Insight
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Edition Feb 2014
Executive briefing Biannual Magazine
THE FUTURE STARTS TODAY. Maximizing the Mobile Broadband Customer Experience
Driving Innovation at Tunisiana Behind the scenes of Tunisia’s largest operator
In this issue, INSIGHT focuses on the key opportunities and challenges for operators in 2014.
Welcome
Conversation with the CEO
Customer Spotlight Innovation at Tunisiana
Red Comment
View from Redknee’s CTO
Beyond the Buzz
Industry updates from around the globe
Redknee Locations
Where in the World is Redknee?
Redknee Events Meet Redknee at a city near you
02 06 10 14 20 24 28
04 08 12 18 22 26
Red News
Latest Highlights from Redknee
Red Trends
Top trends impacting the industry
Red Ahead
Next Challenges
Industry Observations
Red Perspectives
From Redknee’s Product Management Team
Outside Perspective IDC Profiles the Need to Prioritize OSS/BSS Modernization
Welcome
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Welcome to the first issue of Redknee INSIGHT – the magazine for service providers focused on innovation and improving the customer experience.
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elcome to Redknee INSIGHT, the first edition of our corporate magazine focused on how the telecoms industry can empower new possibilities in today’s digital world. In this inaugural issue celebrating both our 15 year anniversary and the re-launch of the Redknee brand, we focus on what it means to ‘Look Beyond’. Today’s service providers are tasked with managing constant change while meeting increasing consumer demands and expectations. Enhancing the customer experience by enabling service providers to become more responsive to their subscribers’ needs is at the foundation of everything we do. This magazine supports this philosophy by drawing upon our industry expertise and experience to provide valuable market insight into current and future challenges and how service providers can turn these to their advantage.
Whether it’s managing the data complexities of M2M and the Internet of Things, working to meet the challenges of supporting new services and business models, or looking for better ways to address customer care issues, Redknee keeps its finger on the pulse of the industry - and we want to keep you informed and ready for what lies ahead. At Redknee, we have an incredible, globally diverse group of customers and partners and I have been fortunate to meet many of you over the years. I hope you enjoy this issue and share it with your colleagues. Please feel free to suggest new topics and news ideas for our fall issue via marketing@redknee.com or by visiting our Twitter @RedkneeRKN, LinkedIn or our blog which is found on www.redknee.com/blog. Kind Regards, Michaela Radman Global Director of Marketing, Redknee
Red News
Latest highlights from Redknee
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Redknee Cloud Goes Live The launch of Redknee Cloud is a reflection of Redknee’s market leadership in developing innovative converged billing and customer care solutions that drive greater business agility, while reducing the total cost of ownership for service providers.
Redknee Utility Suite featured in Oracle OpenWorld Keynote At Oracle OpenWorld, Redknee presented the first cloud-based revenue and subscriber management solution for utility service providers, which leverages the combination of Oracle Linux, Oracle Database and Java running on Microsoft’s Windows Azure.
Redknee named fastest growing billing provider in 2013 Redknee’s strategic growth and customer commitment has been recognized by leading industry awards including the Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan Global Growth Leadership in CSP billing, and the Telecom Review Industry Awards for the Best OSS/BSS Provider of the Year.
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IDC Highlights Redknee in Tech Spotlight Report IDC’s report ‘Empower CSP’s with Business Agility, Differentiation, and Delivery Model Flexibility’ outlines Redknee’s configurable, billing solution as a proven product-based solution that can be deployed from the cloud or on the CSP’s premise.
15 Years in the Making This year, Redknee is celebrating its 15th anniversary. Established in 1999, Redknee has grown organically and through acquisitions to become the industry’s largest independent provider of real-time monetization and subscriber management software.
Conversation with the CEO
06 Celebrating 15 years of growth and innovation
As Redknee’s founder and chief executive, Lucas Skoczkowski (Scotch-cough-ski) has been directing the execution of Redknee’s business activities and corporate operations since 1999.
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his year marks Redknee’s 15 year anniversary, and I am very excited about the opportunities for growth as we embark on the next 15 years. Over the past 15 years we have seen a lot of change. Today’s telecom market is quickly evolving to address the ‘Internet of Things’ – where data connections are changing the way people live, work and communicate. Service providers will also have new opportunities to
create value for their subscribers by merging social networking, subscriber and network data analytics, mobility and cloud-based infrastructure and services. The cloud is also changing the way communications service providers are approaching their investment in their BSS platform. As communications service providers look to monetize new revenue streams such as M2M, cloud-based revenue management and charging solutions will continue to grow as a model for the industry’s competitive operating environment. Gartner forecasts that mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 70% between now and 2016. This incredible growth has accelerated the need for service providers to upgrade their legacy back office (BSS) systems in order to support new services and increased data traffic. Since our founding, Redknee has always made supporting our customers’ business goals our number one priority. Our acquisition of the
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Today’s telecom market is quickly evolving to address the ‘Internet of Things’ – where data connections are changing the way people live, work and communicate.
Today, Redknee supports more than 200 service provider customers in over 90 countries; our combined company is now 1,700 employees strong and our software supports one third of the world’s population every day. In fact, Redknee was the recent recipient of the 2013 Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan Award for Global Growth Leadership in Communications Service Provider (CSP) billing. The award for Global Growth Leadership is presented to the company that has demonstrated excellence in capturing the highest compound annual growth rate over the past three years and we are very excited to be recognized for this feat.
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Nokia Siemens Networks’ business support systems business unit in 2013 significantly enhanced our global reach and customer base, making us the largest independent provider of real-time billing and charging solutions for communications service providers. Our combined expertise will provide even more innovative and transformative solutions to help our customers achieve success.
We are looking forward to all the opportunities that lie on the horizon, and to helping our customers improve their business operations, grow their revenues, improve their profitability and deliver a better customer experience. Lucas Skoczkowski, CEO, Redknee
@lskoczkowski lucas.skoczkowski@redknee.com
Red Trends
Top trends impacting the industry
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Tech Trends Systems that support customer transaction management at the customer’s desired time of engagement are the focal point of the new competitiveness.
Beyond the Cloud Beyond Legacy
In the past mobile operator business has been driven by subscriber growth and this was also a key indicator of company success. With the “Limits of Growth” operational efficiency, optimized internal processes and organizational setup will become the focus of activities. Streamlining processes and removing elements that do not provide value to the customer and business will be essential for future profitability and long-term survival. Operators need to abandon legacy systems that slow them down but not change for legacy’s sake. Customercentricity is the new focus point of systems architecture, as is customer empowerment.
Cloud computing and virtualization if embedded into the operator’s core and access network will dramatically change the way networks are operated and new services are rolled out. Shared resources, excess capacity management and disaster recovery approaches will evolve where even mission critical systems will leverage shared resources, driving an efficiency of operations unprecedented in the telecommunications industry. AT&T has announced that by 2020 it will turn off its circuitswitched network.
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Beyond VoLTE
To achieve VoLTE viability, service providers need to embrace an IP backbone strategy that supports routing optimization as well as flexible charging. Converging policy with charging will allow combinations of pricing and routing optimization. Wi-Fi is also seen as a potential revenue generator for CSPs looking to recoup some of their investment in expanded data networks.
Beyond Networks Beyond Digital Commerce
While tiered data plans have helped slow growth somewhat, traffic is still climbing as fast as CSPs can add capacity. Offloading data traffic onto Wi-Fi networks holds a lot of promise for CSPs as an alternative to adding costly 3G or 4G network capacity. As smartphone becomes the trusted spot for commercial transactions, enabling payment by device will become increasingly important.
Consumers are taking an increasingly connected view of commerce, shifting readily between online / on-device self-service and the store. Retailers must provide a seamless transition from online/on-device to in-store, and make consultation become the focus of the in-store staff.
Read Redknee’s Ten Trends to watch in 2014 and beyond at: www.redknee.com/pdf/forms/2014_Trends.aspx
Customer Spotlight
10 INSIGHT: Tell us about Tunisiana
Innovation and creativity at Tunisiana Jalel Kamoun, Director of BSS and VAS at Tunisiana and Lucas Skoczkowski, CEO of Redknee highlight the benefits of a flexible, next generation convergent charging, rating and billing system to enhance the customer experience, deliver innovative new data services and improve competitiveness.
Jalel Kamoun: Tunisiana launched in 2002, as the first private operator in Tunisia, and consequently was only the second operator in the country. Currently, we are the market leader with a 55% share and seven million subscribers in the mobile sector. We are now part of the Ooredoo Group, formerly known as the Q-Tel Group, and were granted a 3G and fixed licence in 2012 and subsequently launched the 3G service in July last year. We have been able to maintain our market share, even with the entry of Orange into our market four years ago, by maintaining our reputation for innovation and creativity. Competition is quite fierce in Tunisia and we are constantly looking at new ways to keep our competitive edge.
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one communications service provider in the market. What helped you get into that position so quickly? Jalel Kamoun: We started with an agile
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These new, innovative products enabled us to grab a lot of consumer share from the very beginning.
organization, streamlining IT, technical and marketing teams to all work together. We were trying to push for innovation and creativity and were first to launch new products in the market, two or three years ahead of our competitors. These new, innovative products enabled us to grab a lot of consumer share from the very beginning. INSIGHT: What offers and services have you had that set you apart? Jalel Kamoun: There are quite a few but one of our most successful products is our Amigos offer. You can subscribe to the service if you are a student, aged under 25, which enables you to call all other subscribers in the community for a cheap rate. With that offer, we were able to lock the student community into the network. We introduced the innovative family offer a few years ago with reverse billing and reverse charging options. The charging and billing systems we had at that time were unable to do what we wanted so we had to create some additional systems to support these services. This is when we turned to Redknee for support in migrating to our charging system, which has helped enable our success. INSIGHT: Why are Redknee’s products – such as the charging solution charge@once unified product and the policy solution, PCS-5000 – so critical in supporting the new services? Jalel Kamoun: We were among the first operators to deploy the charge@once
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INSIGHT: You’ve made it to be the number
unified product and it’s quite rich in terms
INSIGHT: What trends in the marketplace
of features. It enables us to move all of the
are you seeing that are driving the need for
‘on the side’ products into one convergent
service providers to be more flexible?
product. It provided us with a great deal of flexibility to enable us to launch converged
Lucas Skoczkowski: I think it is all
data services, some of the shared accounts,
about more market segmentation and
family accounts and community accounts.
competition. There is continuous innovation where operators have to adjust the offerings
The PCS-5000 is the policy control function
in the market. We’re also a big believer it
we acquired with the 3G launch that helped
has to be from configuration as opposed to
us give quality of service per subscriber,
traditional customization.
depending on what they were buying as a package. It enabled us to ensure we gave
To keep it cost-effective we have to support
the best quality of service to the premium
a business case for our customers and
subscribers.
make sure they innovate on an on-going basis. Companies can no longer look at the
INSIGHT: Redknee provided some of these
product cycle every six or twelve months – it
systems to Tunisiana. Are there any specific
has to be much more frequent. There are a
challenges that have arisen from data
lot more third-party capabilities and over-
services, in particular with the increase in
the-top services we have to incorporate
smart phone devices in that market?
to really create synergy with the offerings Tunisiana provides.
Lucas Skoczkowski: It’s all about agility, helping Jalel and his team deliver services
INSIGHT: What do you think are the key
faster. We looked at how we could simplify
takeaways that other service providers can
services and how they could consume
adopt from Tunisiana’s experience?
our innovation and convert it into market deployment. I think the key thing for us
Lucas Skoczkowski: I think Tunisiana is a
is how we drive the speed and velocity of
great example of being an innovator. They
adoption so customers can use it in the
lead by example and continue to create a
market very quickly.
very quick tempo in the market so everyone has to catch up with them. They adopt
Tunisiana have been a leader and great early
and embrace new approaches and new
adopters of anything new that has come
technologies and push their partners, like us,
from the technology group. They have really
to really make sure we can deliver in service
pushed the boundaries of our innovation
of their success. I’m really pleased and
through their deployments.
honoured to be their partner and supporter in that.
Red Ahead
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NEXT CHALLENGE
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Service providers continue to purposefully and methodically move toward bringing Voice over LTE (VoLTE) to market. No longer is the reality of VoLTE a question of “if”, but “when”. With early adopters in the APAC region and North America already recognizing success, the VoLTE tide has turned and the time to consider implementation is now.
ES The realization of VoLTE truly revolutionizes the traditional telecommunications industry and opens the door to entirely new business models and service offerings with a significant impact of VoLTE success being governed by Policy Management. In “VoLTE and the Importance of Policy Management”, learn more about the drivers and challenges for VoLTE and how Policy Management serves to navigate and overcome the complexities of deployment while opening the door to new revenue opportunities.
Download VoLTE and the Importance of Policy Management.
http://www.redknee.com/pdf/forms/ VoLTE_and_Policy_Management.aspx
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Red Comment
Views from Redknee’s CTO
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he long-promised future of ubiquitous mobile Internet access at super high speeds is finally here, at least in many countries where 4G/LTE rollout has started. Smartphones and tablets and corresponding applications make information and sophisticated services available almost everywhere. However, in many cases the customer experience related to mobile broadband does not match the expectations and mobile operators are challenged with mobile broadband revenues significantly lagging the corresponding infrastructure investment, while Internet-based service providers establish successful and profitable businesses. Despite these challenges mobile data will become the dominant differentiator for operators in the market and the right way to evolve the business around this will be the key to success. And this will be decided by matching customer expectations for the experience of using mobile data services and tariffs. Mobile operator data plans – and the corresponding infrastructure to implement them – just did not keep
Maximizing the Mobile Broadband Customer Experience up with the evolution of high-speed access and devices using them. Especially with limited data plans, customers today are faced with unpleasant surprises. LTE-enabled devices can run through the traditional 250 MB, 500 MB or even 1 GB volume limits of today’s plans within hours, and this is not even with fancy things like roaming or extensively watching videos on the go, but just by synching applications for a new device from cloud storage. Another topic impeding the customer experience is that the volume limits, which are used in today’s data plans, do not reflect any everyday experience of customers. Users have not yet, and maybe never will, develop a relationship with what exactly 500 MB are. Their
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James DeMarco, CTO, Redknee
Redknee’s vision for BSS evolution is strongly rooted in the understanding that in the future a superior, real-time customer experience will be the key differentiating factor in the competitive mobile environment.
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The Future Is Here
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Consolidated Policy and Charging provides the individuality and competitive positioning that are the evolving drivers of the marketplace. reference system works in terms of videos watched, either in number or duration, songs downloaded or pictures shared. And the related data volume of these elements strongly depends on device used, codecs etc. Redknee’s vision for the BSS evolution is strongly rooted in the understanding that in the future a superior, real-time customer experience will be the key success and differentiating factor in the competitive mobile environment. Therefore, aligning product offerings for mobile broadband with customer expectations is essential for mobile operators. The expectations of customers towards the tariffs and service experience, however, are not only driven by pure volume or bandwidth limitations. They are also influenced by the online experience from the Internet, which is now also available while on the go. This experience includes impulse purchase of digital goods with the ability to immediately use the purchased items. Whether it is a recommended song, video or book from an online store or the latest application from the AppStore, it can be purchased with a
click and easily downloaded, while the purchases and spending remain under control via the store or the credit card. Instant notifications about purchases increase the level of transparency and control. Following this, the Telemanagement (TM) Forum in a recent study has identified six major customer expectations: simplicity, transparency and control, choice, multi-device and multi-user plans, quality of service and trust. In the same report it identified a clear trend among operators for policy control and management to move away from network control towards customer experience management and individualizing of customer policies. Today, however, as a contrast, mobile operator tariff plans are still
structured around 24 month commitments with limited flexibility in terms of volume, bandwidth and services and therefore are not adaptable to the immediate and changing needs and requirements of the customer. Monthly payments include a fixed amount of data volume and exceeding the limit will be penalized with low bandwidth or no access at all.
What Operators Need To Do Balancing mobile broadband investment with corresponding revenue, while still improving the customer experience forces mobile operators to (continued on next page)
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continued
tackle three areas at the same time: >> Look at policy and charging together and align services to customer expectations >> Increase transparency, control and flexibility for the customer >> Enable new business models and relationships, to upsell policy control beyond direct customer revenues For the past several years, converged charging and billing have been in the decision domain inside mobile operators of the CFO and the CIO, while policy management has remained in the hands of the CTO. The decision cycles for charging and policy have been separate, just as the decisionmakers have been separate. This has also been reflected on the technical side. In the first wave of policy control, the challenge was in integrating policy control systems with corresponding network elements and in providing basic fair usage and bill shock prevention. However, as outlined above, policy control is no longer solely used to block improper bandwidth usage, but to monetize high bandwidth
usage in close cooperation with charging and tariff schemes. Policy will become a core element of the mobile operator’s product mix, along with service packages and loyalty programs. This will drive the consolidation of policy and charging management under a joint domain for administration and control, in order to support a flexible, quick and simple roll-out of new product offerings to customers. This consolidation allows reusing charging and policy control elements across multiple products, provides an end-to-end view on services and products, reduces the risk of misconfigurations and enables a quick roll-out of new services across the complete customer base with simple and consistent processes. Most importantly, this consolidation allows the marketing department to bring offers that incorporate policy options into the operator’s product portfolio directly, thus providing the individuality and competitive positioning that are the evolving drivers of the marketplace.
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James DeMarco is the Chief Technology Officer at Redknee Solutions, Inc., responsible for technology strategy and long term portfolio management as well as key executive relationships in customers globally. James joins Redknee from his position as CTO for NSN’s BSS business line, where he held similar responsibilities. James has a law degree from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
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Red Comment
Policy control is no longer solely used to block improper bandwidth usage, but to monetize high bandwidth usage.
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Industry Observations
Nedžad Rešidbegovicć CEO, BH Telecom
Karl Whitelock
Director Global OSS BSS Strategy, Stratecast | Fr
& Sullivan
“To maintain our market leadership and provide our customers with value-added services, BH Telecom required a flexible, scalable converged billing and customer care solution that would support our growth and business continuity strategy. With Redknee’s billing, charging and customer care solution we will be able to differentiate our services to provide unique and innovative offerings to our customers, generate profitability and support our business in the future.” BH Telecom is a leading telecommunication company in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Stratecast believes that Redknee’s commitment to customer satisfaction, in particular, is a key factor in its extremely strong revenue growth and to its expanding global customer base. Through its continued investment in its combined product portfolio, close management relationships with customers, and its ability to retain its acquired customer base, Stratecast believes Redknee will be able to continue the success it has achieved so far.” Frost & Sullivan’s Stratecast practice collaborates with clients to reach smart business decisions in the rapidly evolving and hyper-competitive Information and Communications Technology markets.
rost
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Shira Levine Jalel Kamoun Director of BSS and VAS, Tunisiana
“Redknee’s charge@once unified provided us with a great deal of flexibility to enable us to launch converged data services, shared accounts, family accounts and community accounts. The PCS-5000 has helped us give quality of service per subscriber, depending on what they were buying as a package. It enabled us to ensure we give the best quality of service to the premium subscribers.” Tunisiana, based in Tunisia is a part of the Ooreedo Group, and with over 6M subscribers is the largest operator in Tunisia.
Directing Analyst for Service Enablement and Subscriber Intelligence, Infonetics
Research
“Policy management provides better visibility into and control of access networks, allowing operators to tailor the customer experience, better manage new services and capabilities as they roll them out, and manage the evergrowing range of end-user devices. When a policy solution is combined with a real-time charging engine, it increases its value exponentially by facilitating innovative pricing models. With its integrated charging and policy solution, combined with its Tier 1 customer base, Redknee is well-positioned to take a leadership position in the revenue and policy management space.” Infonetics Research is an international marketing research and consulting firm serving the communications industry since 1990.
Beyond the Buzz Industry updates from around the globe
20 of 90% operators plan to begin deploying VoLTE by 2015. ABI Research http://goo.gl/fyTI9K
EU Council earmarks â‚Ź1 billion of funding between 2014 and 2020 for European Broadband Infrastructure projects http://goo.gl/oYH1Ge
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M2M is going mobile: 54 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2035. IHS Automotive http://goo.gl/gAKvsE
Red Perspectives From Redknee’s Product Management Team
22 What is the role of billing vendors in today’s digital world?
Chris Newton-Smith,
Vice President, Marketing
How does the move to 4G/ LTE affect service providers’ BSS systems? As the industry moves to the next technology, service providers need to maintain or improve the customer experience and create additional revenue to recoup the large investment for 4G/LTE infrastructure, which has significant implications for their charging and billing systems in particular. Data and high value content will continue to grow as new services and partnerships evolve – taxing current BSS systems that weren’t built to manage the rapid pace of change required in today’s market. M2M will also greatly increase the number of transactions that need to be managed by billing systems. Social media has also changed the way subscribers
Billing is growing increasingly complex and important in today’s digital world. While it has always been considered a critical asset of every CSP, its role has changed significantly and we are finding our solutions are being utilized within the CSP well beyond traditional billing departments. Billing is playing a larger role in many marketing departments, helping the business to launch new services more quickly, provide a better customer experience, support new content, new pricing models and even new business models.
expect to communicate with their service providers. Billing systems and customer care departments need to be able to accommodate these changes.
What can service providers do to address these challenges? Higher-bandwidth connections mean real-time charging /policy control/ customer information becomes even more important to avoid bill shock. It also creates a larger load and all systems involved (real-time charging, prepaid, policy control) need to be prepared. 4G/LTE bandwidth creates the opportunity for more and differentiated services and the BSS system will need to be flexible to implement those quickly. Finally, service providers will
Redknee talks about the importance of flexibility and configurability in its software. Why is this important? With Redknee, service providers can configure and adapt their marketing, pricing and service offers dynamically to meet changing requirements quickly and easily. Our commitment to utilizing open interfaces and simplified workflows provides for a smooth integration into any existing BSS infrastructure and helps CSPs quickly onboard new systems and new content partners. Redknee is also committed to zerodowntime upgrades and creating a smaller hardware footprint for our customers - saving money and resources.
need to create new revenue streams by working with partners and third-party content providers and the BSS systems will need to keep pace.
Dr. Friedrich Schmerbeck,
Director of Product Management, Dr. Friedrich Converged Billing Schmerbeck, Director of Product Management, Converged Billing
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With all the interest in Smart Cities and M2M, what is the most interesting area right now for service providers? We are very engaged with the growing demand for connected home services. Redknee has developed a partnership for a full end-to-end connected home offering that combines the latest technologies in home management with our strengths in real-time charging and notifications. This is an exciting space to be in- and we have seen a tremendous level of interest from many service providers looking for new ways to grow their revenue stream. We will be showcasing a demo of this offer at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
What can utility companies learn from telco operators? Mobile service providers are accustomed to dealing with billions of data transactions in real-time. They are used to managing subscriber usage limits and prepaid transactions, and to providing their customers with CRM tools to monitor and manage their usage. Utility providers have had a different business model – one that relies on static monthly bills with very little customer transparency. But Smart Meters are changing the way utility companies do business. They are opening the door to new charging scenarios and flexible rate plans that are similar to how mobile providers bill
for their services. New offerings like prepaid energy are starting to emerge, and customers are becoming more active and conscientious consumers as they gain greater visibility and control over their own energy use– it’s a very exciting time.
Stefan Hess,
Why is Policy Management integrated with charging systems? Policy Management was traditionally a network based solution, but recently has since become more tightly integrated with charging in order to more closely link new offers, new pricing and new services linked with pre-defined policies. This tighter integration means that service providers can get their offers to the market more quickly, and with less involvement from the engineering side. It really comes down to speed - improving time to market, making service providers more agile and responsive to market demands and improving the customer experience. A Policy Management solution that is fully integrated with the billing platform helps make this possible.
Head of Verticals
What are some key trends you see in the area of Policy Management? Customer expectations have changed dramatically. They want everything in real-time, they want more service and payment choices, along with billing transparency and greater personalization of services. Operators are looking to policy solutions to help meet these demands more quickly. They are also beginning to look at offering services such as subsidized or sponsored data from content/OTT partnerships. We are also seeing a growing demand for voice over LTE (VoLTE), which requires policy management to ensure proper quality of service. Operators are also looking for ways to reduce network
congestion and are exploring Wi-Fi offload strategies that leverage policy management.
Dr. Christian Gayda,
Director of Product Management, Policy Management Solutions
Red Locations Where in the world is Redknee?
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“Diversity: Our Strength” is the official motto for the vibrant, multicultural city of Toronto, Canada. The motto, symbolizing the greater value of working together, is a fitting premise for the home of Redknee’s corporate headquarters. Redknee’s presence in more than 90 countries means that we bring global scale but with Redknee’s culture firmly rooted in the values that were established 15 years ago– you will benefit from the local expertise you need to succeed in your market. To read more about how Redknee was founded, visit www.redknee.com.
Toronto
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Outside Perspective IDC profiles the need to prioritize OSS/BSS modernization
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BSS Modernization — A Top Priority That Can’t Wait “In today’s fast-moving digital commerce climate, billing
IDC believes that CSPs will continue to be challenged over
and charging systems top the list of key systems within
the coming years by increased service and business-model
a communications service provider’s (CSP’s) operations
complexity, ever-changing customer expectations, and a
because they can offer the CSP a significant competitive
highly competitive and dynamic market. Accordingly, CSPs
advantage — or cripple the service provider’s brand in an
need to lower their risk and cost structures while improving
instant.”
their business agility and flexibility.
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Today’s billing solutions offer CSPs the required enhanced business agility and flexibility.
Another key requirement for CSPs is
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Today’s more functionally robust, truly
systems to support
productized and configurable (versus
rapid deployment —
customizable) billing solutions offer CSPs
i.e., three to six months or
the required enhanced business agility and
less. Vendors that can provide a
flexibility, in addition to other benefits. These
functionally robust billing solution that
systems need to support rapid introduction
can be deployed in any number of delivery
of new pricing plans (e.g., support for time-
models and can offer complementary,
applications within their BSS solution
and volume-based plans, promotions),
pre-integrated policy management and
portfolio. By doing so, CSPs can benefit
business models, service lines, and product
customer engagement solutions will provide
from the extensive set of out-of-the-box
bundles to enable CSPs to differentiate
the most benefits to CSPs. Service providers
functional complementary solutions and the
their services and provide more innovative
should consider whether their billing solution
fact that the vendor has already borne the
offerings than the competition.
needs to reside on premise, if their business
cost of pre-integrating these solutions.
might be best served with a cloud-based CSPs must also be able to tap into the
solution — or if a hybrid model is required.
Because BSS systems will always be a key
vast ecosystem of application, service,
There are only a few billing vendors that
part of CSPs’ operations and represent a
and content providers, and have highly
offer proven, product-based solutions
significant expenditure, driving automation
automated systems and processes that
that can be provided either from the cloud
throughout the operation and streamlining
can handle rapid integration, management,
or deployed on the CSP’s premise. It is
business processes to create the most
delivery, and customer support for third-
important, therefore, that service providers
efficient and effective economic model will
party service components, applications,
consider vendors that can offer this level of
continue to be a priority. Given these market
and content. Costly custom onboarding
flexibility to select the billing solution and
conditions, CSPs can gain significant time-
of an independent software vendor’s
deployment model that best meets their
to-market advantages and reduce project
application or slow implementation of a
needs.
cost, risk, and integration by working with vendors such as Redknee that have invested
new pricing plan for data downloads can cripple an otherwise profitable offering. In
IDC views Redknee as a leader in the
in pre-integrating the solutions in their
addition, lack of automated billing for an
cloud billing space and believes CSPs will
portfolio.
offering that achieves a high sales volume
increasingly adopt cloud billing solutions
can dramatically impact profitability by
to support rapid new service launches, and
Read the full report “IDC Technology
squeezing margins and turning an otherwise
for their unique ability to preserve capital
Spotlight: OSS/BSS Enhancement - A Top
successful launch into a financial and
(by converting capex to opex). IDC believes
Priority that Can’t Wait” by visiting
operational disaster.
CSPs should consider purchasing solutions
www.redknee.com/pdf/forms/IDC_
from independent software vendors such as
Report_2014.aspx
Redknee that offer multiple, pre-integrated
Redknee Events Meet Redknee at a city near you
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FEBRUARY 2014
24-27 Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Spain www.redknee.com/mwc2014
FEBRUARY 2014
26-28 International Smart Grid Expo Tokyo, Japan http://tinyurl.com/kgk9nyj
MARCH 2014
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(10 AM ET)
Telecoms.com presents a Redknee Webinar Operator Perspectives for 4G BSS Requirements http://tinyurl.com/krze9f5
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APRIL 2014
8-9
Policy Control & Data Pricing Berlin, Germany http://tinyurl.com/m5fctbe
APRIL 2014
8-10 MVNO’s World Congress Berlin, Germany http://tinyurl.com/kqymt82
JUNE 2014
2-5
TM Forum Live Nice, France http://tinyurl.com/moekf49
Redknee Corporate Headquarters 2560 Matheson Boulevard East Mississauga, Ontario Canada L4W 4Y9 Tel: +1 905 625 2622 Fax: +1 905 625 2773 www.redknee.com