David Sharpley is vice president of business and products for Amdocs’ newly created Data Experience business unit. The unit was launched following Amdocs’ acquisition of policy management specialist, Bridgewater Systems in August 2011. Here, he tells George Malim, editor of VanillaPlus, why the new unit has been developed, what it offers and how it provides communications services providers (CSPs) with new opportunities to bring innovative propositions to market rapidly.
VanillaPlus: Bridgewater Systems is now part of Amdocs’ new Data Experience business unit. Please can you explain why the focus has been put on Data Experience and what the unit hopes to achieve?
David Sharpley: From our perspective, CSPs’ customers, whether they be consumers or enterprises, aren’t buying a data plan any more, they’re buying a data experience. That means they’re not interested so much in how much bandwidth they receive as part of that plan, they’re interested in having experiences such as their social networking applications being always-on, seamless transition to Wi-Fi and so forth.
That’s why we’ve created this unit and our objective is to provide a new set of solutions to enable CSPs to deliver the data experiences their customers demand.
VP: Why is the Data Experience relevant to CSPs?
DS: Everything is about mobile data now and the reality is that wherever a user is – whether in a café, an office, at home or on the road – they have become reliant on the applications they use and that’s essentially the data experience they are seeing. Users demand instant gratification and high quality services that are always available and competitively priced. That, fundamentally, is why the data experience is relevant.
As Amdocs, we’ve created a new offering called Amdocs Data Experience Solution which has been designed to enable customers to implement it in their network very quickly to deliver fundamental market offers and use- cases such as tiered services, shared wallet, data pass, pay-per-use and so forth. That’s the key to their ability to innovate and compete because a lot of CSPs don’t have time for large integration and implementation projects. They need to innovate quickly. Social networking plans are one example, shared wallet plans across multiple devices are another.
Because of what’s happening in their respective markets, CSPs can’t wait 18 to 24 months to create, test and deploy a single use case. Rapid time to market is essential for them to compete effectively.
VP: What are some of the key trends you are seeing that support this?
DS: We are seeing a plethora of innovations at play. One operator is in the process of turning up a ‘Data Happy-Hour’ whereby subscriber data usage is not tracked against their service plan. Also, users now clearly have a reliance on social networking and the always-on aspect of that. Everyone needs access to Facebook and Twitter, so we are seeing innovation around unlimited access to social networking applications.
Another trend is the need to monetise. Upsells of bandwidth boost to ensure QoS (quality of service) across different applications, or a roaming data pass to create new revenue while eliminating bill shock risk. We’re seeing unlimited plans for business users and trends such as consumers sharing their packageacross devices. They’re diverting quotas across different family members in a family plan, for example. There’s a need to be creative about how to manage the consumer across their different needs and markets.
VP: What are the use cases that are most relevant to mobile operators today? Why are they challenged to implement these?
DS: There are a set of key use cases that are essential for data monetisation, but also for customer retention and satisfaction. Offers such as roaming data passes whereby a user can purchase a roaming package for a day, or opt in to Wi-Fi offload are coming to market. More and more the ability to transparently offload a subscriber from Wi-Fi to 3G or 4G is required.
Other use cases such as shared wallets, not only across multiple devices, but also across multiple users are being demanded, for example for a family or small business. That brings a different level of commercialisation to the market in terms of how CSPs want to track and deliver plans and packages.
There are three key dimensions for CSPs to consider: time, volume and application. Voice used to be based on time, data used be based on volume but now, unlimited Facebook plans also bring in the application. Once an operator can manage those three dimensions, they have the ability to upsell on top of the basic package being provided. They have the ability to allow for top-ups or upsell the basic plan.
VP: What are the implications of that for solutions such as policy and charging?
DS: In order to monetise and get to market quickly, policy and charging need to be tightly integrated as a single function with a robust configuration capability for rapid time-to- deploy. What is different with Amdocs’ approach, is that we fundamentally believe that what needs to take place is the productisation of market offers, tiered services and Wi-Fi offload to 3G and LTE. Those productised, pre-configured offerings can be quickly enabled out into the market, and should not rely on multiple solutions from different vendors because that will involve lengthy integration efforts. They must be deployable in rapid timeframes.
VP: Do you believe that policy and charging have yet to be successfully integrated? What are the challenges here?
DS: Our belief is there needs to be a fundamental shift in approach. We need to look at how we create unique solutions to address unique market offers. At Amdocs, we’re setting the bar in how to go about this with the new Data Experience business unit. We’ve taken proven product technologies and pre-integrated them with the ability to put them in the customer environment in a matter of weeks. Our proposition isn’t only software, it’s a system – a system that has been created to meet the demands of tier one operators, the biggest and best in the world.
The acquisition of Bridgewater Systems by Amdocs is a scenario in which one plus one equals ten because the new business unit takes the Bridgewater assets and the assets already within Amdocs and productises them on a proven hardware platform. Taking the combined Bridgewater and Amdocs domain expertise and encapsulating that in use cases and productising that out of the box is a compelling proposition for our customers.
Taking those core products, integrating them and doing that on a pre-tested and integrated system and meeting those use cases with a single system is what’s market- leading. It is a different approach to the market and it is also a different approach from Amdocs’ perspective.
VP: Is Amdocs well positioned to meet the challenges you describe – please explain why?
DS: We have one of the industry’s most complete portfolios that is
solely focused on the communications sector. We don’t deal in other sectors. We have the complete proposition from the customer to the network with a suite of products that is only targeted to the communications market and, because they are all pre-integrated and they all work together, we are positioned to serve the entire CSP market from tier three providers up to tier one. With the Bridgewater Systems acquisition, we are enabled to get those mobile propositions to market very quickly. That’s where the Data Experience proposition has something unique to offer. We have a unique product approach that centres around the four P’s of the problem.
The first P is the core product technologies, the second is the product catalogue as a single point of configuration, the third is our uniquely pre-configured and pre- integrated market offers, which no one else has, the fourth and final P is that our propositions are pre- integrated and tested on a proven hardware system that can be rolled out rapidly to enable CSPs to make innovative, creative offers and more importantly give them the ability to monetise their market offers. This approach makes Amdocs unique in the marketplace.
David Sharpley
