Mark Edwards is chief executive of MDS, a provider of managed revenue and customer management systems that enable communications and digital services providers (CSPs and DSPs) to grow their business, evolve to digital services and rapidly monetise any type of communications and IT service. Edwards joined the company in September 2013 to spearhead its move into new markets. He has a reputation as a growth CEO which included growing Mformation from a start-up to a major supplier of mobile device management to tier one CSPs. Previous roles have seen him lead high growth business units at Microsoft, Symbian and Hewlett-Packard. Here, Edwards tells VanillaPlus why the time is ripe for DSPs to continue their adoption of cloud and managed services, and accelerate their move into digital services.
VanillaPlus: How do you see cloud and managed services for billing and customer experience management developing as the shape of the telecoms industry continues to transform?
Mark Edwards: DSPs are experiencing a lot of disruption and I think everyone can see that with the advent of over-the-top (OTT) services and app stores, a lot of value is haemorrhaging away from DSPs in favour of new entrants. The key challenge for DSPs is to react to the hastened time to market and low barriers to launch new services. OTT providers can deliver to the mass market and update apps and services in very short periods of time.
The innovation cycle has therefore become much shorter and it’s hard for DSPs to compete when their legacy systems hinder that innovation, and are effectively not that agile. DSPs must be able to launch new, exciting offerings very quickly and have greater flexibility to target their customers and give them the propositions that they demand.
The benefits of cloud and managed services are that they provide that agility combined with quick time to market. The DSP is not encumbered by their legacy systems and organisational inertia. Additionally, the solution can be paid for on an opex model. That creates a healthier, shared-risk dynamic between the managed service provider and the customer organisation, and that in itself supports faster innovation. Furthermore the managed service provider is held accountable against service level agreements which underpin the business outcomes that are desired.
VP: What types of organisation is the managed services approach applicable to?
ME: Managed service providers like us have a lot of expertise that brings value to all types of providers. There are a variety of different types of operators; obviously there are mobile operators, broadband providers and also MVNOs and VNOs that perhaps offer multiple services. Those might include mobile, fixed line, broadband, M2M, Wi-Fi, TV, SaaS or IaaS – in combination or the whole portfolio. We’re dealing with all these types of scenarios.
Managed or cloud services are also applicable to DSPs that have adjunct requirements to support the launch of new services or innovations, or that have services they need to launch in a short timescale. Other relevant markets include greenfield operators and triple- and quad-play providers. For example, we recently helped a service provider successfully launch a new MVNO service in three months, which is four to six times faster than would otherwise have been attainable with a network deployment. That’s a key benefit to partnering with an experienced managed service provider.
VP: MDS has seen success in the enterprise sector, what benefits do you bring to that market?
ME: Our product, CMP, is inherently very flexible and includes the critical capabilities that are needed by enterprises and SMEs. It was built so customers could define and add new services and offers quickly. For example, one prospect was trying to penetrate the enterprise and government market and had a lot of restrictions with their legacy billing system that precluded them from bidding on particular deals. They showed us the problem on a Friday and, by working through the weekend, we were able to show them the solution they needed to address the requirements to win the business on the Monday. Needless to say, we won this project.
Another example is a service provider that came to us for an all day workshop to share their requirements.
We also see partnerships as a key growth area for the business and a way to deliver even more value to customers.
In the morning we agreed that they would set us a complex tariff challenge, they weren’t able to create and offer, and we would try to solve it. Literally within an hour of the workshop starting, we had configured the tariff into the system by using the expertise of our Managed Service team.
It’s that flexibility, configurability and agility that has given us the edge in terms of proving the value of a managed service partner, to expand our customers business and provide a platform for growth that supports entering new markets.
VP: What are your customers most concerned about?
ME: They are most concerned with innovation. They need to innovate in order to introduce products and services with a fast time to market. They want to do this with a more opex-oriented model and to share the risk and tie outcomes to their business.
Cost efficiency is certainly very important and they also want to feel confident in their supplier. They want to know the roadmap of their partner is such that it can support their future plans.
VP: Have you identified any new areas for MDS to head into?
ME: We are focused on DSPs because their requirements for charging and billing are quite complex. With the growing demand for managed service and cloud, we are well positioned to take advantage of these trends and have increased our investment to expand our business internationally and particularly in EMEA and the North America markets.
We also see partnerships as a key growth area for the business and a way to deliver even more value to customers.
It’s also an industry in transformation. Television is moving to the Internet and there are MVNOs and VNOs, and triple- and quad-play propositions which DSPs need to launch. These bring new opportunities for traditional operators, and new opportunities that involve enterprises from adjacent sectors.
VP: How do you see the industry developing over the next five years?
ME: The theme of innovation and the pace of the industry will continue on an upward trajectory. Cloud services and managed services will be increasingly compelling because of the need to rapidly innovate.
The future is about differentiated digital services and the evolving role of the networks as well as the requirement to deal with the issue of innovation life cycles becoming ever shorter.
One of the other trends we will see is the changing nature of the relationship between the service provider and the customer. The relationship – at least the monetisation opportunity – will need to expand so DSPs can better maximise the value of the data they provide.
I think that will result in the recognition that not all bytes are equal. For example, if I’m travelling on business and I have the option of purchasing a booster on my data speed for the day, I would be likely to purchase this plan if I needed a faster bandwidth. There are lots of opportunities for CSPs to monetise the services that customers like me are most interested in based on context, quality of service and location to maximise data revenue.
This requires higher performance real-time charging technology, which we have incorporated into our billing software and are able to offer as part of our Managed Service.
Real-time also changes the nature of the interaction with customers giving them more immediate up to date information about billing, and lowering the cost to serve new services. A data booster day pass might be attractive to a customer but only viable for the service provider to offer, if they can fulfill the order for cents.
Then there’s the whole element of sharing data capacity, whether in enterprise groups or families. How these services are offered and monetised requires an evolution to the way billing is done. This will be fundamental to the revenue growth of digital services. This capability is something we’ve launched this year in our CMP solution, which we provide as a managed service. This increased appetite for managed services is another key trend we’ll continue to see as the market evolves.
We are very optimistic about the future.
