

BSS for digital commerce isa business imperative, not

an IT or networking project

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T A L K I N G H E A D S

VP: What’s the single biggest challenge thetelecoms industry faces?

DL: For me, there’s a great analogy to the US autoindustry in the 1970s. The industry became fat and lazybecause they made good money but they didn’t innovateto improve their customers’ experiences. Asian playerscame in and absolutely disrupted that industry. The samething is happening in telecoms with the over-the-top(OTT) players. CSPs come from a regulated world wherethey had to ask the government to change the price of aservice, so they didn’t see this transformation coming.The problem with that is you get behind very fast. Thathas now become apparent and some CSPs are losing20% of their annual revenues as voice and data serviceincomes fall with nothing to replace them.

But the money is there if you add up the totalcommunications-related services spend of users – it’s justthat CSPs aren’t necessarily gathering their share. TheCSPs stood at the kerb and watched this happen so theynow have to fight for every dollar.

VP: MATRIXX talks about digital commerce insteadof real-time charging or policy. Why is that?

DL: Because the real goal for us and for CSPs is the end-to-end subscriber experience. What you see when youapproach that is a dozen different boxes in the networkincluding charging, policy and CRM. The reality is that youcan’t create compelling customer experiences by duct

taping together 12 systems, each with their own view –because you end up with a Frankenstein’s monster;consumers encounter a disconnected experience right atthe very point where CSPs are trying to impress them.

We’re the only vendor in the market with a singlecoherent architecture across that entire end-to-endspectrum; we built real-time charging and policy togetheron the same platform. Vlocity and SalesForce are ourpartners, and they facilitate integrated CRM and make itavailable as a service from the cloud.

So many other vendors’ technologies are socumbersome that their systems can’t deliver a compellingcustomer experience. Our strategy is to solve the end-to-end problem without having those moving parts. One ofthe reasons why we win business from our customers –Swisscom, Telstra and PLDT are good examples – is thatwe take the pain out of integrating a new system. WithMATRIXX, CSPs can launch a new digital brand in justthree months, compared to three years for a bigtransformation project, and quite often, those projects fail.They’re always expensive, too.

To be a digital commerce platform you need to support abusiness offering where, say, a football app mightgenerate 20,000 users in a 90,000 seat football stadiumwhen an offer of a streaming clip package is pushed out.Those 20,000 fans may all accept at once and expect toreceive excellent service. If you try to support that offeringwith a classic system it is going to collapse in a heap.


IN ASSOCIATION WITH MATRIXX SOFTWARE

▲

To be a digital

commerce platform

you need to support a

business offering

where, say, a football

app might generate

20,000 users in a

90,000 seat football

stadium when an offer

of a streaming clip

package is pushed out


T A L K I N G H E A D S

www.matrixx.com

There is now a shift in how CSPs are looking at ITinfrastructure and solving problems. 25% of mobileservice providers have hired a chief digital officer in thelast three years to drive digital transformation throughoutthe organisation. They’re change-makers, often hiredfrom outside of the telecoms industry because they bringa new mindset. They’re not specifically focusing on policyor charging, or their network or IT systems, they’rethinking of how to deliver a digital experience to theircustomers.

All of our discussions are led by the chief marketingofficer, the chief digital officer or the chief strategy officer.That’s a business-oriented view and that’s correctbecause this isn’t an IT project anymore.

VP: How does your partnership with Vlocity andSalesforce change anything in the race to go digital?

DL: The partnership essentially provides an MVNO in abox; an end-to-end solution that covers all businessaspects and creates an absolutely real-time, precise andinstantly gratifying view of the subscriber that can satisfydemand from any channel. It lets an organisation deployan experience very quickly and capitalise on the newdigital market, instead of facing a three-year billing projectthat misses the current window and is ultimately basedon expensive, legacy technology.

It lets service providers get into the market and startdelivering return on investment very quickly and has theadvantage of letting them put their toe in the water andscale up if the offering is a success. There’s much lowerrisk and much faster time to return on investment.

VP: Doesn’t the Uberisation of telecoms mean thatCSPs will inevitably make less money from theircustomers?

DL: We’ve had great business results from our customersso far. Telstra is a good example because they have beenlive on our platform for two years. They’ve increased theirdata ARPU by 5%, made significant cost savings in theircontact centre operation, and they’ve achieved improvedsatisfaction, measured by Net Promoter Score. Inaddition, bill shock refunds have also decreased whichmeans the increased spend is not surprising people.Customers are, as I said earlier, happy to spend moneyfor good experiences.

VP: What questions do chief digital officers ask youbehind closed doors?

DL: Essentially, what’s happened for the last 20 years is

that IT and network departments have owned decisionmaking and have tried to map solutions to the needs ofthe business. What’s happening now is the normalevaluation and procurement processes aren’t working sochief digital officers are asking for our help to get IT andnetwork departments to see the magic and understandthat the traditional approach will be dead before itproduces fruit.

CDOs know the platform needs to be much more agileand that a lower cost set of solutions is needed for thebusiness to drive into new markets. It’s a tricky gamebecause there are a lot of careers depending on this.

VP: Some of your customers are also investors inMATRIXX. What’s the strategy behind that?

DL: There are tremendous advantages in both directions.From our point of view, having strategic customersbecome investors provides another pillar of strength inour relationship – these are marriages, not just dates. Forinstance, we’ve had relationships with Telstra andSwisscom through Portal for 25 years, and that addsanother level of openness and commitment to theengagements.

The benefits for the investing CSP are that they getvisibility into what’s going on at the company. The flipsideis that the customers are putting a big bet on us so theywant a reward for making that bet. That takes the shapeof a financial return for them on our success.

This investment model helps alleviate the traditionalconcerns about what happens when a company like usgets bought by a one of the big vendors and theinnovation stops. Financial investors have a horizon inmind by which they want to receive a return – but we’vefound investors who want a better alternative, a long-termrelationship. The strategic investors will be as patient aswe need because their goals are aligned to our goals. Ithink that puts us in a privileged position.

Dave Labuda: Youcan’t create

compelling customerexperiences by duct

taping together 12systems with their

own views

We’ve had great business results fromour customers so far. Telstra is a good

example because they have been live onour platform for two years

Billing systems have always been central to communications service provider (CSP)operations. The first modern CSP billing systems were deployed in the 1960s. In the early days,such systems were mostly developed by the CSPs themselves and were quite basic in whatthey could do. Billing supported a single service type and all charges were billed monthly. Itwas not until the 1980s that CSPs started considering billing systems from third party vendors.As the billing function evolved following the arrival of mobile telephony, a growing number ofCSPs looked to independent software vendors to supply their need for a billing system

n the 1990s the growing popularity of prepaidmobile plans also had a significant impact on howCSP billing and charging systems evolved.Prepaid IN platforms were based on proprietaryvendor hardware and designed to track in real-

time all service usage. It was viewed as a networkfunction unlike postpaid billing, which remained withinthe business function. Over the next decade theprepaid and postpaid charging functions grew closerto each other, driven by the changing marketenvironment and customer behaviour, resulting inconvergent charging platforms that could manageboth prepaid and postpaid users from a singleinstance.

While the CSP billing function has changedconsiderably over the years, the evolution has beensteadily consistent rather than occurring in rapidbursts. Billing systems have consistently attracted asubstantial portion of CSP investments primarily led bythe traditional view that any service is only as good asit can be accurately billed for. To this day, the revenuemanagement functions within CSPs continue toattract the largest investment among all BSSfunctions. The result has been that CSP billingsystems are generally viewed as a mature segmentand mostly ahead of the curve compared to retail orenterprise billing systems, unlike customer care orCEM systems which tend to trail leading retail andenterprise deployments.

The biggest impact on CSP billing systems in the pastdecade has been caused by the explosive rise inmobile data usage. The ubiquity of the internet andthe rising penetration of smartphones havefundamentally altered CSP operations and revenuestreams. There has been steady decline in traditionalvoice and messaging revenues while revenues haveshifted to mobile data as can be seen in Figure 1below.

Figure 1: Telecoms retail revenue growth byservice type, worldwide, 2014–2020

Introduction

I


ANALYSTREPORT

▲

The author, John Abraham,is a senior analyst atAnalysys Mason

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As the data driven digital economy era takes centrestage, CSP spend on policy engines has increased aswell, as most data need to be tracked in real-time foreffective monetisation. Besides, an increasing numberof CSPs are also evolving to become digital serviceproviders (DSPs) in order to improve their customerengagement and experience, which also requires arobust policy and charging platform.

This article analyses three of the recent key trends thathave impacted or may impact billing and chargingsystems – the widespread acceptance of convergentbilling platforms, the increasing significance of policy incharging systems and the potential for cloud basedbilling systems delivered as a service.

Convergent billing systems arethe norm, not the newOne of the foundational requirements for a modernbilling system is that it provides support for bothprepaid and postpaid charging from the sameplatform. Before convergent systems, most CSPs hadseparate billing systems to support prepaid andpostpaid use cases.

Prepaid IN platforms were first deployed in the 1990s,and supported only SS7 and other legacy protocols.They were built on proprietary telecoms platforms andwere initially tied to proprietary hardware, to reducenetwork latency for real-time support. Prepaid IN wasconsidered a network function within telecoms, andwas supported by NEPs (network equipmentproviders). On the other hand, postpaid billingplatforms were the legacy of independent softwarevendors. These platforms evolved from the early billingsystems at CSPs and were considered as part of thebilling function. Over time the postpaid billing platformexpanded to support complex features such asaccount hierarchy and invoicing and billing functionsas well.

Figure 2: Some of the feature differencesbetween prepaid, postpaid and convergentbilling platforms

The emergence of innovative new use cases such ashybrid plans, carrier billing, time-based mobilebroadband speed, real-time subscriber control andothers have resulted in the need for a commonplatform to drive different use cases. While convergentbilling systems have been around since the early2000s, it is only in past six years or so that they havebecome mainstream across regions and CSP types.CSPs generally have been notoriously slow to moveestablished subscribers over to new systems sincelarge-scale transformation projects involving billingsystems are complex, risky and expensive. This hasbeen a key reason why adjunct systems, which aredeployed alongside existing billing systems to extendthe overall billing and charging capabilities, have had asuccessful run within many CSPs.

These adjunct systems can be deployed more easilyand involve a slower migration which results in more-


ANALYSTREPORT

Prepaid Postpaid Convergent platform platform platform

Invoicing andbilling ✖ ✓ ✓

Traffic rerating ✖ ✓ ✓

Accounthierarchy

✖ ✓ ✓

Enterpriseaccount support ✖ ✓ ✓

Real-timecharging ✓ ✖ ✓

▲

manageable projects. However running multiplesystems significantly increases the costs and thesystem complexity and has been a key driver for manyCSPs deploying convergent billing platforms. Besides,the falling margins on traditional voice and messagingservices and the need to launch new services andrespond quicker to market changes have also driventhe take up of convergent platforms. While therecontinues to be demand for prepaid-only andpostpaid-only use cases in some regions, almost allnew platforms currently being deployed areconvergent in nature. However, there continues to bea significant maintenance and support spend onlegacy postpaid systems.

Some of the key drivers that have accelerated the shifttowards convergent billing platforms include:

Reducing costs and shortening time to market –Separate charging silos for prepaid and postpaid are aconstraint on CSPs and stifle service delivery andinnovation. This results in unnecessary duplication ofeffort and a longer time to market for marketing offersand new services. A convergent OCS (online chargingsystem) platform onto which legacy IN solutions canbe migrated eliminates separate workflows for prepaidand postpaid teams. The reduction in support costsmeans a convergent platform provides a better returnon investment, while also providing carrier-gradeperformance and reliability.

Creating new revenue streams – Althoughvariations on existing revenue streams will remain themost significant sources of revenue for CSPs in theshort and medium term, in the longer term they willincreasingly need to earn revenue from non-traditionalservice types to drive up ARPU, especially in saturatedmarkets. These may include services such as mobilepayments, the supply of real-time data for mobileadvertising, new business models based onsponsored data from over-the-top players, and the

ability to offer services as part of a loyalty scheme.

Improving the customer experience – Customersincreasingly expect a better service experience fromtheir CSPs. This includes the ability to obtain servicesthat are more tailored to their particular requirements,such as access to self-service – with real-time billingand account information, and the ability to quicklyresolve account, service and payment issues.European Union and US regulations also require CSPsto implement mechanisms to manage and prevent billshock. By providing customer account information innear real-time, convergent platforms help CSPs bettercontrol and manage the customer experience.

Rapid subscriber growth – Developing andemerging markets such as China, India and those inAfrica and Latin America are experiencing rapidgrowth in the number of mobile broadbandsubscribers. Meanwhile, CSPs in developed marketsare gaining subscribers for new data services such asmobile advertising and IPTV services. As a result,CSPs have been driven towards convergent platforms,which support a larger number of subscribers onfewer systems and so reduce the complexity forCSPs.

Scale and robustness – OCS can run off commercialoff the shelf (COTS) software and standard IThardware and so are cheaper to scale. These systemssupport standardised programmable interfaces forthird-party developers, which makes them moreextendable and future proof.

Explosive data usage growth continues todrive demand for policy enginesThe emergence of the digital economy and the shifttowards IP-based traffic has significantly impactedCSPs’ operations as revenue has shifted fromtraditional voice and messaging services to data-


▲


driven services. Increasingly for all data services,rating has to be done in real-time because users havelimited allowances and CSPs are required to providereal-time notifications and alerts to avoid dataconsumption shocks. Customer expectations andbehaviours have also changed considerably, drivenmostly by real-time control and seamless userexperiences provided by other online digitalcompanies such as Amazon and Uber. An increasingnumber of CSPs are evolving to become digitalservice providers (DSPs) in order to improve theirengagement with their customers and to competemore effectively against a new breed of digitaleconomy competitors. One of the key requirements offuture DSPs will be the necessity to supportcustomers in real-time, which demands a robustonline policy and charging platform.

Figure 3: Differences between a traditional CSPand a DSP

Policy management was created primarily to providetraffic management solutions and ensure that anetwork did not become overloaded. Increasingly,these solutions are being used in different ways tocreate and support new service offerings for serviceproviders. OSS/BSS system interfaces were definedby the GSMA for both offline and online charging.They enable service providers to build rules or policiesbased on information dynamically taken from the

subscribers' billing information and combine it tosubscriber and other data. This linkage betweencharging and policy management solutions enablesCSPs to create new service offerings based both onnetwork and billing information. Initially, this providedsupport for tiered pricing plans, whereby subscribersselect a service based on data usage. A flat-rate feefor usage is charged up to a given amount of data.Once this figure has been exceeded, policymanagement rules are applied to: reduce throughput,stop the service entirely, or increasingly to charge forthe data.

Monetisation of data services has been followed withother use cases that include pricing based on alimited time window, on the URLs or applications,quality of service and content type and others as theinitial tranche of policy-based charging services isbeing followed by many more. Over time the capabilityof the CSP in offering complex services for consumerand enterprise driven by advanced policymanagement functionality will improve even as thesupport cost of launching new services decrease.

Some of the key factors that will drive investments inpolicy management systems include:

1. Growth in the consumption of mobile data services (more than fixed), which will be fostered by new technology roll-outs and the prevalence of smartphones. Hybrid and tiered data tariffs will become the norm for mobile data usage, driving spend on new policy rules and convergent data plans.

2. Typical policy management and real-time charging (RTC) software licences are related to the number of subscribers and therefore as subscribers increase the overall spend on these systems increase as well. Developing and emerging markets such as China, India and those in Africa and Latin America are experiencing rapid growth in the number of new broadband subscribers.

ANALYSTREPORT

▲

• Systems of record

• Product silos

• Mobile and fixed network

• Static information

• Customised processes

• Focus on network and billing

Traditional CSP Digital Service Provider

• Systems of engagement

• Product synergy

• Software defined network

• Dynamic information

• Standardised, lean process

• Focus on data, content and analytics


3. New policy management deployments and migration to convergent billing systems will drive growth as CSPs’ network architecture becomes more IP-based. LTE’s evolved packet core (EPC) is driving CSPs to have an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture. Furthermore, CSPs are using the 3GPP’s PCC architecture to deploy policy management solutions and real-time communications (RTC) solutions in order to gain the maximum benefits of being able to flexibly implement network protection and revenue- generating use cases.

4. Increasing need for service differentiation as CSPs in all telecoms markets increasingly compete for the same customer base. CSPs will continue to invest in policy management and innovative RTC data plans in the bid to retain customers, increase ARPU and create new revenue streams. CSPs are partnering with OTT content and advertising providers using a two-sided business model with revenue sharing in order to differentiate their data services.

There continues to be some inhibitors which canhold back the growth of policy management systems,such as:

1. Net neutrality, privacy laws and related concerns enforced and raised by regulators continue to be a major hindrance for CSPs that would like to track and analyse customers’ usage, preferences and location data in order to develop innovative, personalised services.

2. The complexity and disruption that billing integration and transformation projects can cause are risky for CSPs and hinder full integration between the policy and charging rules function (PCRF) and RTC as well as migration to convergent billing systems.

Billing in the cloud – will it catch on?The rising popularity of XaaS-based deploymentmodels, driven by implementations in enterprise andretail, has compelled CSPs to closely examine theprospect of deploying their own billing functions as aservice in the cloud (Note: in this report SaaS isdefined as a software licensing and delivery model ona subscription basis that is different from managedservices). There are many reasons why such aproposition would be attractive: it is cost-effective andbased on a sustainable opex model, the architecture isagile and permits easy scalability, and migrationchallenges will be eliminated.

However, a cloud-based model may not be suitablefor all CSP support systems, and there are significantdrawbacks to deploying billing systems in the cloud.For example, CSPs would have less control over acritical part of their operations. Furthermore, thefeature functionality offered with cloud-based modelsis generic, with limited opportunities for customisation,and this will be highly disruptive, particularly for largeCSPs. The billing-as-a-service model is best suited tomobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and smallerCSPs.

Key factors that will stand in the way of widespreadadoption of billing as a service in the cloud include:

Organisational structures and businessstrategies within large CSPs Although SaaS-basedrevenue management solutions offer multiple benefits,a comprehensive shift to the cloud is beyond thescope of most large CSPs. The systems that would beimpacted in a potential move to the cloud are servedby multiple teams that often work in silos. Therefore, inorder to make the shift, these teams would first needto be streamlined, which is a highly improbable taskfor large CSPs. For CSPs that have undergone M&As,the organisation and system complexities aremultiplied, making cloud-based deployments highlyunlikely. ▲


In addition to this, CSP billing systems areconsiderably mature because of a steady stream ofinvestments over the past several decades andtherefore less likely to undergo radical changes.Besides, larger CSPs have greater incentive tocontinue with the current model of deploymentsbecause it gives them greater flexibility throughcustomisation, while also offering them greater controlover the operations. Furthermore, the demands of newSaaS processes on large CSPs with several decadesof legacy billing platforms will reduce the chances ofsuccess for such initiatives. MVNOs and CSPs withsmaller footprint are most likely to adopt SaaS-basedbilling platforms. Unlike larger CSPs, they have lesserdemands on customisation and have a simplifiedorganisational culture that will make it easier to adoptSaaS-based billing.

Cloud based deployments are not customisationfriendly CSP billing systems are almost neverdeployed off-the-shelf. Instead, deployment involves asubstantial amount of customisation to ensure that thefeature functionality of the new platform reflects theexisting processes and organisational culture. This isbecause, in almost all cases, little effort is made tomodify the existing organisational culture or processesto adapt to new business environments.

The key to widespread SaaS deployments is toprioritise configuration over customisation. Extensivecustomisation is antithetical to the basic premise ofSaaS-based deployments. Successful SaaS models inthe enterprise have been built around single instanceplatforms with the capability of offering multipleflavours of the solution through extensiveconfiguration. In addition, comprehensivecustomisation increases complexity and creates acycle of constant upgrades and change requests.From a vendor perspective, the benefits of SaaSdeployments that support only a single instance of thesolution disappear if the platform is customisedextensively for certain CSPs.

SaaS models require CSPs to adapt to astandardised, structured way of managing businessprocesses. Large CSPs are not ready to adopt SaaSfor their billing and charging systems, primarilybecause their current requirements are too complex tobe supported purely as a SaaS model. Crossing thechasm to become a fully SaaS-enabled CSP isconsidered too disruptive and risky.

Large CSPs will continue to discount SaaSdeployments for billing, primarily because they requirea degree of customisation that makes SaaS unviable.Smaller CSPs will experiment with some variants ofSaaS, mostly hosted in private cloud environments.MVNOs and smaller CSPs in emerging markets aremost likely to embrace SaaS-based billing services,mainly due to simplified internal organisation and focuson effective cost management. For vendors, awidespread shift to cloud-based services will have asignificant impact on their overall revenue, primarily inthe form of reduced licensing fees and fewercustomisation opportunities. For vendors focused onlarge CSP accounts, the potential for selling SaaS-based billing solutions is very limited.

Figure 4: Mapping CSPs by size against the mostlikely future billing system deployment strategy

ANALYSTREPORT

Tier 0 and

Tier 1

Tier 2 and

Tier 3

Tier 4 and

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Own data

centre

Private

Cloud

Hybrid

cloud

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Source: AnalysysMason


ConclusionChanging customer expectations and behaviour,driven by their engagement with online digitalcompanies and the rising might of internetenabled digital companies, have a significantimpact on CSP operations. CSPs have seen theirtraditional voice and messaging revenues declinealongside a need to invest heavily in nextgeneration technologies that would enable fasterinternet access. CSPs therefore have a strongfocus on effective monetisation of their servicesto ensure their network investments aresufficiently protected. CSP billing systemstherefore continue to attract the largestinvestment in all BSS segments even as theycontinue their steady evolution.

Convergent platforms have become the norm forall new billing system deployments, with CSPs

deploying such platforms even in scenarioswhere their requirements are explicitly forprepaid or postpaid use cases. Most large CSPshave some type of convergent billing platformalready in place, while upgrades from the smallerCSPs continue to drive the market. As CSPrevenue growth continues to shift towards databased services, there has also been a risingdemand for deploying policy engines to supportaccurate real-time charging for mobile data.

CSPs are also considering newer ways ofdeploying billing systems, driven by the risingpopularity of SaaS based deployments in theenterprise. However considering the complexityand real-time nature of the modern billingsystems, no large CSPs are expected to adoptbilling as service model in the near future.

About Analysys Mason Analysys Mason has been a global specialist adviser in telecoms, media and technology (TMT) for morethan 30 years. Since 1985, Analysys Mason has played an influential role in key industry milestones andhelped clients through major shifts in the TMT market. We continue to be at the forefront ofdevelopments in digital economy and are advising clients on new business strategies to addressdisruptive technologies.www.analysysmason.com

Analysys Mason is the global telecoms specialist advisers on telecoms, media and technology

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zNetwork slicing in particular will play a critical role in creating multi-application and potentially multi-tenant networks capable of supporting variable cost connections.

Analysys Mason has extensive and in-depth research and insight on the on-going standards and technology developments, and how these will impact the use cases for mobile networks and 5G.

www.analysysmason.com/next-generation-wireless-research

Our primary research and understanding of telecoms software puts our expert analyst team at the forefront of next-generation networks research and forecasting.

Latest research from Analysys Mason’s Next-Generation Wireless Networks programme shows that the major value-add for 5G will come not just from virtualising the network, but from specific software features that are starting to come into the test programme. “

”

Software will drive the monetisation opportunities in next-generation wireless networks

analysysmason.com [email protected]


Company summary

Founded 1989HQ Graz, AustriaEmployees 400 (within BearingPoint Group: 3,500)Revenue Not disclosedCustomers BT, eir, Dimension Data, HD+, iiNet, Liberty Global,

Telekom Austria Group, Kabel BW / UPC, Cloud212

Partnerships Pactera, HP, Tech Mahindra, Abeam Consulting, Cognizant, Siemens

Financial status Top Rating: DunBradstreet, KSV (Austria)

Bill & Charge products

Infonova R6Infonova R6 is a Digital Ecosystem Management Platform with multi-tenant concept-to-cash BSS capabilities at its core. Infonova R6, whichis TM Forum Frameworx conformance certified, supports organisationsby providing business solutions needed for the creation, delivery andmonetisation of innovative digital services and multi-party ecosystems.This enables the monetisation of end-customer business relationshipsand caters for sharing revenues and allocation of costs with all serviceproviding partners on the platform.

Offering digital services involves dealing with complex scenarios wheremultiple partners and suppliers collaborate in bi-directional, multi-levelrevenue chains in various B2B2x business models. The Infonova R6product empowers businesses with the ability to manage partners,monetise relationships and offerings, and provides scalability for theirservices in the digital economy environment.

Key differentiators

The Infonova R6 product offers a robust platform that enablesbusinesses to operate in a multi-service and multi-tenant architecture.Infonova R6 offers businesses flexibility to orchestrate and monetiseboth traditional and next generation services and products, reflectingthe convergence of industry value chains towards value networks. Itconnects multiple, independent business partners, enabling servicesharing and B2B monetisation between these partners. Conforming tothe TM Forum standards, Infonova R6 is designed on the principles ofan Open API interconnected platform. The product offers full end-to-end concept to cash functionality, that is available to each businesspartner on the multi-tenant platform.

Competitive pressures

Infonova competes with the traditional incumbent vendors who haveactive working relationship with the CSP, from supporting them in theend-customer-relationship management area. In addition, Infonova alsocompetes with the digital vendors that follow anything-as-a-servicebusiness model.

Company summary

Founded 1993HQ Beijing, ChinaEmployees 14,000+Revenue $761mCustomers AIS Thailand, China Mobile, China Telecom,

China Unicom, Nepal Telecom, Telenor Group, UMobile, Zong and others

Partnerships Amazon Web Services, Cap Gemini, IBM and numerous partners in the Chinese market

Financial status Privately held


Veris BSS SuiteThe Veris BSS suite can be deployed on-premise or delivered overcloud – private as well as public. The core products within the VerisSuite include billing, CRM and real-time big data analytics. Veris Billingis a fully convergent billing, real-time charging and policy managementsystem. The billing system can enable real-time, dynamic subscriberpackage creation and monetisation. The CRM system enables theservice provider to deliver an omni-channel experience to thesubscriber, including social media. The real-time analytics capabilitiesof the suite enable service providers to deliver contextualisedinteractions and offers.

AsiaInfo’s Veris BSS suite also includes Veris Open OperationalPlatform (O2P), which enables a B2B collaboration environment. Itallows the service provider to on-board partners, such at OTTs, andoffer converged services to the combined subscriber base. Veris O2Palso enables service providers to generate additional revenue byoffering use of its back-office IT services to its digital partners.

Key differentiators

AsiaInfo offers a complete BSS stack as a fully-convergent, omni-channel solution to its clients, including real-time charging andcontextual awareness capabilities at very large scale. Its Veris O2Pallows its clients to form partnerships and collaborations, enabling themto participate in the digital ecosystem by bundling new digital serviceswith their traditional offerings. In addition to the traditional deploymentmodel of BSS solutions, the company offers its BSS suite through asoftware-as-a-service delivery model which offers cost savings forservice providers planning IT transformation to digitise their existingoperations. It also reduces deployment time and enables early returnon investment.


AsiaInfo faces competition in breaking into new markets outside itsstronghold in Asia from competitors who have long-establishedrelationships with service providers. In addition, network equipmentproviders (NEP) are able to offer their BSS suites bundled within largernetwork equipment contracts, which in principle makes it difficult forindependent software vendors like AsiaInfo to compete.

COMPANYPROFILES


COMPANYPROFILES

Company summary

Founded 2008HQ Mountain View, California, USAEmployees 120+Revenue Undisclosed Customer Swisscom, Teleena, Telstra, PLDT Group,

iD Mobile, Vodafone New ZealandPartnerships Accenture, Aria, Atos, IBM, Tech Mahindra, Unico,

MDS, KPMGFinancial status Privately held


MATRIXX Digital CommerceMATRIXX Digital Commerce provides a single, online platform fordigital service providers (DSPs) to easily create, market, sell andservice an array of digital products as well as traditional network-basedservices. It enables DSPs to develop products and servicesdynamically that can be priced, packaged and promoted throughmobile applications and digital channels. The platform enables a fullyreal-time, online digital customer lifecycle for creating high valuecustomer relationships. From customer on-boarding and purchasing,through to billing, loyalty and rewards programmes, the platformprovides interactive capabilities for customer engagement and givescustomers the power to control, self-direct and tailor how they buy,manage, share and pay for digital services. MATRIXX enablestelecoms providers to build long-term strategic value through high-touch, digital customer relationships.

Key differentiators

MATRIXX enables its clients to delivery an always-on, end-to-endcustomer experience for all customer interactions. It provides preciseinformation to customers, on-demand and for every single interaction.The company offers business agility through a cloud-based,configuration-only solution. MATRIXX offers a patented technology aspart of its digital commerce offering. MATRIXX claims the solution tobe cost-effective as it requires only a small hardware footprint formanaging billions of customer and network interactions a day, in real-time. Having a unified customer database allows for low latencyresponses across all uses, backed by contractual SLAs. MATRIXXDigital Commerce is purpose-built as a single, configurable productwhich can be deployed on premise or from the cloud in as little as90 days.


MATRIXX’s software works with service providers who are focused ondeploying real-time BSS solutions for digital services. In this context,the company competes primarily with network equipment providers(NEPS) who also offer traditional real-time systems for prepaidsubscribers.

Company summary

Founded 1999HQ Headquartered in Canada with 25 offices

worldwideEmployees 1,800Revenue US$223 million (FY 2015)Customer Over 250 service providers including Vodafone,

Ooredoo and Deutsche TelekomPartnerships Accenture, Elster, Wipro, IBM, MicrosoftFinancial status Publicly listed company (RKN)


Redknee UnifiedRedknee Unified helps service providers monetise next generationservices in real-time – no matter the type of service, customer orbusiness model. Its modular design and real-time charging, billing,policy and customer care capabilities provides the flexibility and agilityto monetise new revenue streams, launch new services faster anddeliver an improved customer experience.Redknee Unified utilises an integrated product catalogue and ordermanagement to support the monetisation of any service orcombination of services, including third-party and partner services.Redknee Unified enables a consistent omni-channel customerexperience with real-time account information updates, online self-careapplications and a 360 degree view of the customer, allowing serviceproviders to better understand the customer and proactively supportthem in real-time.

Key differentiators

Redknee is a leading provider of monetisation solutions, monetising 24billion real-time transactions a day. Redknee’s portfolio of real-timemonetisation and subscriber management solutions allow serviceproviders to charge for things in new and innovative ways and can betailored to the customer’s needs and can be delivered on premise,cloud-based, or as Software-as-a-Service. Redknee already supportsa number of MVNEs and MVNOs around world from the cloud. With more than 25 offices, Redknee offers worldwide coverage for itsservices. Its solutions are deployed at over 250 service providersglobally, besides servicing clients in other vertical markets, such asBMW and Meralco.


Redknee increasingly competes with the large tier-1 vendors and alsosome of the smaller vendors in emerging regions. Redknee alsocompetes with network equipment providers (NEP) who offer theirBSS suites bundled within larger network equipment contracts.Redknee also had a growing practice focused on other vertical suchas automotive and energy.

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The fight for revenue continues in the mobile market – communications service providers (CSPs) arehaving to fund significant investment in their networks to manage increasing demand for data, whilecompeting for income with the digital service providers (DSPs). On the other side, these DSPs arefacing increasing competition for the attention of the end user. This means there’s a bigger marketseeking the end-user money, and greater audience dilution. It’s time for Phase 3 of the businessmodel says Andy Tiller

t didn’t take long for mobile consumers to fall in lovewith DSP applications, with their impact spreadingthroughout the telecoms value chain. CSPs aretaking a little longer, but from the early days of thewalled gardens – Phase 1, initial suspicion and

reluctance to engage, there has been a sea change in theDSPs’ approach to partnership. This is largely gearedtowards creating differentiation – and perhaps somerevenue – from a small number of strategic partnershipswith powerful DSPs such as Netflix, Spotify andFacebook – Phase 2. These partnerships can be verybeneficial for the DSPs. As an example, in 2012 Spotifyhad five million subscribers – linking up with major CSPshelped the company reach 75 million monthly activeusers in June 2015, with 30 million now paying for theservice.

With DSP players offering services over CSPs’ datanetworks, there is an opportunity for CSPs to formpartnerships with these challengers creating new servicepropositions; shaking free the perception that CSPnetworks are just a dumb pipe, and crucially, addingvalue to DSP services and gaining a share of revenues.So the industry is now entering a third phase of the CSP-DSP partnership era, but CSPs are struggling to scale uptheir DSP partnerships business.

The opportunity for partnerships is vast, and the potentialfor all parties to achieve their goals is very much there.CSPs however, need to step up their view of thisopportunity, and show more seriousness towards wooingthe DSP community as well as reaching out to the widernon-digital businesses who need help going digital.

Playing to CSPs’ strengthsCSPs have the back-office technology that most DSPscannot afford, and CSPs have the direct customer billingrelationships and position of trust that it would take DSPsyears to build. There is also the largely untappedanalogue market – businesses which have yet to makefull use of the possibilities of mobile communications as apromotional channel, as well as the largely underservedSME market. The focus on CSP-DSP partnerships hasmainly been in the B2C domain rather than B2B.

Google, Facebook and many popular digital players whohave advertising-based business models, are nothesitating to reach out to these markets, yet most CSPsare already linked with these businesses, either as mobileor broadband/fixed line providers. CSPs need the tools toexploit this potentially significant market opportunity.

There are countless smaller retailers, consumer brandsand SMEs which are still, even today, off-the-grid – theydo not connect with their consumers through mobile.These businesses want to compete effectively with theirlarger, deep-pocketed competitors, but don’t have theresources to make hefty investments into new IT systemsand workforce, or the time to gain a full understanding ofthe different operational processes.

Many don’t know where to start and this creates a greatopportunity for CSPs to build relationships with suchbusinesses, to show them the potential of workingtogether. That potential involves packaging up end-to-endsupport including initial consulting, technology from theback-end cloud based billing/CRM/analytics to the front-

Partnerships-based businessmodel enters Phase 3

IThe author, AndyTiller, is global vicepresident of productmarketing atAsiaInfo

▲

EXPERTOPINION


IN ASSOCIATION WITH ASIAINFO

end web presence and apps, and managed services –just like MVNEs offer fully-packaged services to MVNOs.

Expanding the marketBundling DSP services with CSP services can expand themarket for both sides, and the DSP can take advantageof CSPs’ subscriber segmentation to promote services tohighly targeted audiences. Billing can be handled via theCSPs’ sophisticated and purpose-built systems, andomni-channel customer service and support delivered tothe DSP via the CSPs’ capabilities.

Partnering does have its challenges. The success ofthese partnerships relies on all parties. The CSPs, theDSPs and the businesses need to overcome theirincumbent ways of thinking and operating, to embracenewer ways of working together. Issues aroundcontracts, service provisioning and data privacy all needto be addressed to the satisfaction of all involved.However, there are solutions available in the market thatcan help smooth the transition to a new way of workingand deliver significant rewards.

One example is China Telecom, a CSP that has beentapping into the potential of DSP partnerships – andraising some serious incremental revenue from suchbusinesses – through the use of AsiaInfo’s Veris OpenOperational Platform (O2P). This is a collaborationenvironment that enables CSPs to boost revenues byconverging their products with those of the DSPs, andproviding DSPs with the benefit of the CSP’s advancedback-office IT capabilities.

Such solutions enable an environment for the creationand development of converged or mash-up products,which consist of CSP services and IT capabilities such asmobile data, QoS and billing, combined with DSPservices such as music streaming; and an API hub forconnecting various CSP/DSP IT systems.

Through this sharing of resources, such platforms bringsignificant value to CSPs like China Telecom throughenabling effective DSP partners. They enable DSPs toincrease their subscriber base, monetise their servicesand enhance the value they deliver to their customers.CSPs can cross-sell DSP services and content to theirexisting customers and gain a share of that revenue; up-sell communication services; win new customers throughinnovative products, plans and offers that include DSPservices and content, and monetise their IT and networkcapabilities.

The China Telecom modelSince launching this new business model, China Telecomhas continuously added partners who converge their

digital service products with China Telecom’scommunications products across their fixed and mobileas well as IPTV lines of businesses. In a single samplemonth, the incremental value added to China Telecom’sbusiness through its Open Operational Platform wasUS$172 million.

That’s a big number from a large CSP, but the potential isthere for all sizes of operations. Research by Northstreamestimates that the non-platform approach to DSPpartnerships has the potential to generate around €160million in gross profits from Western European CSPs overthe period 2014-2017. However, with a partnercollaboration platform in place, these CSPs couldgenerate somewhere in the region of €2.2 billion in grossprofits over the same period. That’s a sizeable marketopportunity ready to be exploited.

The business case for the platform has two sides:reducing the cost of integration through standardisedAPIs, processes and development environments; andincreasing revenue potential through faster time to marketwith more partners and services, as well as increasing theattractiveness of these services to generate more uptake.

Larger CSPs can use the platform approach to greatlyincrease the profitability of DSP partnerships, while forsmaller players the platform can actually be the differencebetween making or losing money in DSP partnerships.

Open and flexible collaboration platforms allow CSPs toopen up their advanced BSS capabilities to the DSPs,including advanced payment capabilities for consumers,and sophisticated product management to allow CSPsand DSPs to implement innovative use cases and launchattractive B2B2C bundles. Omni-channel customermanagement technology enables a seamless experiencefor the end user across CSP and DSP products andservices, and real-time analytics is a key enabler for CSPsto add value to third parties.

To succeed in the third phase of the DSP-CSPpartnership business CSPs need to pursue the widevariety of new business lines across B2B as well as B2Cmarkets, with a host of tasks that can woo the largeDSPs as well as the analogue businesses. Voice and databundles bring in basic cash flow, but maintainingrevenues from these traditional services will only becomemore of a challenge in the future. If new revenue streamsare to be created, CSPs need to work with partnersoutside the traditional telecoms domain, and add value tothose partners’ services beyond basic connectivity.Ultimately, finding these new ways to deliver value will bea matter of survival.

Bundling DSP services

with CSP services can

expand the market for

both sides, and the

DSP can take

advantage of CSPs’

subscriber

segmentation to

promote services to

highly targeted

audiences

www.asiainfo.com



When communications service providers (CSPs) started to become digital service providers(DSPs), their businesses got fast and furious but sadly billing systems are plodding along in theirwake, writes Nick Booth

here’s no satisfying the modern phone userwho won’t wait patiently for the monthly billand politely point out any inaccuracies.Today’s audience wants instant gratificationor they’re off. They all seem to know their

entitlement and know how to play – or configure – thesystems to their own needs.

How did it ever come to this, and what can be done?

The customers have had their expectations drivenOTT by the social media crowd, according to Jennifer

Kyriakakis, a founder of charging system makerMATRIXX Software. The CSPs are following suit.

The CSP’s customers want to control their ownmobile account, find their own services and appsand only pay for what they use. Even Domino’s Pizzacustomers can sign up with their credit card andpay now via their mobile. In response, CSPs are tryingto adapt to emulate the successes of Uber andAmazon. So they want to offer their own real-timeinteraction and experiences to their customers directlyfrom the device.

T

There’s no situation that can’tbe made worse by an old bill

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B I L L & C H A R G E


Jennifer Kyriakakis:CSPs could offer ahuge choice ofcontent and servicesbased on instanttransactions

The CSPs have no choice but to adapt. According tothe GSMA, the next five years will see a 20% rise inglobal communications revenue, but a 280% surge inmoney made from content. So if content is where themoney is, CSPs need the right billing system to caterfor it.

“If they get it right CSPs could offer a huge choice ofcontent and services based on instant transactions inresponse to payment,” says Kyriakakis. The mantrafor perfect turbo charging should be: no waiting, nobills, no hassle, just instant gratification.

But it could be a dangerous transformation. The newOTT partnerships will be challenging because itinvolves working with companies that were – and stillare – competitors.

The CSP’s best bet is to make customer experiencetheir priority. If they can set things up so subscriberscan choose and manage their own services andinstantly pay for bite-sized data services, that willtempt customers to spend more in the longer term.New billing systems, which embrace all the underlyingelements of a CSP’s information infrastructure, will bethe key to this.

In addition, CSPs will need to look at the new modelsfor CSPs that are emerging such as customer tocustomer (C2C), not to mention business togovernment (B2G) and various other variations on theB2B/B2C theme, says Chris Yeadon, productmarketing director for BSS at Ericsson. “Billing wasseen as a back end support system, now it has to bethe business enabler,” he says. “Charging and billingshould be part of the customer experience. The key tothat is to give each system a more healthy diet ofdata. Ericsson is focusing on a cleaner data modelthat provides a separation of apps and data.”

Cloud-based digital stacks will offer the quickestoption for by passing the old prepaid and postpaidbilling silos of yesteryear. These will give a fasterroute-to-revenue than big transformation projects.

“We’re talking three months, rather than three years,”says Kyriakakis.

It’s only going to get more complicated though, saysJonah Pransky, the product marketing manager forrevenue and insight at Amdocs.

The massive adoption of LTE and the gradualadoption of VoLTE are changing the speeds andvolumes of data packages as well as the quality andvalue of voice communications. The efficiencyafforded by LTE networks is even allowing someservice providers to go back to unlimited plans aswell, where differentiation between plans is possiblethrough the quality of service or speed.

“All that extra data usage incited by LTE will swell theevents and signalling that a charging system that hasto rate and charge,” says Pransky.

New technologies like VoLTE, which is both voice ordata, will create more work for the charging systems,which must correlate the session coming fromdifferent parts of the network as a single interaction.

The definition of billing has evolved too, says Redknee’schief marketing officer Chris Newton-Smith. “It’s notjust about paying for what you used, it’s about loyaltyand reward programmes and the ability to instantlymake the quality of service supplied meet customerexpectations,” he says. “At many CSPs loyaltyprogrammes are not integrated into the billing system orare managed separately to the main service offerings.”

Billing systems have changed to accommodate theuse of different payment methods, including vouchersand loyalty programs. It must be instant, whether it’sthrough an app, an online portal or an SMS. Whichmeans the CRM has to be finely integrated with everyaspect of billing, rating and charging and driven by apowerful processing engine.

The CRM, says Newton-Smith, will be the foundationthat ties this information together.

“If they get it right CSPs

could offer a huge

choice of content and

services based on

instant transactions in

response to payment”

Chris Yeadon:Billing was seen as aback end supportsystem, now it has tobe the businessenabler

Jonah Pransky: LTEwill swell the eventsand signalling that acharging system thathas to rate andcharge

Chris Newton-Smith: Billing isn’tjust about paying forwhat you used, it’sabout loyalty andreward programmes


The digital economy has introduced complex scenarios where multiple suppliers and partners need to collaborate inbi-directional, multi-level revenue chains in various B2B2x business models in order to capitalise on new growth opportunities

he evolving customer expectations of living a digitallife place pressure on businesses to offer an agileand constantly evolving set of products andbundles of services, composed of both existingconnectivity services and emerging digital services,

that deliver increased value to customers.

In order to create, deliver and monetise such combinedofferings, a broader and more diverse set of businesspartners must collaborate to satisfy future business andcustomer requirements over disrupted industry verticals.Successful companies such as Apple, Google, Airbnband other digital natives all follow the formula of creatingdigital platforms to make use of diverse ecosystems ofconsumers, producers and innovators.

Communications service providers (CSPs) have the samechallenges and opportunities in common with otherbusinesses in the digital economy, but face the addedburden of being the network provider and having toensure the network can be flexible and cost efficient tomeet the customers’ digital life expectations. In addition,CSPs are in transition from being providers of acommoditised network-oriented service to becomingproviders of a range of higher value digital services as wellas a core, yet low profit, network capacity offering. Theyface a dual challenge of transforming their operations toreduce cost while simultaneously growing revenues andincreasing profits from new digital service introduction. Inorder for CSPs to succeed in this environment, without

straying far from their core competencies, they need toadopt a new strategy for existing connectivity services andemerging digital services.

“Nowadays we see growth potential for CSPs in twodirections,” says Andreas Gabriel, the vice president ofproduct management at Infonova. “The first opportunity isto sell their own services combined with third partyservices to their own customers. The second is to createa multi-partner collaborative ecosystem that enablesservice sharing between partners on the system andcaters for sharing revenues and allocation of costs with allservice providing partners on the platform. This DigitalEcosystem Management platform is what we term thenew way to grow.”

“Once these two dimensions of potential growth arecombined and a platform that allows other parties tocontribute their services has been adopted, the digitalecosystem becomes a platform business that allowsbusinesses to collaborate as a digital economy in itself,”he adds. “We see specific opportunities for CSPs – andother organisations – to be this platform provider andInfonova provides the management systems tosupport this.”

Gabriel points out that Infonova’s R6 Digital EcosystemManagement Platform has been developed specifically tocater for these needs. The Infonova R6 product coversthe full end-to-end concept-to-cash process, supporting

Digital ecosystem management – thenew way to grow in the digital economy

T

Communications service

providers (CSPs) have the

same challenges and

opportunities in common

with other businesses in

the digital economy

▲

EXPERTOPINION

IN ASSOCIATION WITH INFONOVA


multiple tenants on a single platform, with individualaccess to comprehensive functionality.

“Digital service providers of all types need to deal withany service and partner with third party serviceproviders,” says Gabriel. “A key area of focus for InfonovaR6 is to support not only the end customer business butalso to provide the revenue allocation capability thatfundamentally underpins multi-party business models.”

Gabriel adds that the system enables rapid time-to-market for innovative new services that might bundle anumber of different products and services from differentproviders. Significantly, Infonova R6 enables businessesto monetise industry-specific and cross-industry digitaleconomy business models, dealing not only with theaspects of the end customer’s business that consumesthe services but also with the capabilities required formanaging suppliers and partners as well as thesettlement aspects of these relationships. This empowersInfonova R6 operators with the capability to create adigital ecosystem of partners that collaborate and co-operate by providing their services into the ecosystemand combining them with other services that are availablein the ecosystem.

One example of a CSP that is utilising Infonova R6 is BTGlobal Services, which provides managed network ITservices to more than 6,500 large corporate and publicsector services across the world. Infonova was selectedto enable the service provider to enhance its GlobalCompute Management System to enable cloud supportacross multiple countries. The deployment has seen BTGlobal Services roll-out a centralised platform formanaging all cloud services and offer them in multiplelanguages and currencies.

Benefits have included accelerated time to market fornew cloud offerings which are supported by a flexible,multi-tenant product catalogue. This has fostered acollaborative partner ecosystem that has enhanced theservice provider’s B2B2x capabilities through the

availability of usage based billing for different cloudservices and integration with BT’s strategic systems.Gabriel adds that with this platform, BT now has theopportunity to allow other parties to rent BSS as a servicein support of their offerings.

Another business that has selected Infonova R6 isDimension Data, which provides and manages specialistIT infrastructure solutions and services. The companywanted to achieve consistent delivery of cloud servicesacross its global business and customer base and turnedto Infonova to deliver a true multi-country, multi-currencyBSS implementation that enables complex partneringrelationships between multiple business units and billingentities. Having one, centralised platform to enable cloudservices from different regions with reduced time tomarket is a key deployment goal that has been achieved,along with containing the costs of scaling up the cloudbusiness internationally.

Gabriel sees these examples as indicators that CSPs canplay a key role in the digital ecosystem but also asevidence that organisations from other sectors can alsohandle the complexities. “CSPs have the experience ofcomplex service activation, customer relationshipmanagement and dealing with high volumes oftransactions,” he says. “On the other hand, they are quiteslow moving so the question remains opens as towhether they will jump in the right direction and take thisopportunity or whether organisations from differentindustries will relegate CSPs to network providers.”

Infonova supports both CSPs and service providers fromother industries to take a lead in the digital economy – allwill need a management platform with the capabilitiesthat R6 offers. “The Infonova R6 product truly reflects theprinciples of partner, orchestrate, monetise and grow,and empowers businesses to take advantage of theopportunities that the digital economy is providing,” saysGabriel. “We want to ensure that our customers stayahead of the competition, regardless of from who orwhere that competition comes.”

The Infonova R6 Business architecture

Andreas Gabriel:Empowerbusinesses to takeadvantage of theopportunities thatthe new digitaleconomy provides

www.infonova.com


Communications service providers (CSPs) are decoupling the cost charged for using the networkfrom network consumption. Gone are the days of billing by the bit or minute. Instead CSPs arelooking to charge according the value a consumer attaches to a service they receive, writesJonny Evans

hen you walk into a supermarket do youexpect to take everything you need for oneflat fee? Probably not, so why do youexpect to get all the voice, text and datayou need for one price from your CSP?

Data demand is certainly outstripping CSPs’ ability tomonetise the demands being made on theirinfrastructure. Years of exposure to all-you-can eatdeals means many consumers expect this, but CSPshave begun attempting to decouple the cost chargedfor using the network from network consumption.

“CSPs are experimenting with ways to combat theconsumer perception that bandwidth shouldessentially be free,” explains Timo Ahomäki, the chieftechnology officer of Tecnotree. “Initially a defensive

mechanism against price erosion, bundling is rapidlybecoming a mainstay of a CSP’s business in order tostay ahead of the disparity in price expectations offree OTT offerings versus metered access charges.”

However, such bundles will start to disappear asusers decouple concepts of service value fromnetwork access. A megabit of email will be worth lessthan a megabit of HD videoconferencing, for example.

On the roaming side of the business Europeanlegislation demanding lower roaming charges isprompting some change: “We see many day or weekpass types of roaming offers which give subscribersaccess to the same range of services they enjoy athome, with fixed allowances that simply cut off oncereached,” explains Jonah Pransky, a product

W

How will CSPs ensure theprice is right to encourageusers to spend more?

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P R I C I N G & R O A M I N G


Bobby Srinivasan:There will be no one-size-fits-all approach

David Peters: CSPswill need to use real-time streaminganalytics to determinethe best micro-datapack

Carlos Marques:CSPs will chargecustomers based ontheir actual usage

Timo Ahomäki:CSPs will movetowards tiered datapricing models ortowards valuebundling

marketing manager in Amdocs’ Revenue & CustomerManagement unit. “Other interesting roaming offersinclude app-based roaming, such as WhatsApp …where use of the popular messaging application iszero rated while roaming.”

Mobileum chief executive Bobby Srinivasan explainsthat these new payment models may help CSPscreate new revenue streams, though it is important tobe pragmatic. “For instance, low consumptionservices such as email may not be seen as suitable forsuch a bundle,” he said. HD videoconferencing,however, “could definitely be such a service,” he added.

Policy management tools enable CSPs to supportdifferentiated services to their consumers. These toolsenable robust roaming solutions or new services suchas video provision with guaranteed service quality.“With a rich and flexible targeting engine, CSPs canensure that while the service selection seems prettymuch unlimited and unconstrained, certain keydependencies are maintained to ensure marginsremain healthy,” explains Ahomäki.

Enhanced charging service platforms enable CSPs tocreate highly detailed, tiered and itemised bills forcustomers, enabling “CSPs to charge subscribersbased on their actual usage of the network, alongsidedata usage and premium services,” explains CarlosMarques, the head of product marketing andalliances at WeDo Technologies.

Enabled by strong policy control within 3GPP/4G,Emagine chief executive, David Peters is developinga model in which CSPs sell data in small quantities.“This can only be done with real-time streaminganalytics, personalisation and provisioning,” explainsPeters. “Traditional billing systems certainly can’t dothat… CSPs will need to use real-time streaminganalytics on network level data, combined withhistorical insights, to determine the best micro-datapack for each individual customer.” He claims strong– 150%-250% – conversion rates with such offers.

The challenge is that consumers will be unwilling tolose the data access they currently enjoy. It is in that

environment that CSPs are “shifting towards a modelwhere pricing perception is moved away from accesstowards the actual services used,” says Ahomäki.“However, consumers that are not familiar with thistype of value bundling may initially shy away frommodels that seem too experimental.”

These emerging business models don’t simply needto be personalised for customers, they may also needto be personalised to fit the legal restrictions in placein different territories. “Regulation tends to be verycountry or region specific – for example, mobilemoney is freely allowed in some markets, disallowedin some others and highly regulated elsewhere,”explains Srinivasan. “CSPs will have to craft strategiestaking such regulations into account – there will be noone-size-fits-all approach.”

The silver lining is that in some territories this couldwork to the advantage of CSPs. European regulatorsseem amenable to reducing the cost of access, evenif it means users must navigate broader servicebundles, notes Ahomäki. At the same time in Europe,CSPs are inexorably being forced to drop the cost ofdata roaming.

“People don’t mind paying for better quality of service,as long as they don’t have to fear the bill shock whenthey get home and it adds value to their travelexperience. Offering them roam-like-home servicesmost certainly does that,” notes Pransky.

While the industry will continue in its attempt todevelop the offer, the days of all-you-can-eat accessare coming to an end – demand is outstrippingsustainable supply. The GSMA Mobile Economyreport 2015, warns network traffic will increase ten-fold between 2014 and 2019, even while revenues areexpected to increase by just 3.1% per annum.

“To solve this dilemma, CSPs will either have to movetowards more tiered data pricing models or towardsvalue bundling. The latter, if done carefully and basedon real consumer usage patterns, would seem like thebetter alternative of the two,” says Ahomäki.

These emerging business

models don’t simply need

to be personalised for

customers, they may also

need to be personalised

to fit the legal restrictions

in place in different

territories

Jonah Pransky:People don’t mindpaying for betterquality of service

E V E N T R E P O R T

Reporting from Huawei’s 13th Global Analyst Summit in Shenzhen, China, VanillaPlus editorial director JeremyCowan, found the company reaffirming its commitment to helping communications service providers (CSPs) in theirdigital transformations

ith the theme of ‘Growing Together ThroughDigitalisation and Building a Better ConnectedWorld’, the event saw Huawei discuss itsstrategic thinking, products and market

progress in the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing,and telecoms operations transformation.Opening the event, William Xu, Huawei executive directorof the Board and chief strategy marketing officer (CSMO)remarked, “Global digitalisation is accelerating, and this isimproving efficiency and user experience in many areas,including vertical industries, public services, and everyaspect of our lives. Our Global Connectivity Index (GCI)2016 reveals that global connectivity improved by 5% in2015. We can work together in the areas of enhancingconnectivity, enabling the digital transformation of vertical

industries, improving the connectivity experience andexpanding access under all scenarios, and to accelerateglobal digitalisation.”

Better video experiencesVideo has become a basic service of the telecomsindustry for consumer and business users and customerexperience has become a core competence for operatorsif they are to attract and retain users. Huawei has unveileda video experience measurement system, U-vMOS,which reasonably and objectively evaluates video quality,interaction and the visual experience of various serviceson different networks and screens.

The system is open to the entire video industry, and has

Huawei aims to accelerate digital transformationto promote IoT and a more connected world

W

▲


been recognised by the International TelecommunicationUnion (ITU).

Full cloudificationAt the summit, Eric Xu, Huawei’s rotating CEO – the postof CEO rotates every six months among three CEOs –explained the company’s full ‘cloudification’ strategy indetail. “At the Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2015, weproposed the real-time, on-demand, all-online, DIY, andsocial (ROADS) experience model to define the featuresof a superior user experience,” he said. “This year, wehave introduced the full cloudification strategy, whichfocuses on delivering a ROADS experience.

“At the core of Huawei’s full cloudification strategy is thefull reconstruction of ICT infrastructure in four respects –equipment, network, services, and operations,” addedEric Xu. “The strategy aims to create systematic strengthsin pooled hardware resources, fully distributed softwarearchitecture, and full automation. As a leading global ICTinfrastructure provider, Huawei is committed to becomingan advocate, promoter, and leader of full cloudification.”

Digital transformation for CSPsDigital transformation presents many opportunities as wellas challenges. Huawei stays customer-centric and strivesto help customers succeed and achieve shared success.Eric Xu added, “In the carrier business, we aim to delivera ROADS experience and help operators develop theircompetitiveness to seize new market opportunitiesincluding IoT, video, and cloud services. We will also helpmigrate networks and operations systems to the cloud andhelp operators establish advantages in agile operations.”

“In the enterprise business,” he continued, “we will utilisecloud computing, SDN, and big data technologies tofacilitate enterprise digitalisation towards agile and smart

operations. In the consumer business, brand, quality,experience, and ecosystems matter most. Huawei isworking hard to develop a high-end brand, deliverpremium products, win with quality and services, andestablish an ecosystem that focuses on consumerexperience.”

The network challengeRyan Ding, Huawei executive director of the Board andpresident of Huawei’s Products & Solutions, added: “ABetter Connected World raises requirements fornetworks. Connections, bandwidth, latency, and datastorage must all achieve 100-fold improvements. Moreimportantly, networks of the future must automaticallyaccommodate diverse use scenarios, including massivenumbers of connected things, high-bandwidth serviceslike video and virtual reality, and industrial applicationsthat require a low latency and high reliability. Huawei willfocus on ICT infrastructure and smart devices; invest overthe long term; fully unleash the potential of connectivity,ultra-broadband, and data; and develop agile architectureand open platforms to accelerate the digitaltransformation of our customers, including operators.”

Customer needs are diverse, and no company can meetthem on their own – collaboration with industry partners isessential. William Xu (who is no relation to Eric Xu) added:“We must join forces with industry partners to build anopen ecosystem. We continue to hold fast to our pipestrategy, focusing on ICT infrastructure and smartdevices. To meet these needs, we have forged extensivepartnerships with consulting firms, application developers,system integrators, and channel partners. Through thiscommitment to openness, collaboration, and sharedsuccess, we will create value for our customers,contribute to a healthy ICT ecosystem, and drive socialprogress.”

Eric Xu: Huawei is committed to becoming an advocate, promoterand leader of full cloudification

Ryan Ding: Connections, bandwidth, latency and data storagemust all achieve 100-fold improvements

“At the core of Huawei’s

full cloudification strategy

is the full reconstruction

of ICT infrastructure in

four respects –

equipment, network,

services, and operations”


The big news this month on vanillaplus.com is the launch of our newDigital Transformation Hub. The Hub, prominently placed on our homepage contains news, features, blogs and interviews that explore anddemystify the ongoing journey the telecoms industry has embarkedupon into the digital world. The aim of the hub is to bring together thedisparate thinking surrounding the digital economy, digital serviceproviders, digital experiences and the digital ecosystem.

Whatever you call it, it’s clear that digital something is the direction of

travel for the industry formerly known as telecoms. We look forward tobringing you exciting, informative and interesting coverage of all theissues that affect communications service providers (CSPs) as theyventure further under the digital umbrella.

To access the VanillaPlus Digital Transformation Hub simply visitwww.vanillaplus.com and enter the Hub from the home page. TheVanillaPlus NFV Hub continues to be live and regularly added to andcan be found in Verticals tab of www.vanillaplus.com

New VanillaPlus Digital Transformation Hub launches online

There are three journeys that today’s CSPs mustmake to become modern digital service providers(DSPs), writes Mark Mortensen, a practice head atanalyst firm Analysys Mason in the first of series ofblogs addressing CSPs’ digital transformation. Thethree journeys are:

1. Operations innovation – digitalising the operations to be more online and automatedfor consumers

2. Service innovation – providing new digital services3. Network innovation – supporting the business with an agile, virtualised next generation network.

The first blog outlines the changes necessary in the current OperationsSupport Systems/Business Support Systems (BSS/OSS) to supportthe first of these journeys – the digitalisation of the CSP’s operations.

Read Mark’s blog at www.vanillaplus.com (Search: Mortensen)

Digitalising operations for the DSP Journey will require evolution and revolution in BSS/OSS

With no growth for the foreseeable future, the existing industrybusiness model has reached its end of life and needs re-juvenatingwas the premise at the heart of the recent VanillaPlus webinar. As theworld moves towards the Internet of Everything and the FourthIndustrial Revolution, a new trillion dollar addressable market isopening up for CSPs.

To take advantage of this market CSPs must adapt the successfulbusiness model of the internet players by creating, managing andmonetising ecosystems of partners via platform-based businessmodels.

This webinar, sponsored by Infonova, will help listeners understand: • What the Fourth Industrial Revolution is and what types of addressable markets it is creating• What types of business models are winning in this environment• How CSPs can fully utilise their assets and capabilities to create a new wave of growth• How to overcome technical, commercial and organisational barriers to success

The webinar, held on 20 April is available for playback atwww.vanillaplus.com (Search: Infonova)

Webinar: Digital Ecosystem Management – the winning business model for the4th Industrial Revolution

W H A T ’ S H O T O N V A N I L L A P L U S . C O M

Mark Mortensen

We live in times of disruption writes João Resende,the vice president for product development at WeDoTechnologies. Studies show that by 2020 nearly allthe world’s adult population will be connected, withdozens of sensors and other connected devices pereach human being. Hand-in-hand with thisphenomenon, we see the emergence of tools such asbig data, cloud computing, virtualisation that not onlysubstantially reduce the cost of data handling andstorage, but perhaps more crucially, provide the tools

and the means to extract new value out of data, triggering all types ofdigital services.

No industry will be left untouched – from the traditionally high techsectors such as telecoms, finance, retail or healthcare, to other sectorssuch as transportation, agriculture or mining, to name but a few. This isbecause we are fast reaching a fully digital world, with increasedblurring between the digital and the physical. Similarly, every entity inthe physical world will soon be represented in the digital world. The factthat this utopian ideal is being approached tells us how disruptive,transformative and far-reaching the digital world and the digitaltransformation we are living through is.

Read the rest of João’s article at www.vanillaplus.com(Search: WeDo Technologies)

The digital world challenge: Are you ready to step up?

João Resende


D I A R Y

Upcoming eventsTMF Live!

9-12 May, 2016Nice, France

Organiser: TM Forumwww.tmforumlive.org

Telco Cloud10-11 May, 2016London, United KingdomOrganiser: Informatelco.cloudworldseries.com

Ovum Industry Congress11-12 May, 2016London, United KingdomOrganiser: Informaovumindustrycongress.com

IMS World Forum 201618-19 May, 2016Amsterdam, The NetherlandsOrganiser: Informaworldforum.imsvision.com

Cloud & DevOps World 21-22 June, 2016

London, United KingdomOrganiser: Informa

cloudanddevopsworld.com

Insurance Fraud Europe30 June – 1 July, 2016London, UKOrganiser: FC Business Intelligencewww.fc-bi.com/insurancefraudeu

CTIA Super Mobility 20167-9 September, 2016

Las Vegas, USAOrganiser: CTIA

www.ctiasupermobility2016.com

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NEWS ■ COMMENTARY ■ WEBINARS ■ ANALYSIS ■ INSIGHT

he consensus among industry experts is thatthe modern incarnation of the mobile operator,the communications service provider (CSP),should get more recognition from thecustomer. After all, it’s the CSP that does all

the hard infrastructure work, but it’s the over-the-top(OTT) players that get the content glory. But how doyou put yourself at the heart of things withoutbecoming annoying?

Banks exemplify the evil of intrusive communication.They’ve deluded themselves that we love their brandand share their fascination with their businessprocesses. As a result, every month the bank sendsevery customer three A4 pages of legal mumbojumbo, which we would only ignore at our peril, underthe heading ‘Important Changes to Your Account’.This is an enormous pain for any bank account holder.As a customer, you end up having to sacrificesomething – your time, money or security – as aconsequence of this insane marketing onslaught fromthe bank.

Small wonder that millions of people are desperate tobe liberated from their current banking arrangementsby digital currencies, Bitcoins, mobile money –anything but the current lot.

Mobile banking could be one OTT application the CSPscould clean up with. Then again, a simple step isneeded on the difficult road to changing their businessmodel. According to the GSMA’s projections for themobile economy, global revenue for CSPs will rise by20% in the next five years while the revenues oncontent will surge ahead by 280% in the same time.

So something has to be done and CSPs have threeoptions. Either they create the entertainment, newsand educational material themselves – which involvesbecoming a completely different industry, overnight,with no experience – or they work with theircompetitors, who have no motivation to help them.The third option is to use charging as a means ofchanging their relationship with the customers.

But how do you assert yourself on your customersmore aggressively, without repeating the sins of thetypical CRM users, such as the banks, who often actlike they are one restraining order short of a stalker?

A simple rule of thumb to remember would be this: wecustomers like communications, but not if you’reendlessly going to talk about yourselves. Don’t be likethe banks and endlessly talk about your internalprocesses. Nobody wants to know all the gory detailsof how your systems are down or your backbone wasput out when you overstretched. And yet, that’sexactly what some CSPs and broadband providers dowhen their coverage is lacking. “We’re busy talking toour other customers” indeed! Nobody falls for thoseeuphemisms any more.

The consensus of opinion is that billing has to evolve tobe more flexible and faster to adapt. Ericsson’s ChrisYeadon will tell you that charging is the key tomonetising content. Ericsson is putting its considerableweight behind developing new, more versatile softwaremodules, that can charge around the infrastructure,keeping tabs on everything and orchestrating playfrom one end of the field to the other.

The data needed for these systems has to be pareddown. I never understood why businessadministrators need so much information on everyone,unless they’re compiling a database they can sell to adodgy list broker. If CSPs simplified the amount ofdata held on customers their systems might workfaster and they’d be more trusted. Maybe CSPs needa new broom to usher in a new way of working.

To this end, a study by Stratecast says that a quarterof all CSPs have hired a chief digital officer totransform not only the IT systems, but the networkand the business and cultural ethos. That’s a big ask.I’d love to see that job spec. Why don’t they just askthem to do some gene splicing at the same time?

I’m worried that CSPs are going to make the samemistake as the banks, and over-complicate things.That would be a real shame. Now, if you’ll excuse me,I must rush, I’ve got a mountain of post from my bankthat I have to read.

C L O C K I N G O F F !

The author,

Nick Booth,is a contributor to

VanillaPlus and a

technology journalist

TDo businesses sometimes lose the plot over their relationship with their customers? If youagree that they do, asks Nick Booth, how can we make sure this doesn’t happen to mobileoperators as they make the difficult transition in how they talk to us?

Could CSPs be charged withhaving too much information?


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BILL & CHARGE - The global voice of Telecoms IT€¦ · emerging challenges, like rapidly rising encryption of video and data traffic, which pose management challenges that can negatively