Throughout the incredible journey of the telecom OSS/BSS sector over
the last 10 years, VanillaPlus has remained a reliable source of both key
news but also informative, objective and thought-provoking assessments of
the key trends which have shaped our industry. I am looking forward to
VanillaPlus and their more recent Stream journal continuing to play a key
role in providing valuable insights as we enter one of the most exciting
phases of the telecoms OSS/BSS market evolutions.
Kieran Moynihan
Vice President & CTO Telecoms
IBM Tivoli Division
Expert Opinions
Kabira, Expert Opinion: Policy & Charging Control
Policy and charging control under load
It’s clear that Policy and Charging Control (PCC) is rapidly becoming key to controlling operators’ networks. But, as Sukki Sandhar writes, whether operators have already made their static policy decisions, or are embarking on establishing PCC, they are evaluating the same issue. “What happens when we start to push dynamic policy decisions through a service-centric PCC layer that is integrated to the enterprise and network? What are the cost, performance and the consequential reliability implications to my architecture?”. (Download the full article here, Free of charge, PDF, 190Kb)
Agilent, Expert Opinion: Customer Analytics
CEM: When customers become advocates
In the days of national telecommunication monopolies, carriers often did not treat their subscribers as full fledged 'customers', or at least not as people they needed to please. Subscribers could either accept their experience of service quality or receive no service at all. This industry attitude lingered subconsciously for a long time, even after competition grew fierce. But, says Paul Gowans, field marketing manager, Network Solutions Division in Agilent's Electronic Measurements Group, attitiudes are changing fast in the brave new world of exploding IP traffic, flat rate billing, and plummeting revenue per bit. Customer experience management (CEM) is all the rage. (Download the full article here, Free of charge, PDF, 160Kb)
Neuralitic, Expert Opinion: Customer Analytics
Capturing mobile data opportunities
with customer analytics
It is estimated that by 2012, the number of active mobile data users worldwide will exceed 680 million, which is a whopping 900% increase over 2008. Shifting from both voice and SMS usage, consumers are increasingly embracing the world of the Internet on their portable devices. Consequently, mobile data now represents the key growth avenue for mobile operators. (Download the full article here, Free of charge, PDF, 453Kb)
MATRIXX Software, Expert Opinion: Real-Time Charging
Drop the walled gardens without
dropping your guard on cash
While many medium and large operators have publicly committed to LTE (Long-Term Evolution to 4G), the industry is still justifying its investment in 3G networks. Not because 3G network usage hasn't sky-rocketed over the last few years, but because revenues have not. Real-time charging is crucial to driving more revenue and reducing costs. (Download the full article here, Free of charge, PDF, 453Kb)
Orga Systems, Expert Opinion: Personalisation
Every subscriber is an individual, so
treat their data privacy the same way
More than ever, tomorrow's telecommunications market requires differentiation. For operators to be able to deliver the innovative services that are now in the pipeline they need to deploy advanced systems for managing subscriber data. (Download the full article here, Free of charge, PDF, 297Kb)
HP, Expert Opinion: Charging
Put an end to 'bill shock'
Many of us have had that dizzying moment of shock and confusion - we've just opened the bill from our service provider, only to find that it totals hundreds of Euros more than we were expecting. As Tomas Kovar writes, we race through each line item, until our eyes alight on an entry showing dramatically inflated roaming charges. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 378Kb)
eGain, Question & Answer: Customer Service
Is it time for smarter customer service?
Communications service providers face greater complexity in delivering their services than most industries. Name us another industry whose services are evolving as fast and are delivered in so many ways, from wireless to broadband and from cable to satellite. Here, the editor, Jeremy Cowan, talks to Andrew Mennie, general manager at customer interaction specialists, eGain about the latest challenges and lessons for telcos.(Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 284Kb)
Kabira, Expert Opinion: Mobile Payments
Preparing the ground for
a successful long-term
mobile payment strategy
Mobile financial transactions are already proving to be fertile ground for operators in emerging and mature markets. Services like M-Pesa in Kenya, GCash in the Philippines, or NTT DoCoMo's Osaifu-Keitai in Japan are concrete examples of mobile operators successfully bringing financial transactions onto mobile handsets, says Eric Carlier. Clearly there is now a market for mobile payments. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 284Kb)
Orga Systems, Expert Opinion: Emerging Markets
Profitability in emerging
markets - just an illusion?
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is one of the world's fastest growing mobile subscription markets, even as the world economy has slowed. Leading analysts underline a revenue growth of up to eight per cent until 2012. Nevertheless, as Andreas Freund finds, operators need to position themselves carefully as market liberalisation, GSM licences and new entrants characterise the competitive situation. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 336Kb)
CTI Group, Expert Opinion: Billing & Analysis
Multinational enterprise contracts at risk
from poor reporting and analysis
Carriers have been actively targeting multi-national corporations (MNCs), attracted by huge regional and global contracts. However, before they award them, MNCs need to know they are going to have transparency of spend and access to in-depth data in their communications usage. George Malim explains MNCs' requirements and details how carriers can rise to the challenge. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 268Kb)
InfoVista, Expert Opinion: Service Assurance
Emerging victorious from an economic downturn
The telecommunications industry isn't recession-proof, which is why service providers are doing everything they can to keep their operations lean and reduce their botton lines. But providers that cut operations down to subsistence levels can easily jeopardise the availability and quality of the services they deliver, as well as their ability to meet customer expectations and SLAs (service level agreements), argues InfoVista's Service Provider market director, Steve Hateley.(Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 355Kb)
OSI, Expert Opinion: Customer Experience
Customer Service Assurance: The nervous system underpinning Customer Experience
In the changing fixed and mobile telecommunications services environment, competitive forces are driving increasingly complex integrated service offerings that compel communication service providers (CSPs) to alter their business strategies. The pace of service innovation is driven by customer need, bandwidth requirements, network / service complexity, and non-optimised business processes.(Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 487Kb)
Kabira Technologies' Expert Opinion: Provisioning & Activation
High performance, customisation
and extendibility are key
to operators' success
Telecoms operators exist in a rapidly changing world. Consumers are
demanding instant access to new services, while enterprises have come
to define high quality customer interactions across multiple channels
as a core business enabler. Stephane Beauvais of Kabira Technologies
reports that this has had a dramatic effect on service provisioning and
activation, which provides the crucial link between the development and
marketing of new products and services and fulfilment, with the need to
provide a high level of customer service across the chain.(Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 267Kb)
Agilent Technologies' Expert Opinion: IMS Migration
IMS: A very definite Maybe
I've talked with several executives at different service providers
about IMS, and their views of its worthiness vary wildly. Some consider
it the best way to truly deliver a wide range of IP services and
operational efficiencies demanded by highly competitive environments.
Others, says Paul Gowans of Agilent Technologies, would give up their
first born rather than deploy it. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 188Kb)
MetraTech, Expert Opinion: Order Management
Understand the enterprise customer's paying process
Billing isn't always just 'billing', especially when it comes to business-to-business accounts. So assuming that one size fits all when it comes to billing system funtionality could be little more than a recipe for alienating the most valuable customers of all, says MetraTech's chief technology officer, Doug Zone. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 332Kb)
Comverse, Expert Opinion: Convergent BSS
Unify to manage customers smartly
A converged business support systems (BSS) approach - unified billing, customer and order management - helps increase revenues while providing the same positive experience to all customers, as Gabriel Matsliach reports. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 290Kb)
Comptel, Expert Opinion: Roaming
Planning a successful roaming business
The success of new mobile services, especially high value broadband offerings, hinges on communication service providers' (CSPs) ability to provide these services to customers when roaming. This creates not only a number of technical challenges but many pricing and charging issues too, as Olivier Suard reports. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 260Kb)
HP, Expert Opinion: Data Retention
Implementing communications data retention -
Turning a challenge into an opportunity
Terrorism and other global scourges are not going away. And neither are governmental requirements for service providers to support the fight. As Nigel Upton of HP highlights, communication service providers in Europe must implement data retention programmes, and similar requirements are appearing in other nations around the globe. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 381Kb)
Orga Systems, Expert Opinion: Billing & Settlement
Are you content with your content partnerships?
Billing generally remains the jealously guarded preserve of the operator but, as Andreas Freund reports, with new and untested content partners joining the delivery chain billers need the right tools for third party settlement. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 792Kb)
TTI Telecom, Expert Opinion: Service Assurance
Service assurance in the service of BSS
Amit Aviram of TTI Telecom dreams of bringing together parallel BSS (business support systems) and OSS (operations support systems) business processes in customer-facing service assurance.
(Download the
full article, Free of charge, PDF, 323Kb)
Comarch, Expert Opinion: Application SLAs
The missing part of complete service management?
Service models don't include information about applications used, yet applications are increasingly the heart of the service, while the network is simply re-used. Jakub Zaluski-Kapusta argues that only tools allowing flexible service modelling and including applications management can deal with the complexity of the service offer. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 393Kb)
LHS, Expert Opinion: Billing & Business Intelligence
Turbulent markets demand integrated billing and BI
Turbulent economic times have the effect of raising the competitive stakes for all businesses including communication providers. Becoming ultra-competitive really could make the difference between staying in business and going under. So, says Dr Jens Troetscher, if you thought competition was fierce in the good old days, it just got a lot tougher.(Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 447Kb)
SAP, Expert Opinion: Advertising Business Models
From experiment to enterprise scale
Mark Johnson describes the urgent demand for telecoms advertising to scale from an experiment to an enterprise level. Advertisers want clear and tangible marketing RoI (Return on Investment) and proof that advertising dollars are being translated into impressions, leads and revenue. (Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 348Kb)
Progress Software, Expert Opinion: BSS/OSS Interoperability
Balancing customers and consolidation
with SOA-based Business Services
Service providers face increasingly complex integration challenges as they attempt to reconcile the conflicting demands of customers and consolidation. John Wilmes describes how the TM Forum takes interoperability to another level with the development of Service Oriented Architecture-based Business Services and Platforms that help growing enterprises evolve from silos to service-oriented enterprises.(Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 484Kb)
Orga Systems, Expert Opinion: Mobile Self-Care
Keeping everyone happy
For mobile
network operators in emerging and developed markets there are clear arguments
in favour of mobile self-care. So, how have such strategies and
systems developed in the last few years? And how have the services supported
by mobile self-care evolved? Andreas Freund tells you how to keep everyone
happy.
(Download the
full article, Free of charge, PDF, 294Kb)
MACH Group, Expert Opinion: Revenue Assurance
Mastering market 'multiplexity' in the Consumer Age
I remember when
going for a coffee was a simple affair. Black or white, sugar or no sugar –
it was rarely more complicated than that. Then a new age dawned, a
new Consumer Age. And almost unnoticed, going for a coffee became an
operation that, without careful planning, could degenerate into an
embarrassing display of fumbling indecision at the till. Today, the consumer
is the undisputed master -- and that is nowhere more true than in the world
of wireless communication. Guy Dubois explains how to master this market
'multiplexity'.
(Download the
full article, Free of charge, PDF, 319Kb)
Celona, Expert Opinion: Data Migration
Migration mountains: Business-focused data migration
-- is it the key to next generation telecoms?
As Charles Andrews reports,
data migration is all about moving data from one environment to another in
an optimal way, with the least amount of business disruption and risk; whether
to consolidate applications or to change from one vendor, or version of an
application to another, data migration is at the heart of the deployment
process. In the telecoms market, OSS/BSS environments are being optimised to
fit in with next generation strategies for driving down operating costs,
improving efficiency and increasing customer focus.
(Download the
full article, Free of charge, PDF, 383Kb)
Praesidium, Expert Opinion: Credit Risk Management
Control your exposure to credit risk
Simon Collins, the General Manager of
Praesidium, WeDo Technologies’ business consultancy division, has provided
risk management consultancy to more than 100 telecom companies across the
world over the last 12 years. Here he talks to VanillaPlus about tightening
credit risk controls.
(Download the
full article, Free of charge, PDF, 318Kb)
Comarch, Expert Opinion: Partner Management
Efficient partner management --How will it contribute to success?
(Download the full article, Free of charge, PDF, 314Kb)
CTI Group, Expert Opinion: Web Self-Care
Online Billing & CRM
(Free PDF article download -- 283kb)
Corporate customers and consumers today expect not only to view current details, but to access usage data and historical account reports. So, how are Web billing and payment services developing in Web 2.0? What types of service provider are deploying these services and to what effect? Warren Drummond, Head of Product & Marketing at CTI Group reports.
Comarch, Expert Opinion: Service Assurance
Move service assurance to the next level
(Free PDF article download -- 377kb)
Delivering services to customers is the livelihood of a business operator. As Jakub Meisner, Comarch's OSS Solution & Product Manager, Telecoms Business Unit, says, when the services are maintained to a quality fulfilling the SLA agreements, modified constantly according to market needs, and new services are activated quickly, the business succeeds.
Telcordia, Expert Opinion: Network Test & Measurement
Why expert testing equals good customer experience
(Free PDF article download -- 410kb)
Communication service providers (CSPs) are at a crossroads with their customers. Today, with triple- and quad-play services they can boost their brand, differentiate their offering and drive revenue. To do this the services must be targeted and provide value to their customer so that they will pay for them. Customer expectation means that CSPs have to get this right first time. So, the need for quick, accurate and sound testing becomes even more critical -- as James Munro of Telcordia reports.
HP, Expert Opinion: Service Delivery Platforms
The Semantic SDP -- It knows what you want
... and what you need!
(Free PDF article download -- 360kb)
What if you could give your subscribers what they want, before they
even know that they want it? That's the promise of the Semantic Service
Delivery Platform. Here, HP's Peter Dragunas, director, Worldwide
Network Services and Platforms in HP's Communications, Media and
Entertainment business unit, answers key questions surrounding the
Semantic SDP.
Comverse, Expert Opinion: Billing & Charging
Time is money!
(Free PDF article download -- 425kb)
Success is no longer about identifying and delivering the one killer
application. it's about getting new services - and bundles of services
- to market before your competition. In today's changing telecom
environment, there are many moments of opportunity, but success hinges
on market agility. According to Gabriel Matsliach, operators need to
create differentiation, often defined by who is first to market. That
is what demonstrates innovative, forward thinking to your customers -
and what helps to capture profits from early-adopting trendsetters.
Ericsson, Expert Opinion: Convergent pre- & post-paid
Convergent pre- and post-paid
service billing and charging:
Mission impossible?
(Free PDF article download -- 274kb)
The growing range of multimedia services opens up new revenue streams
for telecom operators, but to realise these revenues operators need a
single convergent charging and billing solution. So say, Jaco Fourie,
Ericsson's director of Business Development and Strategies, Revenue
Management, and Dr Ralf Guckert, vice president of Product Strategy for
LHS.
Comptel, Expert Opinion: Business Control
Striking a balance between quality and access
(Free PDF article download -- 262kb)
The convergence of media, entertainment and telecoms represents the
effective merging of, at the very least different business operations,
if not the coming together of completely distinct industries, says
Olivier Suard of Comptel Corporation. Convergence changes two critical
aspects of the customer's experience; the types of service that
customers will be able to demand and the way that customers will be
able to consume these services.