Vanillaplus Black Book 2016 by Prestige Media

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VANILLAPLUS BLACK BOOK 2016

BLACK BOOK 2016 SPONSORED BY

We Turn No into Now Marketing wants new digital services, Finance instant monetization, and IT is left balancing these expectations with reality.. With Trransformative IT,, the e C-suite can join forc ces and say yes, now.

We elcome to the Networked Society.

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www.ericsson.com/transformative-itt

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C O N T E N T S

IN THIS ISSUE 4 COMMENT George Malim says virtualisation means the times are changing for CSPs and within that change risks and opportunities abound in equal measure

Anders Thulin 5 LEAD INTERVIEW Anders Thulin, the chief information officer of Ericsson, tells VanillaPlus that real transformation means becoming a truly customer-centric organisation through the industrious application of IT intelligence

9 VANILLAPLUS NFV INSIGHT Our VanillaPlus NFV Insight report starts here and explores how NFV is moving from theoretical ideals into real commercial deployment. The Insight contains a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firm AnalysysMason to help you understand how NFV is being deployed and the likely timeframe for mainstream virtualisation roll-outs

BLACK BOOK 2016 EDITOR George Malim Tel: +44 (0) 1225 319 566 george@vanillaplus.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR & PUBLISHER Jeremy Cowan Tel: +44 (0) 1420 588638 jc@m2mnow.biz

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VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

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25 VANILLAPLUS BILL & CHARGE INSIGHT Our VanillaPlus Bill & Charge Insight assesses how the twin disciplines of billing and charging are breaking out of their traditional siloed approaches to enable greater flexibility. The Insight features a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firm Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan explaining the challenges facing billing and charging as telecoms moves to an ondemand, real-time world 41 VANILLAPLUS CEM INSIGHT Our VanillaPlus CEM Insight report explores the extent to which CEM enables CSPs to differentiate on more than price. The Insight contains a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firm Heavy Reading that details how efficient CEM can both generate new revenue and reduce operational expenses 55 VANILLAPLUS REVENUE MANAGEMENT & ASSURANCE INSIGHT Our VanillaPlus Revenue Management & Assurance Insight explores how CSPs are using their revenue insights to create flexibility and enable new services, not just for themselves but for their partners as well. The Insight presents a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firm AnalysysMason which explains how revenue assurance and management have evolved to underpin the digital services provider business 69 DIGITAL IDENTITY & DATA ANALYTICS INSIGHT Our VanillaPlus Data Analytics report assesses the extent to which big data analytics is becoming an important future revenue stream for CSPs. The Insight contains a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firm Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan to help you gain a wider understanding of the big data opportunities and pitfalls CSPs face 83 VANILLAPLUS DIRECTORY 2016 Now in its 16th annual edition, the VanillaPlus Directory lists the key companies in telecoms O/BSS. As CSPs face the challenges of continued network investment, the need to introduce new services and the virtualisation storm that is just beginning, these are the companies that can provide the answers to CSPs’ questions

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C O M M E N T

WELCOME TO THE VANILLAPLUS BLACK BOOK 2016 As the telecoms industry continues to go through the greatest transformation since the introduction of IP technology – and possibly ever – this, the third VanillaPlus Black Book, paints a picture of an industry fully engaged in change. The analyst reports and executive interviews assembled here explore how new technologies and capabilities are creating new opportunities for communications service providers (CSPs) to create new services, new business models and new revenues. It’s an exciting time and one that is truly stretching CSPs, their network and IT teams and, by extension, their suppliers robably the greatest challenge and opportunity for CSPs in 2016 is the emergence of virtualisation from its test and development phase into real life deployments. Virtualisation encompasses network functions virtualisation (NFV), software defined networking (SDN) and elements of other software-based technologies such as selforganising networks (SON). The move to IT-oriented, software-based technologies to operate networks based on commodity hardware is a sea change that is seeing the industry move away from its heritage of function-specific, proprietary network hardware. The benefits virtualisation is anticipated to bring include reduced operational and potentially capital expenditure, greater flexibility and the scalability to meet ever-growing user demands for data capacity.

P George Malim, editor, VanillaPlus

However, to get to the rewards CSPs have to go through the pain of transformation. Lots of jobs will change description or disappear and this will be disruptive and divisive for many organisations. Nevertheless, the industry seems to have accepted there is no alternative if CSPs are to remain viable businesses and, beyond that, become leading organisations in the future networked society in which services, companies and customers are integrated and interlinked, the common factor between them being the network. It’s clear now that all CSPs are committed, although at varying degrees as they figure out how rapidly to deploy virtualisation and which areas to prioritise. AT&T in the US is very clear about its goals and has stated that it wants to virtualise 75% of its network by 2020. That’s a giant task and accelerated

momentum will need to be seen this year for CSPs to have a realistic prospect of meeting timelines of this type. Virtualisation presents a great opportunity for companies in the O/BSS market. After all, telecoms software is their core expertise and they have the IT capability coupled with the understanding of the network that is required to make virtualisation a reality. Virtualisation, though, isn’t the end game. It’s simply the enabler of a new way of doing business. It will put customers in greater control and enable a more on-demand approach to accessing network and associated services. It provides CSPs with a greater opportunity to extend their role in the digital market place beyond simply providing the network. That’s fundamental to enabling CSPs to reset their cost bases and enhance profitability. The times they are a-changing and there are risks and opportunities in equal measure. With this in mind, during 2016 VanillaPlus will publish a further series of Insights commissioned from analyst firms. Topics planned include: NFV, Data Analytics, Bill & Charge, CEM and IoT. We’ll also explore key topics including telco cloud, revenue management, fraud prevention, roaming, pricing, policy control and network planning and optimisation. We hope you enjoy this Black Book and the Insights contained within it.

George Malim, Editor, VanillaPlus

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LEAD INTERVIEW

Anders Thulin: IT executives want more automation, more integration, more customer self-service, more real time capabilities and more extension of systems to third-party partners

Top industry trends signal both opportunity and disruption for CIOs Anders Thulin is the chief information officer of Ericsson. As CIO of a company that operates and manages networks across the world and supplies network and IT services and systems to communications service providers (CSPs) globally, Thulin understands the pressures CIOs face as the industry transforms. Here, he tells VanillaPlus that real transformation means becoming a truly customer-centric organisation through the industrious application of IT intelligence

Anders Thulin: Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a fair question, and my answer is yes, but clearly rooted in our heritage and experience within the telecoms industry. We think less in terms of legacy labels and more about how we can couple IT intelligence with the network intelligence that is driving the Networked Society. With Transformative IT, we are positioning telecoms- or service provider-

anillaPlus: Ericsson has recently started to talk about Transformative IT. People know Ericsson as a network company, or perhaps a support systems company, but IT? The first logical question to ask you, as a CIO, is whether or not you consider Ericsson an IT company?

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LEAD INTERVIEW

I don’t see support systems going away, exactly, but by 2020 or 2025, I think we won’t have this division between OSS and BSS

specific software, IT equipment and services to solve our customers’ most pressing business problems. I’d say we have been investing in information technologies for quite a while now and evolving our portfolio of products and services to meet the specific needs of the emergent digital enterprise. As the industry becomes more and more IT-driven and more responsibilities accrue to the CIO and other IT executives, I think our value will become even more apparent. VP: Ericsson seems to be placing additional emphasis on transformation. In fact, your support software, data analytics, consulting and integration services and relevant hardware are now grouped under the Transformative IT banner. Has transformation become a greater company focus? AT: IT is the ‘oil in all the salads’, as one incumbent carrier executive put it – it is involved in all transformation projects and bringing together all the elements. We’ve been talking about transformation for quite a while and have helped a number of ICT companies through various types of transformation projects. Perhaps we are using the word more often because the ICT industry as a whole and so many CSPs individually are facing such rapid transformation, in so many respects. For these companies, the main goal of transformation is the desire to succeed in the Networked Society. That means becoming a truly customer-centric organisation that provides more personalised, consistent, flexible, real-time products and services to customers anytime, anywhere and on any devices. It’s interesting, but just the word transformation can cause very emotional reactions. We funded some research near the end of 2015 that included extensive interviews with almost 50 CIOs and other IT executives around the world, and when the subject of transformation came up it was clear that it touched a nerve with some people. The reactions ranged from thinking transformation is simply a part of industry life – that it’s always taking place whether it’s recognised or not – to thinking that transformation has overhyped the search for differentiation to the detriment of a coherent strategy and roadmaps.

VP: Ericsson has made a series of acquisitions in the OSS and BSS markets over the last few years, most notably its purchase of Telcordia. What role do you see OSS and BSS playing as CSPs transform and become more IT-oriented organisations? AT: I don’t see support systems going away, exactly, but I think we won’t have this division between OSS and BSS. It’s already quite blurred in some of our own products. In the future, we probably won’t even call this type of software support systems, since they will really help drive the business. This isn’t just us saying so; a broad majority of the people we talked to in our study say that BSS and OSS have to change, perhaps radically, and we agree. They see the top challenge for vendors like Ericsson as adding more agility and flexibility to these systems, so they are better able to deal with new functional areas such as mobile payments, virtualisation, the Internet of Things (IoT) and content. IT executives want more automation, more integration, more customer self-service, more real time capabilities and more extension of systems to third-party partners. These are all things Ericsson has been working on since the Telcordia acquisition, investing heavily to rethink, reimagine and redevelop OSS, BSS and service enablement. It is clear that CSPs’ needs have dictated a converged, interconnected system that could provide the dynamic power necessary for agility. We aren’t entirely there yet, but we’ve made some real strides and I think our customers would agree. VP: In just a few years, service providers have completely embraced the idea of extensive data analysis. Ericsson introduced its own Expert Analytics product in 2014. What’s your take on this development? Why is it so important to the industry?

The reality is that transformation is happening right now at ICT companies around the world – enabled by IT intelligence in the network, in service development,

delivery and management, and in customer interaction. It’s going to change the organisation, because it forces the rethinking of processes, the development of new internal competencies, and a culture and mindset that has more in common with what most people would expect to see in start-ups. All of this allows the organisation to be increasingly centred around the customer and dedicated to providing exceptional user experiences. When you do that, higher revenue and greater profitability inevitably follow.

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AT: CSPs have a huge advantage because of the enormous amounts of network and customer data they maintain and collect. For example, profiles of customer groups can be based on usage patterns and allow the proactive creation of services that customers are most likely to buy. You can use realtime data to send context-specific offers to customers that enhance their experience, based on where they are, what device or app they’re using, and so on. Similarly, a constant flow of network data can be used for proactive, predictive and preemptive assurance to minimise call times and reduce customer care costs, while also increasing customer satisfaction. The growth in data analytics is only going to continue, and maybe even accelerate, as companies find more and more ways to use it. In order to do these kinds of things, it helps to have an analytics solution that is actually made for the industry and knows which data is important and which isn’t for any particular use case – right out of the box. That’s the solution Ericsson developed, and I think our experience and industry pedigree explain why we were able to do that so effectively. And of course, you need analysis in real time to deliver insights that can have a positive effect on the customer experience as it happens, and Expert Analytics delivers that, too. VP: Another hot topic of the moment is virtualisation in general and network functions virtualisation (NFV) in particular. Do you see 2016 as the year in which virtualisation technologies emerge from the hype cycle and start to deliver real business value?

AT: Virtualisation in the IT domain has been well understood for some time, but in the network domain some ICT CIOs are still taking a wait and see attitude until they have a clearer picture of the the risk/reward for SDN (software defined networking), NFV and, to some extent, cloud. CIOs and CTOs will naturally be hesitant in the network domain, especially where the TCO (total cost of ownership) reduction case is unclear in their eyes when it comes to virtualisation.

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LEAD INTERVIEW

I think it’s very safe to say that IT executives have a unique awareness of the coming application of cloud to all areas of IT, which basically is coming to mean all areas of the business

There are a number of reasons CIOs are wary about being first in adopting breakthrough technologies. At Ericsson, we understand their concerns, but think the benefits of virtualisation are simply too great to ignore. Virtualised functions and hyperscale clouds can be managed and orchestrated in real time, so you can run your networks like software, and greatly improve performance, reliability, cost-effectiveness and the customer experience. We’ve been concentrating on the technology issues that are creating this hesitation, and believe we have largely removed them from the implementation equation. Transformative IT includes software that allows virtual and physical assets and functions to be managed holistically, as a single entity, with all resources available for maximum utilisation and serving customer needs on demand. Also, keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that the transition from legacy to virtual networks will be simple. The level of network transformation is substantial. There is a lot of work involved, but as I said, we think it’s definitely worth it. VP: Speaking of cloud, Ericsson has stepped up its offering with regard to cloud and cloudrelated services, including adding database hardware to its product line. What do you see happening in the industry in that area?

www.ericsson.com

AT: I think it’s very safe to say that IT executives have a unique awareness of the coming application of cloud to all areas of IT, which basically is coming to mean all areas of the business. Its various as-aservice delivery models can potentially reduce costs, accelerate time to market and help service providers move up the ICT value chain. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) can be used as a base for both commercial enterprise offerings and a provider’s private IT cloud. Naturally, the cloud offering

model chosen depends on the circumstances and needs of the CSP and/or its enterprise customers. There are companies that have already accomplished this transformation, such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. They have developed their own hyperscale computing approaches and changed the rules of the game in data centre design, construction and management. Now, most service providers do not have access to the resources needed to develop their own hyperscale architecture, and that’s what we set out to provide. We’ve developed our cloud offerings so our customers can take advantage of all the potential benefits of cloud through a modernised infrastructure that includes seamless, real-time management and orchestration. VP: What about the relationship between ICT technology executives and the business side? AT: Given the unprecedented rate of change in our industry, it is understandable that IT departments feel like they are scrambling to keep up with the demands of the business. But on whole, the CIOs we heard from seem fairly optimistic. They feel like they can lead the transformation discussions in their organisations. While adequate communications between business and technical departments can be a pain point, the customer-centric mindset is breaking down the walls between IT and the business side. Instead, we hear of CIOs convincing the lines of business to bring in IT early in their development, and likewise CIOs are encouraging their IT departments to bring enablers to the business. The IT intelligence we’ve been talking about in terms of OSS and BSS, Expert Analytics, virtualisation and cloud will help that happen and are addressed in our Transformative IT portfolio of software, consulting and integration services and infrastucture.

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LEAD INTERVIEW

Flexibility and agility are NFV’s key benefits, capex and opex savings are a byproduct As CSPs grapple with virtualisation deployments, Amdocs’ Angela Logothetis and Justin Paul tell George Malim why next generation OSS is so critical in codifying and managing CSPs’ physical, virtual and hybrid architectures and acting as a bridge between the disciplines of IT and telecoms

anillaPlus: The traditional view of the network is bottom up, starting with the hardware. How is that changing to a top down approach that starts with the end user’s experience?

Angela Logothetis: There are traditionally two sides to how organisations work. Network engineers would say SDN or NFV is coming so let’s figure out how to introduce the technologies into our business. Customer experience people would say what innovative and attractive service do those technologies enable us to introduce.

You have to have a system that is able to translate a product specification into a network specification and we see OSS as the critical layer that brings the customer and the network together. Another key area is around the experience. Typically a CSP would build a very high quality network which is universal and to be shared by everybody. Some CSPs still pride themselves on that and some regulators require it. CSPs recognize that even though they build the network for everyone, they will sell class of service to some customers. We’re also seeing more business models that are two-way. For example, Netflix traffic must be at a certain bit rate across the network or customers won’t be happy. CSPs won’t prioritise the

Those two worlds would meet one another in very long and complex processes with reams and reams of paper and procedures that typically result in it taking 18 months to introduce a new product. What communications service providers (CSPs) need to do

is bring the two worlds together which is what we can do in OSS to enable both a top down and a bottom up approach.

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Angela Logothetis is vice president of OSS product and offerings at Amdocs

Justin Paul is head of OSS marketing at Amdocs

traffic but they will ensure the network is in place to deliver the service at the bit rate required. This is the job of next generation OSS.

AL: If it was a completely greenfield environment it would be simpler but still complex for a CSP to set itself up as a virtualised business. CSPs have a lot of capex sitting in the ground in the form of their traditional network equipment and it is not going to go away. CSPs are going to sweat those assets for as long as possible.

VP: The division between networks and IT is changing as networks move towards the IT domain. How important is it to demonstrate IT skills to CSPs, especially as they embark on their journey to telco cloud? AL: We’re rather uniquely positioned because we have the network capabilities and have worked with network organisations for managing operations in OSS, the control plane and service development platforms (SDP). We are also one of the largest IT vendors in telecoms, along with our managed services capability. We understand how the network works and how IT in data centres works but the really interesting part with OSS is it’s not just a set of asset software. It’s software that codifies the technology that a CSP has to run its network. That’s where I see real change happening as the network becomes more IT-oriented than it is today. Justin Paul: If you look at some of the players coming in from the data centre market, they’ll say they know about virtualisation but I’m not sure they understand the differences between IT and telecoms. They are not used to working to the same engineering parameters as CSPs which is essential. That is an operational issue for this type of vendor.

For example, if you think about enterprise customer premise equipment (CPE), it has to go into the enterprise’s building today as physical CPE. However, if it’s virtual where do you put it? In data centre A or B, in server blade C or D? It becomes a complex decision and you have alternatives that mean something and have an impact. Making sure you are making the right decisions and how they are going to join up is absolutely key. VP: NFV and SDN are forcing OSS to change but is this a revolution or more of an evolution? AL: People want to roll-out NFV because it increases the agility of the network while SDN increases configurability. There are strong business cases driving these technologies but if you put the virtualised equipment into the network and nothing else changes you don’t get the benefits in service functions. All you get is a flexible, configurable network that no one can use. To get the full benefits of NFV and SDN you have to have next generation OSS. The trick is how do you

VP: Virtualisation is the next transformation in networks but for the next ten years at least the reality is hybrid, virtual and physical networks and services. What do CSPs need to manage the complexities of hybrid environments?

Therefore introduction of virtualisation is about finding opportunities where CSPs will get the most benefit and also enable interoperability of virtual and physical assets. Virtualised assets will operate totally differently to physical assets.

If you look at some of the players coming in from the data centre market, they’ll say they know about virtualisation but I’m not sure they understand the differences between IT and telecoms

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LEAD INTERVIEW

get that and no one wants yet another set of systems. Hundreds of millions have already been invested so CSPs want a scenario in which current systems run 90% of the network with 10% virtualised initially. Therefore we need systems that are able to evolve from the traditional to virtual world. JP: From talking to some of CSPs’ operations people it’s clear that the full capabilities of NFV scare them significantly because of the potential risks of untried technology. The ideal of fully automated networks is quite frightening and it is going to take time for them to understand the technology and make changes to the organisation. There are a lot of operational questions for CSPs to address. VP: Openness is a key characteristic of next generation OSS to ensure that service providers can avoid vendor lock-in. What vendor attributes should CSPs be looking for? AL: The need for openness is both horizontal and vertical. From a horizontal perspective there are few CSPs with a single vendor network. CSPs want their operations layer to manage multi-technology, multivendor environments to avoid lock-in so they need openness so people and systems can work across multiple vendors. Amdocs is one of the few vendors that can say it is independent of a CSP’s network equipment vendors. Looking vertically, increasingly we’re seeing larger vendors saying they can give CSPs a completely vertical solution for virtualisation from server blades to hypervisors, to cloud, to virtual network functions, the virtual network functions manager, the element manager and the orchestration system. They are trying to sell a complete virtualisation stack but that completely destroys the proposition of moving to an IT world which should be composed of commodity hardware. Network equipment vendors are coming from the world of tightly coupled network elements. We say you can use anybody’s hardware, anybody’s hypervisor and so on and we’ll bring it together. JP: Network equipment providers have a long history of using proprietary capabilities to lock CSPs in to them. It’s contrary to NFV but the tendency is there to say that if you have our virtual network functions and orchestration system we’ll give you proprietary functions that no one else has. That has to be resisted by the industry. We have our own virtual network functions, particularly in the policy plane, and we’ve demonstrated we can work our orchestration with our virtual PCRF (policy and charging rules function) but we are not saying we have something proprietary. We can work equally well with a third party PCRF.

www.amdocs.com

VP: Efficient operations and rapid time to market demand that processes are catalogue-driven. Do

OSS and BSS need to be driven from a single central catalogue for both traditional and virtual networks? AL: We see the catalogue as a single place where everything about the CSP comes together enabling a top down customer view and a bottom up network view. However, there is more to it than that. It’s very much about not only cataloguing of parts buts also why those parts work in the CSP’s business, processes, engineering and fulfillment. That’s what’s really giving the agility and it will be increasingly important in the future network. VP: To achieve lean operations next generation OSS must monitor, evaluate and change the network in response to planned and unplanned events. To what extent is assurance the key and must both data and processes be real-time? JP: NFV and SDN are the catalysts forcing OSS to change. OSS has survived until now without having to make any radical changes but with NFV you have to have a system that is much more tightly coupled to virtual components, that has to be aware of what is happening in the network. There are planned events, such as peak usage times, where your virtualised functions spin up and it’s important to do that in realtime because things can change. There are also unplanned events – security is a good example because it requires a much faster reaction than people can make. Security services are edge services and spin up in response to demand with relatively little impact on core services. Next generation OSS therefore needs real-time capability because of the dynamic nature of the network. VP: Business agility can be achieved through agile operations but this won’t help with improving time to market, which is typically in the region of 18 months. Does bringing new virtual and hybrid services to market rapidly require a means of creating services in an agile way? JP: What has been very interesting is that lots of NFV use cases have not been about improving time to market for introduction of new services. It takes a very long time for CSPs to build services – 18 months is not atypical today – and the resources involved are significant. We’ve been looking at ways to define, test and configure services in a much more agile way. We have to be able to address how CSPs create services to take the engineering and test effort down significantly so the balance changes and CSPs are able to react to market impacts much more readily. New service introductions won’t be 18 months, it will be a couple of weeks. The ability virtualisation presents to create new services very rapidly and offer upsell at the drop of the hat is where it gets very exciting. The opex and capex

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ANALYST REPORT

Introduction

ommercial deployments of automated virtual infrastructure are still limited. However, all three key aspects of network virtualisation – cloud computing, network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) – are steadily advancing to commercialisation. The reason for this is because CSPs are increasingly facing service competition from alternative service providers that have built their services on automated, scalable platforms using cloud computing and SDN. As such, CSPs need to change their network and operations to continue to stay relevant and competitive in the emerging communications-enabled digital economy world. CSPs need to improve their service agility, which refers both to faster development of internal systems and new services and to reduced time-to-market for launching error-free services Figure 1 depicts CSPs’ weighting for the three key drivers for network virtualisation based on Analysys Mason’s most recent research. CSPs trialling network virtualisation accept that operations support systems (OSS) automation will enable service agility and improve operational flexibility, with cost savings regarded as beneficial by-products.

deployments today are: virtualised IMS deployments for VoLTE; virtual CPE deployments for small to medium enterprises (SME) and residential broadband services; and virtualised EPC (evolved packet core) deployments for Internet of Things. This has led Analysys Mason to update its network virtualisation timeline with NFV (not SDN) network functions being commercially available sooner than first predicted in 2013 (see Figure 3). For a successful deployment of a new service on NFV/SDN infrastructure CSPs recognise the need for, at a minimum, orchestration features and functions which are mandatory for vNGN-OSS. This report identifies key functional blocks needed for a vNGNOSS architecture to transform CSPs into digital service providers.

The authors are Glen Ragoonanan, the lead analyst for the Infrastructure Solutions, Service Delivery Platforms and Software Controlled Networking research programmes at AnalysysMason, and Dana Cooperson, the research director for AnalysysMason's Network-Focused Software research programmes

Today, NFV is more real than SDN for CSPs Figure 1: CSPs’ weighting of drivers of network virtualisation [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

Established CSPs may need up to 10 years to complete the transformation to a new OSS architecture that is less expensive, more agile and more automated – one that matches the flexibility of a virtualised network, while still managing a traditional network. Analysys Mason calls this a vNGN-OSS. 80% of CSPs Analysys Mason has spoken to are favouring a service-led deployment strategy for network virtualisation rather than a lifecycle-upgrade or platform-migration strategy as described in Figure 2. The three key NFV/SDN-enabled services CSP

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

CSPs are increasingly facing service competition from alternative providers such as over-the-top service providers including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft/Skype, Netflix, Hulu, and data centre providers such as RackSpace, Equinix and others. These alternative providers have a fundamental competitive advantage compared with CSPs: they have built their services on automated, scalable platforms using cloud computing and SDN. As such, CSPs are looking to transform themselves and become digital service providers (DSPs) to compete and better meet the changing needs of their digital consumers. CSPs need to change their network and operations to continue to stay relevant and competitive in the emerging communications-enabled digital economy world.

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ANALYST REPORT

Figure 2: Summary of main network virtualisation deployment strategies [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

Three key technologies are giving CSPs the opportunity to transform their telecoms infrastructure from physical and inflexible to virtual and agile: • Cloud computing: virtualisation of standardised commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) IT (x86 architecture) hardware of compute, storage and server networking into virtualised instances, to make CSPs’ back-office OSS/BSS support systems and enterprise applications as well as enterprise cloud services consume less power, cooling and floor space while maximising compute, storage and networking resources flexibility. However, cloud computing technology only guarantees 99.9% reliability. • Software-defined networking (SDN): separates the data and control planes of communications core and transport network resources for dynamic configuration and management using an intelligent software product – an SDN controller. SDN’s goals are to enable faster deployment and change of connectivity services – such as VPNs, layer 2 services, data centre interconnect – and to optimise CSPs’ exponential traffic growth across its network. • Network functions virtualisation (NFV): a carrier-grade and orchestrated – automated – version of cloud computing that will guarantee 99.999% reliability for CSP network functions such as IMS functions, PCEF/DPI (Policy & Charging Enforcement Function/Deep Packet Inspection, EPC functions, HSS and Diameter routing. NFV has progressed further and offers more immediate capex savings in CSPs’ networks. SDN is lagging NFV in CSPs’ network trials and deployments, but is being used in their data centres. CSPs will need to harness all three virtualisation technologies to drastically transform operations, business and service delivery and

Deployment strategy

Description

CSPs considering this strategy

Service-led strategy

Investment for a new service allows the 80% introduction of NFV and SDN for the service in a greenfield-like implementation isolated from existing network complexities. Three services driving this approach and examples of CSP deployments are: VoLTE built on virtualised IMS, which Korea Telecom launched in 2014; smallmedium enterprise (SME) services and residential broadband services built on virtual CPE deployments that AT&T (Network on Demand), Deutsche Telekom (Cloud VPN), Telefónica (home gateway for residential broadband) and Verizon (enterprise cloud bursting) have launched; and IoT built on virtualised EPC deployments, which SK Telecom plans to launch nationally.

Lifecycleupgrade strategy

Investing in upgrading end of life infrastructure with virtual network functions (VNFs) to replace physical infrastructure. This approach does not require the CSP to have an explicit business case for network virtualisation if it can get the upgrade done with the same or lower budget.

15%

Platformmigration strategy

This is an IT-like approach. The CSP defines a scalable virtualisation platform reference architecture and migrates infrastructure (VNFs) and services onto the platform over time. Migration is triggered by a combination of infrastructure and server investments as in the above two strategies, but avoids the past practice of creating deployment silos. Telefónica’s UNICA platform and AT&T’s Universal Services Platform, a convergent digital voice platform, are examples of this strategy.

related management infrastructure, processes and systems and become agile, competitive, relevant DSPs.

Network virtualisation deployment strategies Regardless of the deployment strategy used, CSPs will require significant systems integration for successful virtualisation deployments. The systems integration can be internal or externally provided by a vendor or systems integrator. AT&T has opted for an in-house development, integration and management approach together with external vendor solutions and support to launch its ‘Network on Demand’ ethernet services. However, most CSPs are selecting vendors to transfer the risk of deploying NFV/SDN solutions. Telefónica announced in March 2015, for example, that will use HP as its prime integrator for its UNICA virtualised network platform. Figure 2 summarises the three main network virtualisation deployment strategies CSPs are considering: We expect CSPs will use multiple strategies where and when it makes sense within their networks. Telefónica’s UNICA was initially meant to host an array of virtualised IMS and mobile core functions in Spain; however, Telefónica will likely extend UNICA to support other new VNFs and services across multiple operating companies as well. Telefónica is uncertain whether or not it will extend UNICA for all future services such as 5G mobile and has not ruled out the advent of additional platforms. In addition, Telefónica took a service-led approach in Brazil, where it is not the incumbent, when it deployed virtualised CPE to support residential broadband services. Verizon launched its enterprise cloud bursting service with a combination of cloud computing and SDN technologies using a service-led strategy, whereas it is using a lifecycle-upgrade strategy

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Figure 3: NFV and SDN functions likely initial adoption timeframes in CSP networks, 2013–2023 [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

to replace end-of-life infrastructure as opportunities arise. CSPs will need to employ the right combination of strategies to support business goals without recreating silos that have increased their operational costs and inefficiencies in the past.

Service-led deployments are dictating the NFV/SDN timeline Figure 3 illustrates Analysys Mason’s view of the likely timeline of NFV- and SDN-driven infrastructure deployments. Virtualisation of BSS/OSS systems based on cloud computing has begun and will continue throughout the timeframe, mostly in CSPs’ private cloud environments. The following assumptions underlie the NFV/SDN timeline, based on Analysys Mason’s discussions with CSPs: • NFV adoption will be faster than SDN because immediate benefits are clearer. • Network functions that do not require high-performance, dedicated processing and yield significant cost-reduction and service-velocity benefits will virtualise first. • Commercial availability of VNFs on the NFV timeline has exceeded Analysys Mason’s 2013 forecast through a combination of CSPs’ service-led deployment strategy and network functions replacement based on the lifecycle-upgrade strategy. • Three years after commercial availability of NFV- or SDN-enabled functions, deployments will increase from exploration to adoption of these functions by CSPs. • CSPs will need OSS and orchestration functions that support NFV/SDN to move from the exploration stage to adoption with a standardised deployment approach. • Increasing mobile video traffic over LTE and ETSI’s MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) initiative will increase mobile CDN

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solution availability. • Not all functions will be virtualised with NFV, including highperformance, low latency functions that need dedicated appliances, such as DDoS security functions in ISP or Gi LAN, aggregation routers, optical equipment and legacy for SS7/SIGTRAN network functions. Because it is not possible to virtualise every network function CSPs’ next-generation networks (vNGNs) will be a mixture of virtualised and traditional physical network assets encompassed by or overlaid with cloud computing, NFV and SDN software management technologies where most of the core – namely the service layer – is virtualised first.

An evolved vNGN-OSS architecture is needed for vNGNs CSPs need a new OSS architecture that is less expensive, more agile and more automated than the status quo: one that matches the flexibility of a virtualised network, while still managing traditional network functions in a hybrid vNGN.

OSS abstraction is the first stage of vNGN-OSS evolution CSPs accept that the benefit of network virtualisation is service agility, which requires increased operational efficiencies through automation. OSS abstraction of the virtualised network infrastructure (VNI) through NFV orchestrators (NFVOs) and SDN controllers will support the coexistence of traditional physical and virtualised networks, reduce operational disruption for at least the next 5-10 years, while virtualised elements represent less than 40% of total network assets. Figure 4 illustrates Analysys Mason’s high

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ANALYST REPORT

Figure 4: vNGN-OSS architecture evolved to provide multiple levels of abstraction to manage established and new virtual infrastructure [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

level view on an evolved vNGN-OSS architecture which uses OSS abstraction conceal the complexity of network virtualisation under orchestrators, while preserving OSS processes and operations using established OSS and user interfaces. Established OSSs will require a modular upgrade and APIs to support NFV and SDN control of virtual network infrastructure (VNI) through VNF managers, NFVOs (NFV orchestrators) and SDN controllers. OSS abstraction will ensure that CSPs can simplify and streamline service fulfilment and assurance control of both physical and virtual networks for established services, while reducing the infrastructure cost with commodity hardware. SDN trials and use cases generally target traffic control and management, although the emphasis on service assurance OSS functions is increasing. Analysys Mason sees the following as essential to vNGN-OSS as shown in Figure 4 above: • Two orchestration layers – network and service –are needed and must be integrated for an end-to-end view and operation of catalogue-driven (semi-) automated service delivery and lifecycle management: - Network orchestration: the ability to create, manipulate, (de)activate, and manage network resources across CSPs physical and virtual infrastructure. This orchestrator will have in-depth VNF intelligence of configuration and management which it will abstract from the upper OSS and service layers. - Service orchestration: will take customer service order and decompose them to network service orders which it can pass to the network orchestration layer. There will be a need for a common data model and translation for this, which does not exist today. This is more akin to SID from the TM Forum, while for network orchestration vendors are gravitating to IETF’s NETCONF and YANG data modeling. • A unified, dynamic inventory is needed that will be essential to ensuring automation of the creation, manipulation and recreation of network resources as well as understanding the physical and

logical/service inventory in a single view. This can automate capacity planning and network optimisation processes. Today most inventories are disjointed, which increases CSPs’ inefficiencies and causes cost leakage on untracked network resources. • A master policy database in the OSS layer that can allow the CSPs to configure and manage the vNGN environment based on predetermined and approved user-defined business and operations network and service designs, configurations and policies. This OSS policy database will need to overlap with existing service layer policy functions such as PCRF (Policy & Charging Rules Function) for delivery and management of customer empowered self-service enabled by a vNGN with a vNGN-OSS management layer. • Near-real-time analytics for service assurance to improve network predictability, with open- and closed-loop automation workflow options. • Improved security administration, hierarchy, zoning and auditing functions for manual and automated tasks. The dynamics of a vNGN environment will require more automated security with multiple failsafe mechanisms, which will be applied across the infrastructure but managed from the OSS layer. The lack of OSS standards is inhibiting vNGN adoption. As such existing and new telecoms software suppliers are developing their own vNGN-OSS architectures. The work in the ETSI NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) working group is driving CSPs such as AT&T and NTT Communications to develop their own in-house OSS technology. In June 2014, the TM Forum launched its Zero-touch, Orchestration, Operations and Management (ZOOM) project to support the development of open, dynamic APIs, exposing standardised network and management functions at all layers of a NFV architecture, but not SDN. The TM Forum will provide an update on ZOOM at its TM Forum Live! event in June 2015, but it has started to look beyond the technology and

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into the business process and organisational changes needed. CSPs accept that OSS abstraction provides a default migration path for them. Initially, OSS abstraction will deliver service fulfillment and assurance control for existing services through new software control layers of VNF managers, NFVOs and SDN controllers. However, for maximum benefit, CSPs expect that vendors will develop new, mature vNGN-OSS that will: • Orchestrate and manage physical and virtual network resources for both existing and new services

automating existing manual processes.

• Continually reduce the complexity, development and maintenance costs of CSPs’ OSSs • Reduce the time and cost of integration through open interfaces and hardware and software interoperability standards • Provide near-real-time view and control of operations, with policy-controlled automation and analytics • Encompass delivery and lifecycle management of services, where resource management is implicit • Potentially modernise operations to converge network and IT planning, build, operations and maintenance • Increase operations flexibility and service delivery agility.

Figure 5: OSS automation of new network elements and functions to increase service agility [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

OSS automation is critical for service agility OSS automation is essential if a CSP’s aim is to increase service agility. It requires new OSS functions and features that can perform auto-additions of new network elements, functions and technologies, and can deliver services using a combination of network and service policies. These OSS features will effectively optimise CSPs’ end-to-end plan-to-provision (P2P) OSS processes and, as a result, increase their service agility. Figure 5 illustrates how an automated OSS can improve CSPs’ service agility by

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Full OSS automation does not exist yet, but CSPs view it as a crucial vNGN-OSS requirement for increasing their service agility and enabling them to differentiate themselves from other CSPs as well as IT-centric competitors, including digital media and data centre providers. As a result, vNGN-OSSs need ‘automated service readiness’ to increase service agility and deliver business benefits to CSPs. Figure 6 describes three OSS automation use cases that

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ANALYST REPORT

can service agility with a vNGN environment. Useincrease cases CSPs’ Description Network augmentation

• If there is increased market demand for existing services, network capacity monitoring can alert the CSP of the need for new VNFs or NFV infrastructure (NFVI) because all existing virtual machine capacity has been exhausted. • New NFVI could be automatically discovered and sent configurations from the control plane, based on the network configuration policy. New VNFs could be pre-configured from a pre defined network architecture in the control layer, to automatically configure the new VNF when it is implemented in the network. New NVI and VNFs would be made available to the OSS inventory to support network readiness, service fulfillment and assurance processes.

Add new NFVI, VNFs and/or technologies

• New network functions (UDC/UDR, PCRF, DRA, ANDSF), technologies (LTE, SON) and NFVI (server, storage, network I/O [high-speed optical]) can be added similar to the first use case. However, it will deliver a new service which was not possible without the new technology or VNF, such as 300Mbit/s mobile broadband with QoS using LTE-A and service policy rules. • The service catalogue would model new resources and service specifications and, when discovered, the new network capabilities would be instantiated and made available in the OSS inventory to support network readiness, service fulfillment and assurance processes.

Create services from existing resources

• Launching new services ensures CSPs will stay competitive. With network virtualisation, VNFs can be created from dormant NFVI to deliver new services without additional capex. • Existing capacity will be queried. If available, VNFs can enter the creation, inventory, configuration and management cycle (see Figure 5). If not, either network augmentation or new addition use cases will be invoked to create, deliver and manage the new service being requested.

Figure 6: Use cases for OSS automation in vNGNs [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

CSPs must plan and prioritise their virtual network investments in a

phased approach Irrespective of the deployment strategy(ies) (see Figure 2) used by CSPs, there are three phases for the successful migration to an agile CSP with a vNGN-OSS needed for completion: 1. Initial deployment of a vNGN: vNGN investments to augment or replace the network service delivery infrastructure. The vNGN should not be implemented in a silo environment, which would lead to spending on multiple networks and operations domains. Today, advanced CSPs are in this phase and are deploying VNFs with a service-led strategy. Ideally this will be on a scalable, uniform, virtualised vNGN platform using the platform-migration strategy. 2. Co-existence with vNGN: In this phase, VNFs and physical infrastructure will coexist and the CSP cost will increase. These costs will largely come from hardware costs, and co-existing OSS and orchestration solutions to provision, manage and assure physical and virtual network functions for existing and new services. Infrastructure and service migration are critical to the success of this phase; the lack of industry standards and the nascence of OSS and orchestration co-existence are inhibitors for CSPs. AT&T, NTT, Telefónica and Verizon needed to do internal development to operate their network virtualisation enabled-services. 3. Transformation to vNGN and vNGN-OSS: CSPs clearly identify legacy systems and infrastructure, and either replace or retire them with newer, lower-cost virtualized alternatives which are more readily integrated into the CSPs virtualised vNGN platform and its flexible vNGN-OSS architecture. The faster this transformation is completed, the better the service agility benefit gains CSPs can achieve. Historical trends indicate that if CSPs continue their operations as they are, costs will increase gradually but continually over the next 10 years. As a result, a holistic service agility framework for transformation to a vNGNs with vNGN-OSS will require people, VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

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processes and systems changes.

Organisational challenges of automation The organisational changes required to implement and automate virtual networks cannot be underestimated and must be thoroughly factored into virtualisation plans and business cases. Assessment of the effort needed to increase process automation should include: • Staff restructuring, hiring and (re)training • In-house and outsourced development

focusing vNGN-OSS solutions on network orchestration functions and features, while leading OSS vendors and new entrants are focusing on service orchestration. However, there are fundamental disconnects among various CSPs' and vendors' vNGN-OSS architecture approaches. These differences could lead to inflexible architectures where multi-vendor plug-and-play software components are elusive. Figure 7 illustrates the vNGN-OSS vendor landscape, today. Leading NEPs and IT vendors have the most to lose in terms of hardware infrastructure and are building their own server hardware portfolio to protect their hardware businesses.

• Procurement processes and terms changes • Operation of dynamic VNFs versus static physical elements • Incorporation of agile development and DevOps methodologies. CSPs’ evolution to automated vNGN-OSSs provides a good opportunity to assess, rationalise, and consolidate existing systems so that new silos do not simply replace old ones.

vNGN-OSS vendor landscape summary Key vendor types are attacking the vNGN-OSS upgrade opportunities afforded by network virtualisation. Tier-1 OSS vendors will use the strength of their installed bases and their expertise to aggressively protect their current revenues and grow through products and services for network and operational transformation, advocating OSS abstraction and evolution for an extended period. New entrants using NFV orchestration and SDN controller software to build ‘new’ OSS features into these new control points for their market entry include established NEPs with limited OSS portfolios; start-ups; and enterprise IT vendors seeking to enter the telecoms vertical. NEPs with leading OSSs are

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Figure 7: Key vendor types pursuing the CSP vNGN-OSS opportunities [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

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ANALYST REPORT

Figure 8: Critical success factors for network virtualisation [Source: Analysys Mason, 2015]

Established as well as new vendors will need to develop vNGNOSSs with increased OSS automation functions to ensure a mutually beneficial outcome for themselves and CSPs, by: • Allowing CSPs to continue to use or extend their established OSS processes and systems, thus maximising the return on their investments while ensuring minimal disruption to operations and customer services

Looking forward: Service agility, innovation and automation

• Accelerating the development of their software skills and assets, because they will continue to be vital suppliers to CSPs

Today, commercial network virtualisation deployments remain limited and vNGN-OSS automation is still under development. However ,virtualisation – cloud computing, NFV, SDN – technologies have increased the pace of network transformation in the last two years compared with its pace over the past 30 years. We are at the start of a very long journey to implement NFV and SDN. Analysys Mason’s roadmap and forecast assumes network virtualisation will not significantly impact the traditional telecoms markets until after 2020. By 2023, the NFV market will be the largest of the three sub-segments of the US$30 billion software-controlled networking opportunity.

• Providing a basis for differentiation: vendors will be able to continue to differentiate themselves on their products, while CSPs differentiate themselves on service agility and innovation using vendors’ solutions.

Advanced CSPs have three near term actions to capitalised on network virtualisation and become not only relevant to its digital customers but high competitive as a DSP: • Establish sound business cases for NFV and SDN.

• Limiting changes to CSPs’ operating and organisation structures by allowing them to continue to buy and operate multi-vendor OSS solutions, for which the various vendors bear the costs of R&D, development and maintenance

• Plan business and network evolution priorities with cloud, NFV and SDN technologies. • Identify and manage organisational and process changes

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary Amdocs, established in 1982, is headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri, USA. It has 22,774 employees working in 60 countries and, in 2014, it reported revenues of US$3.6 billion. Amdocs has about 200 service provider customers in more than 60 countries across all telecoms software segments. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ. Amdocs Network Cloud Ecosystem partners include: ADVA, Allot Communications, ASOCS Networks, AudioCodes, Brocade (Connectem), Check Point, Cloudify, Contextream, Dell, Flash Networks, HP, IBM, Intel (Wind River), Juniper Networks, Metaswitch Networks, MRV, Netsocket, Nominum, Oliver Solutions, Openstack, PeerApp, Radware, Radcom, Redhat, Sandvine, Tango Networks, Tropo and VMware

Market credentials Amdocs Network Cloud Service Orchestrator is a catalogue-driven system designed to help CSPs transition from traditional physical networks to next generation NFV/SDN environments. It creates and manages network services based on real-time network events and customer data. The system helps continuous design, fulfilment and assurance of network services, from numerous virtual network function (VNF) vendors, using the industry’s ETSI based standard for NFV management and orchestration (MANO) and multiple SDN controllers such as Juniper’s Contrail and OpenDaylight. In February 2015, Amdocs launched the Order Delivery Orchestrator system to enable CSPs to support their enterprise customers across the order delivery lifecycle and improve time-to-cash and reduce the cost for the delivery of complex enterprise orders. It is a cataloguebased orchestration solution that supports hybrid order execution consisting of both traditional physical and virtual services, such as virtual firewall and virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) across multiple vendors' fulfilment stacks.

Key differentiation Amdocs has a large OSS installed base worldwide with the ability to deliver end-to-end integrated product suites, backed by its large managed services business for supporting CSP OSS/BSS transformations. Its OSS domain expertise and NFV/SDN orchestration involvement has led to its Amdocs Network Cloud Service Orchestrator and Order Delivery Orchestrator, which provide a vendor-agnostic and catalogue-driven fulfilment model for hybrid NFV/SDN networks. Furthermore, Amdocs is building Amdocs Network Cloud Ecosystem, which is an NFV partner ecosystem that includes 26 specialised providers of VNF and virtualised infrastructure (NFVI), today, in order to ensure multi-vendor interoperability.

Competitive landscape Amdocs’s competitors in NFV/SDN orchestration space includes other major OSS vendors, NEPs and IT players such as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, HP, IBM, Nokia, NEC/NetCracker and Oracle as well as many emerging vendors entering the market with vendoragnostic solutions, such as CENX and Cyan. Further competition comes from open source solutions from in-house development by CSPs with OpenStack source code.

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Company summary CENX was established in 2009 in New Jersey, USA and now has 130 employees. Customers include several global Tier 1 service providers and data centre providers, including two of the top four mobile CSPs in North America. In addition, the company has partnerships with Accedian Networks, CA Technologies, Ericsson and VM Ware. Privately held, CENX does not disclose revenues. Investors include: Cross Creek Advisors, DCM Ventures, Ericsson, Highland Capital Partners, Mesirow Financial Private Equity and Verizon Ventures.

Market credentials CENX’s core product for NFV and SDN is its Cortx Service Orchestrator, a service lifecycle management and orchestration solution for Carrier Ethernet and IP services over traditional infrastructure, NFV/SDN infrastructures, or a hybrid. The product is aligned with the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) concept. It continuously audits various network and service data, such as inventory, performance, trouble tickets and provisioning, from multiple sources including existing OSS, NMS/EMS, SDN controllers, NFV MANO systems and correlates and unifies these inputs into actionable intelligence for service fulfilment and assurance through automation and real-time analytics. The solution is modular and consists of multiple software modules; continuous data audit, service visualisation, workflow orchestration, automated inventory reconciliation, automated ordering and provisioning, real-time troubleshooting, network analytics, SLA management and capacity planning.

Key differentiation CENX has multi-vendor network connectivity heritage to provide an end-to-end service orchestration solution that can co-exist with CSPs’ existing infrastructure and operations, and facilitate CSPs’ transition to next-generation virtualised networks with NFV/SDN. The orchestration solution supports a wide range of use cases around mobile backhaul, enterprise connectivity, cloud exchanges, NFV/SDN orchestration, and just-in time capacity management. The Cortx Service Orchestrator product has a unified service information model with data analytics capabilities, which helps CSPs manage ever-increasing network complexity by using abstraction over multiple OSS functional silos across hybrid multi-domain networks and by providing a real-time network search and service visualisation capability. The product enables automation of key service fulfilment and assurance processes, such as inventory management, performance monitoring, fault isolation, ordering and provisioning.

Competitive landscape CENX faces market entry barriers by competing against established OSS vendors that are defending market share and extending into NFV/SDN service orchestration domain, such as Amdocs, HP, NEC/NetCracker, Oracle and others, as well as from network equipment providers with OSS portfolios and NEPs with an IP/Ethernet hardware, such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Coriant, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE.

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary Comarch is publicly listed software vendor and systems integrator specialising in the telecoms and financial sectors. The company’s main telecoms offerings cover OSS systems for network management, planning and optimisation, service fulfilment, asset management and service assurance. The company also has BSS solutions for billing and charging, customer relationship management and self-care.

Market credentials Founded in 1993, Comarch has been growing steadily to become one of the strong innovative European OSS providers in the market. Its OSS/BSS suite is now deployed in a wide base of European, North American and Asian Tier 1 CSPs, with whom they hope to grow through the introduction of NFV and SDN in their commercial networks.

Key differentiation Comarch has been preparing its OSS suite for NFV and SDN readiness for the last couple of years with CSP customer collaborations and proof of concept projects. Its approach to the evolution of the OSS is based around making all elements as close to real-time as possible, bringing it in line with this inherent quality of a virtualised network. It sees each virtualised network element developing beyond being just a virtualised version of a physical node into a ‘micro data centre’ capable of many advanced additional functions. Comarch sees a real-time OSS will eventually become part of the network rather than operating in a separate layer above, blurring the lines between the network and network management. It also believes that in the years of hybrid NFV and traditional network function, a single OSS should be designed to control the all elements. Comarch is currently in the advanced proof of concept phase for these evolved OSS functions.

Competitive landscape The company is under competitive pressure from other leading OSS vendors that are also evolving their product suite to be ready for next generation hybrid networks and have a greater installed base of OSS deployments with progressive CSPs. Some of these major CSPs have been building out networks of worldwide data centres to support next generation OSS in the cloud, also with fully real-time platforms.

Company summary (This report is reproduced from VanillaPlus April/May 2015)

JDSU was established in 1999 and is headquartered in Milpitas, California, USA. With approximately 5,000 employees, the company reported revenue of US$ 1.7432 billion in 2014. The company is publicly traded and has partnerships with Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson and Hitachi Data Systems Among its many CSP customers are AT&T, BT, SingTel, Deutsche Telekom, MTN, Telmex, Verizon, CSL (Hong Kong), SoftBank, Partner Communications and Telefónica.

Market credentials JDSU is a provider of service assurance systems, software and services, enabling design, build, deployment, operation, troubleshooting and optimisation of high performing, next-generation networks. Starting out as a pure test and measurement vendor, the company has diversified its portfolio into network, service and customer experience assurance, covering transport, core and radio access networks (RAN). Key CSP focused assurance offerings include Ethernet Assurance, Customer Experience Assurance, Video Assurance, and Location Intelligence. These are complemented on the enterprise side with Application Aware Network Performance Management, which together with its probing solutions enables JDSU to address the challenges of CSPs delivering Enterprise Managed Services and Cloud Services. The company is innovating in the NFV space, and is collaborating with industry peers under the auspices of TM Forum to develop a proof of concept for maximising profitability with NFV.

Key differentiation With extensive market presence and a large customer installed base in over 164 countries, JDSU is the second-largest vendor in the probes systems segment and fourth-largest in the service assurance market. The acquisitions of Trendium, Arieso and Network Instruments enable the company to offer customer experience assurance (CEA) solutions on a true end-to-end, handset-to-core basis. The company is taking a leading role in driving the development and definition of assurance requirements for NFV based networks, and benefits greatly from NFV-ready technology acquired from the companies mentioned above.

Competitive landscape With the acquisition of Tektronix Communications, NetScout will pose an even larger threat to JDSU. Smaller vendors such as Anritsu, Astellia, Empirix and Polystar are nimble and innovative, and may pose a threat in new markets. In the CEM area, major network equipment providers such as Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Networks will continue to be a strong competitive threat in the future. The ongoing organisational changes at JDSU may divert the management focus away from the pressing customer and market demands, although the bulk of these changes are now in-place enroute to the company’s transition to become the Viavi Solutions. By actively participating in NFV innovations, the company has demonstrated its ambition to lead the industry transition to NFV. (This report is reproduced from VanillaPlus April/May 2015)

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Company summary Razorsight is a private company founded in 2003 and headquartered in the Washington DC, USA area. Razorsight provides cloud-based analytics software to the telecoms industry. Razorsight’s predictive insights enable communications service providers (CSPs) to optimise customer relationships and improve margins and operational efficiency. Razorsight solutions address: network capacity planning, preventative network maintenance, proactive customer experience, customer acquisition and retention, margin improvement and SLA management. Razorsight provides solutions delivered via a cloud-based software suite, which reduces the hardware costs and enables a lower cost of ownership all based around a software as a service (SaaS) pricing model. Razorsight is used by significant CSPs including AT&T, Verizon, TMobile, Sprint, Comcast, Telus, Orange, CenturyLink, Virgin Mobile and Windstream as well as dozens of others.

Market credentials Razorsight has developed a deep expertise in analysing complex telecommunications data throughout its history and uniquely understands how to help CSPs improve key business processes and customer insights. By working exclusively within the telecoms sector Razorsight understands the variety and complexity of data sets and systems deployed. This enables its analytics solutions to be applied to optimise processes by proactively initiating network changes. The move to NFV (network functions virtualisation) by network equipment vendors exposes network functions more readily to allow business analytical insights to automatically drive network functions.

Key differentiation Razorsight was one of the first software companies to go to market with a cloud-based delivery model for its software, delivering a scalable, high-performance and cost effective platform that can meet the big data requirements of CSPs. The synergies between NFV that is delivered over a cloud based infrastructure allows for both solutions to be easily integrated. Business functions that require the use of real-time data processing and analysis are supported on the Razorsight platform that enables near instant network changes driven proactively by customer experience and quality of service triggers.

Competitive landscape Razorsight has competitors that include general-purpose analytics tool vendors as well as consulting firms. In addition OSS/BSS application vendors are working to extend the intelligence of their solutions by attempting to add analytics tools into their back office solutions.

About Analysys Mason Analysys Mason is a trusted adviser on telecoms, technology and media. We work with our clients, including communications service providers (CSPs), regulators and end users to: • design winning strategies that deliver measurable results • make informed decisions based on market intelligence and analytical rigour • develop innovative propositions to gain competitive advantage. We have more than 250 staff in 12 offices and are respected worldwide for exceptional quality of work, independence and flexibility in responding to client needs. For 30 years, we have been helping clients in more than 100 countries to maximise their opportunities.

Consulting • Our focus is exclusively on TMT. • We support multi-billion dollar investments, advise clients on regulatory matters, provide spectrum valuation and auction support, and advise on operational performance, business planning and strategy. • We have developed rigorous methodologies that deliver tangible results for clients around the world. For more information, please visit www.analysysmason.com/consulting

Research • We analyse, track and forecast the different services accessed by consumers and enterprises, as well as the software, infrastructure and technology delivering those services. • Research clients benefit from regular and timely intelligence in addition to direct access to our team of expert analysts. • Our dedicated Custom Research team undertakes specialised and bespoke projects for clients. For more information, please visit www.analysysmason.com/research

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Joe Hogan: BSS needs to enable CSPs to rapidly develop, launch and monetise new offers

CSPs canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t save their way to greatness, new offers and services will be their salvation Communications service providers (CSPs) need to move from a mentality of saving costs to one of creating new sources of revenue. Those can come from effective use of CSP data, greater exploitation of the customer relationship and improved agility and flexibility to introduce new services over virtualised networks, Joe Hogan, the founder and chief technology officer of Openet, tells VanillaPlus CSPs move from a commodity model to selling based on value? Joe Hogan: The race to the bottom is happening among CSPs that are in danger of commoditising data

anillaPlus: Every day we see CSPs cutting prices and increasing data volumes in bundles. Does this signify a race to the bottom and the commoditisation of data? If so, how can

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TA L K I N G H E A D S

The cost saving implications of using Wi-Fi are huge but in order to take full advantage, CSPs need to ensure that they’re delivering the quality of services that customers expect

if they just sell data as a product. Every week we see another CSP announce data increases in their basic bundles and associated price cuts. This is fine if you’ve got a new source of revenue to compensate for the loss but if you don’t, then there is a real danger that data could be commoditised. We are seeing CSPs develop new revenue sources – from selling more products and services to looking at new business models. Working with content partners and upselling television, entertainment and music services, for example, is happening. Also providing better direct customer engagement is helping boost revenues, such as from selling roaming passes or add-ons. Either a data block at the end of the month, or a content upsell is helping augment the fixed monthly data bundle revenues. BSS needs to enable CSPs to rapidly develop, launch and monetise new offers – this is often not possible with service heavy legacy systems. BSS needs to be all real-time, have a centralised offer catalogue that can enable fast time to market for many, many more offers. VP: With free Wi-Fi becoming increasingly widespread and reports that between 60-70% of mobile data traffic currently being carried by WiFi, is there a danger that CSPs could even lose out in the fight for basic connectivity? How can they better harness Wi-Fi to their advantage? JH: The importance of Wi-Fi is increasing. Just look at the connectivity models for Google’s Project Fi. It’ll be Wi-Fi connectivity where possible and then LTE as a fallback. As long as the quality is good customers probably don’t know and don’t care over what technology their mobile data is going. The key point here is that the customer will be happy as long as the quality is good. CSPs are selling high-speed LTE services, people are watching television on their devices so the network experience must be good otherwise customer will turn off.

The cost saving implications of using Wi-Fi are huge but in order to take full advantage, CSPs need to ensure that they’re delivering the quality of services that customers expect. The impact on BSS is that as CSPs look at multiple access methods – LTE, LTE-U and Wi-Fi there does need to be a capability to extend policy to the device to ensure the customer network experience is as expected. In many cases CSPs are losing out to free Wi-Fi. Some prepaid customers top up infrequently and then don’t even bother switching mobile data on. They use public and free Wi-Fi. CSPs are offering service passes that stress the convenience of cellular data as well as low cost. For example, we see CSPs in some countries offer a one-day, 50MB data pass. We’ve also seen application service passes where CSPs offer a service pass for WhatsApp. This is low cost and allows only the use of WhatsApp. We’ve seen this in countries with a large migrant workforce that uses WhatsApp to call their family back home. Here the CSPs stressed the low cost and convenience of WhatsApp service pass, as opposed to walking around shopping malls or public libraries trying to get free Wi-Fi. VP: One of the main assets that CSPs have is their customer base but when you compare the level of engagement a CSP has with its customers, compared to a say, Facebook or LinkedIn, there’s no comparison. Is it fair to say that CSPs are not engaging with their customer base and therefore are at risk of ignoring their most valuable asset? JH: Yes, a CSP’s customer base is their most important asset, but they have to ask some very hard questions of how relevant they are to their customer base and measure themselves against the competition. In this case competition can be the digital service providers such as Google, Facebook or LinkedIn. These companies engage with mobile customers day in, day out and, more importantly, customers engage with them. The main reason is relevance. On the whole most CSPs don’t really engage that much with their customers. Many customers just get a bill emailed to them once a month, and some don’t even open the email. If they’re lucky they’ll get a call from a call centre once a year asking them if they’re happy with the service. The level of engagement is not great.

In order to deliver the type of network experience customers expect there is a role to play for network selection intelligence. This is a combination of ANDSF (access network detection and selection function) and policy management. This not only identifies available Wi-Fi hotspots for offloading data traffic to but also can measure the quality of the Wi-Fi hotspot and also set the rules as to what traffic goes to Wi-Fi and what stays on LTE. This could mean video traffic for some

types of customers on certain devices gets offloaded, for example.

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Which is strange as CSPs have the data that can drive meaningful, personalised and relevant customer engagement. For example, a subscriber spends a lot of time streaming music to their phone – perhaps they’d like to try a free month of Spotify premium? BSS needs to be able to drive real-time, relevant customer engagement – from upselling a new service to providing a customer notification on a loyalty offer. CSPs already have the data in their systems – the key is harnessing this data and turning it into relevant and timely intelligence to drive customer engagement. VP: We hear about BSS moving to all real-time, but what about functions like business intelligence? These have traditionally used historical data to build a view of customers. Is there an opportunity for real-time network and usage data to enhance business intelligence? JH: As BSS moves towards all real-time so does the opportunity to use the data collected for deeper analytics and to drive customer offers. BSS collects data on customer behaviour and usage in real-time and this is passed to a data warehouse where it can be used to provide historical business intelligence, such as churn propensity score, lifetime value, net promoter score and customer experience indicators. However, while data warehouses provide a good historical view of customer behaviour, they don’t provide a picture of what’s happening here and now. This why streaming analytics is being used on real-time data so that it can also be used to provide a real-time trigger, along with the historical customer business intelligence, to activate context-aware offers. The problem is not all CSPs are providing real-time context-aware offers, so many are missing out on additional revenue streams. Traditional upsell offers are not real-time; they are usually based on preplanned schedules or off-line processing based on historic activity. Whilst CSPs continue to create innovative data services to generate more revenue, they may not be maximising their revenue potential with traditional upsell approaches. Every time there is an opportunity to upsell, CSPs should be able to do so. This means having the capability to take into account the real-time and historical customer context to send the most suitable offers to their device in realtime; customers should then be able to purchase and activate the services instantly. The context can be based on a combination of historical and real-time data including the subscriber activity, usage,

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application accessed, location, profile and more. By enabling such real-time contextual offers, CSPs can maximise upsell opportunities and the chances of uptake by customers as they receive the most relevant offers at the most opportune time. In a recent survey of 87 operators by Openet, respondents indicated that they could increase offer uptake rates by 75% and data revenues by 15% if they could deliver real-time contextual offers. VP: CSPs are reducing their network and IT capex and opex budgets. Does this make them more vulnerable, or is this a result of new dawn of agility and implementation of NFV and SDN?

As BSS moves towards all realtime so does the opportunity to use the data collected for deeper analytics and to drive customer offers

JH: Reduction of capex and opex budgets are all part of CSPs becoming leaner and more agile organisations. SDN (software defined networking) and NFV (network functions virtualisation) are playing a major role here. CSPs are looking to turn up services in minutes rather than months. With CSPs looking at NFV it’s important to examine how NFV impacts BSS. Many CSPs’ existing network operations models and OSS/BSS systems are not prepared for emerging new technologies like NFV. New thinking is required on how legacy OSS/BSS systems will need to evolve in order to support NFV. Simply extending existing OSS/BSS models to account for virtualisation will not be sufficient, because this approach will not support the new value-added capabilities and services provided by NFV. In addition, there is also the need for real-time processing of a huge amount of data, including data analytics, based on several data sources. Structured and unstructured data from the infrastructure is a further key challenge in the OSS/BSS and NFV context. On its own, network functions virtualisation is not enough. NFV concepts need to be applied in the OSS/BSS to deliver on the promises of NFV such as agility, reduced total cost of ownership, increased elasticity and greater service availability. This is particularly important for policy and charging functions. There is little point in having a dynamic network if the monetising, access control, and revenue handling systems are not similarly endowed. The nirvana, which is five to ten years away, is running NFV over SDN and that is where the capex and opex reductions will really become significant. It will come in steps but if you’re just hacking away at budgets you won’t get the agility you need to stay in business. I

www.openet.com

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ANALYST REPORT

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

Introduction

ntil approximately four years ago, automation of the charging and billing processes centred almost exclusively on the business-to-consumer (B2C) model in support of millions of customers. The largest part of any mobile and fixed-line communications service provider (CSP) business today continues to focus on the business challenges from consumers. And for good reason. Addressing the service and billing needs of millions of customers is not easy and comes with multiple business challenges Globally, the vast majority of consumers receive broadband access through a mobile network operator. But, customers continue to ask why is it so hard for these operators to offer services through the same type of self-care mechanism as internet-based retailers do and at the speed of the internet as well? Must all customers subscribe to the same data plan offerings? Are pick and choose service options something of a nirvana that cannot be delivered by the global CSP community at large? Are there alternative ways to pay the bill for service access beyond a pre-defined pricing plan or prepaid data usage bucket? From these and several other questions, it is easy to see that what customers really want is a better experience based

on their expectations from working with internet retailers and ecommerce providers. Billing and charging solutions installed to address the consumer services market more than five to seven years ago were implemented as solution silos tied to support for a particular type of network technology, with little thought about the overall customer experience involving services from potentially multiple service silos such as voice, broadband and video. These systems contain multiple databases, duplicated functionality, and are integrated through rigidly-defined business processes. But times have changed and business requirements today are much more complex. In

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Figure 1: The global communications marketplace is at the centre of the transformation experience strategy of all other industries

fact, it is not uncommon to hear the frustration of CSP chief marketing officers (CMOs) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the installed business and operations support systems, especially the monetisation systems, are constraining the CMOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to increase revenue by attracting new customers and in introducing new services. Enter the world of real-time monetisation solutions designed around the customer experience. These new solutions incorporate the benefits of policy management with real-time rating and charging along with contextual awareness and near instantaneous customer notification. Discussion about the real-time world of charging and billing for consumer services is the first part of this story. Though very important, B2C (business-to-consumer) is not the full billing and charging story the communications marketplace must address today. With the advent of cloud services, some of the billing industry momentum tied to consumers has shifted to the back office business-to-business (B2B) relationships that make complex services work for the B2C marketplace. B2B wholesale

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relationships are the lifeblood for any large business or enterprise. However, the operations and monetisation needs of the B2B world are similar, but still different, from those that support B2C retail services. In the pursuit of providing customers a better experience, most industries are not only blending mobile communications capabilities with the goods and services they have always delivered, but network technology advances, computing dynamics and data storage capacity are allowing them to bring to market solutions that extend well beyond their traditional business focus. Such new market solutions include shopping malls that bring customers and retailers together through online access, to better facilitate customer interaction. Other solutions involve healthcare institutions that provide gourmet cooking clinics as part of a patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wellness programme; automobiles with mobile access; insurance services based on consumption and driver performance; and support of other customer needs within industries such as public services, education, publishing, financial services, logistics and the transportation sector.

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ANALYST REPORT

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

Multi-part business ecosystems are redefining how the communications marketplace of the future will address the needs of industry from the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to virtual services offerings. Operations and monetisation capabilities within the B2B world form the second part of the charging and billing story.

Consumer-focused B2C charging and billing The global billing solution supplier community has done a good job with delivering systems that can address the end-to-end billing process for the consumer-based marketplace. However, most installed solutions lack a real-time element, and have grown together in a tightly woven architecture that was never designed to address rapid change or market-based service innovation. In fact, most CSPs believe the greatest business challenge they presently face in meeting the needs of new business opportunity is directly linked to the multi-system business solution environment they now maintain. Timely change management and system redefinition often fall short of expectations, especially when modifications across multivendor functions require market-speed flexibility. Many CSPs still have multi-vendor business solution architectures Today’s competitive mobile services environment involves applications, content and cloud services suppliers working with network operators to rapidly deliver innovative, optimised, and

value-added customer service offerings. For many CSPs, installed systems and processes no longer meet the needs of today’s business environment. Yet, today, rapidly-emerging competitors are making a big play for customer attention, customer mindshare, customer loyalty and the customer’s pocketbook. CSP competitors such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, have a very different IT-systems mindset and solution structure that enables a fast and adaptable response to customer needs, and rapid optimisation capabilities developed in the internet industry. CSP systems have remained divided into functionality sets tied to various business processes from their earliest beginnings. The end-to-end monetisation process, often supported through a multi-vendor best-of-breed environment, consists of mediation, policy management, rating and charging, invoicing, collections, customer notifications, partner settlements and now, usage insight analysis. This environment provides a powerful ability to address the needs of millions of customers with a relatively small number of service offerings. However, when business change is rampant, and competitive pressures are significant, a lack of configurable systems and flexible processes fails to satisfy rapidly emerging customer opportunities. This level of change often requires simultaneous updates across all systems. In spite of disparate IT systems suppliers’ valiant efforts to keep pace with change, agility and flexibility is simply not practical in a multi-vendor and multisystem integrated architecture. Systems silos across several customer management,

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monetisation and service assurance processes operate in a less than optimally-defined solution definition environment. Systems silos tend to create data duplication issues, functionality mismatches, cost excesses, upgrade complexity, slow responsiveness to market change and, ultimately, dissatisfied customers. To interact, monitor and understand end-user behaviour requires real-time functions and services such as real-time selfservice and real-time policy-enabled charging. Real-time enduser interaction is also required for contextual customer notifications and optimal offer conversion. This user engagement capability is a critical gap that is significantly limited by mobile carriers in comparison to internet services competitors. An inflexible monetisation environment is no longer conducive to meeting the rapidly-changing business needs defined by new network technologies, virtual networking and virtual data centre services. A lack of responsiveness from existing systems and processes leaves a gap that can negatively affect the way new business models are enacted and consumer needs are addressed. If left unchecked, such gaps will result in missed commitments, lost opportunities and unmet financial objectives. Cloud-based mobile services enablement architecture With the realization of cloud-based software solution technology, important differences exist between what can be delivered by traditionally integrated multi-system, multi-supplier business support architectures, and what is now possible through a cloud-based, single supplier design focused on the needs of mobile customers. To compete in an increasingly aggressive market, CSPs should consider a solution in the newly emerged category of customerengaged mobile services enablement. The three defining elements of this architecture are: • Agile cloud-based service platform – To enable service agility and service innovation, CSPs need to move key mobile business support functions to a single integrated business logic stack and database. For operational efficiency and rapid responsiveness to change, this stack should reside in a cloud-based environment defined by a single supplier. A

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multi-supplier cloud-based configuration would be subject to the same limitations that presently-deployed solution architectures suffer when a rapid response to changing market conditions is needed. A single supplier cloud-based approach always provides a solution with the most recent features and functions. This integrated stack is not related to network functions virtualisation (NFV), which is tied to the network traffic plane. • Contextual user engagement – To efficiently reach the customer, the solution stack includes a new architecture element – the user engagement platform – which is essential and fundamentally designed to work with on-device, realtime user experience software to: - Sense the current real-time context of the user: what is the user doing now? - Deliver real-time, on-device interaction, based on user context, to help users understand their service or ecommerce options; and to complete transactions including service purchases based on those options. - Be definable by business logic in the back-end, and be adaptable in real-time. - Set mobile services policy to address issues concerning network efficiency. - Provide on-device, out-of-the-box, account and device activation capability. • Integrated service creation environment – To truly allow service innovation by the network operator, the system must be managed by a single, secure web environment to allow a small team of marketing and IT professionals to very quickly design, beta test, perfect and commercially launch the following aspects for services and ecommerce offers: - Service plan offering catalogue, service allowances for each plan, pricing for each plan, on-device catalogue appearance/branding for each plan, on-device contextual marketing triggers for offering plans and services with immediate user actionable notifications. - ecommerce offering catalogue with pricing and contextual marketing triggers for offering ecommerce goods and services on-device. - On-device marketing via user interface (UI) notification definitions, and contextual trigger conditions to present

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ANALYST REPORT

actionable marketing offers. - Integrated segmentation capability for targeted services, and improved monetisation and sub-brand creation, plus micro segmentation for agile new service testing. Major reductions in IT vendor costs accrue when moving from a multi-vendor, hardware-based architecture with high IT project costs, to a cloud-based, single supplier service creation solution. In addition, a rapid service definition and deployment process allows CMOs to validate winning services ideas with customers, which reduces the cost associated with launching new services. It also eliminates the sizeable percentage of the IT and marketing budgets associated with unsuccessful service launches. Such actions free resources for promoting the most proven services on a larger scale. The benefits from a cloud-based mobile services enablement solution A cloud-based mobile services enablement architecture would be comprised of various software modules that display solution flexibility when market conditions change or customer service preferences transform. The solution would involve customer interaction and reduce the need for custom software development. It would also sharply decrease the time-tomarket needed by more traditional approaches. The advantages of this type of mobile enablement solution are: • On-device presence and user engagement – Within a cloud-based business solution construct, on-device user engagement and ecommerce enablement can be designed into the mobile services solution. User context awareness, analytics and on-device policy enhancement can all be made available. Incorporating these functions in a common set of business logic and tightly integrated functional modules results in a holistic architectural approach to a mobile operator’s business needs. This solution environment can also deliver flexible service offerings and ecommerce capabilities at a lower implementation cost compared to traditionally defined solutions. Most, if not all, of the

functionality to support new service ideas is already included in the solution. • Best of breed service experience – Modern mobile bornin-the-cloud competitors and cloud-client solution providers have used the power of devices to uplift their value proposition towards end-users. By incorporating different categories of devices into the design of a solution, a more elegant and compelling user experience is developed to engage customers; for example, discovering new services in a contextual fashion, enabling a one-click purchase customer journey and transforming the perceived value of the CSP offering. • Solution flexibility and agility – A cloud-based, singlesupplier, mobile services environment would manage all aspects of service policy, rating and charging, ecommerce and user engagement through a seamless set of business logic, without the functional boundaries imposed by API integrations. Through this approach, end-users are exposed to new service offerings via a product catalogue. The catalogue can address individualised customer service plans, and handle any level of change without incorporating the time-consuming step of an IT project to define, update, test and then release software each time change is needed. In addition, on-device user content can be incorporated to qualify all aspects of network policy, self-help user interaction, and ecommerce offers. The cloud-based mobile services approach delivers a seamless end-to-end design of service and user experience. • Rapid innovation through an integrated service creation environment – All aspects of network policy, pricing, charging and on-device user self-care for new service offers are programmed into a single graphical service design and deployment environment. This type of approach eliminates IT project time – and cost – associated with updating each system and API definition. The cloud-based mobile service architecture and service creation environment enables CSPs

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to rapidly create, test, optimise and then launch new consumer services in a matter of weeks rather than the months that are typical when defining new services through the traditional service creation process. The rapid service design model, which an integrated, cloud-based, mobile services solution enables, allows a CSP to market-test and optimise multiple service offerings in the time a traditional monetisation architecture could launch a single service. This technology actually eliminates certain steps within the traditional service delivery model because the rapid design model incorporates some service creation steps as built in capabilities. Another advantage of the rapid service design model is that multiple service ideas can be tested simultaneously with different customer groups, thereby accelerating the pace of responsiveness to changing market conditions. Still another advantage for any CSP engaging in this rapid service design approach would be quick recognition by its customer base as an innovator of services and capabilities designed by direct customer feedback. Such a label is what breeds customer loyalty. Enterprise-engaged B2B charging and billing CSPs are challenged today to address the billing needs of bundled network services such as voice, text messaging and data access for their consumer and small business customers. They have the added challenge of profitably providing broadband connectivity to their enterprise customers; and managing multiple B2B relationships with solution partners for several new business endeavours â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some of which include mcommerce, cloud-based virtual services, IoT communications and enterprise use of mobility services within their product offerings to deliver a more enhanced experience for their customers. Monetising this complexity, including compensation to a growing number of business solution partners as revenue is received from customers, means that CSPs must adopt new business strategies, new business models and new business

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management solutions. â&#x20AC;˘ B2B services need flexibility and negotiable pricing Enterprises demand personalised and individualised contracts containing service definitions and pricing agreements that are unique to the organisation. In addition to usage-based charges, enterprise monthly billing requirements involve complex components such as service packaging and pricing without restrictions, monetisation of managed services, and pricing based on a variety of business models. Addressing these needs requires a flexible and configurable approach to service selection, pricing and usage monitoring. Enterprise B2B agreements are binding business contracts that define the terms and conditions that an enterprise negotiates with its services supplier for each of its data service and applications options. The contract contains pricing discounts, loyalty focus and payment schedules for these services. In addition, an emerging table-stakes requirement for any deal now is the providerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to show consumption tracking against agreed upon terms. This level of tracking is essential to prevent enterprise-level bill shock and to eliminate endless manual calculations in determining how charges are computed, and whether they are part of an agreement. Automating such tracking capabilities within the regularly delivered enterprise payments invoice would save onsiderable reconciliation time for both the data services provider and the enterprise. Stratecast believes that enterprise data services providers need the business support infrastructure to innovate their own pricing and selling models; and that they must have the ability to distribute and monetise their offerings to customers and partners in a fully automated manner. Without this capability, these providers will struggle to meet the market demands of an increasing customer base, as they continuously update their customised business support solutions.

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ANALYST REPORT

• Monetisation of enterprise data services is no simple task Enterprise data services take on many forms, and quickly create behind-the-scenes complexity for the service provisioning, business management, and monetisation processes. For example, enterprises typically purchase broadband connectivity from one or more network operators according to geographic coverage needs, pricing flexibility and service availability. This provides evidence from the general enterprise marketplace that CSPs are the best suppliers of network connectivity. Enterprises also purchase data centre services such as unified communications, remote data storage, elastic bandwidth, and computing capacity from one or more cloud services providers. In addition, enterprises purchase cloud-based applications including ERP, customer care, office automation, sales management and specialty applications from these same cloud services providers; or, in some cases, directly from the developer, according to business relationships and service needs. While some enterprises are now considering network access and virtualised data centre services from a single supplier, setting aside the reasons for this trend and focusing on the enterprise market in general, the most important aspect associated with enterprise customer billing is the need by enterprise customers for unique contract agreements and the tracking of usage to agreement terms. These agreements are based on numerous factors, such as the enterprise customer’s changing business needs, willingness to spend and flexibility demands pertaining to pricing options, usage discounts, loyalty focus and brand awareness. In addition, there is a high probability that different partners will be involved with the delivery and maintenance of each service combination package that a cloud service provider sells. From a monetisation perspective, this means complexity as services are billed, revenue is collected and partners are compensated. Managing the impact from multiple terms and conditions for each exchange or use of goods or services – an event – can

be complex, but necessary to provide proper accountability of charges and distribution of payments. In addition, business needs can change quickly; so, to swiftly negotiate or change agreement terms enables a service provider to differentiate in this complex environment by adapting to the needs of new markets, new business models, or competition. Given the complexity associated with virtual service offerings, or enterprise-level services of any kind, the monetisation processes should fit the business model a company chooses to run, rather than forcing the business model to match what the billing system can address. Billing systems should also allow a company to define its products and pricing strategies in a way that provides flexibility to react to changing market and customer needs at the speed of business, not at the speed of IT, which is usually measured in weeks or months. • The key requirements for addressing enterprise B2B billing complexity To better understand the complexities that virtual services now bring, key requirements that a billing solution should address in support of today’s new business realities include: Pricing models – Pricing model support should include on-demand, reserved, usage-based, location-based, free trials, promotions, bundling, peak and off-peak business scenarios. Usage rating for hybrid clouds – Usage rating must include support for any computing model; allow creation of product bundles from multiple sources; and bill channels or partners for the components defining each. Chargeback for private clouds – Deliver ability to chargeback or bill IT departments that use transfer pricing and departmental chargeback policies. Corporate and settlement hierarchies – Allow for configurable billing and settlement hierarchies, including grouped commitments across corporate hierarchies.

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Virtual bundle support – Allow service bundle billing based on partner contributions and revenue sharing agreements. Channel compensation and multi-party settlement – Manage channel behavior through creative compensation options – incentives, discounts, and penalties – and support multi-party settlement – retainer, residual, shared, and settled. Settlements should include ability to handle multi-party agreements where a single transaction can involve three or more relationships. Enterprise agreements – Support individualised negotiation for enterprise agreements. Online bill – Provide customisable online billing with re-branding for partners and customers. Dynamic scaling – Dynamically scale to flexibly accommodate peak periods, including bursting from private to public clouds. Product changes – Ability to change product pricing quickly – in hours or at most days – to respond to market demand and competition positioning. Combined payments processing – Account for enterprise customer billing and third-party payments, commissions and incentives from the same platform. SLA enforcement – Provide automated support for contract commitments tied to service level agreements (SLAs). Though this is less of a function of billing and more a concern of the service delivery and quality of service processes, it is an important topic for network operators and cloud providers. Regardless of the exact terms and conditions an SLA agreement may require, a clear audit path defining all billing-related customer charges and partner settlement payments is essential for not only the customer and partner management processes, but the SLA management function as well. Beyond both of these, such detailed accountability is mandatory to satisfy corporate governance requirements.

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Conclusion Digital service personalisation has changed the course of direction for nearly all CSPs throughout the world. Unfortunately, most installed systems do not allow them to react to changing market conditions quickly enough to take full advantage of the opportunities the market now provides. The longer-term billing implication is that as customer services are consumed, all parts of the end-to-end service definition and supply chain process must be reconciled in shorter and shorter intervals. To achieve future business success, it is imperative that new service offers and new business models not be saddled with the limitations of currently defined systems that can not show a high degree of flexibility and configurability along with the business processes they support. Some billing suppliers understand the changing business landscape, inside and outside the communications sector, and are now satisfying those needs with solutions originally intended to address complexities found only within the communications industry. The difference between suppliers that can support the billing needs of multiple industries, lies in how these systems are engineered. The complexities of the continuously changing CSP environment, to include simultaneous support for multiple business models will no doubt affect the way billing suppliers meet the future needs of this changing environment. If a single billing solution, initially made for the communications industry, can simultaneously address hundreds of business models that define the operations needs of complex enterprises in multiple industries, such as a large international airport today, imagine what could be accomplished with a similar solution in meeting the business relationship and monetisation needs of business strategies yet to be defined.

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary

Founded

1982

Founded

1999

Chesterfield, Missouri, United States

Dublin, Ireland

Employees

More than 22,000

Employees

More than 800

Revenue

US$3,564 million (2014)

Revenue

Undisclosed

Customers

Over 250 CSPs in 80 countries worldwide. Key customers include: AT&T, Bell Canada, BT, Comcast, Deutsche Telecom, MetroPCS, Sprint, Telefónica, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone.

Customers

Partnerships

Strategic partnerships with EMC, HP and IBM. A wide range of partnerships with systems integrators and independent software vendors.

Key customers include: AT&T, A1 Telekom Austria, Bell, Charter Communications, CTBC, Orange Group, Softbank, Sprint, Telus, Time Warner Cable, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Videotron and Vodafone.

Partnerships

A wide range of partnerships with equipment vendors, systems integrators and independent software suppliers.

Financial Status

Privately held

Financial Status

Publicly Traded (NASDAQ:DOX)

Bill and charge products Amdocs Customer Amdocs CES brings together a full suite of Experience OSS/BSS functionality, including revenue Solutions (CES) management. A selection of revenue management related offerings include: • Amdocs Convergent Charging – Real-time convergent charging across all services, networks and customer types. • Amdocs Policy Controller – Serves as the policy decision function, providing real-time usage metering, and service control for advanced data services. Ties in closely with the convergent charging engine. • Amdocs Master Enterprise Catalogue – Centralised data repository that manages all products defined through various CES modules and external OSS/BSS. • Amdocs Mediation – The mediation platform supports all networks, services and processing modes. It operates in real-time or batch mode, with active or passive interaction. • Amdocs Partner Management – Provides a comprehensive partner management and settlement system to support the complete partnership lifecycle. • Amdocs Invoicing – Creates all charges, including recurring charges, discounts, taxes and invoice totals. • Amdocs Accounts Receivable – Enables CSPs to gain an instant and accurate snapshot of their financial position at any given time. • Amdocs Collection – Facilitates an accurate and manageable collection process.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures Amdocs meets the OSS BSS functionality needs of any size of CSP as shown by its current customer base. The Amdocs CES solution modules operate as pre-integrated suites or as standalones according to functional need. Amdocs features a global services organistion to install and operate its solutions. The company has a strong innovative spirit that allows it to address the needs of any organisation, while maintaining a leadership position within the global billing marketplace.

Bill and charge products Openet Fusionworks Framework

High performance framework utilised by all of the company’s modular software products. The framework centralises common functionality, provides support for custom logic and eases integration.

Openet Policy Manager

Enables CSPs to dynamically control network resources with real-time policies based on service, subscriber, or usage context. These policy rules do not just control network capacity and quality of service, but also enable new business models and innovative new services.

Openet Evolved Charging

Pre-integrated with the Openet Policy Manager, Openet Evolved Charging can be deployed as a standalone online charging system or as an adjunct system. It supports spend alerts to reduce bill shock, dynamic pricing models with real-time notification triggers, shared device plans with usage dashboards, and service bundling – for fixed and mobile, family plans and dual persona enterprise plans.

Openet Convergent Mediation

An enterprise-wide platform with the scalability and configurability to address the billing mediation, network event processing and data collection challenges within fragmented and diverse operator networks.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures Openet offers a real-time data collection, analysis and management solution capable of addressing both customer experience and business management needs. Its data management capabilities can be configured to address multiple mediation, rating and charging, or policy requirements. The company has proven it can deliver on the data management challenges for some of the largest CSPs in the world. Competition within the rating, charging, mediation and now data analysis domain space is fierce, but Openet continues to remain aggressive and innovative in addressing the changing needs of the communications marketplace.

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Company summary Founded

1996

Vienna, Virginia, United States

Employees

160

Revenue

Undisclosed

Customers

Global customer base includes tier one CSPs and OTT providers in Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Key customers are: América Móvil, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Twilio, Sprint, Switchco, Telefónica and Verizon.

Partnerships

The Telarix Technology Alliance Partner Programme includes: Amdocs, Arptel, Ascom, IceHook, NxtGn, PurgeFraud and XConnect.

Financial Status

Privately held

Bill and charge products Telarix iXTools

The company’s solutions focus on wholesale charging and billing. A selection of revenue management functions addressed by the iXTools suite include: • iXBill – Ensures billable activities are captured, rated and billed, allowing CSPs to address agreement types and rating scenarios such as multi-party settlements and revenue sharing partnerships. • iXConnect – Is a business intelligence platform, for collecting and managing information. iXConnect defines and manages agreements between CSPs and partners, and applies rates to different types of traffic within the scope of each agreement. • iXRoute – Enables CSPs to identify and implement optimal routing strategies, to keep the network profitable. • iXTrade – Allows CSPs to simplify and automate the buying, pricing and selling processes within the wholesale interconnect business. • iXAudit – Streamlines the validation of interconnect invoices, reconcile charges, and manage settlements.

Telarix iXLink iXLink is an information exchange platform that enables CSPs to automate the exchange of business documents for the interconnect processes and to electronically share documents, such as pricing quotes, rate and dial code changes, numbering plans, invoices and declarations. iXLink has more than 4,000 members with 40 million transactions monthly.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures Telarix addresses what it calls interconnect business optimisation, which aims for more efficient carrier-to-carrier relationships through its portfolio of wholesale solutions. iXTools can be a pre-integrated suite or delivered as standalone modules. The iXLink exchange service allows members to apply business rules that are specific to each partner and/or service to validate transactions, meet internal business objectives and capture errors so that the sender can be notified immediately. Telarix is a market leader within the wholesale charging and billing domain, though it continues to face competitive pressure from other suppliers and clearinghouses.

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

About Stratecast Stratecast collaborates with our clients to reach smart business decisions in the rapidly evolving and hyper-competitive Information and Communications Technology markets. Using a mix of action-oriented subscription research and customised consulting engagements, Stratecast delivers knowledge and perspective that is only attainable through years of real-world experience in an industry where customers are collaborators; today’s partners are tomorrow’s competitors; and agility and innovation are essential elements for success. Contact your Stratecast Account Executive to engage our experience to assist you in attaining your growth objectives.

About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to utilise visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today’s market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the Global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organisation prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? For more information about Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Partnership Services, visit www.frost.com.

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Some of the largest Service Providers in the world use the Brite:Bill platform.

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CEM Can CSPs avoid a race to the bottom on price?

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TA L K I N G H E A D S

Network integrity is the firm foundation on which all CEM is built There is a lot of conversation about customer experience management (CEM) systems used to manage the customer experience and mitigate against the effects of increased network utilisation and wireless network congestion. However, many of these solutions are mechanisms to alleviate issues rather than curing them. Mary O’Neill, the chief executive of Nakina Systems, tells George Malim that, as communications service providers (CSPs) face heightened complexity as they roll out new technologies and virtualise their networks, ensuring the integrity of the network is the fundamental basis of CEM

anillaPlus: What distinguishes Nakina Systems’ approach to CEM from other vendors?

Mary O’Neill: Nakina provides network integrity assurance. Our solutions ensure network data accuracy by discovering and eliminating network and service configuration errors. Nakina helps customer experience by improving network quality by eliminating network and service configuration errors. Many customer experience issues CSPs deal with trace back to network performance issues, the majority of which are caused by incorrect configurations within the service path. Our solutions understand how the network and services are configured. The associated analytics we generate supply other systems, including policy, OSS, BSS, orchestration and CEM with valuable and timely insights so the appropriate data-driven decisions can be made dramatically improving diagnosis and remediation times. Typical CEM approaches rely on endpoint – user equipment or handset – information, performance monitoring information and probe data. But the network itself plays such an important role in service delivery and, ultimately, the customer experience. Holistic CEM strategies should not only provide realtime performance metrics but also analytics regarding the network configurations themselves, outlining mismatched network and service configuration parameters, alerting network operators to potential service impacting conditions or incorrect network configurations.

Using our solutions as part of a holistic approach to experience management helps dramatically reduce network outages and congestion, improving the overall quality of the network and the resulting customer experience. We can also help customers to predict and refine network configurations to drive maximum network stability and performance, introduce new services, reduce customer churn and preserve revenue. VP: Everyone’s talking about CEM so what do you see as your main competitive differentiators and why do these give you an advantage? MO: We help CSPs preempt network configurationcaused customer experience impacting issues. By assuring the integrity of the network in the first place, you essentially prevent customer experience issues from happening. This is important because more than 40% of outages are caused by some sort of network misconfiguration in the service path. Scale is our key differentiation. Our systems collect and analyse data network-wide, for an entire mobile network, spanning multiple technologies and vendors. Some of the world’s largest mobile service providers use our systems. Our strength is the ability to scan and analyse the entire network and pinpoint configuration errors, enabling CSPs to avoid experience-impacting conditions in the first place.

Extending network behaviour analysis to include security related events becomes increasingly desirable

and necessary as IP continues to proliferate and networks become virtualised. By correlating real-time service performance, network parameter changes, and network access events, CSPs can determine not only which configurations may have changed, but when and by whom, and understand potential associated network performance impacts.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH NAKINA SYSTEMS 42

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Network configuration errors could be complex or very simple. For example, we’ve seen situations where a Cisco cell site router might be connected to an eNodeB from another vendor and interface is configured half-duplex and the other full-duplex. It’s a simple setting, but when network traffic peaks, congestion and packet loss ensues. The end customer has no idea why, they just see slow application performance and dropped calls. Ultimately it comes back to helping our customers protect revenue, reduce churn and introduce new services. It’s also important to address issues that affect high value subscribers by pinpointing serviceaffecting issues. VP: What benefits have your CSP customers seen by deploying your CEM solution? Are there any commonalities between those who embrace CEM and those who may be lagging? MO: Obviously, for our customers one of their key metrics is customer churn. Churn rates remain high in many markets so being able to review and refine the network to achieve stability is important. Even though some of the customers that have deployed our system have the lowest amount of customer churn in their market, when I go to see them they want to talk about how to go further and reduce churn even more. They’re very pro-active across the board.

From our work with some very large mobile service providers, we have seen scenarios in which incorrect network configuration errors create the potential to impact mobile signaling performance. Network-wide, this potentially impacts up to 40% of the

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TALKING HEADS

Mary O’Neill: CSPs don’t have to get into a situation where their network is overloaded and your customer has a bad experience

Today’s siloed approach to experience management will need to evolve. An end-to-end service oriented view is needed

CSP’s subscribers. Furthermore, the symptoms caused are transient in nature and only experienced under peak conditions – such as when subscribers are placing large numbers of calls or other network requests, making them even harder to isolate. Exacerbating this is the inherent complexity of service provider networks. They are multi-vendor and heterogeneous in nature. For example, a CSP had been suffering from a network issue for some months. Subject matter experts from each equipment supplier involved said its equipment was correctly configured and working properly. In isolation, the configurations were correct but put together in a network, the configurations were incorrect for the services they were supporting. By being able to apply a serviceaware context, end-to-end across the network, CSPs can eliminate those types of issues and really focus on improving the customer experience, rather than spending time and effort dealing with network configuration errors. We allow the CSP to focus on the root causes, not mitigating symptoms. The great thing is what we do is highly measurable and therefore an attractive investment for CSPs. VP: Where are you seeing the greatest demand for your CEM system? MO: Our customers are facing a lot of competitive pressures, such as from over-the-top providers, which is driving them to significantly invest in their networks while trying to reduce costs at the same time. All of our customers are really going through a lot of difficult technology inflections as they implement their business strategies. They’re moving from 2G to 3G to 4G and new 5G technologies, their introducing small cells and carrier aggregation to alleviate congestion issues. They’re investing in NFV and SDN to reduce costs and accelerate new services. For them, it’s about creating a differentiated experience.

www.nakinasystems.com @nakinasystems

The rate of change is profound and it’s really hard for service, network and security operations teams to keep pace. As a result, network security – and more specifically privileged identity access management – is another major driver for our solutions. Security breaches almost always trace back to unintentional or malicious activity so controlling access and the network is becoming a greater requirement, and one that is vital to CSPs as they move to virtual networks and start opening their networks to host different types of virtual network functions. We secure access

to these networks, and can tell who accessed the network, what they did and when they did it. The correlated data delivers holistic view of what’s happening on the network. Where we can help CSPs is in automating their business processes. VP: What are the most significant barriers to greater adoption of CEM solutions? MO: CSP networks are intensely complicated by their nature and that’s only going to continue and is likely to grow as virtualisation is introduced. NFV – and by association SDN – results in networks that are far more dynamic and fluid. Service chains can be complex, and the underlying network itself is constantly changing. Virtualisation introduces a range of new experienceimpacting performance interdependencies. The instantiation of a new virtual function or a change in the configuration of the underlying server could have unintended consequences. Being able to discover new services and proactively audit network configuration data will be essential in order to achieve CEM strategies. Today’s siloed approach to experience management will need to evolve. An end-to-end service oriented view is needed. Understanding network configuration analytics along the service path so that it is contextual and service-aware, and has the ability to discover and correlate everything together to learn the topology, will be a key component of customer experience management. Siloes remain in the back office and they need to be bridged to enable a really comprehensive view to be created. VP: What changes do you expect to see in the CEM market over the next 12-24 months? MO: I think increased business process automation will be a significant change. We also need to change our definition of customer when it comes to the Internet of Things. Breaking down silos and getting all systems from order management to policy management to experience management will require more automation. We’re working with one of the largest cable providers in the US right now to do that. They’re pushing the boundaries and it’s really exciting. We’re fortunate to be able to do this with them and we’re really looking forward to taking this experience and making it available to our other customers.

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ANALYST REPORT

The author, Roz Roseboro, is senior analyst at Heavy Reading

Introduction

he telecoms markets in mature regions have long been saturated and those in emerging markets are fast becoming so. To avoid a race to the bottom by forever cutting costs, CSPs have, in recent years, begun to pay more attention to the customer experience. Heavy Readingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research reveals that CSPs are starting to appreciate how customer experience management (CEM) can help reduce churn, provide opportunities to sell additional services and reap the benefits of having customers advocate on their behalf Early adopters â&#x20AC;&#x201C; those CSPs that have been practicing CEM for four years or more â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are demonstrating that they are outperforming their competitors and that CEM does yield results. Challengers with me-too networks have been particularly interested and active here as a means of strongly differentiating themselves from established competition. However, incumbents in particularly competitive markets have also seen CEM as a means of responding to price pressure from new market entrants, enabling them to preserve a reputation for premium value. Fast followers have been hard on the early adopters' heels, but Heavy Reading research finds

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that even mainstream adopters are now developing strategies for CEM. Their efforts may not yet be as pervasive across the organisation or supported with as mature CEM technology solutions as those of early adopters, but they are addressing CEM at a good time. Market understanding of this management discipline and how to measure customer experience (CE) is well established, so they can learn from the best practices identified by early adopters and benefit from the useful tools emerging from the TM Forum (TMF) CEM programme. Our research reveals that the drivers for adopting CEM vary depending on a CSP's level of maturity:

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ANALYST REPORT

need to improve customer retention – churn prevention – and to use CE data to refine how and what they sell to existing customers.

Figure 1: Top three factors influencing investment in CEM

Increase subscriber numbers & profitability

Some of the other drivers cited include:

1.58

1.35

Improve brand value & perception 1.17 Provide competitive differentiation 0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

Weighted Ranking

• • • • •

Churn reduction/increased subscriber loyalty Subscriber growth prediction and trend analysis Customer intelligence acquisition Net Promoter Score (NPS) adoption Customer service improvement, including selfservice support • Product rationalisation and consolidation

Source: Heavy Reading Survey of 118 CEM decision makers and influencers

• Early adopters are driven by the need to establish themselves as the leading brands in their market (outperformers), putting clear blue water between themselves and their competition where CE is concerned. Incumbents saw CE differentiation as a response to price pressure from new market entrants, enabling them to preserve a reputation for premium value. Challengers with me-too networks saw an opportunity to win market share by offering a highly differentiated CE not available from competitors. • Fast followers realise that they need to catch up with the leading benchmark for CE in their market to improve subscriber numbers and profitability. Fast followers often have very similar key performance indicators (KPIs) to early adopters, but customer perception – voice of the customer – does not reflect this. They need to invest in CE to present themselves as a real alternative to the market leader, maximising their business potential. • Mainstream adopters are gradually responding to the CEM strategies of leading competitors in order to maintain their business on a sound financial footing. They are mainly driven by the

Defining CEM The academic sphere defines CEM as the means of creating advocates for an organisation's brand/product/service: turning customers from the merely satisfied to loyal and then, in today's social media-aware age, from merely loyal to active advocate. CEM is all about building an emotionallyweighted relationship with each customer. The more positive that relationship, the more trusted the CSP becomes and the more successful it is likely to be at keeping the customer's business, selling the customer further services over time and encouraging customers to promote the CSP and its products to friends and associates. Heavy Reading defines a CEM system as one that collects data related to CE from multiple sources, models and analyses CE data and recommends actions on the basis of CE analytics. A handful of vendors are building telecoms CEM systems that span domains within the CSP organisation and attempt to provide an end-to-end picture of CE encapsulated in a single CE indicator (CEI). Others offer targeted solutions can help CSPs improve the customer experience without necessarily measuring the customer experience explicitly. What has been crucial in the increasing adoption of CEM within the telecoms market is a growing

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awareness that CEM: • Is a management discipline that applies across the organisation, including to both front- and back-office staff and processes. Everyone and every activity must be harnessed to the goal of serving the customer. • Requires senior level leadership because of its crossorganisational remit and impact on the culture of the CSP. • Involves improving internal processes with customer needs in mind. At a minimum, this means ensuring that each of the processes that customers touch during their lifetime with a CSP, referred to as touchpoints, provide best-practice CE. But CEM also affects support processes, such as human resources and IT. • Mandates listening to the voice of the customer. The key factor that differentiates CEM from earlier process improvement programmes, such as Lean Six Sigma, is its incorporation of the customer view of organisational behaviour at touchpoints. CEM explicitly uses the customer's emotional perception of the service to target operational improvements, such as a better billing experience, capex investment in the network and employee training requirements. • Includes managing a high-quality network. The network is the foundation of customer experience in a CSP context, and insights from the network are critically important to its management, at a predictable level of quality that customers will pay for.

functionality that their CEM projects become too large to successfully implement. Heavy Reading sees the following factors as being critical in getting the most out of CEM: • Inspirational leadership. Visible CEO and senior level management support for a CEM programme is critical to its success. Some CSPs insist that senior executives spend time on a regular basis with front line staff so that they experience customer interactions first hand. They publicise this commitment to underline to employees and customers the importance of CEM. • Putting CEM in the right place for maximum impact within the organisation. This is a fascinating topic as it varies so widely across CSPs. Early adopters have seen CEM evolve out of customer care or network operations departments into a business function in its own right. Mainstream adopters are often highly unsure where to place CEM, typically attaching it to marketing departments or business intelligence projects. • Tying CEM improvements together with cost reduction projects to strengthen the business case. The CSP's challenge is to secure trade-offs between the requirement to improve CE and the need to reduce cost. It therefore focuses on projects where both are possible for a win-win outcome – and points out that it has yet to reach an inflexion point where it has driven out cost and can focus only on improving CE. This is likely to be the case for any CSP.

Factoring in the customer voice Keys to making CEM a success Because of its broad scope, implementing CEM is a long-term project and its cross-organisational nature can make it difficult to carry out. Changing a culture by overcoming inertia, convincing the skeptics and demonstrating a measurable CEM impact can take years. CSPs cite the difficulty of securing cross-organisational cooperation as the largest barrier to implementing CEM. Some CSPs try to reduce CEM into a single indicator – which may not provide enough insight to act upon – while others can be so overwhelmed with data and

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Heavy Reading research confirms that most CSPs collect basic ‘inside out’ metrics such as network and service availability data, service usage data, first call resolution metrics, average call handling time and time/cost to resolve customer issue metrics. The collection of such metrics pre-dates any emphasis on CEM since they are equally applicable to cost reduction programmes and investment decision-making. Such metrics are often closely associated with CSPs' business intelligence and big data programmes. But many CSPs score badly on capturing the ‘outside in’ view –

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ANALYST REPORT

the customer perception of their experience and how this affects perception of brand and willingness to recommend their experience to others. Lack of measurement makes it difficult for CSPs to manage and influence the voice of the customer. Most CSPs Heavy Reading has surveyed say they want to increase the frequency with which they measure customer satisfaction, and there is strong CSP interest in understanding and implementing NPS. Many recognise that improving NPS is a significant market opportunity for CSPs that get CEM right, given the low base the industry is starting from. CSPs see the number, type and frequency of metrics capture as key to providing a better and more differentiated CE. They believe customer-specific metrics are particularly important, as Figure 2 shows. Figure 2: Top improvements needed to provide a differentiated customer experience Per-subscriber, pre-service view of network performance

While CEM data is not big data – many CEM practitioners argue that it needs to be extracted from big data and processed separately – it is still extensive enough that CSPs need a manageable way to visualise it. As part of its metrics discovery/algorithm development race, the CEM industry is looking for a single, per-customer proxy for the sum of the customer's experience of a particular organisation. This is known as a CE indicator or index (CEI), depending on whether it is a single measurement or the sum of multiple metrics. There are several reasons why a single CEI is important:

3.26 3.26

Ability to measure customer experience/satisfaction 3.21 Knowledge of customer behaviour 3.21

Unified view of the customer 3.19

Availability of individual service quality metrics 3.1

3.2

3.3

Weighted Ranking Source: Heavy Reading Survey of 118 CEM Decision Makers and Influencers

Creating a metric for customer experience CEM practitioners advocate the collection of appropriate metrics and are producing methodologies for implementing them. The TMF's CEM Metrics Framework gives a small taste of just how many measures the TMF CEM programme participants think need to be tracked – a significant

number at near-real-time intervals. Drill down into individual service assurance areas, such as HD video, and vendors have created multiple measurement universes crying out to be factored into the overall CE. The race is on among CSP and vendor CEM practitioners to identify the critical measures, correlations of measures and causes that really matter to CE.

• Organisation-wide visibility: A single indicator/index can easily be understood by anyone in the organisation so it changes the prism through which the CSP views what it does, according to one CSP. A single indicator is a powerful expression of the state of an individual customer's engagement with the CSP. Because the whole organisation can understand and buy into it, it can be used to drive the employee incentives and salary reviews that align all staff with CEM goals. • Neutrality: a CE indicator/index is seen as neutral. Although metrics from different CSP departments may contribute to the index, it is not aligned with any particular department. It is as applicable to someone from network operations as it is to employees in sales and marketing. This means it is likely to be accepted across the organisation.

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• Support for benchmarking: A single indicator/index can be the basis for benchmarking across all the operating companies in a CSP group, enabling both the parent company and each operating company to understand the state of CEM in different countries and local differentiators that need to be taken into account. • Customer-driven root cause analysis: The CEI is the starting point for drilling down into constituent metrics to discover root causes of poor experience wherever these occur within the organisation. Customer knowledge can then be used to prioritise which causes are investigated and addressed first. • Proactive improvement: Once root cause(s) are understood, the CEI can be linked to pre-emptive ways of avoiding problems in the future: for example, if the index slips below a certain threshold for a certain customer/customer segment, it could trigger device management, SON or policy control systems to remediate a poor user experience dynamically. The CE indicator can also be used to drive longer-term business cases for people, process or technology improvements. One CSP has proved statistically that making an extraordinary effort to fix a problem makes minimal difference to an antagonistic customer's likelihood to churn. It recognises that the best approach is to identify and stop the fault affecting other customers or to avoid it in the first place.

NPS practitioners are building up an extensive knowledge base of outside in views that they are making available to their entire organisation and have gained empirical evidence of NPS's link with customer churn, revenue generation and/or product and service uptake. Other companies are also developing service quality algorithms based on loss and delay. These are often limited to particular types of application. They may also be based on multiple average single-point measures rather than a rigorously composed and predictable metric. Certain SDN and network operating system vendors are working on autonomic network resource scheduling algorithms that aim to remove network contention and the delay it causes when they establish new virtualised network paths. CSPs are beginning formally to model application performance across different network paths so that they can deliver differentiated application experience to enterprise customers at different price points. In the hybrid networks that Orange Business Services (OBS) creates, for example, enterprises can choose whether applications with different performance characteristics are delivered over the internet or its private MPLS/Ethernet network. All these developments are giving rise to the hope that network performance management will become a science rather than an art, using algorithms to predict and control service quality in the first place – and by proxy, the user experience – rather than compensating for/fixing user experience failures once they have occurred.

Contenders in the single indicator race There are multiple contenders for the role of a single metric that summarises customer quality of experience (QoE).

Which approach will prevail?

The TMF and a number of BSS/OSS vendors are lining up behind a Customer Experience Index (CEI – or CEMI according to the TMF): a single overarching CE score for each customer. This score is the sum (index) of the CE across all touchpoints and the customer's outside-in perspective, at any given time. In other words, the CEI combines the subjective voice of the customer and objective operational metrics in a highly visual way.

Studies have shown that users' experience of the network is by far the single largest contributor to their perception of a CSP and their decision to remain loyal to it. CSPs are prioritising network and service quality improvements within their CEM programmes because CSPs realise nothing much matters if network quality isn’t there. A single network QoE index that can drive network optimisation is highly valuable but many CSPs find it difficult to create or use because of the siloed nature of their network/service delivery organisations.

Some CSPs argue that NPS, rather than a constructed CEI, can act as the ‘single vehicle’ the entire business can rally around.

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But what of CE factors that a CSP can't control, such as

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ANALYST REPORT

experience of devices? Some argue that it is important for CEM reasons for a CSP to detect that devices are, for example, freezing video frames, even if it can't do anything about them. The fact that such issues are brought into a CEI means that CSPs can take action, if only to exonerate their networks. This is a further argument for broadening the scope of a CEI, although an index that tries to model and reflect the universe of potential factors influencing customer perception may well be unachievable. Hence the TMF's CEMI validation programme and vendor assertions that their indices are the result of long experience of what really matters. Hence, too, some CSPs' adoption of NPS alone as a guide to CEM, avoiding the messiness of inside out metrics. Both of these approaches are

in their infancy and have a long way to go. While the customer's voice is important and most CSPs measure it, there is skepticism regarding its suitability as a single indicator. "It's not clear how the customer voice moves and what drives it," according to one Tier 1 European incumbent CSP. "We can survey our customers over and over again, but this doesn't necessarily deliver a statistically meaningful result." Another CSP remarks, "You can provide the most reliable service ever, but if a customer is willing to take a hit for $5 less, you can't do much about it." Interestingly, the European incumbent claims that its outside in scores lag the inside-out metrics, and that the business feels the impact first when it gets CE wrong.

Conclusion CSPs recognise that CEM is a management discipline that: applies across their organisations; requires senior management buy-in because of the cultural change it brings; involves an internal process improvement programme that in part needs to be driven by listening to the customer voice; and is underpinned, in a CSP context, by strong network management, since the network is the primary contributor to CSP CE. Technologies and services such as VoLTE, 4G/5G, streaming video and mobile data/OTT will put additional strain on the network. This makes it even more critical for CSPs to keep a close eye on network quality so as not to jeopardise these emerging revenue streams. CSPs have traditionally been poor at listening to the voice of the customer and using it to drive internal improvement. Adoption of an indicator such as NPS is a good step forward but can be misleading as the only metric guiding CEM. CSPs are also evaluating the merits of broader CE indices and new formalised (modelled) approaches to network performance management. The latter use algorithms to predict and control service quality in the first place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and by proxy, the user experience â&#x20AC;&#x201C; rather than compensating for/fixing CE failures once they have occurred. It is still early days for the CEM-driven CSP, although we expect their levels of understanding to continue to grow. The amount of data being generated by a plethora of devices will only increase, supporting demand for automated CEM solutions that can help them collect, process, and act upon it. The signs are, however, that early adopters will be taking the next steps toward process automation and CE analytics-driven customer service to maintain their market leadership and simultaneously drive costs down and customer satisfaction up.

About Heavy Reading Heavy Reading, the research division of Light Reading, offers deep analysis of emerging telecoms trends to network operators, technology suppliers, and investors. Its product portfolio includes indepth reports that address critical next-generation technology and service issues, market trackers that focus on the telecom industry's most critical technology sectors, exclusive worldwide surveys of network operator decision-makers that identify future purchasing and deployment plans, and a rich array of custom and consulting services that give clients the market intelligence needed to compete successfully in the global telecom industry. www.heavyreading.com

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary Accanto Systems provides advanced analytics solutions to CSPs in order to optimise the network and customer experience. Accanto’s iCEM product suite analyses customer, network and handset-based data, turning network-centric monitoring into customer-centric operations and creating a single view of the customer across all departments. Accanto is headquartered in Finland and has more than 20 customers worldwide.

Company summary Empirix specialises in end-to-end network performance visibility with the ability to analyse customer behaviours by application in real-time. Empirix helps service providers, mobile operators, contact centres and businesses optimise processes to reduce operational costs, maximise customer retention and grow top line revenue.

CEM credentials CEM credentials Accanto focuses on the quality of experience of the subscribers. Its iCEM solution integrates data from a wide variety of sources across network technologies and vendors, and is able to monitor the quality of experience of every single subscriber’s voice and data services. When combined with information about the customer and their expectation, iCEM is able to provide a detailed ranking of the customers and issues based on business value, and can therefore optimise the network and customer experience based on prioritisation of business value. Accanto helps CSPs move from traditional network monitoring to a more customer-centric approach by enabling them to follow every area, subscriber, corporate account and service in real-time. This gives them visibility of where their most important customers are suffering bad quality, and enables them make more informed investment and operational decisions. Accanto says its iCEM customers have seen reductions in churn and support call costs.

Key differentiators Having originally been a network probe supplier, Accanto has a deep understanding of network protocols and operations. It is able to correlate network activity with other information including data from CRM systems and handsets to allow CSPs to see the subscriber experience and understand which KPIs have the biggest impact on customer happiness. It takes disparate types of data from multiple vendors’ equipment and systems and integrates it into a single view on a common platform. It has defined and deployed a whole range of ready-made CSP use cases that enable the CSPs to immediately benefit from the knowledge, analytics, and optimisation recommendations that are in-built in to its platform. The Accanto iCEM platform is able to handle a huge amount of real-time and non-real-time information to monitor the quality of every subscriber for voice and data services. Its solution is able to dynamically segment the subscribers and can rank all customers based on correlated quality indicators, customer expectation, and customer value information.

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Empirix collects information on how individual subscribers are interacting with both the network and the services. Its solution sits with the technical support team to provide better insight into their customers. It aims to reduce the amount of time spent between a tech support agent and the customers, as well as provide the intelligence to allow a less-experienced technician handle most issues. Its solutions allow an agent to see the device, services and network resources a customer is consuming, and compare to the peer group to determine if it is a subscriber issue or a larger one. It can support customer-based alarms in real-time. It also helps reduce costs by being able to verify claims of poor service, avoiding situations where it compensates a subscriber when no compensation is due.

Key differentiators Empirix’s solution is able to support every subscriber in a network – scaling to hundreds of millions – at a granular level, rather than infer the experience based on a limited number of data points. Similarly, it scales horizontally so that 100-200 individuals can use the platform at the same time. Empirix has designed its solution to provide high performance, updating dashboards in five minute intervals, and 20 second response rates to customer queries. Because of its history with service assurance, probes and DPI (deep packet inspection), Empirix has visibility up and down the stack. It is able to see and collect applications and usage at the subscriber level. It can also drill down to get a technical view of the subscriber to help reduce MTTR (mean time to repair). It offers near-real-time dashboards that allow its customer to support short term SLAs which is particularly important in saturated markets where CSPs are competing on quality rather than price. It provides the visibility to enable CSPs to focus on its highest value customers, and prioritise issues accordingly.

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary EXFO is a provider of next-generation test, service assurance and endto-end service experience solutions for mobile and fixed network operators and equipment manufacturers in the global telecoms industry. EXFO’s intelligent solutions with contextually relevant analytics improve end-user quality of experience, enhance network performance and drive operational efficiencies throughout the network and service delivery lifecycle. EXFO has a staff of approximately 1,600 people in 25 countries, supporting more than 2,000 telecoms customers worldwide.

CEM credentials EXFO’s Xtract solution focuses on providing comprehensive, end-toend visibility of service experience to the network operations, planning and customer care organisations. This entails continuously collecting, correlating, analysing and visualising information from radio, core, backhaul and fibre networks, as well as from the devices themselves. Xtract contains three main analytical applications: service, subscriber and network analytics, which allow CSPs to operate and manage service quality and network performance, troubleshoot, plan capacity increases, confirm service activation, more quickly identify and respond to network issues, and suggest changes and new offers.

Company summary MDS is a UK-based provider of convergent real-time charging, billing and customer management products and private cloud managed services to the CSPs and wider digital services provider (DSP) industry. Its Customer Management Platform (CMP), helps DSPs launch new products and services quickly, bill for them accurately, and unlock new revenue streams to support business growth. CMP has been in production for almost 20 years and is used in 21 countries around the world.

CEM credentials With CMP, MDS has moved decision-making to the customer, giving them visibility and control of their usage online and on-demand. Using an intuitive interface, users can select which services and payment methods best suit them. With easy to use real-time account management, they can purchase any service, day pass or package. Subscribers can decide and use the services on their terms. Using CMP, customers have reduced their operational costs, improved standards of customer care and helped grow their subscriber base and profits. MDS’ managed service provides a cost efficient, fully assured alternative to in-house management. This also brings down the total cost of ownership, with one view of the customers that enhances their experience.

Key differentiators Because of its long history working with Tier 1 CSPs around the world, EXFO has a deep understanding of network technologies and operations. It has built upon its expertise in fibre to now include 2G/3G/4G/LTE and Ethernet and has packaged this expertise as comprehensive portfolio of services included into its turn-key solutions. EXFO’s Xtract analytics platform is able to process massive volumes of data from devices and radio, core, backhaul and fibre networks in realtime, providing a comprehensive end-to-end view into service experience. This is increasingly important for new services such as VoLTE, where Xtract is able to analyse control and user plane traffic as well as call quality information from IMS systems in real-time to fully understand the service experience. EXFO provides predictable and transparent TCO with its open analytics platform, which allows CSPs or other third parties the ability to customise EXFO Xtract to better suit their needs, including adding dashboards and changing algorithms, without having to go back to EXFO.

Key differentiators MDS offers its platform via a scalable and effective managed services business or as a product licence, which is a unique approach to CEM. It has continually invested across its entire portfolio to offer real-time analytics, M2M, managed services, and multi-tenant solutions that customers needed to gain more insight and compete effectively. MDS has built its own tools, including executive dashboards which show usage, churn rates, update of new services for a deeper understanding of customer behaviour. It can also feed usage data to CRM tools such as salesforce.com and other external tools. CMP can also be used to present offers based on customer behaviour – an area MDS is increasingly focusing on with its customers. MDS has expanded its addressable market from its predominantly B2B, mobile-only origins to support consumer and multi-product offerings such as home phone and broadband services. Its managed service is underpinned by more than 50 SLAs that monitor over 200 pre-defined business processes, giving DSPs the confidence that their billing is taken care of.

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Company summary Nakina offers a suite of Network Integrity applications for managing, securing, and optimising physical and virtual networks. Nakina’s applications are built upon its Network Integrity Framework – an open and modular software platform that abstracts network complexity, normalises multi-vendor management, and bridges the physical and virtual worlds for management and orchestration systems.

Company summary Founded in 1999 and based in Dublin, Ireland, Openet is a leading independent supplier of real-time BSS (business support systems) to CSPs. Its software supports 600 million mobile telecoms users around the world and enables CSPs to monetise data use in real-time.

CEM credentials CEM credentials Nakina’s solutions assure network data accuracy and timely access to critical network data so that CEM systems can provide correct, datadriven insights. It enhances customer experience by improving network quality by preventing, detecting and correcting network and service configuration errors. CEM systems can correlate real-time performance analytics with the network configuration analytics Nakina provides to present a holistic view of the customer experience by incorporating a view from the network. When combined as part of a holistic solution, Nakina helps CEM solutions predict and refine network configurations to drive maximum network stability and performance at the lowest possible cost, reduce customer churn, preserve revenue and dramatically improve diagnosis and remediation times.

Key differentiators Nakina’s roots are in multi-vendor, multi-technology network management. All of Nakina’s software solutions are built on top of the company’s network integrity framework, an open orchestration enablement platform. The platform enables Nakina’s solutions to scale across the largest service provider networks. All Nakina’s network integrity applications including those that discover, audit, analyse network configuration accuracy and provide privileged identity access management, are built on top of this software platform. These solutions audit network configuration accuracy end-to-end along the service path, spanning physical and virtual networks. When paired with CEM solutions, service providers can isolate network configuration issues wherever they may be in the service chain, and rapidly identify the impact to specific customer experience. The solutions dramatically improve problem isolation, diagnosis and resolution response times. Nakina detects network security configuration vulnerabilities, and automatically applies privileged user access policies. Its systems augment the capabilities of performance management systems. By correlating real-time service performance, network configuration changes, and network access events, CSPs can determine not only which configurations may have changed, but when, by whom, understand potential associated network performance impacts and associated impacts to customer experience.

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Openet comes from a background of policy and charging, so is geared around the real-time consumption of services. It approaches CEM by focusing on increasing and improving customer engagement. Its solutions help CSPs offer its customers personalised offers that take into account the full range of understanding about network and subscriber behaviour. The aim is to enable CSPs to make offers relevant by considering the context, thereby demonstrating how well the CSP understands the customer’s needs. Openet’s CSP customers have found that by tailoring personalised offers more quickly, they are achieving higher take-up rates.

Key differentiators Because Openet is able to provide information in real-time, it gives its CSP customers the ability to create more personalised offers, rather than generalised blasts. Openet also understands the underlying network, so it can ensure that the offer is capable of being delivered at a particular point in time. Its solution handles access to the service, as well as the charging for it, providing a comprehensive view that makes it seamless across multiple organisations. It believes its long-term industry experience gives it an advantage over general IT solution suppliers who may not fully understand the complexity and culture of telecom network operations and customer care.

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary Polystar helps CSPs simplify their CEM strategies and drive operational efficiency through real-time network analytics. Polystar’s real-time network and customer insights uncover the data that yields valuable analytics and insights to CSPs. Founded in Stockholm in 1983, it has evolved to a global presence, serving customers in over 50 countries.

CEM credentials Polystar’s primary focus is to provide objective insights about subscriber experience during the usage phase of the customer lifecycle. Through real-time passive probes, its solutions capture all signaling related to subscriber activity and convert this to objective quality of experience data that can be analysed in Polystar’s own tools or forwarded to third party systems. Polystar’s own tools deliver realtime quality of experience data to network and service operations centres and customer care. In large CEM initiatives targeting the entire customer lifecycle, Polystar’s solutions often supply enriched real-time and objective quality of experience data to third party systems, while its own tools are primarily used for in depth troubleshooting in second or third line engineering. The information collected spans all activities from connecting to the network, moving between cells, using OTT applications and the CSP’s own applications, such as VoLTE and other voice and data services. Using Polystar’s solutions, CSPs have found that support calls are resolved more quickly, and that there are fewer repetitive calls on the same complaint. In addition, CSPs have also seen improvements in network availability and service quality, including a reduction in the number of dropped calls and data sessions. Polystar’s solutions may be used both to resolve and isolate problems and to guide the CSP to complementary tools. As a result, CSPs can become more proactive by identifying service degradation before failures occur.

Key differentiators Polystar’s solutions have the capability to collect billions of events, analyse them and present end-to-end insights in real-time, or forward them to other systems. It has built its entire solution in-house, rather than through the acquisition of external technology, leading to very tight integration of system components. Compared to other solution providers, Polystar believes its solution is more flexible in terms of being more easily modified and tailored to CSP requirements. The systems have, since inception, been built on standard hardware and software, making it easy to adapt to new technology shifts such as the introduction of network functions virtualisation (NFV). Expertise in signaling is an increasingly scarce resource and Polystar’s in-house knowledge is much valued by its CSP customers. Polystar has invested heavily in its professional services team, which is designed to provide additional expertise to CSPs and help them capitalise more effectively on real-time insights.

Company summary SysMech is a provider of software solutions for the telecoms industry. In 2010, it launched Zen, an application which enables CSP’s to successfully optimise their networks and deliver true business value from big data. It has Tier 1 CSP customers across Europe and the Middle East.

CEM credentials SysMech’s Zen solution enables CSPs to look at CEM in line with the rest of their business by correlating CEM data with network and billing information. Zen allows customers to define scenarios and action that needs to be taken under those conditions. By using just one centralised tool for both network and customer data, visibility is increased, and standardised views, processes and reports can be achieved. The solution can manage across multiple domains, giving the CSP the ability to look at a particular service with certain customers at a certain point in time. Its customers have been able to correlate their network data with customer experience data, enabling them to see what changes are actually affecting the customer experience and perception.

Key differentiators SysMech’s main IP is around the ability to deal with data quickly, correlate it and provide actionable intelligence. It has designed Zen so people with little to no experience with big data can effectively use the tool. It has also partnered with Tableau to bring user-friendly visualisation, which, combined with its customised user interface, means users can build and manipulate their own reports and scenarios. Zen can take in data feeds from any domain, any vendor and any technology, giving CSPs an end-to-end view of the network, services and customers in a single application that can be used by people in multiple departments. It uses a patented correlation engine that enables proactive automation methodologies to support CEM, as well as other domains like fault and performance management. Zen was designed to reduce the number of clicks needed to accomplish a task, as well as be self-healing/managing.

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REVENUE MANAGEMENT & ASSURANCE Can revenue management be a revenue maker?

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TA L K I N G H E A D S

Bob Titus: You will see the need for more online, real-time processing of offers and revenue management

Revenue management is the flexible enabler of CSPsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; digital service transformation Bob Titus is vice president of Global Converged Solutions at NetCracker Technology. Here, he tells George Malim that as communications service providers (CSPs) look to expand their service portfolios and play wider roles in the digital services landscape, revenue management capabilities will enable rapid and flexible service introduction not just for CSPs but for their partners as well. Titus predicts that CSPs will sell their BSS capabilities as a service to partners through the utilisation of cloud-based platforms with open interfaces in order to enable partners to set up services and offers themselves

Bob Titus: As you look at the competitive landscape and the impact of over-the-top providers (OTTs), itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clear that CSPs must become digital service aggregators. They need the ability to onboard partners and efficiently charge and settle for services provided by those partners. Partnerships will become more and more dynamic in nature, so integrating these offers

anillaPlus: As CSPs consider their digital service transformation, they must consider expanding their services ecosystem. What are the roles of partner management and settlement in this context and why do they need to be an essential component of next-generation BSS?

Reproduced from VanillaPlus Magazine 56

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CSPs learn about NetCracker’s BSS solutions at the numerous industry events that it attends each year

There will still be the same efficient batch processing for rating, but you will see the need for more online, real-time processing of offers and revenue management and prices and being able to charge, bill and settle increases in importance. Partner lifecycle management is now about much more than just adding new services to the catalogue; it encompasses how to change the pricing and how to account for the changes. Partner management must become an important aspect of the BSS platform by enabling partners to integrate efficiently with the CSP. It’s not a case of the CSP deciding which partners to add to their offerings – it’s about providing an environment that enables partners to connect to the CSP. I envision a world where the offers that CSPs deliver will be dynamic in nature. There will be models where partners sponsor data and service plans and where CSPs pick the services they bundle depending on the context of the user. That’s an entirely different concept and paradigm to how we operate now. I foresee a very different operating model where the user chooses online or OTT services to bundle into their package. In addition, CSPs may select their partners on the fly to address the specific needs of a customer.

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At the same time, pricing is becoming more dynamic. Pricing could be based on the time, volume and customer value associated with consumption – any combination of factors can be considered. This requires CSPs to instantiate services in real-time while incorporating current balances and usage patterns. There will still be the same efficient batch processing for rating, but you will see the need for more online, real-time processing of offers and revenue management. VP: What are the foundational BSS elements needed by CSPs for data monetisation? BT: Certainly real-time usage and balance management are fundamental capabilities, but those

VP: BSS for postpaid has traditionally been offline and batch based. Does it need to change? Why is there a need for online revenue management systems in the postpaid world today?

BT: The situation is definitely changing. CSPs are selling packages based on buckets of data usage, shared usage buckets and even usage-based billing. With today’s network speeds, those allocations can be consumed very quickly. These combinations create a need for real-time capabilities for postpaid users. The line between prepaid and postpaid is disappearing as trends to charge for buckets of data emerge and offers that are prepaid in nature are made for postpaid customers. An example of that would be a roaming data top-up which requires a postpaid user to agree to pay for the top-up.

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TA L K I N G H E A D S

If you look at the role of BSS in new product introduction and service enablement it’s clear that in the past it was often an impediment to getting those services to market

also need to extend to give customers the ability to run their own accounts and billing. Self-service userand device-centric profiles and policies will give customers the flexibility and usage control they expect, which requires the BSS platform to support that functionality. For example, I could allocate a certain amount of my service plan to my son’s iPad and a different amount to his phone and authorise a certain level of on-demand content purchases. Flexibility is important in other ways too. CSPs need flexible billing models and the flexibility to allow customers to pay how they want, whether that’s postpaid, vouchers or via a credit card. That places requirements on the CSP and the underlying BSS. The other foundational piece is embedded business analytics for campaign management. This will become critical to enabling CSPs to differentiate themselves and their offers in the marketplace. In terms of being able to monetise services, this capability will let CSPs understand customer usage, users and their devices as well as understand current balances and the trends and buying patterns of customers to create dynamic and real-time offers. Ultimately, that will provide a better customer experience and introduce the opportunity to upsell additional services. Those all contribute to enhanced data monetisation. VP: What role will revenue management play in the world of M2M and IoT? BT: It comes back to revenue management being the enabler of those services. M2M and IoT bring new business models and exponential transaction volumes, which requires flexibility and online usage models. CSPs also need the flexibility to expand the role of revenue management to offer billing as a service and direct-to-bill services to enable M2M and IoT functions. In this sense, revenue management capabilities are the enablers and a service that CSPs could deliver to support smart cities, biometrics and many other IoT applications. These new markets will involve transactions that CSPs can price and manage on behalf of their IoT partners. VP: How can BSS play a key role in innovation and service enablement?

www.netcracker.com

BT: If you look at the role of BSS in new product introduction and service enablement, it’s clear that in the past it was often an impediment to getting those services to market. If you look at the capabilities we’ve

already talked about, they’re all great – but if it takes months to update the BSS and introduce these capabilities, you really can’t compete. Therefore, all these services that enable revenue generation and innovation must be easy to apply in the BSS and must be exposed in such a way that months-long IT programmes are not required. The industry needs a DevOps (development operations) approach so new products and services can be brought to market in hours or days rather than weeks or months. It’s a new operating paradigm for CSPs, and it must be enabled through BSS. A shift in CSP operating mentality is occurring as they begin to ask how BSS can help them introduce new offerings and services, instead of asking how long it will take to upgrade the BSS to support new services. CSPs are recognising the BSS as an enabler and are asking, “How can we use BSS capabilities to bring services to market?” VP: How are these industry trends affecting the underlying BSS platforms? BT: As we look at the overall trends affecting our CSP customers and the industry as a whole, the BSS platforms must become even more flexible and enable faster time to market. We are seeing BSS platforms evolving into cloud platforms. We are also no longer seeing prepaid and postpaid BSS as separate functions – convergence has become a reality and everyone sees the need to avoid creating separate siloes. At the same time, billing has become a separate layer from usage and policy management. You see revenue management functions separate out into layers so they can be exposed and managed individually. This concept of open BSS is critical. Providing SDKs (software development kits) and APIs (application programming interfaces) to provide microservices will become an enabler not only for partners and the onboarding of new services but for the CSPs themselves. There’s no reason a partner shouldn’t be able to develop an application or service themselves by accessing a CSP’s revenue management function. This is where we are headed. Ultimately, BSS will be cloud-based, open and componentised and that will allow flexibility within the CSP and wider ecosystem and become a critical enabler of CSPs’ digital transformation.

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ANALYST REPORT

The author, John Abraham, is part of the BSS practice in Analysys Masonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Telecoms Software Research team. He leads the firmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s revenue management programme

Introduction

elecoms mediation systems have been a critical part of the CSP operations landscape for decades. Mediation systems sit at the boundary between the network and the business support systems and regulate the type and format of records going into the communications service provider (CSP) subsystems. Mediation systems provide a mechanism for collecting, filtering, aggregating and transforming network usage data into records that can be processed by other systems. CSPs have historically relied on mediation systems to improve billing accuracy and granularity and support new services, mainly to offer competitive services and deliver revenue collection improvements but also to ensure regulatory compliance Over the past decade, the nature of mediation systems had undergone considerable change. The ability to extract, manipulate and load data in realtime was originally needed to support prepaid realtime charging applications. However, the advent of new services created with the use of policy-based charging techniques and the requirement for better control for CSPs and subscribers have driven the need to provide the same real-time mediation infrastructure for postpaid services as well. In addition, the use of mediation systems for noncharging applications is increasing as well. As mediation infrastructure is increasingly being used to carry data not directly needed for charging or billing requirements, CSPs are recognising the benefits of developing standardised data infrastructure to facilitate the sharing of common

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data. In other words, mediation infrastructure can potentially be used to support analytics-based use cases. As CSPs increasingly launch new data services based on real-time charging, the traffic load on mediation systems increases which creates greater potential for analytics-based applications. Such applications can add value to CSP operations by providing real-time insight into customer usage patterns and enabling them to offer personalised services. The potential applications include business analytics, which uses real-time data to optimise the targeting of customers, and revenue assurance, which identifies and remedies problems that cause financial underperformance. Figure 1 captures an overview of the mediation system interconnections. As operational systems become more reliant on analytics tools to optimise

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ANALYST REPORT

key processes, the role of the mediation system as a robust underlying platform that can handle real-time data on a large scale becomes critical. Figure 1: An overview of mediation system interconnections Source: Analysys Mason

Application server (balance management)

Network elements and subscriber data system

Revenue assurance and fraud

data traffic is expected to grow at 47% CAGR from 2014-2018. Fixed broadband usage has soared as well – from 2015 to 2020, fixed network traffic is expected to grow by a factor of 3.7. The dramatic increase in the traffic load has had a multiplier effect on the underlying systems and their capability to deliver consistent quality of service. Mediation systems are where the business rules are configured and typically handle much more traffic than charging platforms. CSPs are therefore investing in new mediation systems that are flexible in configuration and can be quickly scaled to manage increased traffic.

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Market drivers and trends for mediation systems Mediation system deployments are complex and costly, but CSPs regard this as a necessary cost of doing business. CSPs spent over US$770 million on mediation systems in 2014. The overall market is expected to continue growing, albeit slowly, over the next five years. The primary drivers include1. Increased data traffic The overall traffic on CSP infrastructure has increased dramatically in the past decade. Smartphone penetration, the roll-out of mobile broadband, fibre and Wi-Fi all contribute to driving up data usage and boost the requirement for mediation systems. M2M services are yet to have a significant impact on the volume of data, but will begin to do so in the future. Mobile

2. Monetising data services The share of data services of worldwide mobile retail revenue is expected to reach cross 63% by 2020. CSPs face a significant challenge in shifting from a traditional voice and messaging revenue model towards a data-centric charging model. This calls for innovative charging mechanisms such as on-demand charging, shared bundles, speed boosters, real-time customer notifications and more. Supporting these capabilities requires real-time charging systems which need online mediation systems to ensure timely processing of the data records. Moreover data charging for both prepaid and postpaid subscribers needs to be in real-time as most postpaid subscribers have data limits which must be tracked in real-time. An online real-time mediation system therefore becomes a critical component in a CSP’s ability to monetise new potential revenue streams. 3. LTE deployment The deployment of LTE and the increased data speeds it offers have had significant impact on the billing and charging market, which is expected to drive investments in mediation systems as well. Voice over LTE (VoLTE), the next-generation voice service delivered over the LTE infrastructure, is slowly gaining traction as well. At the end of 2014, there was an estimated 498 million LTE connections – composed of handsets and mobile broadband, and this is expected to grow to 2.463 billion connections by 2019. CSPs are expected to spend significantly on network and spectrum to ensure good customer experience on their network. However, this will also throw up new challenges of monetising the usage to ensure optimised used of network resources. LTE rollout will trigger considerable investments in billing and charging platforms, especially around

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5. Deployment of convergent charging systems A convergent billing and charging platform allows CSPs to support both prepaid and postpaid users from a single instance. Convergent platforms have gained in popularity over the last decade and today are a necessary part of all new billing system requirements. By breaking down the separate silos between prepaid and postpaid systems, convergent platforms reduce support cost and time to market for new products and promotions. It is also more flexible and can be scaled cost effectively. While most tier 1 and tier 2 CSPs already have deployed some form of convergent billing, several smaller CSPs are still using legacy billing platforms. As the cost and complexity of maintaining the legacy billing system increases, many of these CSPs will make the switch towards convergent platforms. Demand for convergent charging systems will drive spending on convergent mediation systems as well. 6. Digital economy use cases The digital economy is all socioeconomic activity mediated by software and enabled by telecoms infrastructure. It is mainly powered by several new technologies such as ubiquitous highbandwidth communications and complex applications software that can be integrated easily via web services APIs. The value chain of digital economy use cases is often complex and varied and involves multiple disparate players. CSPs, already under considerable pressure from the stagnation and decline of voice and messaging revenues, are investing to ensuring digital economy applications are monetised effectively. This requires CSPs to offer their services in a digitally enhanced manner and provide the information and control that consumers demand while collecting vast amounts of information about consumers’

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preferences, lives, locations and actions. Overall mediation systems revenue will grow from 2014 to 2019 at a CAGR of 3.1%. A significant portion of the revenue is driven by maintenance and growth of current systems. The increasing volume of data records as broadband data services grow, and requirements for the use of larger systems are also driving growth. Figure 2 captures the forecasted growth of mediation systems from 2014 through to 2019. Figure 2: Mediation systems revenue growth, 2014–2019 1000 Revenue (US$ million)

data charging use cases. 4. Consolidation of legacy platforms Many CSPs have a number of disparate mediation systems to support specific use cases. Maintaining complex legacy platforms is expensive and inhibits CSPs’ capabilities to launch new products and services. As CSP traffic shifts to predominantly IP, investments in convergent mediation systems will increase to support streamlined support systems. Mergers and acquisitions by CSPs can also be listed here as a related factor that can impact investments in mediation systems. However they are generally more negative than positive because the overall number of mediation systems tends to decline post the merger.

800 772

790

2014

2015

819

847

2016

2017

874

901

2018

2019

600 400 200 0 Source: Analysys Mason

From a regional perspective, in the emerging markets of APAC and Latin America, the growing popularity of mobile data is expected to drive growth. LTE roll-outs and deployment of broadband infrastructure will also contribute to the demand for mediation systems in this region. The EMEA and North America regions will grow more slowly because mediation systems are widely deployed already. Growth will come from upgrades to established infrastructure to support new digital economy use cases and LTE deployments, when they reach the mainstream in Europe. In terms of services, mobile will continue to dominate the mediation market as a result of subscriber base growth and the launch of next-generation mobile data networks. The residential broadband segment will also register a high growth rate as established systems are upgraded to meet the infrastructure demands of emerging economies.

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ANALYST REPORT

The evolution of mediation Software development for telecoms has evolved radically over the past two decades towards faster design cycles, less expensive hardware and lower support costs. Over this period the software platforms have evolved from in-house to vendor supplied systems, from proprietary hardware tied to the network towards generic hardware platforms and from batch processing to online real-time data processing. In the 1960s the first iterations of a telecoms billing system were mostly developed in-house to support monthly billing for basic voice services over POTS (plain old telephony service). These systems had little need for a mediation system, since the usage end points were fixed and there was only a single service type. In the late 1980s as mobile services were rolled out and vendor billing systems started gaining prominence, the role of the mediation system as a pre-processor to the billing platform became better defined. In the late 1990s the rising demand for mobile prepaid services created a market for real time mediation systems. At the time these systems were closely tied to the IN (intelligent network) system which controlled the prepaid charging. These systems were expensive to maintain and ran on proprietary hardware. In the mid to late 2000s as data gained ground as the primary growth segment for CSPs, convergent mediation systems became mainstream. These systems could support batch and real-time processing from a single platform. Over time all data services were required to be tracked in real-time as even postpaid users had fixed usage limits and regulatory requirements demanded that consumers be warned of overage use in near real-time. In the past few years as the internet economy took centre stage and CSPs introduced new services designed around policy-based charging, mediation systems were used to support applications not directly related to charging. The biggest change in the nature of mediation systems has been its moving away from simply operating on data supplied offline to tracking data and attributes in real-time to help CSPs make informed decisions. In this they are increasingly becoming more like analytics solutions that offer CSPs insight into realtime data. Legacy systems that manage large data sets cannot

be updated frequently. This delays processing of records, making data models and analysis less reliable. The availability of real-time data helps CSPs improve established operational processes, expand established revenue streams and create new revenue ones. Figure 3 captures the potential functionality for mediation systems. While the core feature remains charging related use cases, the potential for analytical tools and apps that can be built on top of mediation systems cannot be disregarded. For vendors of mediation systems, this provides a growth opportunity. Adding data integration and ETL (extract, transform and load) capabilities to mediation systems could increase the size of the mediation market by up to 20% over the next five years. Figure 3: Mediation systems and their potential functionality

ANALYTICS APPS

More opportunities for value-added use cases

ANALYTICS TOOLS

CHARGING/BILLING BASED REQUIREMENTS

Basis for all mediation requirements

Source: Analysys Mason

Mediation as an enabler of analytics applications For CSPs, data services will be the primary driver of revenues over the next several years and therefore the need to provide online real-time support for monetising data is critical. Unlike

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traditional services, all data traffic must be charged in real-time to ensure optimum network utilisation. The hype about big data analytics has helped to promote the potential value of real-time data to CSPs. To ensure optimum return on investments, CSPs are considering how best to re-use the available real-time data sets for new applications such as customer management or marketing. Figure 4 depicts how mediation fits in within the overall analytics infrastructure. Figure 4: Mediation and its place within the analytics infrastructure Structured data access to established applications and tools

Application or presentation layer Ad-hoc report tools (visualisation tools)

Business intelligence and analytics tools

all customer channels. Using near-real-time data can place considerable stress on an organisation, but up-to-date information enables better business decisions to be made â&#x20AC;&#x201C; micro-segmentation permits data triggers to determine a specified segment and associated process automation. This real-time aspect allows CSPs to alter undesirable outcomes in processes that are running. For example, it might help CSPs to prevent churn or better target upsell and cross-sell offers. However real-time data adds to the total volume of data that needs to be moved, stored, modelled and visualised, which will have significant cost implications. Figure 5 tracks the progression of data analytics modelling. In each of the three stages a mediation system can step in to provide the all-important access to data in the appropriate format.

Data management, structuring and access layer

Figure 5: The progression of data analytics modelling Mediation

ELT/ETL Data sources

Business intelligence tools

At the heart of all analytics is the ETL layer that gathers and transforms data into a usable format. As discussed earlier, mediation systems were originally designed to do this and were able to run in real-time to support prepaid charging requirements. CSPs can use the same infrastructure that already has adapters to extract data from networked devices to gather data to support new use cases other than those related to charging or billing. While cost control is a key driver for CSPs to consider reusing the infrastructure, it will also cut down on redundant data storage, complexities around data consistency and integrity and encourage more open architecture. Analytics is moving away from operating on data and results supplied offline that give an historical analysis of what has already happened. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s systems are able to take data attributes and use modelling to predict the most likely outcomes of the future. Complex algorithms and real-time processing of big data sets enable timely customer interactions to drive up revenue. The use of streaming data generated when prospects interact with the CSP enables much greater personalisation of responses to in-bound customer enquiries on

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

Predictive analytics tools

In-line analytics tools

Value

Source: Analysys Mason

What is happening now? What will happen? What happened?

Time

Source: Analysys Mason

The analytics tools in use today have been developed from the business intelligence tools of the past that were concerned with reporting what has already occurred. This may include the running of complex models to provide derived information that is used within KPIs or other business measurements. Predictive analytics tools model future outcomes based on historical patterns. This needs expertise to create models based on an understanding of the data attributors and the potential

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ANALYST REPORT

Revenue assurance Revenue assurance systems are an example of business intelligence tools detailed earlier. They are typically used by specialist groups in CSP operations to monitor across their network the financial performance – such as total revenue, ARPU and subscriber growth; revenue performance – such as revenue and cost by category and revenue and fraud loss; and operational performance – such as revenue, fraud and bad debt loss by root cause. This allows the CSPs to ensure they are getting all the revenue to which they are entitled for use of the network, they are compliant with reporting on that usage, and manage their external network expenses. Revenue assurance systems have been around for a while now and have been one of the leading analytics based use cases supporting CSP business operations. Revenue assurance operations are heavily dependent on the mediation data feed to identify revenue leakages between the switch and the billing system. CSP efforts and ultimately spending in this segment has been driven mostly by audit and compliance activities. CSP spending on revenue assurance systems will continue to increase at a modest pace, driven by the introduction of new services and the expansion of established services into new geographical regions. New service types will continue to create challenges for CSPs, ensuring that revenue assurance systems remain an important part of operational requirements.

Business analytics

Business analytics uses real-time data to optimise the targeting of customers. It mainly deals with use cases in customer acquisition, customer management, financial management, operational optimisation and data monetisation. The increasing quantities of operational data and the falling storage and server costs is expected to drive new use cases in business analytics. The most significant driver of CSP spending on business analytics systems is related to marketing functions. These are increasingly able to use real-time data to optimise the targeting of customers and are used to predict key metrics such as customer churn and lifetime value. Both revenue assurance and the business analytics segments are set for higher growth than mediation systems. Overall the revenue assurance segment will grow at a CAGR of 5.4% from 2014 through 2019. Over the same period, business analytics segment will grow by 10.2%. Figure 6: Analytics software solutions revenue by subsegment, worldwide, 2014–2019

3500 3000

Revenue (US$ million)

outcomes. In-line analytics tools overcome the time constraints of running models on stored data by being updated with realtime information. This enables models to react to live information and update live processes where needed. For example, it is possible to address in real-time events such as network configurations or selling services to active users at a location or on a website.

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

CAGR

Business analytics

1865

2080

2311

2547

2781

3028

10.2%

Revenue assurance

449

469

491

519

549

583

5.4%

Source: Analysys Mason

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Conclusion The nature of mediation systems has evolved in the past decade. The rise of the digital economy and the subsequent changes in the consumer consumption of CSP services has created the need for an online real-time mediation system that needs to cope with an explosive increase in data traffic. Besides this, mediation systems are also increasingly being used for non-charging applications, driven by the CSP interest in harnessing the power of big data analytics to improve efficiency and revenues. Investments into mediation systems have grown at a moderate pace during this time. A substantial portion of this spend has been on maintaining and expanding installed systems to support increasing subscriber numbers. Growth in the volume of underlying services such as data services, the need for increased real-time data and the increasing number of non-charging use cases have driven the market. Analytics, which is set to grow much faster than mediation, will have a significant impact on the future growth of mediation systems as well since current mediation deployments have an inherent advantage in that the underlying infrastructure required to store and transfer data in real time is already in place. Growth can also come from the mediation system expanding to absorb adjacent functions. For instance adding data integration and ETL capabilities to mediation systems could increase the size of the mediation market by up to 20% over the next five years. While mediation continues to be a critical part of the overall charging process, its future growth may well be as an enabler of analytics applications for non-charging use cases.

About Analysys Mason Analysys Mason celebrates 30 years as global specialist advisers on telecoms, media and technology. Since 1985, Analysys Mason has played an influential role in key industry milestones and helped clients through major shifts in the TMT market. We continue to be at the forefront of developments in digital economy and are advising clients on new business strategies to address disruptive technologies. www.analysysmason.com

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary Founded

Company summary

1994

Founded

1993

Englewood, Colorado USA

Waltham, Massachusetts

Employees

3,500

Employees

7,000 (without including NEC)

Revenue

US$750m

Revenue

Part of NEC (US$24.5 billion revenue in 2015)

Customers

500+

Customers

200+

Partnerships

Extensive system integration partnerships with IBM (15 joint implementations in the past two years), Accenture, Infosys, Cognizant, Virtusa, TCS and others

Financial Status

Part of NEC

Public (NASDAQ:CSGS)

Active Mediation

Financial Status

Revenue management products

Revenue management products Singleview

TSM

WBMS

ACP

Ascendon

Singleview suite provides an integrated customer care, billing and real-time rating and charging system and can be delivered either on premises or in a cloud-hosted environment. Total Service Mediation (TSM) provides offline and real-time mediation requirements as well as service activation. Wholesale Business Management Solutions (WBMS) delivers interconnect and partner management and settlement solutions for roaming, international routing, and international testing for quality and fraud detection. Advanced Convergent Platform (ACP) is a preintegrated billing and customer care platform for cable and satellite providers in North America. Ascendon, a solution for digital services commerce that unifies the customer management and billing capabilities of the combined CSG portfolio, provides incremental support for digital services, overlaying existing IT infrastructure and forming the basis for ongoing transformation and operational consolidation. It enables rapid go-to-market while supporting personalised customer experience and advanced monetisation models including one-off charging, loyalty points, subscriptions, ad-funded, gifting and others.

Key differentiators CSGâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most significant differentiator is Ascendon, a convergent customer and revenue management solution, which enables distinct paths to digital services for CSPs, content providers, OTT players or traditional retailers. Delivering OTT models to CSPs or new customer and billing operations to OTT players, Ascendon can be deployed rapidly in the cloud as a standalone platform supporting digital services and allows easy integration to existing systems. It enables BSS transformation by bringing the scalability and efficiency of CSG's widely deployed Singleview billing solutions to create an ideal platform for system and business process consolidation and optimisation.

Enables CSPs to collect and process usage data in multi-service, multi-network environments, while providing flexibility and configurability for real-time, customer-centric data mediation.

Converged Rating Allows CSPs to support and monetise prepaid, & Charging postpaid and hybrid rating and charging scenarios, fixed and mobile network technologies, residential and business customers. Online Charging System

Designed for wireless service providers, it offers a high-performance, scalable and flexible real-time charging platform, which can monetise nextgeneration wireless services quickly and efficiently.

Partner Billing Management

Delivers strong functionality to perform billing settlements with different partners including wholesale, interconnect, roaming and other partner types.

Customer Billing Management

Provides CSPs with capabilities to centralise billing operations for all customer types and helps to effectively handle all tasks and processes regarding financial relations with customers.

Voucher Management

Delivers functional capabilities to manage the voucher lifecycle, configure multiple voucher parameters and support voucher data protection.

Key differentiators NetCrackerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s differentiator is its end-to-end capabilities that enable it to support CSPs on large transformational projects such as shifting to new business models, deploying personalised customer service, transitioning to real-time and on-demand services, diversifying lines of business, supporting flexible solution delivery models and implementing integrated, real-time analytics capabilities. Its product differentiators include single platform to drive cost optimisation and business process simplification, omni-channel capabilities, big data and predictive analytics, centralised product catalogue, cloud platform to support BaaS and partner management among others.

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary

Founded

1990

Founded

1999

Petersfield, UK

Toronto, Canada

Employees

150

Employees

1,800

Revenue

Privately held

Revenue

US$257m (2014)

Customers

More than 250 enterprises over 90 countries

Partnerships

Elster, Microsoft

Financial Status

Private, self funded

Financial Status

Publicly traded (TSX: RKN)

Revenue management products Revenue management products Redknee Unified Minotaur RA

Minotaur RA is designed to support revenue assurance departments in their remit to ensure that all revenue generated by customers and partner organisations is correctly billed or accounted for and that the processes designed to support the revenue assurance function are working efficiently. The product enables all revenue assurance challenges to be resolved proactively through configuration, empowering users to handle new problems as they arise, without the requirement for code changes. The product has extensive functionality including real-time charging and rating, mediation and analytical capabilities including supervised and unsupervised neural modelling, statistical behavioural analysis, trends, reconciliations, link analysis and business logic.

Key differentiators Neural Technologies combines product development and systems integration to ensure complex data analytics projects can be achieved in a timely and successful manner. Minotaur is a modular system with a collection of specialised components that connect together to solve specific business problems. It has been designed to be one product that addresses many solutions and provides one common graphical user interface for fraud, revenue assurance, credit risk and analytics. The platform allows a 360 degree view which helps to quickly identify revenue loss and manage risk effectively.

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

Redknee Unified helps CSPs monetise next generation services in real-time no matter the type of service, customer or business model. With its modular design and agile real-time charging, billing, policy and customer care capabilities, it enables CSPs to monetise new revenue streams, launch new services faster and deliver an improved customer experience. Redknee Unified offers realtime convergent charging and policy management in addition to multi-channel self-care capabilities. It is fully integrated and can be deployed out of the box with limited customisation. It can be deployed on premise, cloud-based, or as Software-as-aService and works with traditional and newer Hadoop technologies. The solution supports also supports complex charging models such as sponsored data.

Key differentiators Redkneeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solutions support more than 250 businesses globally, including some leading CSPs, helping them to differentiate themselves in some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most competitive environments. Redkneeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s billing, charging and customer care solutions allow businesses to monetise digital products and services faster and easier.

GET IN TOUCH WITH US: MARKETING@POLYSTAR.COM M

WWW. POLYSTAR.COM

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DIGITAL IDENTITY & DATA ANALYTICS Are users' digital identities at the heart of monetising CSP data?

PLATINUM SPONSOR:

GOLD SPONSORS:

SILVER SPONSORS:

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TA L K I N G H E A D S

CSPs need to empower every user with a digital identity and enable a fully digital user lifecycle Gemini Waghmare is the founder and chief executive of UXP Systems. Here he tells George Malim that for communications service providers (CSPs) to survive and thrive in the digital services market, they need to position themselves as the broker of users’ digital identities. Doing so puts them at the heart of the digital services value chain and enables them to tap into indirect sources of revenue such as advertising and direct revenues from supplying data insights and added value to partners and customers. Their trusted relationships with customers, their physical infrastructure and their ability to handle complexity at great scale positions them well to achieve the transformation from CSPs to digital service providers (DSPs)

Gemini Waghmare: The challenge for CSPs is that they have vectored all their existing systems around the notion of a customer rather than a user

anillaPlus: CSPs used to focus on serving traditional customers that they knew only by billing account details or a specific device. How, as they enable digital users in multiple locations and using different devices, are they bringing users’ digital identities together with their traditional processes?

Gemini Waghmare: From our point of view every service is digital. In television, for example, CSPs, for years and years, simply shipped set top boxes that users would plug into their rooms and watch TV at a specific time. Now you can watch anything, at any time, on all sorts of devices – a fixed service has become digital; accessed by a digital ID.

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“ ” The need to manage the user lifecycle and what the user lifecycle has meant has been rudimentary so far

When you think about the lifecycle of digital user, you have to think about digital identity (ID). If you want to offer digital services, you have to offer a digital ID - you can’t even have a relationship with Apple, for example without one.

The challenge for CSPs is that they have vectored all their existing systems around the notion of a customer rather than a user. A customer is a billing address, a bill payer and a SIM card but, to be a digital services provider, a CSP has to deconstruct that paradigm. A user might be my children or my wife or a guest using services at my home. CSPs need to support all the users associated with an account and without moving on from the traditional concept of a customer, they can’t become a digital service provider. I’m not only talking about next generation services here, this affects all services. VP: Is this transformation as simple as CSPs asking customers to establish digital IDs?

VP: You’ve mentioned the need to manage the user lifecycle. What is the importance of that? GW: The need to manage the user lifecycle and what the user lifecycle has meant has been rudimentary so far. CSPs have required user ID for something as simple as viewing their bill and that’s it. Recently, ID usage has become a little more robust and CSPs are using digital IDs to enable users to log into services such as TV anywhere. Beyond that sort of service there hasn’t been much need to go beyond having one ID per household. Now CSPs are starting to offer more digital services such as cloud, fitness or health services and need a digital ID for every member of a household. The provider now has to identify who you are, whether you exist, what mobile device you have, whether you have an entertainment service and then they can onboard you to the service you want to use. Most CSPs can’t onboard you to a service without having a billing relationship with you but digital service providers will do that. Netflix or Box will let you come on board without you having a billing relationship with them. They allow the notion of groups and profiles and those ultimately enable monetisation of each user.

For example, on a CSP website I might use a username and password but on a mobile device I shouldn’t need to because I can be identified by the unique SIM card in my device.

VP: This will be complex and costly for CSPs to achieve. What’s the business case and how will they achieve a return on investment?

Further complexity is added because of the existing sources of truth and identifiers by which CSPs already know you. They need to federate these while maintaining the individual identities associated with each existing system. There are only two approaches to achieving that. One is to make it really difficult and customise and redefine all their existing systems. The other is to overlay their existing systems with the notion of a digital ID and begin to federate all their existing users and create a new user lifecycle.

GW: There are three facets to the business case. The first is addressing the original argument that CSPs will become only dumb pipes. All the digital service providers at the moment are non-CSPs so all the CSP is needed for is providing the pipe. If CSPs want to play in the value-added services market they must manage the digital relationship and have a digital services platform to bring all of these services together. If they don’t they will not have a role to play in digital services beyond selling capacity on their pipes.

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

GW: It’s certainly not simple. CSPs have a lot more to worry about than just a name and password and they have much more than just a digital identity of their customers. That could turn out to be valuable but it is complicated by customers having multiple IDs within their CSP such as phone number, set top box, SIM card and billing ID.

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TALKING HEADS

“”

User lifecycle management, which is our business, is what customer relationship management (CRM) was 20 years ago

The CSP owns the network so they will always play a role and, unlike a company such as Apple, they can’t be cut out of the mix. They will always play a role. There are typically one, two or three providers bringing fibre or LTE to users so why wouldn’t a consumer want to use their broadband provider as a hub for all their activities? Another advantage is the trusted relationship that CSPs have with their customers. We trust our CSPs because they have the billing relationship with us and they are local. In addition, there is more inherent trust in them about the data we give them. That trust presents a lot of value for the end user and the CSP. A final observation is that CSPs are regulated and legislated in the market a user resides in. Companies such as Google are far less regulated and, as privacy concerns increase, users are looking to the attributes that CSPs already have to secure their data.

The second business case is the monetisation of new services. If you look at how CSPs have invested in fibre, the connected home and the digital life there is an amazing opportunity for them. You currently need about ten digital IDs to access all your services but if you brought all those together there’s a value-added opportunity for CSPs to become the digital ID provider. The great thing about that approach is that CSPs would place themselves at the heart of the value chain. Finally, being at the heart of the digital value chain would mean that digital interactions all happen within a CSP’s environment and they would gather valuable user data from that. Google makes no secret that by having a relationship with a digital user it is collecting all sorts of data about them. If CSPs were to do the same it would open up a huge amount of user data insight and enable indirect monetisation models such as advertising as well as direct monetisation opportunities for the CSPs of the future. CSPs understand this opportunity and at the moment are gathering themselves and regrouping to take advantage of it. VP: Do you see CSPs becoming a hub that federates data from all the different digital services providers and other organisations in traditional sectors? Could they turn this into a significant revenue stream? www.uxpsystems.com

GW: I hope so – we’ve bet our business on it. and we think that there’s good reasons why:

VP: CSPs’ huge volumes of data, their trusted relationships with users and their status as infrastructure owners seem to be coming together to give them good prospects of becoming successful digital service providers. What will UXP Systems’ role in that be and how do you see the company developing? GW: User lifecycle management, which is our business, is what customer relationship management (CRM) was 20 years ago. At some point CSPs will look back and say to themselves can you really believe all we had was the relationship with the bill payer and the device, not everyone in the house? Internet players have forced the user lifecycle to be very robust so you interact completely digitally with them but that will help CSPs to initiate digital relationships across all users. It’s one thing to enable a single digital user relationship but it’s quite another to say here’s a platform to make it easy to plug into an ecosystem of connected cars, smart homes, entertainment, IT services and many other digital offerings. CSPs can do that and will serve as a hub for data with monetisation models attached. We’re already supporting customers such as Cable & Wireless, Rogers, Telus and CenturyLink to enable digital IDs. The CSP of the future will integrate and interact with apps like Nest to control their home or Fitbit and many, many others. CSPs can monetise a lot of this and act as the broker. We believe this is what the value chain of the future looks like but without digital ID it isn’t going to happen.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH UXP SYSTEMS 72

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ANALYST REPORT

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

Introduction

ike an old song on the radio, offering voice, text and data services has become so familiar to mobile and fixed-line customers that they take network connectivity for granted. They view getting connected and staying connected with equal footing to an electrical outlet, modern plumbing, the air we breathe and even the food we eat. For them, network connectivity is an essential part of life. Just ask anyone about the importance of social media, especially those between the ages of 12-30 Yet, when it comes to a digital lifestyle on the grand scale delivered by communications service providers (CSPs) even with the most advanced versions of LTE, the industry remains stuck in the past. Innovative proficiency has not kept pace. Technology will continue to evolve and bring us more, much more in the coming months. The challenge lies in our ability â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as a collective industry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to manage the data that will come from these services in a cost-effective manner. Network usage insights must also be used in a way that brings value to suppliers, business customers and consumers, while honouring all data privacy concerns.

CSPs, businesses and individuals are drowning in data as they struggle with how to make the most sense from it. The communications industry has yet to really move beyond just data and into a world where information derived from data can make a difference; the true information age. But, times are changing. Figure 1: Projected global mobile data traffic 2014 - 2019

The CSP data conundrum The engine creating new business opportunities and driving service innovation, as shown in Figure 1, is indeed data. Lots and lots of data. It should be no surprise that the digital economy is about data â&#x20AC;&#x201C; constant streams of it to and from customers across global networks, combined with the details that identify one customer from the next. Presently,

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

Source: Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update 2014-2019, Stratecast

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ANALYST REPORT

Many CSPs regard the vast volumes of data traversing their networks from two perspectives: the cost of carrying capacity and the competitive insight that can be gained from data usage analysis.

Figure 2: Today it is all about data and the mobile app

The unceasing growth in data volumes represents a cost – something that must be dealt with for CSPs to remain in business. Networks must continually scale up to handle more traffic. Additional spectrum is required to meet advancing customer needs. And, the business management and operations systems must address these larger data volumes, often in real-time. Analysing network usage data to derive information about customers, products, services and the business itself, is strategic for any organisation – CSP or otherwise. Gaining insight from this information yields the real pathway to business success: intelligence. Delivering the business analysis that data contains, to the right place, at the right time, defines relevance. All are core competencies of the data-driven operations, orchestration, and monetisation functions that will keep a CSP's business viable for years to come. Supporting the transport of large data volumes, and analysing customer network usage, is not an either-or situation. As data volumes rise, the cost increases; yet, so does the potential for greater intelligence and better business results. While it has been said that data ownership is the newest currency of business, and the gateway to long-term success, applying the results from CSP data analysis is the key to opening the door to smoother operations, more satisfied customers, and hopefully increased revenue.

There’s an app for that and lots of data to go with it From a customer’s perspective, everything is an app today, as shown by Figure 2. Data movement across a network can be substantial for some app types – streaming movies, self-made video, or gaming entertainment. It can also be minimal – a simple information search or a weather check. Over the next two to four years, an increased outpouring of data from new customer apps and

Source: Stratecast

services involving virtualised networks, virtual or augmented reality, 3D and 4D printing, and 5G networks, will be commonplace. These core capabilities are the basis for smart cities, smart cars, smart government services, and smart health/wellness care, to name a few. Extracting the most benefit from network and customer sources is both challenging and overwhelming for network operators and the businesses now delivering value within the global connected marketplace. Understanding what data to tag as useful, poses an equally concerning dilemma. As one can appreciate, such data volume increases place a heavy burden on all previously installed business and operations systems.

Billing data collection and processing: a hard reality check Results from Stratecast’s now annual – previously biennial – survey of global billing solution suppliers, concerning the key requirements their service provider customers place on them, is shown in Figure 3. Most of the 2015 respondents indicate that the number of usage transactions requiring collection and processing for billing purposes is much greater than 20 billion per day, which was an unheard of amount in 2011 when Stratecast first conducted this survey. In 2015, more than half (62%) of the monetisation solution suppliers in the survey noted that scaling or developing systems with processing capacity to address 50 billion or more

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transactions per day is a realistic planning objective. They believe that such processing volume will satisfy CSP business needs for the next three years, as 4G LTE networks become the dominant access medium. Figure 3: Usage transaction processing volume per day

number of transactions to process. In both cases, transaction volumes are significant.

The expanding role of purpose-built analytics for communications Before the term big data reached the peak of its industry hype a couple of years ago, CSP business management and network operations insight analysis had already delivered many solutions designed to address day-to-day customer, service, and network management concerns. These purpose-built data analysis and management functions take on many names, which are still relevant, and in fact have gained importance in certain circles inside and outside CSP operations and customer management centres.

Source: Stratecast 2015 Biannual Billing Requirements Global Market Supplier Survey

Stratecast believes that an objective of 50 billion transactions per day is realistic, however it could prove inadequate in the near future. Why? The continued deployment of LTE and evolution to LTE-A, the growth rate of user apps, and increasing consumer acceptance of mCommerce as a more secure way to make personal payments, will likely create a higher level of transaction volumes than what each category individually projects. In addition, the longer-term quest for 5G networks capable of handling 1000x greater throughput volumes and 10x–100x faster data rates, will push demand for systems to process ever higher daily transaction volumes. Presently, Stratecast is aware of two network operators that are approaching 20 billion usage transactions per day, for monetisation purposes; and at least three additional CSPs processing more than 100 billion transactions per day, for network operations needs. While equal in importance and throughput capacity requirements, transaction volumes for the monetisation and operations processes are different. Network operations teams need to see every transaction from every part of the network – hence the 100+ billion level. The monetisation processes are concerned with transactions that relate to measurable, accountable, and chargeable usage, which often means the aggregation of multiple records, and thus a lower

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

In the past, installed operations and business support systems focused on internal network and operations needs according to a specific design purpose. These included, for example, network fault monitoring, billing mediation, customer experience management, and revenue assurance. These systems each involve a data collection and analysis function. However, little or no effort was made back then to deploy a common data collection and analysis model that could be shared among multiple systems and processes. Even today, a network fault management solution monitors for operational issues tied to network elements, network nodes, and network databases. It is completely self-contained. It does not look at the performance management or service management functions – so closely related to fault management – because a fault management system does not collect the type of data needed to support performance or service management. Integrated network fault, network performance, and customer device monitoring solutions are now available, but only from a select number of suppliers, some of which combine network and customer data to deliver customer-centric insight. A concerted effort is underway among service assurance and test and measurement suppliers to combine these capabilities and bridge the gaps between network management, service management and analytics. As another example, billing mediation was originally designed to address the data collection, aggregation, and correlation needs

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ANALYST REPORT

of the billing process and nothing else. Then, approximately four years ago when the common data analysis story was first voiced, the idea of using billing data for multiple business purposes started to gain traction. Some CSPs have recognised the importance of multi-function solutions as a means to reduce operating costs, improve data integrity, and to form the foundation upon which advanced customer services can be supported. In yet a third example, working with network usage data and customer details to understand the customer experience, while not a new topic for Stratecast, has been labeled by some as the network-facing part of customer experience management, also known as customer service assurance (CSA). CSA covers a broad range of customer, network, and business management functions. CSA is a growing aspect of new technology trials, management of existing services, and in the validation of key operational parameters tied to new service offerings. CSA measurements can take on many forms and address multiple business needs. For example, CSA is becoming a major factor in the determination of quality of service (QoS) levels with certain customer-sensitive offerings. Figure 4: CSP business, operations, and customer experience data analysis processes

Source: Stratecast

Regardless of what CSP network operations, billing, or customer experience management functions are called today, as shown in Figure 4, there is growing evidence that the CSP

data analysis processes can best benefit from using a common data collection and analysis approach. Using a single platform, for example, rather than separate solution silos, can minimise operating costs, and deliver an enhanced customer experience by bringing cross-functional awareness to CSP work processes. Bringing the business, network operations and customer experience processes together is not a new requirement. However, the number of use cases today that are tied to integrated use of network and customer data is rapidly climbing, and quickly becoming the de facto approach to endto-end customer management. Responding to customer solution offering updates and relaying service change needs to partners, must be addressed at market speed. CSPs are rapidly realizing the value of real-time purpose-built data analytics and its importance to business success.

Data analysis brings new business models: prepaid time-based data access Customers look for an easier way whenever challenged by pricing or usage complexity. For example, prepaid customers in the Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, and African regions continue to seek out alternatives to the megabyte mobile data plans now provided by network operators in these markets. In addition, international travellers are fixated on the high price of data usage while roaming. Many of them, if not most, turn off their data services to avoid paying inflated roaming charges. While there are numerous externally-facing partner and customer management needs as just described, there are also countless internal business processes CSPs must not overlook. Many of these challenges, especially those involving the use of data to generate new revenue opportunities, can be addressed with purpose-built analytical tools and out-of-the-box thinking. For example, why is everybody so concerned with the technology-driven and data-focused perspective of today's digital society? One of the answers lies with data-intensive service affordability. While customers in mature markets may be engaged with postpaid, multi-gigabyte mobile data plans that often exceed US$150 per month, there are billions of people in many global

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

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markets that cannot afford such levels of spend. In the Philippines, which is a market with more than 90% prepaid customers, mobile data is not mainstream because customers have a small amount of disposable income, and always look for free Wi-Fi before turning on their mobile data. Customers in other geographies – and not just in emerging markets or while roaming – reach for Wi-Fi first, as a way to minimise their chance of overshooting their allowable data plan limits. Several questions come to mind with this observed customer behaviour, namely: • How will customers globally benefit from data-bloated new technologies such as 3D printing and virtual reality that are becoming mainstream for some businesses? • How will business customers pay for the new service offerings that are sure to come with these expansive technologies? • Will consumers pay for the bandwidth needed to make personal usage of 3D printed materials a viable option, especially if their only means of internet access is a mobile device? • If 5G makes as big a difference in the way data passes across the radio access network (RAN), as 4G did within the 3G world, how will such an increase in data volume be accounted for and billed so as to not overpower the budgets of even the most significant postpaid data users? • Will prepaid users be taken out of the data monetization and service experience equation altogether? The answers to these questions and others are what will power new innovation amongst data monetisation suppliers and define business models yet to make a mark by CSPs the world over. As a way to address the mobile data access affordability problem, consider for a moment the concept of time-based mobile data access. Time-based mobile data involves a business approach that customers have been trained to understand for years: pay for minutes of use. Shown in Figure 5, time-based mobile data means that a customer can purchase app-specific, Website-specific, group bundles, or full internet access in measures of time rather than megabytes or gigabytes to be consumed. Payments are prepaid, and usage is continuously metered to show the customer how much time is remaining for each data-access package followed by the use of policy to administer usage constraints.

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

Figure 5: Hypothetical example of time-based mobile broadband access

Source: Stratecast

Is time-based mobile data a good strategy and positive revenue-generating approach for the small number of CSPs that have engaged in it already? Only time will tell, however, when this approach was first executed in the Philippines more than a year ago, 3G mobile data traffic went from a trickle to more than 10 million users in less than 12 months. To be successful with time-based data access service plans, an organisation must apply a good amount of effort towards network data usage analysis to understand the cost in traffic carrying capacity verses the revenue needed to justify these costs. Once pricing definitions are determined, CSPs need to be aware that what works in one market or region, may or may not be profitable in another. Policy-enabled real-time charging, and insights from CSP network data traffic, can now be combined to create a new level of personalised experience, based on mobile data consumption pricing. This is much different, and requires a lot more usage analysis than traditional megabyte/gigabyte pricing strategies. While not the answer in all markets and for all customers, providing mobile data in terms that are more easily understandable by customers makes good business sense, if the new pricing plans meet reasonably-defined CSP profitability requirements.

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ANALYST REPORT

Data analysis and unlocking the value of customer behaviour Data analysis is playing a larger role with some CSPs, as they grasp the significance of real-time customer interaction. But, there is still a long way to go. Customers today are used to dealing with problem resolution and decision making at internet speed, propelled by the omni-channel marketing push of the retail industry. With this mindset, CSPs are in various stages of rising to customer demand mostly through self-care service options. But, when it comes to technology issues or service concerns, customers want action and immediate problem resolution. For example, how do each of the following realworld use cases play out from a customer’s usage and billing perspective? • What do customers do if they experience network compatibility trouble with a recently purchased device? • What if a customer has problems with a device OS upgrade? • What about a customer that is suddenly unable to access the internet or a certain app that previously worked? • If the network detects a malware intrusion from a potentially infected customer device and locks out the customer account or just the device, how is the customer notified and what steps can the customer take to resolve such issues? • Most importantly, how are customers informed about data usage compared with postpaid usage plan caps or prepaid authorisation limits? Without real-time notification of usage, for example, postpaid customers can easily exceed a data plan limit. Some CSPs still allow the customer to continue usage when this condition happens, but at a premium rate with no notification. In other situations, mobile roaming activates premium charges per data volume consumed. In both cases, the result is bill shock and customer complaints. What if a postpaid customer runs out of data usage quota before the start of his or her next billing cycle? For CSPs in many parts of the world, postpaid customers are rare. A prepaid SIM is the norm rather than the exception. So, when a postpaid customer in these regions meets or exceeds a data plan limit before the billing cycle is up, many CSPs extend additional data volume by automatically bumping up the

customer to the next usage tier, and then sending a notification of both the data usage limit increase and corresponding additional charges that now apply. But, this practice is not universal, especially in markets where the majority of mobile customers are postpaid users; and, until very recently, the previously described bill shock situation in these regions has been the norm rather than the exception. A business critical and potentially revenue-generating opportunity for CSPs globally lies with immediate and actionable impact analysis, to understand and predict customer behaviour based on network usage or billing record data. Then, with that insight, deliver an enticement to only the affected customers as a token of added value and perceived concern about them individually. Recently, a network operator using a purpose-built data analysis toolset enabled its marketing-level analysts, rather than IT or data science specialists, to look for demographic-specific customer usage changes in network access and service usage. Through a series of steps, this organisation identified approximately 15,000 customers out of more than 30 million that were voluntarily curtailing the use of mobile data services the last three days prior to the automatic renewal of their monthly postpaid billing cycle. These customers were more concerned about data overage charges – when they exceeded the contract limits of their monthly data volume allotment – than with an always connected lifestyle. These customers had decided that paying a higher data usage amount to stay connected was not equitable enough for continuous access of a popular social media application. Most of them reverted to the free Wi-Fi route. The remedy to this situation was early CSP detection of such behaviour and then a personalised offer to top-up their data plan for access only to the social media app of most importance until the billing cycle refreshed. This action resulted in a new avenue of revenue for the CSP with an almost 20% take rate by the customers who received the top-up offer. This new service offering, as an added benefit for the CSP, significantly improved the experience of the affected customers.

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

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Conclusion Network operators have been collecting, sorting, aggregating and correlating customer usage data to address several internal business operations and monetisation needs for years. All of them have recently come to an understanding of the power of gaining insight into their customer base, and in delivering the right level of anonymised customer awareness for their partners. Customers are the beneficiaries of this process as mobile digital content, mobile cloud-based apps, and even advertising becomes more individually focused around the things that matter most to them. Indeed, the era of personalisation is not just about mobile devices, connected wearables, or even smarter daily services associated with where a person lives and how they travel. The era of personal data collection by trusted parties is making life a better experience, but it also comes with a challenge and a price. Central to the world of personalisation is real-time data analysis and usage awareness. Real-time has one meaning if applied to the connected car, where low latency and highvolume data exchange is critical. Real-time has a different meaning when making an individualised pricing plan offer available for anyone using a particular application, and whose mobile tiered data plan is about to exceed a usage limit. Both real-time situations are important to those involved. Delivering the right data at the right time is the challenge, as contextual awareness now plays a solid role in data usage analysis.

About Stratecast Stratecast collaborates with its clients to reach smart business decisions in the rapidly evolving and hypercompetitive Information and Communications Technology markets. Using a mix of action-oriented subscription research and customised consulting engagements, Stratecast delivers knowledge and perspective that is only

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

The reward is significant to CSPs that use customer insight analysis to create competitive advantage through delivery of service capabilities with high customer appeal. Harnessing customer data in a proper and secure manner is the key to business success, customer satisfaction, and a means for curbing unnecessary regulation. The price for managing customer data requires CSPs to transform their business processes to a real-time operating environment. The price includes higher standards for keeping data secure, so as to keep customer trust high. The price also means that realtime customer usage data collection and analysis must be tied to a real-time charging and billing solution, to get the added benefit that customers hope for and CSPs dream about. A new era of customer insight analysis and monetisation strategy is now unfolding. The challenge comes to those organisations that can get the real-time customer data collection, charging, and billing process right. Right for the customer, with enticing contextual service offers while keeping their data secure; and right for the CSP, with increasing revenue from an ongoing supply of new service offerings. Some organisations are moving swiftly, while many others are still waiting to engage with the right supplier that can make real-time data collection, analysis, and charging a reality. The real question is: what side of the fence is your organisation on, both now and a few months from now? Straddling the fence is no longer an option, as competitive opportunities that only last for hours, or possibly minutes, are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

attainable through years of real-world experience in an industry where customers are collaborators; todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s partners are tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s competitors; and agility and innovation are essential elements for success. Contact your Stratecast account executive to engage our experience to assist you in attaining your growth objectives. www.stratecast.com

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary Founded

1993

Beijing, China

Employees

Over 14,000

Revenue

Undisclosed

Customers

China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, AIS (Thailand), Zong (Pakistan), U Mobile, Nepal Telecom, Hello Nepal, the Telenor group and more.

Partnerships

Member of TM Forum and the NGMN Alliance.

Financial Status

Privately held

BSS products with integrated analytics Veris

The company’s BSS solution suite, Veris, includes the core products of billing, customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI). • Veris Billing – The modular system provides end-to-end billing capabilities including mediation, real-time rating and charging, policy management, interconnect and settlement, and partner management, multiple levels of convergence such as network, service, payment, and integrated purpose-built analytics capabilities. Its real-time self service capabilities enable innovative concepts like transferring resources to friends, transforming spare resources into others, and customising monthly plans. • Veris CRM – This system supports omnichannel interaction with customers – in store, online, over the phone, via email, via social media, or through a CSP-branded self-help app. AsiaInfo’s SVT (Single Version of the Truth) architecture means all channels share the same workflow and data, to allow customers to start in one channel and finish in another seamlessly. • Veris BI – A suite of business intelligence software products for the telecoms industry, it provides real-time operational and strategic insights, and is built to support big data initiatives. Veris BI processes disparate structured and unstructured data, to produce actionable intelligence. According to AsiaInfo, the insights gained from Veris BI enable CSPs to improve customer experience, boost revenue, and cut costs.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures Using some of the world’s largest CSPs in China as a proving ground, AsiaInfo has found success with its Veris suite of BSS in other parts of Asia, and more recently, in Europe as well. What sets apart this suite from other solution offerings is the tight integration that Veris BI has with the rest of the suite, particularly with Veris Billing. Numerous functionality modules from the Veris BI suite can be plugged together to allow real-time analysis of customer usage behaviour, allowing CSPs to understand their customers’ context better, increase customer satisfaction and revenue and reduce costs.

Company summary Founded HQ Employees Revenue Customers

Partnerships Financial Status

1985 Quebec City, Quebec, Canada Approximately 1,500 US$222 million Global customer base includes Tier 1 and 2 wireline CSPs, wireless operators, cable MSOs, network solution vendors, enterprise LAN/WAN, education and research, and government, aerospace and defence. MEF, CENGN, Ciena Blue Orbit Ecosystem, HPE OPEN NFV Ecosystem, ALU Cloudband Ecosystem Public

Telecoms test and service assurance solutions Test and measurement

With myriad field and lab instruments designed for fixed and mobile networks, EXFO streamlines test and monitoring cycles and makes the transition to new technologies both simpler and faster. Optical – A wide, range of fibre test and characterisation solutions: from connector inspection kits, OTDRs and iOLM, up to dispersion and optical spectrum analysers. Transport and Datacom – Solutions covering SONET/SDH, OTN, Ethernet and converged multiservice networks up to 100G. Access – Solutions for deploying high-speed, triple-play services in the last mile: wideband copper, xDSL, VDSL2 bonding and vectoring, VoIP, data and IPTV. Performance Analysis – 4G/LTE network simulators, dedicated benchtops and modular platforms for lab optical, transport and datacom testing.

Service assurance Service, subscriber and network analytics; active and analytics probing; passive probing and device agents. EXFO provides an end-to-end view into the subscriber experience (E2E SX) based on the level of experience measured, analysed and reported from subscriber, service and network perspectives. Key solutions include EXFO Xtract open real-time analytics platform.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures EXFO empowers CSPs and network solution vendors to improve the performance of their networks, and the service experience of their subscribers, by designing intelligent, automated and cloud-based test and monitoring solutions. EXFO also delivers contextually relevant analytics. EXFO couples these capabilities with an end-to-end view of the service experience. EXFO’s inherent expertise, acquired over 30 years, encompasses recent technologies such as voice over LTE (VoLTE) and network functions virtualisation (NFV). This experience enables the company to transform data into actionable intelligence for improving the end-to-end service experience. EXFO’s approach is to design: data collectors, intelligent applications that make collection simple for CSPs, and the analytics to bring it all together. EXFO moves CSPs forward with solutions to cover the entire loop from service turn-up to the subscriber’s device and back. VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

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COMPANY PROFILES

Profile by VanillaPlus

Company summary

Founded

1997

Founded

1983

Warrington, United Kingdom

Stockholm, Sweden

Employees

Undisclosed

Employees

170

Revenue

Undisclosed

Revenue

Undisclosed

Customers

Customer base includes CSPs, DSPs and MVNOs in Europe. Key customers include: ACN, BT, Dixons Carphone, eir, iD Mobile, Telefónica UK and TalkTalk.

Customers

More than 110 CSP customers in more than 50 countries for CEM, service assurance and network monitoring. Selected customers include: TeliaSonera, Telenor, Tele2, Singtel, Telefónica, Belgacom, T-Mobile, Bell and Three.

Financial status

Privately held

Partnerships

Financial Status

Technology partners include: Brightstar, Bottomline Technologies, Equifax, Getronics, IBM, MasterCard, MATRIXX, 20:20 Mobile, Oracle, Red Hat and Tech Mahindra. Privately held

Data analytics credentials and products Polystar helps CSPs to unlock the value of big data and monetise assets more effectively through extracting valuable analytics data points and insights from the vast volumes of user and network data that CSPs generate and store.

Revenue management products with associated analytics MDS Customer Management Platform (CMP)

MDS CMP is a cloud-based, real-time convergent billing and customer management solution that features rating and charging and policy, fulfillment capabilities, integrated analytics, and self-care. CMP addresses both the enterprise and consumer market.

The company delivers solutions that link network analytics with the user experience at CSPs. The company’s systems include real-time network monitoring, as well as subscriber and marketing analytics solutions. Polystar’s tools help CSPs to understand their networks and customers better or help marketing teams to design personalised, targeted offers in order to deliver the best possible customer experience.

Convergent across networks, services, and payment methods, CMP allows service providers to combine all their billing needs on a single platform. Multi-dimensional rating capabilities support custom price plans, flexible bundles, and discounts.

Polystar offers flexible deployment models and its solutions can be rolled out as standalone analytics systems with their own interface or integrated into big data systems from other providers. Either approach enables Polystar to deliver rich insights into customer and network behaviour.

CMP’s customer management capabilities provide a full view of customers and their services, improving customer care and the customer experience. Integrated business analytics provide a deeper understanding of customers ensuring a better experience, while reducing costs. Embedded analytics within CMP helps to anticipate and deliver the services that customers want most.

Network Insight

Real-time network analytics enables CSPs to prevent churn, retain high-value and strategic customers and improve overall customer satisfaction by delivering the best customer experience through outstanding network performance and quality.

Customer Insight

Customer Insight solutions help CSPs to deliver a superior service experience, understand their customers better, reduce churn, and improve operational performance.

CMP features multi-tenancy to support multiple MVNOs or to allow a provider to launch its existing brands into new verticals.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures MDS CMP is entirely cloud-based, designed for enterprises and MVNOs and to be complementary to a CSP’s existing infrastructure. This gives the carrier an ability to transform into a digital service provider with reduced risk. The solution allows CSPs to enter new markets rapidly, try out new business models, and offer new products and services, quickly, without upfront costs for infrastructure and lengthy implementation cycles. The company’s managed services combined with its size and geographic focus has created an enviable reputation for successful delivery of projects. The company’s strategy for focusing on MVNOs and the B2B market accelerating CSPs to move into the digital services, appears to be paying off.

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

Key differentiation Polystar’s primary differentiation is that, uniquely, it offers support for all network technologies in a single solution, from 2G to 4G and VoLTE, which enables streamlined usage across network types. The company’s solutions for network and customer insights are integrated, so a seamless drill-down can be performed.

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COMPANY PROFILES

Company summary

Founded

1996

Founded

2011

Vienna, Virginia, United States

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Employees

160

Employees

90+

Revenue

Undisclosed

Revenue

Undisclosed

Customers

Global customer base includes Tier 1 CSPs and OTT providers in Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Key customers are: América Móvil, AT&T, Deutsche Telecom, Twillio, Sprint, Switchco, Telefónica and Verizon

Customers

Customer base includes CSPs in North America, EMEA and Latin America. Key customers include: Telus, Rogers Communications, CenturyLink, Cable & Wireless Communications and Cable Bahamas.

Partnerships

Extensive partner ecosystem with 40+ vendors including: Ericsson, Cisco, ThinkAnalytics, Nokia, Genband, Nest, Fitbit and Aria Systems.

Financial Status

Privately held

Partnerships

The Telarix Technology Alliance Partner Programme includes: Amdocs, Arptel, Ascom, IceHook, NxtGn, PurgeFraud and XConnect

Financial Status

Privately held

Identity driven service enablement platform Revenue management solutions with purpose-built analytics Telarix iXTools

Telarix iXLink

The company’s solutions focus on wholesale revenue management. iXTools covers all areas of interconnect business including: • Billing, routing and provisioning • Trading, settlement and dispute management • Traffic and quality management • Bilateral and carrier agreement management • A comprehensive fraud defense suite • In-depth business intelligence and analytics iXLink is an information exchange platform that enables CSPs to automate the exchange of business documents for the interconnect processes and to electronically share documents, such as pricing quotes, rate and dial code changes, numbering plans, invoices, and declarations. iXLink has over 4,000 members with 40 million transactions monthly.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures Telarix addresses what it calls Interconnect Business Optimisation, which aims for more efficient carrier-to-carrier relationships through its portfolio of wholesale solutions and associated analytics capabilities. iXTools can be a pre-integrated suite or delivered as standalone modules. The iXLink exchange service allows members to apply business rules that are specific to each partner and/or service to validate transactions, meet internal business objectives, and capture errors so that the sender can be notified immediately. Telarix is a market leader within the wholesale revenue management domain, though it continues to face competitive pressure from other suppliers and clearinghouses.

MINT Digital Experience Engine managing

The MINT Digital Experience Engine works with existing billing, customer care, and identify management systems. It is an overlay for customer relationships beyond the billing account. MINT enables the creation of user hierarchies that provide users delegated access to manage their specific set of individual, shared, or cloud-based services. MINT enables CSPs to manage the digital lifecycle of every user consuming services – not just the account holder responsible for the bill. By overlaying existing legacy systems, the solution expands the possibilities of service offerings and business models; adding user-centric business processes to simplify user access journeys, unify services around users, and individually personalise the service experience. Usage data is powerful for CSPs, however most activity is logged at the household or device level. With MINT usage data is logged at the individual user level. This user data can then feed personalisation and recommendation engines, targeted advertising, analytics and campaign management systems to deliver fully personalised user experiences while maximising the monetisation of a service. MINT also automates the onboarding and registration of devices by using similar processes, including automated device association and username-driven registration processes, largely eliminating manual legacy processes and complex account numbers or unique device identifiers.

Key differentiation and competitive pressures UXP Systems, and its MINT Digital Experience Engine, allows CSPs to move beyond the limitations of their legacy systems and the billing relationship, to provide individual-user-centric service personalisation. User-specific usage data provides more value to CSPs; by deepening CSP understanding of individual users when multiple users share an account. The company has created a new software category, so competition is limited at this point; making UXP Systems a company to watch in the months ahead. 82

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

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DIRECTORY 2016

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DIRECTORY 2016

Amdocs

AsiaInfo

www.amdocs.com Tel: +1 314 212 7000

www.asiainfo.com

Amdocs is a market leader in customer experience software solutions and services for the world’s largest communications, entertainment and media service providers. Its portfolio powers The New World of Customer Experience, where a wide array of innovative and personalised services are delivered seamlessly to end users, regardless of device or network. Amdocs solutions, which include BSS, OSS, network control and optimisation, coupled with professional and managed services, have accelerated business value for its customers by streamlining complex operating environments, reducing costs and speeding time to market for new products and services. Amdocs Delivery The Amdocs Delivery group has been supporting service providers for over three decades, with thousands of delivery experts across the globe, achieving a delivery success rate of over 95%. By comprehensively sidestepping common obstacles and pain points, Amdocs Delivery utilises its tried-and-tested best practices blueprint to dramatically reduce the risks associated with delivery implementations. • Solution Design – Clear management of every stage of the project lifecycle • Customisation & Implementation – Delivery on configuration and development needs • Infrastructure Services – From system planning and design, to implementation and deployment • Data Services – From migrating legacy system data, to analysing business intelligence data • Deployment & Testing – Complete end-to-end support until the new system is fully operational Sectors: Data Management: Data Analysis Product & Service Management: Order Management | Product Lifecycle Management | Service Adoption Management

Founded in 1993, AsiaInfo is a leading provider of internet-based systems and software to the telecoms industry serving over a billion customers worldwide. Headquartered in Beijing, we employ more than 14,000 professionals worldwide. AsiaInfo is a privately owned company. AsiaInfo provides a full suite of business support systems to solve the business challenges of the future. Our Veris product suite allows AsiaInfo to offer billing, customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI) and real-time intelligence (RTI) based on big data analysis, as well as over-the-top (OTT) and cross-vertical collaboration solutions. Veris is the cornerstone of AsiaInfo’s growing ecosystem to support the transformation to the business internet creating internet-based systems and software that will solve the business challenges of the future. Sectors: Billing & Charging: Billing & Customer Care | Billing (Convergent Pre& Post-paid) | Billing (Interconnect & Wholesale) | Billing (Retail) | Billing (Utility) | eBilling, ePayment & ePresentment | Mediation & Collection Business Intelligence: Accounting, Recording & Management | Behaviour Analytics | Billing Analysis | Business Analysis & Intelligence | Business Process Optimisation | Customer Analysis | Personalisation Customer Care: Contact Centres & Hubs | Customer Experience Management | Customer Interaction Management | Customer Lifecycle Management | Customer Relationship Management | Loyalty & Churn Management Partner Management: Partner Relationship Management | Partner Settlement Revenue Management: Cost & Debt Control | Credit | Fraud Control & Prevention | Revenue Analytics | Revenue Assurance | Revenue Management | Risk Management | Roaming Clearing & Settlement | Product & Service Management: Mobile Device Management | Number Portability | Order Management | Product Catalogue | Product Lifecycle Management Services & Platforms: Cloud Computing Other: Machine to Machine (M2M) | Mobile Virtual Network Enablers | Mobile Virtual Network Operators | Outsourcing | PCC - Policy Control and Charging | Policy Management

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arvatofinance.com

Brighterion

brighterion.com

ACS

acsdallas.com

Ascom Group

ascom.com

BroadHop

broadhop.com

Actix

actix.com

Aspect Software, Inc

aspect.com

BroadVision

broadvision.com

Adapt

adaptplc.com

Aspiro

aspiro.com

business.bt.com

Adare

adare.com

Astellia

astellia.com

Business Logic Systems

businesslogicsystems.com

Aepona

aepona.com

ATDI SA

atdi.com

Capgemini

capgemini.com

Affiniti

affiniti.com

ATIO

atio.com

Casewise

casewise.com

Aicent

aicent.net

Atlas Interactive Germany

atlasinteractivegroup.de

CA Technologies

ca.com

Airwide Solutions

airwidesolutions.com

Atos Origin

atosorigin.com

CBOSS Corporation

cbossgroup.com

Aktavara

aktavara.se

Audilog Groupe Ericsson

audilog.com

CellVision AS

cellvision.com

averox.com

Centile

centile.com

Aladdin Knowledge Systems Co.

aladdin.com

Averox

Albany Software

albany.co.uk

Azoft (a division of DonRiver, Inc) azoft.com

Ceragon Networks

ceragon.com

Alcatel-Lucent

alcatel-lucent.com

Barcoding, Inc

barcoding.com

Cerillion

cerillion.com

Allot Communications

allot.com

BaseN

basen.net

CGI

cgi.com

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DIRECTORY 2016 interface to provide a complete Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) billing application for the next generation of digital and non-digital services.

CENX

cenx.com Tel: +1 613.569.3644 CENX transforms network big data into real-time actionable intelligence. We accelerate end-to-end operations by harnessing dynamic analytics and web-scale computing to visualise, manage and assure data services across multi-vendor, SDN and NFV networks. Our software solutions are deployed by the largest, most innovative service providers worldwide. Sectors: Business Intelligence: Business Analysis & Intelligence Data Management: Data Analysis Network Management: Network & Service Test & Measurement | Network Performance Management Revenue Management: Revenue Assurance Product & Service Management: Product Lifecycle Management | Service Assurance Services & Platforms: Cloud Computing Other: Machine to Machine (M2M)

Sectors: Billing & Charging: Billing (Utility) | Billing & Customer Care | Billing (Convergent Pre- & Post-paid) | Billing (Interconnect & Wholesale) | Billing (Retail) | Mediation & Collection Customer Care: Customer Relationship Management Partner Management: Partner Relationship Management | Partner Settlement Revenue Management: Credit | Cost & Debt Control | Revenue Management | Roaming Clearing & Settlement Product & Service Management: Order Management | Product Catalogue Services & Platforms: Cloud Computing Other: Machine to Machine (M2M) | PCC - Policy Control and Charging

Codix

www.codix.eu Tel: +33 4 89 87 77 77 CODIX provides worldwide the iMX solution that supports A/R and/or dunning activities for both retail and corporate. The all-in-one eventdriven software solution, integrates with the existing billing and CRM systems, providing the most advanced business functionalities, native integration of all tools needed to improve the global productivity: Extranet, telephony, imaging, decisional environment and others. Flexible and powerful with its Expert System business rules real-time management, iMX is multi-entities, multi-lingual and multi-currency.

Cerillion

www.cerillion.com Tel: +44 20 7927 6000 Cerillion is a leading provider of billing, charging and customer management systems with more than 20 yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experience delivering its solutions across a broad range of industries including the telecommunications, finance, utilities and transportation sectors. These are used to price and bill subscriptions and variable usage for wholesale, retail and white label services; B2B and B2C offerings and multi-country service provider portfolios. Cerillion Skyline combines this heritage of providing high performance billing and transaction processing engines with an intuitive online user

The target of implementing the iMX leading software solution is not only to reduce the collection costs and risks, but also to generate additional revenue from the collection process managing in very precise and automated manner the collection strategies on large volumes. iMX handles also third parties collection and legal. The Expert System reacts and executes the business knowledge on any event, positioning tasks, raising alerts, sending emails, SMS and others. Expert System rules are managed dynamically through a graphical tool by business teams. Being multi-entity, iMX allows centralising the collection on a group level, ensuring better risk monitoring and efficiency.

Company

Website

Company

Website

Company

Website

Check Point Software

checkpoint.com

Continuous Computing

ccpu.com

DNS

dns.co.uk

Convergys

convergys.com

DragonWave

dragonwaveinc.com

Technologies Ltd Ciena

ciena.com

CopperEye

coppereye.com

EastWind

eastwind.ru

Ciqual

ciqual.com

Cordys

cordys.com

Easynet

easynet.com

Cisco

cisco.com

Creanord Ltd

creanord.com

ECI Telecom

ecitele.com

Citrix

citrix.com

CreditCall

creditcall.com

ECT - Telecom

ect-telecoms.com

Clarity Integration Ltd

clarity-integration.com

CRM Technologies

crmtechnologies.com

eGain

egain.com

Classifeye

classifeye.com

CSG International

csgi.com

Elitecore Technologies Ltd

elitecore.com

Clearswift

clearswift.com

CSR

csr.com

Eltel Networks

eltelnetworks.com

Comarch AS

comarch.com/telecommunications

CTI Group

ctigroup.com

EMC Ionix

emc.com

CommScope

commscope.com

Current Analysis

currentanalysis.com

Emida

emida.net

CommSolv

commsolv.com

Customer Value Partners

cvpcorp.com

Empirix, Inc

empirix.com

CommuniGate Systems

communigate.com

cVidya Networks

cvidya.com

empolis arvato

empolis.com

Communications Fraud

cfca.org

CyberSource

cybersource.com

End2End

end2end.net

Control Assoc

Cycle30

cycle30.com

Endace Ltd

endace.com

Comptel Corporation

comptel.com

Devoteam

devoteam.com

ENTEREST GmbH

enterest.eu

Computaris

computaris.com

Data Track Technology PLC

datatrackplc.com

Entuity

entuity.com

Compuware

compuware.com

Dataflow Communications Ltd

dataflow.net

Envivio

envivio.com

Comsearch (a Commscope co.)

comsearch.com

deCarta, Inc

decarta.com

Equinox IS

equinoxis.com

Comviva

comviva.com

Dialogic Corporation

dialogic.com

Ergon

ergon.ch/en/telecom

Condico

condicomobile.com

Diginotar

diginotar.com

Ericsson

ericsson.com

Connectiva Systems, Inc

connectivasystems.com

Digital Fuel Technologies, Inc

digitalfuel.com

eServGlobal

eservgobal.com

Consona CRM

consona.com

DigitalRoute

digitalroute.com

ESKADENIA Software

eskadenia.com

Consult-Hyperion

chyp.com

Dimension Data

dimensiondata.com

ETI Software Solutions, Inc

etisoftware.com

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DIRECTORY 2016 Thanks to its 450 staff, CODIX delivers turnkey systems providing implementation and customisation services to ensure complete and total coverage of the client needs, this on fixed price/fixed time basis. Sectors: Other: PCC - Policy Control and Charging

EXFO

www.exfo.com Tel: +1 4 18 683 0913 Networks are evolving, becoming software-centric, increasingly automated, more virtualised and much more complex. Communications service providers (CSPs) and network solution vendors must adapt rapidly. Despite these evolutionary changes at the provider level, subscribers expect, demand and deserve to continue to enjoy excellent quality of experience.

Comptel Corporation www.comptel.com Tel: +358 9 7001131

Life is about digital moments. Comptel perfects these by transforming how you serve, meet and respond to the needs of Generation Cloud customers. Our solutions allow you to innovate rich communications services instantly, master the orchestration of service and order flows, capture data-in-motion and refine your decision-making. We apply intelligence to reduce friction in your business. Comptel has enabled the delivery of digital and communications services to more than 1 billion people. Every day, we care for more than 20% of all mobile usage data. Nearly 300 service providers across 90 countries have trusted us to perfect customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; digital moments. Sectors: Billing & Charging: Mediation & Collection Business Intelligence: Accounting, Recording & Management | Behaviour Analytics | Customer Analysis Data Management: Data Analysis Network Management: Inventory, Asset & Element Management Product & Service Management: Order Management | Product Catalogue | Product Lifecycle Management Services & Platforms: 4G, LTE & WiMAX | Backhaul Management | Cloud Computing Other: Machine to Machine (M2M)

Company

EXFO empowers CSPs to continually improve the overall performance of their networks, and ultimately the service experience of their subscribers by designing intelligent, automated, cloud-based test and monitoring solutions, as well as contextually relevant analytics What makes EXFO unique is that we couple the above with a comprehensive end-to-end view of service experience. Our inherent expertise, acquired over 30 years in the industry, encompasses recent technologies such as voice over LTE (VoLTE) and network functions virtualisation (NFV). That expertise enables us to transform data generated by our solutions into knowledge about end-to-end service experience that is actionable and meaningful to our customers. EXFOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach is to design: data collectors, intelligent applications to make that collection simple for CSPs, and finally the analytics to bring it all together. The result is that our customers are provided with precise and actionable intelligence about subscriber experience. Sectors: Product & Service Management: Service Adoption Management | Service Assurance

Website

Company

Website

Company

Website

EuroMACC Ltd

euromacc.com

Genesys (an Alcatel-Lucent co.)

genesyslab.com

Infonova

infonova.at

Eurotime Solutions Ltd

eurotimesolutions.co.uk

Gensym (a Versata Enterprises co.) gensym.com

Infor

infor.co.uk

Evidian (a Groupe Bull co.)

evidian.com

GeoCentric

geocentric.com

Informa Telecoms & Media

informatm.com

Evistel

evistel.com

Getronics NV

getronics.com

Informatica Corp

informatica.com

Evolved Intelligence Ltd

evolved-intelligence.com

Gintel

gintel.com

Information Engineers

idest.co.uk

Evolving Systems

evolving.com

GIPS Group

gips.net

Infosys Technologies

infosys.com

Excentis

excentis.com

Global 360, Inc

global360.com

InfoVista

infovista.com

EXFO

exfo.com

Google

google.com

Ingenico

ingenico.com

Experian

experianplc.com

GRUPO DELAWARE

grupodelaware.com

Ingres Corp

ingres.com

Experian Payments

experianpayments.com

GSMA

gsma.com

Inline Telecom Solutions

inlinetelecom.ru

EyeBill Interactive Solutions

eyebill.net

Harris Stratex Networks

harrisstratex.com

InnoPath Software

innopath.com

F5 Networks

f5.com

hp.com

Innopay

innopay.com

FICO

fico.com

Horsebridge Networks

horsebridge.net

Integralis AG

integralis.com

FIQAS Software BV

fiqas.nl

Huawei

huawei.com

Integration Consortium

integrationconsortium.org

Fiserv

fiserv.com

i-conX solutions Ltd

iconxsolutions.com

Inteligentis

inteligentis.com

Flash Networks

flashnetworks.com

i2 (a Silver Lake Sumeru co.)

i2.co.uk

Intelliden, Inc.

intelliden.com

Fluke Networks, Inc

flukenetworks.com

IBM Corp

ibm.com

Interactive Intelligence, Inc

inin.com

FML

fmlsolutions.com

ICare

icare.it

International Turnkey

its.ws

FROX communication

frox.com

Identify Networks

identifygroup.co.uk

Systems (ITS)

FTS

fts-soft.com

IIR Telecoms & Technology

iir-telecoms.com

Intersec

intersec.com

Gemalto

gemalto.com

ILOG

ilog.com

InterSystems Corp

intersystems.com

GENBAND

genband.com

Incognito Software

incognito.com

INTRACOM TELECOM

intracom-telecom.com

generationE Technologies

generationetech.com

Indra Sistemas

indra.es

Invivo

invivosoft.com

Info Directions

infodirections.com

iPass

ipass.com

Generic Software Consultants Ltd generic-software.com

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DIRECTORY 2016 Analysing every transaction from a business standpoint, FTS offers end-to-end and add-on telecoms billing, charging, policy control and payment solutions to customers worldwide, and services both growing and major providers. FTS implements solutions, including convergent billing platform installations, in mobile, wireline, broadband, MVNO/E, payments, e-commerce, M2M, mobile money, cable, cloud and content markets. FTS’ solutions dramatically lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) for telecoms and content service providers.

Flytxt

www.flytxt.com Tel: +97 14 361 8868/78 Flytxt is a fast growing mobile consumer analytics solution provider for communication service providers (CSPs) and mobile enterprises across the globe. The company offers full suite of internal and external monetisation solutions for increasing revenue, reducing churn, enhancing customer experience and generating new revenue streams. Flytxt offers full solution stack combining technology, packaged analytics, business applications and enabling services to deliver maximum economic impact to its customers. The company has deployed its platforms with more than 50 customers across 32 countries, analysing data of more than 500 million mobile consumers, delivering 2 to 7% economic impact consistently. Flytxt has its headquarters in the Netherlands, a corporate office in Dubai and also presence in India, Mexico, Singapore and Kenya. Sectors: Business Intelligence: Behaviour Analytics | Business Analysis & Intelligence | Customer Analysis | Personalisation Customer Care: Customer Experience Management | Customer Lifecycle Management | Loyalty & Churn Management Data Management: Data Analysis Other: Machine to Machine (M2M)

Sectors: Billing & Charging: Billing (Utility) | Billing & Customer Care | Billing (Convergent Pre- & Post-paid) | Billing (Interconnect & Wholesale) | Billing (Retail) | eBilling, ePayment & ePresentment Customer Care: Customer Relationship Management Network Management: Inventory, Asset & Element Management Partner Management: Partner Relationship Management | Partner Settlement Other: Machine to Machine (M2M) | Mobile Virtual Network Enablers | Mobile Virtual Network Operators | PCC - Policy Control and Charging | Policy Management

Infonova

www.infonova.com/en/index.html Tel: +43 316 8003 Infonova, founded in 1989, is a premium BSS vendor to telco, media and convergent industries. Infonova’s R6 is a proven E2E Multi-Tenant Concept-to-Cash BSS Platform. R6’s unique business architecture supports multiple tenants to be enabled on a single platform with individual access to the full range of R6 functionality, thereby enabling consolidation of various business segments and brands on one platform. R6 enables a fast implementation of digital economy business models at the same time.

www.fts-soft.com Tel: +972 9-952-6500

Infonova’s R6 has been implemented for fixed line incumbents, tier 2 aggregators/attackers, cable TV, mobile MVNO bureau, utilities and content players supporting both Telco 1.0 and Industry 2.0 business models.

FTS, a Magic Software Group company, works with telecommunications, content, M2M and payment service providers globally to help them manage complex transactions and relationships with greater flexibility and greater independence.

Sectors: Application Management: Application Lifecycle Management Billing & Charging: Billing (Utility) | Billing (Convergent Pre- & Post-

FTS

Company

Website

Company

Website

Company

Website

iisy

iisy.de

LogiSense

logisense.com

Mobilis Networks Ltd

mobilis.com

IoT Now Magazine

iot-now.com

LogNet Systems

lognet-systems.com

Mobipay International SA

mobipay.es

ITU

itu.int

Loyalty Partner Solutions GmbH

lpsolutions.com

mobivention

mobivention.com

IXIA

ixiacom.com

LTC International

ltcinternational.com

Mojiva

mojiva.com

Ixonos

ixonos.com

Mahindra Satyam

mahindrasatyam.net

Moneybookers

moneybookers.com

Jones Cyber Solutions Ltd

jonescyber.com

Mala Communications

mala-communications.co.uk

MoreMagic Solutions, Inc

moremagic.com

Junifer Systems

junifersystems.com

MATRIXX Software

matrixxsw.com

Moriana Group

morianagroup.com

Juniper Networks

juniper.net

MaxBill Ltd

maxbill.com

Motive (an Alcatel-Lucent co.)

motive.com

Kabira Technologies

kabira.com

mBlox

mblox.com

Motorola Solutions

motorolasolutions.com

Kalido

kalido.com

MDS

martindawessystems.com

Movius Interactive

moviuscorp.com

KANA

kana.com

MDS Lavastorm Analytics

lavastorm.com

MTS Ltd

mtsint.com

Kansys Inc

kansys.com

MegaSys Computer

megasys.com

MYCOM

mycom-int.com

Kapsch

kapsch.net

Technologies

Myriad Group

myriadgroup.com

Kcom

kcom.com

Metastorm

metastorm.com

Nagravision

nagravision.com

Keynote

keynote.com

Metaswitch Networks

metaswitch.com

Nakina Systems

nakinasystems.com

Kineto Wireless

kineto.com

Metracom

metracom.fr

Narus, Inc

narus.com

Kobil

kobil.com

MetraTech Corp

metratech.com

NEC

nec.com

Kognitio

kognitio.com

MGt plc

mgtplc.com

NeoMedia

neom.com

Kroll Ontrack

krollontrack.co.uk

Micro Focus International

microfocus.com

Neptuny

neptuny.com

KXEN

kxen.com

Microsoft

microsoft.com

NetAdmin

netadmin.com

Leostream

leostream.com

MIND CTI

mindcti.com

NetCracker Technology

netcracker.com

Lionbridge

lionbridge.com

Mi-Pay

mi-pay.com

NetEvidence

net-evidence.com

Logica

logica.co.uk

Moba Consulting

mobaconsulting.com

Netformx

netformx.com

LogicManse

logicmanse.com

Mobile Distillery

mobile-distillery.com

NetNumber

netnumber.com

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DIRECTORY 2016 paid) | Billing (Interconnect & Wholesale) | Billing (Retail) Customer Care: Customer Experience Management Partner Management: Partner Relationship Management | Partner Settlement Revenue Management: Cost & Debt Control Product & Service Management: Order Management | Product Lifecycle Management Other: Machine to Machine (M2M) | Mobile Virtual Network Operators

MDS

Polystar

www.mdscem.com Tel: +44 01925 462300

www.polystar.com Tel: +46 850600600

MDS is a leading provider of convergent real-time billing and customer management solutions, enabling digital service providers to monetise and bill any product and service rapidly and accurately. The MDS platform helps digital service providers unlock new revenue streams without impacting existing IT systems, to rapidly launch compelling new multi-service propositions. Its managed service solutions support customers and deliver a low total cost of ownership, with a one view platform that enhances the customer experience. Headquartered in the UK, MDS managed service solutions support customers across Europe, including BT Business Mobile, Dixons Carphone, eircom Business, TalkTalk Business and Telefonica UK. Sectors: Billing & Charging: Billing (Utility) | Billing & Customer Care | Billing (Convergent Pre- & Post-paid) | Billing (Retail) | eBilling, ePayment & ePresentment Business Intelligence: Behaviour Analytics | Billing Analysis | Business Analysis & Intelligence | Business Process Optimisation | Customer Analysis Customer Care: Contact Centres & Hubs | Customer Experience Management | Loyalty & Churn Management Data Management: Data Analysis | Data Migration Partner Management: Partner Relationship Management Company

Website

Company

NetQoS

netqos.com

NetScout Systems

netscout.com

Netsize NetSocket

Polystar enables communications service providers (CSPs) to achieve excellence in CEM, big data analytics, service assurance, network monitoring, service enablement and high performance testing. We help CSPs to simplify their CEM strategies and drive operational efficiency through real-time network analytics. Polystarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s real-time Network and Customer Insights uncover a goldmine of data, which yields indispensible analytics to CSPs. Polystar is recognised as one of the fastest-growing companies in Sweden. Since Polystarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foundation in Stockholm in 1983, we have experienced continuous and sustainable growth, and evolved to a global presence, serving our customers in over 50 countries. Sectors: Business Intelligence: Business Analysis & Intelligence | Customer Analysis Customer Care: Customer Experience Management Data Management: Data Analysis Network Management: Network & Service Test & Measurement | Network Performance Management Product & Service Management: Service Assurance Services & Platforms: 4G, LTE & WiMAX | IMS Migration & Deployment

Website

Company

Ontology Systems

ontology.com

Portrait Software

portraitsoftware.com

Onyx Software

onyx.com

Practiv

practiv.com

netsize.com

Open Text Corp

opentext.com

Praesidium

praesidium.com

netsocket.com

OpenCloud Ltd

opencloud.com

(Consulting division of WeDo)

Network Cadence

networkcadence.com

Openet

openet-telecom.com

PRAGMATEK Consulting Group

pragmatek.com

Neural Technologies

neuralt.com

OpenTrust

opentrust.com

PRD Technologies

prdtechnologies.co.uk

NeuStar

neustar.biz

OpenWave

openwave.com

PricewaterhouseCoopers

pwc.com/gx/en/communications

NewBay

newbay.com

Opteq International

opteqint.net

Prime Carrier Ltd

primecarrier.com

Nexagent (an EDS business)

nexagent.com

Opus Advance Business Solutions opusabs.net

Prior Analytics Ltd

prior-analytics.com

Nexus Telecom AG

nexustelecom.com

Oracle

oracle.com

Prism Technology

prismtechnology.net

nicholson Search & Selection

nicholsonintl.com

Outbox

outbox.pl

Pro:Atria Ltd

proatria.com

NMS Communications

nmscommunications.com

Ovum

ovum.com

Progress Software

web.progress.com

Noetica

noetica.com

Panviva

panviva.com

Pronto Networks

prontonetworks.com

Nokia Siemens Networks

nokiasiemensnetworks.com

Parallels

parallels.com

PSD

psdgroup.com

Novarra

novarra.com

Partner Telecom

partnertelecom.com

PSI AG

psi.de/en

The Now Factory

thenowfactory.com

Passlogix

passlogix.com

Psytechnics Ltd

psytechnics.com

NTG Clarity Networks

ntgclarity.com

Patni

patni.com

Qualcomm

qualcomm.com

Nuance Communications, Inc

nuance.com

Pega

pega.com

Qualitative Change

qualitativechange.com

OASIS Systems

oasissystems.com

Persistent Systems

persistentsys.com

Quova

quova.com

Objective System

osi.com

Pilat Media Global PLC

pilatmedia.com

Radialpoint

radialpoint.com

Pitney Bowes Business Insight

pbinsight.com

RadioFrame Networks

radioframenetworks.com

Integrators (OSI)

Website

On Demand Group

ondemand.co.uk

Pivetal

pivetal.com

Rapid Mobile

rapid-mobile.com

OneAccess

oneaccess-net.com

Polystar

polystar.com

Red Bend

redbend.com

OneVu

onevu.com

Pontis

pontis.com

Redknee

redknee.com

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DIRECTORY 2016

Procera

Redknee

Procera Networks structures mobile and fixed broadband network data, transforming it into actionable intelligence to empower operators make informed business decisions and improve the quality of subscriber experience. Procera’s solutions are delivered by our proprietary PacketLogic DPI platform, built on 15 years investment into our best-in-class traffic identification engine, DRDL.

Redknee is a leading global provider of innovative communication software products, solutions and services. Redknee's award-winning solutions enable wireless, multi-service and alternate service providers to monetise the value of each subscriber transaction while personalising the subscriber experience to meet mainstream, niche and individual market segment requirements. Redknee's revenue generating solutions provide advanced converged billing, rating, charging, policy and wholesale settlement for innovative data offerings, messaging, and voice services to over 200 communications service providers in over 90 countries.

www.proceranetworks.com Tel: +1 510-230-2777

www.redknee.com Tel: +1 9 056252622

Solutions include Insights Reporting, Traffic Management and Policy Enforcement. Headquartered in Freemont, California, with offices in EMEA and Asia Pacific, Procera empowers more than 600 networks and vendors worldwide. Procera’s vision is for a world in which all networks deliver exceptional, universal and seamless broadband services profitably, everywhere. Sectors: Application Management: Application Delivery | Application Performance Management Business Intelligence: Accounting, Recording & Management | Behaviour Analytics | Billing Analysis |Business Analysis & Intelligence | Customer Analysis | Personalisation Customer Care: Customer Experience Management Data Management: Data Analysis Data Retention & Lawful Intercept Network Management: Network & Service Test & Measurement | Network Performance Management Product & Service Management: Service Assurance Services & Platforms: 4G, LTE & WiMAX Other: PCC - Policy Control and Charging | Policy Management

Sectors: Billing & Charging: Billing (Utility) | Billing & Customer Care | Billing (Convergent Pre- & Post-paid) | Billing (Interconnect & Wholesale) | Billing (Retail) | eBilling, ePayment & ePresentment | Mediation & Collection Customer Care: Customer Experience Management | Loyalty & Churn Management Partner Management: Partner Settlement Other: PCC - Policy Control and Charging | Policy Management

TEOCO

www.teoco.com Tel: +1 703–322-9200 TEOCO is a leading provider of planning, assurance, analytics and optimisation solutions to communications service providers worldwide. We utilise our expertise in big-data and real-time capabilities to help over 300 of the largest service providers in more than 100 countries run their networks and businesses more efficiently, profitably and to optimise the customer experience. Company

Website

Company

Website

Company

Redwood Systems Ltd

redwoodsystems.co.uk

Skuku

skuku.com

Sygnity

signity.pl

Roamware

roamware.com

SL Corporation

sl.com

Symantec Corp

symantec.com

Rodopi Software

rodopi.com

Sofrecom (a France Telecom

sofrecom.com

Symsoft

symsoft.com

Round (UK) Ltd

round.co.uk

–Orange Group co.)

Synchronica

synchronica.com

RR Donnelly

rrdonnelley.com

Softrax (AFS Financial Solutions) softrax.com

Synchronoss Technologies, Inc

synchronoss.com

Samsung

samsungnetwork.com

Software AG

softwareag.com

Syniverse Technologies

syniverse.com

Sandvine

sandvine.com

Solera Networks

soleranetworks.com

T-Systems

t-systems.com

SAP

sap.com

Sonus Networks

sonusnet.com

Tail-F Systems

tail-f.com

Sapient

sapient.com

Sopra Group

sopragroup.com

Talisma Corp

talisma.com

SAS

sas.com

Spirent Communications plc

spirent.com

(an nGenera company)

Scorecard Systems

scorecardsystems.com

Starhome Mach

starhomemach.com

Tango Telecom

tango.ie

Seeker Wireless

seekerwireless.com

Steria

steria.com

Tanla Solutions Ltd

tanlasolutions.com

Segala

segala.com

Stork Ltd

storkltd.com

Tata

tatacommunications.com

Service2Media

service2media.com

Strand Consult

strandconsult.dk

Tech Mahindra

techmahindra.com

Servista

servista.com

StreamServe

streamserve.com

Technology Research Institute

technology-research.com

Sevone

sevone.com

Subex

subexworld.com

Tecnotree

tecnotree.com

Shenick

shenick.com

Sun Microsystems

sun.com

Tekelec

tekelec.com

Sicap

sicap.com

Sunrise Telecom

sunrisetelecom.com

Tektronix Communications

tektronixcommunications.com

Sierra Wireless

sierrawireless.com

SunTec Business Solutions

suntecgroup.com

Telarix, Inc

telarix.com

Sigma Systems

sigma-systems.com

Suntech Technologies, Inc.

suntechtechnologies.com

Telchemy, Inc

telchemy.com

Simon Kucher & Partners

simon-kucher.com

SurfKitchen

surfkitchen.com

Telcotec

telcotec.com

Singularity

singularity.co.uk

Sword ciboodle

sword-ciboodle.com

TeleBilling

tele-billing.com

SITRONICS Telecom Solutions

sitronicsts.com

Swyx

swyx.com

TelecityGroup

telecitygroup.com

Sixth Sense Media

sixthsensemedia.com

Sybase (an SAP company)

sybase.com

Telecom Inventory LLC

telecominventory.com

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

Website

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DIRECTORY 2016 Results-driven relationships Industry-leading companies choose TEOCO because of our world class solutions and unmatched commitment to measurable results. Our global customer base spans mobile, fixed, hybrid and next generation networks, providing wholesale, retail, third-party, peering, resale, MVNO business agreements and other business models. Our success comes from our clients’ success – we help to increase profitability and create more efficient networks. The powerful combination of technology and telecom-focused experience makes us both a market leader and a robust business management partner. Strength in analytics, planning, assurance and optimisation: • Network Planning and Optimisation: plan, analyse, and optimise radio access networks to reduce costs while providing wider coverage and superior penetration. • Service Assurance: resolve errors, maximise performance and utilisation, and improve customer quality of experience across the network, services and devices. • Financial Analytics: manage network and partner costs, provide detailed visibility into the revenue chain, and understand the profitability of every transaction and relationship. • Customer Analytics: bring a customer-centric perspective and combine profitability, quality of experience and behavioural data to better understand, target and engage the subscriber base. TEOCO succeeds in meeting today’s challenges of managing multivendor and multi-domain networks. We support various fixed and mobile technologies, including switched and optical networks, Ethernet and MPLS transport services, along with LTE, 3G, CDMA, GSM and IMS-based networks.

UXP Systems www.uxpsystems.com Tel: +1 416 477 8916

UXP Systems’ Digital Experience Engine powers the digital user lifecycle as operators transform to a seamless, digital world of entertainment, communications, and connected life services. Its User Lifecycle Management, Service Gateway and UXDR Insight modules are transforming service experiences in order to simplify user journeys while unifying and personalising access to digital services for every household user. UXP Systems’ Digital Experience Engine innovates above existing legacy systems to transform user experience, enabling frictionless user registration and device on-boarding, new user acquisition models, delegated user access and individual user profiles across all screens and services. Sectors: Business Intelligence: Personalisation Customer Care: Customer Experience Management | Customer Lifecycle Management Data Management: Authentication, Identity & Access

Sectors: Application Management: Application Performance Management Billing & Charging: Mediation & Collection Business Intelligence: Behaviour Analytics | Billing Analysis | Business Analysis & Intelligence | Customer Analysis Customer Care: Customer Experience Management Data Management: Data Analysis Network Management: Network & Service Test & Measurement | Network Configuration Management | Network Discovery & Optimisation | Network Performance Management Partner Management: Partner Settlement Revenue Management: Fraud Control & Prevention | Revenue Analytics | Revenue Assurance | Revenue Management | Roaming Clearing & Settlement Product & Service Management: Service Assurance Services & Platforms: 4G, LTE & WiMAX | Backhaul Management Other: Machine to Machine (M2M) Company

Website

Company

Website

Company

Website

Telehouse Europe

telehouse.net

Telemac Corporation

telemac.com

TNS, Inc

tnsi.com

VeriSign, Inc

verisign.com

Tollgrade Communications, Inc

tollgrade.com

Verizon Business

Telepin

verizonbusiness.com

telepin.com

Transverse

gotransverse.com

Vertek Corp

vertek.com

Teligent Telecom Group

teligent.se

Triad

triad.co.uk

VISA

visa.com

Tellabs

tellabs.com

Trigyn Technologies Ltd

trigyn.com

Visionael Corporation

visionael.com

Telmap

telmap.com

TTI Telecom

tti-telecom.com

Visiongain

visiongain.com

Telsis

telsis.com

(a TEOCO Corp company)

Vistorm (an EDS company)

vistorm.com

Tempest Technology

tempest-technology.com

TUFF-Telecoms UK Fraud Forum tuff.co.uk

Vitria Technology, Inc

vitria.com

Teneo Ltd

teneo.co.uk

Turkcell Teknoloji

turkcellteknoloji.com.tr

Voice Objects

voiceobjects.com

TEOCO Corporation

teoco.com

Ukash

ukash.com

VOSS Solutions

voss-solutions.com

Teradata

teradata.com

Ulticom

ulticom.com

WeDo Technologies

wedotechnologies.com

Tescom

tescom-intl.com

Upaid

upaid.net

Wipro

wipro.com

Tevron

tevron.com

UshaComm

ushacomm.com

XAL

xal.co.uk

Thales

thalesgroup.com

Valimo (a Gemalto company)

valimo.com

Xelas Software

xelas.com

The Billing College

billingcollege.com

Value Team

valueteam.com

XINTEC

xintec.com

Theta Networks

thetanetworks.com

VanillaPlus magazine & portal

vanillaplus.com

XIUS-bcgi

xius-bcgi.com

TIBCO

tibco.com

Velti

velti.com

Xura

xura.com

Tieto

tieto.com

Ventraq

ventraq.com

xwave (a division of Bell Aliant)

xwave.com

Tilgin

tilgin.com

Verax Systems

veraxsystems.com

Yahoo!

yahoo.com

TM Forum

tmforum.org

Veraz Networks SARL

veraznetworks.com

ZOHO Corp

zohocorp.com

TM Solutions Ltd

tmsols.co.uk

Verimatrix

verimatrix.com

ZTE Corporation

zte.com.cn/en/

TMNG Global

tmng.com

Verint

verint.com

VANILLAPLUS BLACKBOOK 2016

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BLACK BOOK 2016 www.vanillaplus.com