Van+ Feb 2015 aw Layout 1 - VanillaPlus · PLUS: Teradata buys Appoxee to enhance integrated marketing ... elekom and Orange joint-Mobile UK – formerly One2One – together with

PLUS: Teradata buys Appoxee to enhance integrated marketing ■ Synchronoss Mobile Content Transfer exceeds one million devices ■ AsiaInfoHungary for success with new delivery centre opening ■ Location platform revenues to reach €470m by 2020 ■ Regional taxation issuesaddressed with update to CTI Group Analysis e-billing product ■ SingTel chooses Amdocs billing and customer care apps ■ Comverse toimplement rich services and modernise messaging at Telekom Srbija ■ Read the lastest news, opinion, blogs and features at www.vanillaplus.com

T H E G L O B A L V O I C E F O R B / O S S

DATAANALYTICSIs there a pot of gold at theend of CSPs' data repositories?

February / March 2015Volume 17 Issue 1

■ ANALYST REPORTHeavy Reading analyst details howstrategic analytics will help CSPs

■ TALKING HEADS Lucas Skoczkowski explains whyvirtualisation is a business enabler

■ BIG DATA ANALYTICSDoes focusing on revenue todayimpede profit tomorrow?

ISSN 1745-1736

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4 EDITOR’S COMMENTThe names may have changed but some things remain the same for UKmobile operators, writes George Malim

5 INDUSTRY NEWSTeradata acquires Appoxee, VOSS and Soft-ex bring billing analysistogether with unified communications management

6 MARKET NEWSAsiaInfo opens new delivery centre in Hungary, Synchronoss celebratesone million devices for Mobile Content Transfer

7 PRODUCT NEWSCTI Group product to solve regional taxation issues

8 CONTRACT NEWSSingTel selects Amdocs billing and care apps, Comverse modernisesmessaging at Telekom Srbija

10 THE CONTRACT HOT LISTThe latest vendor deals listed

11 PEOPLE NEWSWho’s on the move

12 TALKING HEADSRedknee’s Lucas Skoczkowski explains why virtualisation is a business enabler

16 EXPERT OPINIONChad Dunavant details a new proposition for digital service providers from CSG

19 VANILLAPLUS DATA ANALYTICS INSIGHTOur VanillaPlus Data Analytics Insight reports starts here with 28 pagesexploring how big data is maturing to the point at which CSPs are startingto generate value from data analytics.

The Insight contains a VanillaPlus-commissioned report from analyst firmHeavy Reading and includes features and interviews to help you gain awider understanding of what happens with your data now the collectionquestion has been addressed

47 EXPERT OPINIONMathias Liebe explains why it’s important that BSS as well as the networkand other software becomes virtualised

48 EXPERT OPINIONJustin Paul explores the hybrid reality CSPs will experience as they deploy NFV

51 DIARYWhere to go and what to see

52 CLOCKING OFF!Nick Booth wonders if data has become too big

C O N T E N T S

36

CLOCKING OFF!

3

IN THISISSUE

Lucas Skoczkowskisays virtualisationisn’t a buzzword anymore

Is there a pot of goldat the end of CSPs’data repositories?

BIG DATA VALUE

DATAANALYTICS

42

52

EXPERT OPINION

47

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY / MARCH 2015

1219

f you were a UK mobile subscriber in thelate 1990s you had a choice of joining BTCellnet, One2One, Vodafone or newcomerOrange. Only one of those brands still fullyexists with Orange poised to disappear fromthe high street as a UK operator brand.

Oddly, though, for the customer of the late 2010s,the companies behind the brands of 20 years agowill be largely unchanged. BT is in the process ofre-entering the mobile market with an acquisitionof EE, the Deutsche Telekom and Orange jointventure that brought T-Mobile UK – formerlyOne2One – together with Orange, the UK mobileoperator. O2 UK, the former BT Cellnet operation,is likely to be sold to Hutchison Whampoa andmerged with Hutchison’s Three UK operation.

All this washes over me because I have neverchanged mobile operator. I’m too lazy to assessthe options, I’ve never had an experience soterrible that I feel the need to change and Iassume all mobile operators are pretty much thesame anyway. In spite of my laziness, this year willsee me join my fourth operator.

My mobile history began at One2One in 1997which was Cable & Wireless owned. By 2000 thatbrand was replaced by Deutsche Telekom’sT-Mobile brand. I wasn’t a fan of the pink and greycolour scheme but I still stuck with it. Now I’m inthe two green circles of EE and poised to end up,probably early next year, on BT’s newly-brandedmobile operator, which, looking at their domesticservice branding, I expect to be called InfiniteInfinity and have a fetching electric blue palette.

Confusion is forgivable. BT will own the businessesthat were One2One and Orange, Hutchison willown the business that was BT Cellnet as well asit’s own operator, Three. Only Vodafone remainsunchanged in its ownership and branding from 20years ago and rumours persist regarding apotential break-up of that business.

This all runs against the continued exhortations ofthe vendor community for CSPs to protect theirbrands by providing excellent customer experiencemanagement, to use advanced analytics todeliver a premium brand experience and to targetusers with brand-oriented offerings to generatenew revenue from new propositions. The point of

these brand buildingactivities is hard to graspwhen the brand, by thecurrent pattern, seemslikely to be a competitor’sbrand in a few yearsanyway.

Two schools of thought areemerging surrounding this.One is that this convolutedswapping of brands amongmobile operators is simply a shuffling of thedeckchairs on the sinking ship of the mobileoperator sector. The other is that it’s not actuallythe brand that’s important. Mobile users are savvyand extremely willing to switch provider whentheir contract is up.

The challenge then, isn’t to have a slick brand, it’sto provide an excellent experience that takes allthought of churn out of the user’s mind.

Enjoy the magazine!

George Malim

C O M M E N T

EDITORGeorge MalimTel: +44 (0) 1225 319 [email protected]

DIGITAL EDITORNathalie BisnarTel: +44 (0) 1732 [email protected]

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTDIRECTORCherisse JamesonTel: +44 (0) 1732 [email protected]

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Mark BridgesTel: +44 (0) 1732 [email protected]

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EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Andreas Freund, VPMarketing, Orga SystemsGmbH

David Heaps, senior vicepresident, strategy, CSGInternational

Chris Yeadon, director ofProduct Marketing, Ericsson

Louis Hall, chief executive,Cerillion Technologies

Simon Muderack, senior vicepresident for marketing andalliances, Sigma Systems

Dr Reinhard Zuba, CMO,Vipnet (Telekom Austria)

© Prestige Media Ltd 2015

Mobile’s branding merry-go-round highlights thatCSP’s real value is networkand service performanceThe question of brand value is always an interesting onebecause the pace of mergers and acquisitions in telecomssees branding occur with sometimes bewildering frequency,writes George Malim

What’s on www.vanillaplus.com this monthHighlights on www.vanillaplus.com this month include our new NFV Hub which hosts our recentNFV roundtable discussion as well as a series of articles and opinions. In addition, George Fraser,the vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa at CSG International is the subject of ourexecutive snapshot. We also have new additions to our Troubleticket series of comment articlesand, as usual, all the latest news.

I

4 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY / MARCH 2015

George Malim,editor, VanillaPlus

Sponsored by: www.csgi.com

Teradata has acquired Appoxee, a mobilemarketing Software-as-a-Service provider.The addition of Appoxee to the TeradataIntegrated Marketing Cloud is expected tocomplement Teradata’s strategy to providemarketing solutions that help data-drivenbusinesses deliver more individualisedinformation and communications to theircustomers, based on the type of brandengagement experience those customerswant and expect.

Terms of the acquisition have not beendisclosed and Appoxee’s solutions will beintegrated into the Teradata IntegratedMarketing Cloud beginning immediately,and quickly integrated with Teradata DigitalMarketing Center.

Appoxee will accelerate Teradata MarketingApplications’ growth in the digital

marketing space by providing a full rangeof mobile capabilities, particularly in thearea of omnichannel marketing and real-time customer interaction. Teradata DigitalMarketing Center customers will now beable to use a single solution to managecustomer communications across email,landing pages, SMS, social media andmobile push. Teradata will also providerobust multi-channel campaignmanagement and real-time decisioningfor mobile as well as mobile marketinganalytics. Future integration plans extendto Teradata Customer InteractionManager and Teradata Real-TimeInteraction Manager.

“By adding Appoxee’s mobile marketingsolutions, we’re further helping ourcustomers use data to know more abouttheir customers’ true preferences, and do

more to realize the benefits of individualiseddata-driven marketing,” said DarrylMcDonald, the president for TeradataMarketing Applications. “This investmentunderscores our commitment tocontinuously expand our capabilities inindividualised digital marketing to benefitTeradata Marketing Applications customersthroughout the world.”

Itay Levy, the founder and CEO ofAppoxee, said: “Marketers haverecognised the strategic importance ofdelivering optimised customer experiencesacross channels, enabled by acomprehensive view of the customer, acentralised communication hub andcoordinated messaging technologies. Byjoining forces with Teradata, we’re helpingmarketers worldwide deliver the bestcustomer experiences possible.”

Teradata acquires Appoxee to add to integrated marketing offering

I N D U S T R Y N E W S

5VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE IFEBRUARY / MARCH 2015

WidePoint, a provider of managed mobilityservices that specialises in cybersecurityand telecoms lifecycle management (TLM)systems, has announced that its subsidiarySoft-ex, a supplier of analytics and billingsystems, and VOSS Solutions, a supplier ofunified communication (UC) managementplatforms, have entered into a strategicpartnership to integrate the Soft-exOptimiser and VOSS UC managementsolutions into a platform offering.

The combined expertise of Soft-ex andVOSS is set to deliver granular visibility andbilling insight, providing significant costsavings and improved efficiencies oninfrastructure and performance tocustomers that use the VOSS UCmanagement platform.

Mike Frayne, the chief executive of VOSS,said: “There are over 100 large globalenterprises that are currently using theVOSS UC management platform, and weare very excited about the additional value

that the Soft-ex solution can offer ourcustomers. We believe the Soft-extechnology can lead to real cost-savings,and it has already led to a number ofexploratory discussions with some of ourlarger service provider customers.”

The Soft-ex and VOSS alliance will be ofparticular interest to organisations thathave the VOSS UC management platformin place either as a direct customer ofVOSS or embedded in the Cisco HostedCollaboration Solution (HCS) under thename of Cisco UCDM. The Soft-exOptimiser solution collects call detailrecords from Cisco HCS and inventorydata from the VOSS UC managementplatform to generate key invoice dataanalytics and intelligence.

Ian Sparling, the chief executive of Soft-ex,added: “We are delighted to be partneringwith VOSS and delivering a strongercombined proposition and value-add to ourjoint customers. By taking the VOSS output,

we can now provide HCS users andresellers with much more data intelligence,and we can also provide a billing platformleading to a better customer experience.”

VOSS and Soft-ex launch global strategic partnership to couplebilling analysis with unified communications management

Mike Frayne: Soft-ex technology can lead toreal cost savings

SynchronossTechnologies’ MobileContent Transfer (MCT), awireless content transfersystem, has successfullytransferred data for morethan one million devicessince its debut in June2014, the company reports.

Synchronoss MCT is enhancing the userexperience by providing an easy to use,peer-to-peer and cloud-based system thatenables mobile customers to wirelesslytransfer data and content such ascontacts, photos, videos, messages(SMS/MMS), call records, music, anddocuments from one device to another

quickly and securely. Synchronoss MCTalso works across networks and operatingsystems, allowing customers to easilyswitch their content between iOS andAndroid devices. Synchronoss MCT willalso soon support both Blackberry andWindows Phone devices.

Synchronoss MCT enables mobileoperators around the world to givecustomers an intuitive, branded experiencethat migrates important content from onedevice to another in a fraction of the time ofhard-wired solutions. The SynchronossMCT solution also features a cloud-basedversion of the solution that requires noadditional hardware or wired connection forsuccessful operation. When purchasing a

new mobile device or re-activating anexisting device to a new network,consumers can start and complete a fulldata migration anywhere safely and quicklywith just a Wi-Fi connection.

“Today, wireless consumers are upgradingto new devices faster than ever before andview the content on their devices as moreimportant than the device itself,” saidStephen Waldis, the founder, chairmanand chief executive of Synchronoss.“Synchronoss MCT is giving CSPsimproved service offerings while giving theircustomers the freedom and confidence totake their content with them to newdevices regardless of the operating systemor device type.”

Location platform revenueswill grow to €470mworldwide in 2020 According to a new research report fromanalyst firm Berg Insight, the global marketfor mobile location platforms will showsteady growth in the next few years. Totallocation platform revenues are expected togrow at a CAGR of nearly 11.5% between2013 and 2020, reaching €470 million at theend of the forecast period.

Much of the growth is expected to comefrom the emerging commercial indoorlocation segment, while the market forlocation platforms deployed by mobileoperators is maturing. Annual revenues for

GMLC/SMLC and A-GNSS servers, passivelocation platforms, as well as middlewaredeployed by mobile operators are forecastedto grow from €200 million in 2013 to €300million in 2020.

“Mobile operators deploy new locationplatforms and upgrade existing systemsmainly to comply with public safety andlawful intercept regulations that are graduallybeing introduced worldwide,” said AndréMalm, senior analyst, Berg Insight.

These platforms can also enable commerciallocation-based services (LBS). He adds thata growing number of mobile operators arealso deploying passive location methods thatenable mass location of handsets withoutoverloading the network. Mobile operators

are starting to explore opportunities toextract more value from location datagathered from their networks in areas suchas network optimisation, customerexperience management, mobile marketingand analytics. However, most consumer andenterprise LBS now use location dataobtained directly from GPS or Wi-Fi inhandsets and will therefore have a limitedimpact on location platform market growth.

“The commercial indoor location market isstill at a relatively early stage and has not yetreached mass adoption,” added Malm. “Themarket has suffered from a lack of cross-platform solutions and confusion amongvenue owners over which platforms andtechnologies to use.”

NEWS IN BRIEF

M A R K E T N E W S

AsiaInfo has opened its new EuropeanNearshore Delivery Center (NDC). The NDC– which will support AsiaInfo’s increasingpresence in Europe as the company beginsa major joint project with Telenor Hungary –will be co-located within Telenor Hungary’sTörökbálint HQ near Budapest.

The company plans for the NDC to beproviding support services for up to eightEuropean CSP projects by 2016.

Announcing the opening of the NDC,AsiaInfo’s European managing director, AlexHawker, said: “Little more than one yearafter announcing our first major Europeanproject, we are now embarking on oursecond one, and at the same time openingup a major new delivery centre to supportour customers and our expanding business.”

At the ceremony to mark the official openingof the NDC, Christopher Laska, the chiefexecutive of Telenor Hungary, said: “Last

year we celebrated our 20th anniversary,now we are preparing ourselves for thenext 20 years: our new partner AsiaInfo willhelp us further improve the Telenorcustomer experience. AsiaInfo will employdozens of Hungarian developers, thuskeeping local IT talents in Hungary andcontributing to the growth of value-addingindustries. I am particularly pleased thatthey are moving into the Telenor House inTörökbálint, further raising our profile as acentre for excellence in telecoms.”

Synchronoss Mobile Content Transfer passes one million devices

6

Stephen Waldis:Users view on-device content asmore importantthan device itself

AsiaInfo opens delivery centre in Hungary tosupport Telenor Hungary and other CSP projects

Sponsored by: www.csgi.com VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE IFEBRUARY / MARCH 2015


M A R K E T N E W S

CTI Group has announced that the latestrelease of its Analysis e-billing system nowhas improved regional tax reporting forbusiness usage. The latest update comesas a direct result of changes to taxreporting requirements within the telecomsindustry across a number of regionalmarkets.

Beginning in 2015, telecoms, broadcastingand electronic services will be taxed in thecountry where the customer resides or isregistered. This applies whether thecustomer is a business or a consumer and

whether the supplier is based within the EUor outside. From a business perspective, itis either the country where they areregistered or the country where they havefixed premises receiving the service.

For a consumer this means the countrywhere they are registered, have theirpermanent address or normally live. This isa substantial change from prior EU taxationrates which were based on the location ofthe supplier; hence the new EU legislationsees taxation migrating from the place ofpurchase to consumption.

Trevor Davis, head of products at CTIGroup, said: “This latest version of ourAnalysis solution now delivers a higherdegree of granularity of taxation fortelecoms services allowing business usersto complete tax filings accurately across allthe regions in which they operate and bill.Many service providers currently use billingsystems that neither recognise nor detailtaxation, therefore our solution ensures thatthey can now offer their businesscustomers a highly relevant and distinctivevalue-add service which will ensure theyremain competitive and compliant.”

Analysis e-billing from CTI Group to solve regional taxation issues

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Amdocs has beenselected by SingTel, for abusiness transformationproject in its key marketsof Singapore andAustralia.

SingTel will use Amdocs’technology to enhanceand differentiate its

customer experience. Billing and customersupport for retail, enterprise andgovernment customers will be migratedonto a single platform, giving SingTel aholistic view of its customers. This will leadto greater customer satisfaction and

efficiency in customer engagement andproductivity for the group.

“At SingTel, customers are at the centre ofeverything we do. We are retooling oursystems and processes to deliver aseamless and intuitive customerexperience,” said Wu Choy Peng, groupchief information officer at SingTel. “Withthis solution, we will have a single view ofthe customer relationship and make servicerecommendations to our customers.”

Amdocs will deliver a single integratedsolution based on its customer experiencesystems product suite (CES 9.2) that will

consolidate support across all businessesand networks. This will be rolled out overthree years.

“Amdocs is committed to deliveringbusiness innovation and value to serviceproviders in Asia Pacific,” said Eli Gelman,president and chief executive officer ofAmdocs. “The award of this business-critical project is a testament to that andfurther exemplifies our strong, longstandingrelationship with the SingTel Group andtheir trust in us to successfully deliver ontheir most strategic projects, delivering trueinnovation, across multiple areas, that willhelp people communicate more effectively.”

BT Compute adds BearingPointInfonova R6 platform tocloud service Management and technology consultancyBearingPoint has agreed a contract with BTfor the implementation and use of itsInfonova R6 platform to enhance BT’s datacentre colocation and cloud servicesportfolio which includes storage offerings aswell as software applications from thirdparties, across multiple countries, with theappropriate language and currency.

BT’s Cloud Compute helps CIOs build payas you go cloud solutions with high levels ofquality, security and service delivered fromBT. It is available in 20 countries across fivecontinents and is used by multinationalcompanies from a variety of industry sectors.

Neil Lock, the vice president of BT Computeat BT Global Services, said: “This agreementwith BearingPoint enables us to furtherimprove our cloud platform by adding newservices such as Apps from BT and BTCompute Storage. Those are now available

to our customers through a single point ofcontrol within our Compute ManagementSystem, helping CIOs orchestrate their cloudresources and thus realize the possibilities inthe cloud.”

Andrew Thomson, director for Infonova R6Solutions at BearingPoint, added: “As anend-to-end full business lifecycle multi-tenant platform, R6 has been designed toenable compute and other technologyproduct bundles for cloud services andbeyond. In the first instance, this allows BTto deliver to their customers’ sophisticated ITand cloud requirements.”

Astellia to lead network andbusiness performance for Aircel Astellia has signed a multi-million dollaragreement with Aircel, one of India's largestmobile operators with a subscriber base ofmore than 75 million.

Under the deal, Astellia has deployed itsNova suite for the optimisation of Aircel’s 2G

and 3G radio access and core networkresources. It allows Aircel to detectimpediments that may cause network qualitydegradations and take promptly correctiveactions, thereby ensuring the availability andefficiency of the network. Through this networkoptimisation, Aircel will be able to furtherstrengthen its opex and capex strategies.

Astellia will use customer analytics to helpAircel understand and predict customerusage trends, optimise existing data plans orintroduce new ones, address churn andoptimise ROI on infrastructure investments.

“With fierce competition in the Indian mobilemarket and the frenzied adoption ofsmartphones, consumers are becomingincreasingly discerning in terms of servicequality. We have teamed up with Astellia toget an increased visibility into our networkperformance to offer enhanced customerexperience and improved operationalefficiency. I am also expecting revenue upliftbased on customer insights and bespokensolutions coming out of the Astellia stable,”said Sameer Dave, the CTO of Aircel.

NEWS IN BRIEF

C O N T R A C T N E W S

Telekom Srbija, which serves Serbia,Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro,has selected Comverse to modernise itsmessaging platforms, enable IPCommunication, and lay the foundation formonetising future rich communicationservices (RCS).

“As the regional leader, Telekom Srbijaaspires to improve the lives of oursubscribers by being first to introduceadvanced technologies that address theirconstantly evolving needs forcommunication, information and

entertainment,” said Filip Bankovic, theCTO at Telekom Srbija. “Unification of allvalue-added services (VAS) in a singlevirtualised environment is a springboard todelivering a superior experience – includingcompelling new services and capabilitiesthat our subscribers can now find hereinstead of seeking OTT alternatives.”

Aashu Virmani, the vice president ofproducts and go to market at Comverse,added: “Spanning more than a decade, thelongstanding Comverse-Telekom Srbijapartnership has celebrated numerous

notable achievements, and we are nowlooking forward to utilising innovative best-fit and future-proof technologies to reachexciting new milestones together. Theproven maintenance and methodologies ofComverse support services will help ensuregains from streamlined operations areoptimised and long-term.”

Comverse is collaborating on this projectwith TERI Engineering, Comverse’s longterm regional partner and reseller. TERIEngineering will provide front-line projectmanagement and maintenance support.

Amdocs to implement new billing and care apps at SingTel

8

Eli Gelman:Amdocs willdeliver a single,integrated system

VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE IFEBRUARY / MARCH 2015

Telekom Srbija selects Comverse for richservices and messaging modernisation

H O T L I S T

Vendor(s) Client Country Product/Service Awarded

Amdocs Singtel, Singapore Amdocs to implement new billing and care applications for business transformation project in Singapore and Australia 1.15 and Australia

Amdocs Vodafone Hutchison, Deployment of Amdocs self-optimising networks system to help free up 4G spectrum and manage peak traffic 12.14 Australia

AsiaInfo AIS, Thailand Advanced Info Services (AIS) launches new service to prepaid customers using AsiaInfo’s Veris real-time convergent 1.15 charging and billing product

Astellia Aircel, India Astellia selected to lead network and business performance initiatives at Indian CSP with more than 75 million subscribers 1.15

Bearing Point/ BT, UK Implementation and use of Infonova R6 platform to enhance BT’s data centre collocation and cloud services portfolio, 1.15Infonova including storage and software-as-a-service offerings

Centina Systems C-Spire, USA C-Spire to deploy Centina NetOmnia suite of systems for service assurance including real-time end-to-end network visibility 1.15

Comarch BASE, Belgium Comarch selected to implement next generation management platform to improve network performance visibility 12.14

Comptel Telenor, Norway Comptel wins €8m order for Comptel Fulfillment software licences. Four-year contract builds on existing relationship 12.14

Comptel Telefónica, Chile Comptel Fulfillment selected as part of Chilean CSP’s quad-play transformation project 12.14

Comverse Telekom Srbija, Serbia, Comverse selected to monetise CSP’s messaging platforms, enable IP communications and lay the foundation for 1.15 Bosnia and Herzegovina monetising future rich communication services (RCS) and Montenegro

CSG International DST, Brunei DST consolidates wholesale business and interconnect operations using CSG Route and the latest release of CSG 1.15 Interconnect in expansion of 15-year relationship with CSP

JDSU Softbank Mobile, Japan JDSU xSIGHT Customer Experience Assurance system chosen to optimise the scale and quality of experience of LTE services 1.15

NetCracker RCN, USA NetCracker Next Generation Revenue Management system deployed in upgrade at US-based provider of internet, TV, 1.15Technology telephony and business communications services

NetCracker Blue Ridge Multi-year renewal for NetCracker Revenue Management licences to support Blue Ridge’s pay-TV, on-demand, 1.15Technology Communications, USA high-speed data and voice services

Openet eircom, Ireland Openet delivers prepaid 4G data offering for CSP’s Meteor brand to ensure prepaid 4G availability before the Christmas period 12.14

Redknee Omantel, Oman Multi-year, multi-million dollar contract agreed to operate Redknee Unified converged charging platform in support of 12.14 Omantel’s LTE network

Redknee Vodafone, India Deployment of latest release of Redknee Unified Charging and customer care solutions to support customer base of 1.15 170 million users

Sigma Systems Tiscali, Italy Sigma Systems successfully deploys Sigma Provisioning across Tiscali’s entire triple play offering 12.14

VanillaPlus Hot List: February / March 2015

The Hot List below shows the companies informing us of recent contract wins or product deployments. If your contract is not listed here email the details to us now marked "Hot List" <[email protected]>

1 0

Redknee has announced it is supportingVodafone India to deliver the benefits ofreal-time charging to its pan-India activeprepaid and postpaid data subscribers.Vodafone India is using the latest release ofRedknee Unified Charging to boostits data subscribers’ adoption andenhance customer satisfaction.

In addition, Vodafone India will useRedknee’s customer caresolution to provide advancedcustomer care and self-service on web and smartdevices, and engage withthem using their customers’favourite social mediaplatforms. This significantsolution upgrade highlights

Redknee’s expertise to enable tier oneCSPs with innovative, real-time solutionsto support their next generation networkinvestments and deliver superior supportto customers.

Vishant Vora, the director of technologyfor Vodafone India, said: “VodafoneIndia operates in one of the most

competitive markets in the worldwhere the use of data is

growing. Redknee’sconverged chargingsolution’s is pivotal toVodafone India’s ability toeffectively drive customerloyalty and generate newrevenue. With Redknee’ssolution Vodafone India

can provide personalised data services anddifferentiated tariff and price options toenhance the customer experience.”

Lucas Skoczkowski, the chief executive ofRedknee, added: “We are extremelypleased to support Vodafone India’s datagrowth strategy with our end-to-end, real-time Redknee Unified platform. Partneringwith this tier one service providerdemonstrates Redknee’s capability todeliver greater scalability and flexibility tomonetise new revenue streams. Theaccelerated adoption of 4G/LTE servicesand rise in mobile broadband in the APACregion validates the growth opportunity forRedknee to expand the presence of ourintegrated charging, billing, policymanagement and customer care platform.”

Redknee supports Vodafone India data subscribers with real-time charging

Lucas Skoczkowski:Vodafone India will useRedknee Unified Chargingto boost data adoption

Sponsored by: www.csgi.com VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE IFEBRUARY / MARCH 2015


P E O P L E N E W S

Francois Van Zyl todrive Anam’s growthin Africa Anam Technologies, theA2P (Application toPerson) revenueassurance solutionsprovider for mobileoperators, has appointedFrancois Van Zyl asregional director for Africa.With 19 years experience

in the telecoms sector, Van Zyl joins AnamTechnologies from his role as a managingexecutive at South African mobile operatorCell C.

As the A2P and enterprise messagingmarket continues to demonstratesubstantial growth, with Juniper Researchforecasting that the A2P SMS market inAfrica alone is set to be worth $60 billionby 2018, Van Zyl will be instrumental indriving Anam’s business development andgrowth strategy across Africa, whilstworking closely with key partners acrossthe region.

Prior to his role at Cell C, Van Zyl had morethan ten years experience in managing andleading companies and developing saleschannels across Sub-Sahara Africa in thetelecoms market. Originally starting out inthe chemical and process industry, Van Zylmoved into the telecoms sector in 1996,where he has held senior positions atorganisations including Infracom, Likusasaand Webb Industries. Until 2001, he wasthe national operations managerresponsible for business development andinfrastructure for mobile operations inSouth Africa at Infracom before moving toWebb Industries as export marketing andsales manager for Africa. In 2008 he joinedLeBlanc Jasco where he held positionsacross the organisation including divisionalmanaging director of carrier solutions.

“Francois’ wealth of experience in workingwith network operators in Africa isinvaluable as we continue to drive ourgrowth and capitalise on the opportunitiesavailable in the region. The A2P SMS andenterprise messaging space shows nosigns of slowing down and as mobileoperators in Africa look for assistance inmanaging and monetising this messagingdomain, Anam will be there to provide theguidance to ensure they succeed ” saidLouise O’Sullivan, the chief executive of

Anam Technologies. “Francois has aproven track record in developingsuccessful sales channels and businessdevelopment in telecoms and is a realasset to the Anam team.”

Van Zyl added: “I’m thrilled to be joiningAnam at an exciting time in the A2P SMSmessaging evolution. Increasingly mobileoperators are turning to experts such asAnam for help and reassurance as theyweave their way through the mobileecosystem and seek success for their SMSofferings. The Anam technology, whether itis the revenue assurance or anti-spamservice, is robust and already provenacross global networks meaning thatAfrican operators can be assured they aregetting best of breed technology. I’mlooking forward to working closely with theAnam team and our partners in the regionto make 2015 a success for Anam and theAfrican telecoms industry as a whole.”

CommScope appoints UK sales staff CommScope has expanded its UKenterprise sales management team tosupport its growth and customer support inthe UK. The appointments of Bryn Jonesas sales director and Peter Marsh assales manager will help deepen customerrelationships and deliver systems toenterprises for CommScope in the UK.

Jones will be responsible for jointlydeveloping strategy and coordinatingchannel, marketing and end-user salesactivities. Jones has almost 10 years ofexperience with responsibility for sales andhas been instrumental in developingCommScope enterprise and data centresales in the UK as well as coordinatingCommScope’s data centre sales effortsacross Europe.

Marsh, who will report to Jones, hasalmost 25 years of experience in sales andtechnical roles. He will bring this in-depthknowledge to maximise sales ofCommScope enterprise solutions in theUK. As part of his role, he will beresponsible for new business and theexpansion of existing accounts.

“I am delighted to strengthen our UK salesteam with these two appointments,” saidWillie O’Connell, managing director,Northern Europe. “Bryn and Peter havealready contributed greatly toCommScope’s success in the UK. As

CommScope continues to explore newopportunities to support enterprise networkinfrastructure needs in the UK, their wealthof experience and in-depth understandingof their customers will be invaluable.”

Aria Networksappoints new CEO Aria Networks hasappointed Steve Newtonas chief executive. Newtonhas already been in anexecutive role at thecompany for the past 12months. He brings morethan 25 years’ experiencein the telecoms sector. Hewas part of a managementteam that steered billingsoftware specialist

Geneva Technology from product launchthrough rapid growth to an exit for $700m.

“Aria Networks is already working withmany of the largest internet companies inthe world,” Newton said. “As user demandfor data continues to grow exponentially,the software solutions provided by AriaNetworks become ever more relevant tointernet service providers, network andcloud operators. I am delighted to lead thecompany into a new era where ourapplications and software defined networkservices will enable Aria to rapidly scale.”

Previous chief executive, Tony Fallows,is leaving Aria Networks to pursue anew opportunity, with the best wishesof the company.

New facility means newjobs at AsiaInfo in EuropeAsiaInfo has said it expected to employabout 180 staff at its new Törökbálintcentre in Hungary within two years and isplanning to recruit more than half theworkforce locally, working alongsideexperts relocating from China.

The first local engineers have already beenrecruited for the new centre, which will beheaded by AsiaInfo senior director, ChenHuaping. Prior to joining AsiaInfo, Chenwas chief solution architect in the telecomsbusiness unit of Hewlett Packard. He hasextensive experience of both telecomsbusiness and technical architecture witha track record of success in deliveringmajor projects.

Francois Van Zyl:CSPs looking forhelp as they seeksuccess with SMS

Steve Newton:Applications andsoftware definednetwork serviceswill enable Aria togrow rapidly

1 1VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE IFEBRUARY / MARCH 2015

anillaPlus: Virtualisation is the buzzword ofthe moment. What is its impact on BSS andhow will virtualised BSS deliver theflexibility CSPs need?

Lucas Skoczkowski: To me, virtualisationbecame a buzzword within the last year, but

we’ve been engaged in this space for at least five years.For us, virtualisation is a reality and it addresses so manyof the issues CSPs face. One of the benefits ofvirtualisation is that it has the ability to keep capitalspending in line with revenue and it provides the flexibilityto add or reduce computing capacity as needed, helpingto serve customers well and keep costs in check.

In addition, from an operational perspective, virtualisationallows a vendor like Redknee to continue upgrading ourcustomers with the latest version of our software. Intelecoms, software upgrades have traditionally been slowand somewhat painful. But with virtualisation, if youchoose to get upgrades continuously – for instance, everymonth or so – you can do so without a huge operationalimpact on your business.

Another benefit, from a business perspective, is that theCSP can go after new business opportunities without theheavy lifting that has been required from traditional BSS.Many of our customers have opted to use a software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach with their enterprisecustomers, utilising more agile BSS systems to enablenew capabilities, such as energy rating, or to provideloyalty systems for retailers. That becomes very exciting

and different, enabling CSPs to think outside theirtraditional businesses.

Virtualisation is also great for smaller CSPs because ofthe cost benefits it provides and the flexibility it candeliver. It also has huge relevance for larger CSPs. In thelast 12 months, Redknee customers such as Oi andVodafone have used virtualised solutions to address theirlarge, high value subscriber base. In short, virtualisation isfor all types of CSPs. It’s not just a buzzword, it’s abusiness enabler.

VP: How is the Internet of Things (IoT) changing themarket for CSPs and placing new demands on theirBSS?

LS: The Internet of Things, as with everything intelecoms, is probably over-hyped for where we are rightnow, but in the coming years, we will see the businesscases emerge. There are definitely more and more thingsbecoming connected. For instance, at the CES show thisyear, Samsung said that all of its domestic appliances willbe able to connect to the internet. The barrier now isreally about human adoption, so I think the business-to-business market will be where we see the most growth inIoT and where we will see the initial return on investment.

From a CSP perspective, they have a choice. They canbe a fundamental pillar in the IoT ecosystem or just apassive connector. Many CSPs we engage with todaywant to play a role beyond the bit-pipe provider and offera platform for business interconnections. The increased

Virtualisation isn’ta buzzword, it’s abusiness enabler

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�TA L K I N G H E A D S

1 2 VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY / MARCH 2015

deployment of platforms and sensors in IoT will create aplethora of new business models for the future.

The IoT drives tremendous volumes of data and CSPshave the capability and systems to process this data,so there’s a natural role for them in IoT - if they want it.There is an impact on BSS as well, because IoTdrives the need for enormous configurability and amore product-oriented approach. In contrast tolegacy BSS, systems will need to be more agileand real-time.

VP: Why is real-time agility so important tobilling? We've got this far without it, so whydoes it matter now?

LS: Real-time provides a lot more flexibility interms of how CSPs can address the market.They need the flexibility and agility that real-timecharging provides because OTT services aredeployed much faster than CSP services.We’re now seeing CSPs use real-timecharging to interact with businesses andsubscribers to improve the targeting ofcampaigns and create more automation inhow businesses and consumers areexperiencing a service.

Real-time allows you to respond directlyto your customers in the moment, whenit matters, while also using business toolsto provide a constant feedback loop so

Lucas Skoczkowski is chief executive ofRedknee, having founded the company in

1999. In his years at Redknee, he has led thedevelopment of the company’s product

portfolio and created a global organisation. Inaddition, he has overseen the purchase of the

BSS business of Nokia Siemens Networks.

A former Nortel executive, Skoczkowskicontinues to drive the company’s development

of real-time BSS systems, for both on-premises and the virtualised telecomsenvironment as well as technology for

companies in adjacent markets. Here, he tellsVanillaPlus that virtualisation is a reality, the

Internet of Things is an approachingopportunity and in a real-time, on-demand

world there are attractive, new possibilities forcommunications service providers (CSPs)

1 3VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY / MARCH 2015

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you can be efficient in how you deliver services todifferent constituencies within your customer base.

Without the agility of real-time capabilities, the industryhas to spend large amounts of money and time creatingcustomised solutions to achieve the same end; now, withreal-time BSS, it’s slowly coming together. We have seenthat some LTE launches have been the catalyst toaccelerate the move to real-time.

VP: Customers interact with their providers acrossmany different platforms and through many differentchannels. What challenges do CSPs face in enablingconsistency and how is the industry making progresstowards the connected customer experience?

LS: It has been an evolving challenge and one that willcontinue to be prevalent. As CSPs provide connectivity tomore and more devices, the consistency of how theservices are experienced across different platforms willbecome a greater challenge. We see big data becomingincreasingly critical in this area, but actionable data will beeven more important. As CSPs move beyond traditionalcommunications, we see them partnering and deliveringnew services and working to create a better customerexperience. One example is retail loyalty programmes,which use a points/rewards system across devices,businesses and platforms. This consistently creates morevalue for the consumer, but it relies on end-to-endsystems to correlate all this data into actionable events orrewards points, and makes it available in real-time to theend-user.

Traditional BSS systems have historically lived in a morefractured or siloed environment, but integrated cloud-based systems are becoming available. CSPs canprovide more interconnections using BSS systems thatare open – and we will see that these are capable of farmore than the monolithic systems of the past.

I’m really excited about moving service expectationsbeyond what has been a typical response/react situation,to taking more of a proactive approach to what can beoffered to customers.

VP: How will Redknee develop to address thesechanged and continually evolving needs over thenext five years?

LS: I continue to be excited about the opportunities I see.Redknee has a strong technology core that we’vedeveloped over the last 15 years. We’ve created this inorder to address complex real-time needs in charging,policy and analytics, and we continue to build on this aswe see the market evolve.

At Redknee, we see CSPs planning for their new roles inthe digital ecosystem and we see our customerscontinuing to diversify. We’re working with non-telecomsindustry customers, as well as CSPs, and have donequite a lot of work to understand the requirements ofother organisations.

Redknee continues to spend significantly on research anddevelopment – the R&D team is 60% of our organisation.I also understand the growing importance of businesspartnerships and see a real need to continue to improvehow we approach and grow in this area. You can alsoexpect to see us acquire companies that will help shapeour organisation to be more responsive to where theCSPs will be in the future.

In five years, I believe Redknee’s customer base will becomprised of 80% CSPs and 20% across other verticals,and we’ll certainly be seen as one of the top three softwareplatforms in the market. At the same time, we’ll continueto build awareness so that we can be the platform ofchoice for connected businesses that use IoT platforms.

This goal puts significant demands on us as a companyand ensures that we don’t rest and sit back on ourlaurels. We’ve recently completed a deployment atVodafone India, which was one of the most complex anddemanding projects in the history of Vodafone Global.This was a challenging and daunting engagement, but it’sreally exciting to serve a CSP of that size - with over 170million users.

I envision in the next five years that we will have built abusiness that is approaching US$1 billion in revenue, andI believe we’ll achieve this in great part through ourvirtualisation and cloud offerings. It will be a tall task, butwe have the energy and the passion to get there, and tohelp our customers along their journeys to be successful.There’s lots to do.www.redknee.com

Lucas Skoczkowski,chief executive of Redknee

TA L K I N G H E A D S

Redknee continues to spend significantlyon research and development – the R&D

team is 60% of our organisation

Redknee Unified brings service providers the power to differentiate in an era where mobile users are more connected, and demand to be in control, informed and always on. Be ready to charge for new digital services across industries and partners, and connect with your customers in a more personalized way. From mobile services to the Internet-of-Things, Redknee Unified provides the flexibility and speed you need to monetize our growing digital world.

Visit www.redknee.com to find out more about our solutions.

At Mobile World Congress 2015, CSG International will announce an innovative digitalcommerce platform that will help CSPs to capitalise on the next generation of digital servicesand digital service provision. Here, Chad Dunavant tells VanillaPlus about the new CSGproposition and approach

cross the industry mobile operators arebecoming media companies, and cablecompanies are becoming mobile providersand providers of content. They’ve becomepartners rather than rivals with over-the-top

(OTT) providers and it’s not just communicationsservice providers (CSPs) that want to win a slice of thedigital services value chain.

That makes it hard to pin down what digital servicesand digital service providers (DSPs) are. Digitalservices are not defined by, or necessarily integratedwith physical networks. A DSP doesn’t need to own aphysical network to deliver its service – anyone with aservice or product that is defined and delivered digitallycan be a DSP.

So why is CSG International, with its extensive heritageserving telecoms operators and cable providers,targeting this emerging market with a new proposition?

“We’ve seen a steady untethering of the way contentis being delivered to consumers,” explains ChadDunavant, the vice president of product managementat CSG International. “Cable providers, for example,have needed to enable access to content across anumber of devices, not just the set top box. Serviceshave to be delivered to different devices and differentmembers of the household, maintaining a level of deviceubiquity and access that is unmatched by OTT rivals.”

The customer experience has to compete with thoseoffered by web companies and CSG has been working

From back office to front of store– welcome to digital commerce

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steady untethering of

the way content is

being delivered to

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to help all types of organisation rise to that challenge.What they’ve come up with is an enabling platform fora new breed of DSP rather than an upgraded idea ofa traditional CSP’s back office.

“It’s not just about the traditional service offering ortraditional service providers any more,” confirmsDunavant. “We’re seeing business transformationshappen across all industries. For example, we’veworked with the Cineplex chain of movie theatres tohelp them transform the experience users have. Fortheir customers, going to watch a movie is no longerjust a one-time experience. You go to the theatre butwhen the movie is released to buy, you can downloadit and access additional content.”

Dunavant says the experience enables the theatrechain to extend the relationship with its customersbeyond the one-time event. “It’s not just aboutcapturing the long tail though, it’s about defending theexisting business,” he adds. “For people that mighthave waited until the movie was released to downloadit, and not gone to the theatre at all, there’s nowanother option as today’s theatre ticket becomestomorrow’s redemption token.”

He adds that CSG has more than 20 tangibleexamples of helping companies in many differentindustries become digital service providers.A lot of that functionality is applicable to CSG’straditional customer base. For instance, a cableoperator that wants to provide customers with theopportunity to buy content instead of rent it. However,the relevance extends far beyond CSPs.

CSG’s new proposition, which will be unveiled atMWC 2015, encapsulates the concept of a digitalcommerce platform – bringing together a new digitalback office and a consumer monetisation strategy –and draws some of its functionality from its widelyused billing, charging and settlement products.However, this is far from a repurposing or a marketingwrap for the company’s telecoms systems.

“That will be clear when we launch the solution at theshow” says Dunavant. “We’re not rebrandingSingleview, this is a new platform we’ve been

building and executing on over the last five years.We’ve now added it to our BSS assets to create anew proposition.”

“We recognised that it can’t always be about full-scaleBSS transformation so we created the concept of anintegrated digital overlay to an organisation’s existingsystems,” adds Dunavant. “This lets DSPs experimentwith many new services easily and, as important, seethem succeed or fail quickly, unencumbered by theneed to invest for two years in developing billing forthat unproven new service.”

For CSPs and others, CSG is bringing a tacticalproposition which has long-term strategic potential.CSPs can initially invest in an overlay to their existingsystems that will include subscriber portals, afederated e-wallet that can integrate into existingorder and billing platforms, functionality to supportnew device ecosystems, and an identity and rightsmanagement model, all delivered as a service fromthe cloud, and use this new platform to grow theirdigital businesses. They can avoid the cost, delay andupheaval of customising existing systems and enternew markets rapidly with the potential to extend theirinvestment for future services and businesses.“The challenge facing CSPs is how to monetise thedigital experience and highly variable new digitalservices” explains Dunavant. “If you go back to atraditional billing approach, it could take six to 12months of customisation work to address each newservice. That’s too slow.”

With the CSP market splitting into two groups,Dunavant sees great potential ahead. “It’s clear thatthere are two paths open to CSPs,” he says. “Theycan become a utility and, if a CSP wants to go thatway, we’ve got great technology to help them runleanly and efficiently.

“With our new proposition, though, we’re focused onthe rest of the market,” he explains. “CSPs that wantto take an alternative path and monetise a new suiteof products and services will need a more nimbleapproach. We believe we can help them gain accessto that DSP tier and we’re looking forward to sharingour ideas at Mobile World Congress 2015.”

Chad Dunavant,We’re launching anenabling platformfor digital serviceproviders at MobileWorld Congress

www.csgi.com


PLATINUM SPONSOR: GOLD SPONSORS:


Ray Bariso is vice president of Ericsson’sOSS/BSS business in North America –including strategy, marketing, solutionand offer development and businessmanagement. He also leads Ericsson’sOSS/BSS Global Engagement PracticeCommunity. Prior to joining Ericsson,Bariso was responsible for managingTelcordia’s Global Operations Solutionsand Utility solutions business. Here hetells Vanilla Plus that big data andanalytics are nothing new forcommunications service providers(CSPs). What is new is that the volumesof data involved have become far greater.

The good news within that volume is thatCSPs can now use analytics to triggerchanges in the network or systems toaffect the experience that is in progressor to proactively engage the customer asa result of a previous experience. That iscreating the capability to performexperience-based marketing.

L E A D I N T E R V I E W


VanillaPlus: With the tremendous amount of focuson analytics today across all industries, arecommunications service providers (CSPs) behindrelative to IT providers and enterprises with regardsto big data and analytics?

Ray Bariso: Actually, the truth is that CSPs and theirsuppliers have been utilising big data since the industry’sinception. Certainly the definition of big has changeddramatically, but CSPs have always used a tremendousamount of data to manage their assets, secure theirnetworks, meet SLA requirements, and perform otherfunctions. Telecoms has used big data and analytics longbefore it was trendy – it was simply what was needed toprovide network services. The big difference now is thatCSPs can drive innovation and more value for theircustomers faster than ever before.

VP: Why do you think that is?

RB: It’s because CSPs can become well positioned tomonetise all that data traversing their networks. Big datahas become much bigger. The communications industryhas always led in terms of the volume of data that had tobe managed, and that will continue. Instead ofcommunications networks managing and generatinggigabytes and terabytes, they’re now required to manageand handle petabytes, exabytes and zettabytes. Giventhe innovation that is happening in the Networked Society,I wouldn’t expect it to stop there either. So – the step-function increase in volume is a significant change andmust be addressed by more capable tools and processes.

Other key differences are the format and sources of thedata traversing communications networks. Data is nolonger solely structured in rows and columns inside arelational database and stored in a data warehouse, butrather also comes in as unstructured data generated from

social media and other interactive sources. The sourcesare also very different now – it’s on the move. We’re in ahighly connected – mobile – society, and all of thesemobile devices that we have are generating tons of richdata that can tell us so much more about how to betterserve the end user and better utilise our networks. Thisrich data is in motion – and that adds much more complexityto capturing, storing and understanding that data.

VP: You mentioned that more capable tools andprocesses will be needed to address these changes– can you be more specific?

RB: Sure – let’s hit them one at a time. First, the tsunamiof data must be managed as efficiently and utilised aseffectively as possible. Costs for storing and processingmust be optimised, business processes must be agile toquickly assess which data is important, and actions mustbe triggered based on data while it is still relevant – theclock will be ticking. Next, the platform and its tools mustbe able to ingest and process free flowing, unformatteddata. Finally, in addition to the typical data at rest thatwe’re accustomed to, an analytics platform must be ableto capture and process streaming data and driveappropriate action through the integration of policy andOSS, within both physical and virtual infrastructureenvironments.

VP: So what are the characteristics of an analyticalplatform that CSPs should consider?

RB: I would say that first and foremost, an analyticalplatform serving the needs of today’s highly connectedmobile society must operate in real-time – in terms ofcapturing, processing and responding to the data. Theplatform also must be horizontal to cut across the typicalvertical silos of network, IT and marketing data, andenable automated business processes at the

Big data analytics enables CSPsto achieve experience-basedmarketing to the benefit ofcustomers and the bottom line

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“...the truth is that

CSPs and their

suppliers have been

utilising big data

since the industry’s

inception”


www.ericsson.com

organisational level, and not just the departmental level. Itwill also need to be open not only to accommodatevarying sources of data, but also multiple vendors whounderstand what data is important and how to interpret it.

VP: How are CSPs responding today?

RB: We work with lots of different CSPs around theglobe. Some offer many communications services to bothenterprises and consumers, while others focus on asingle service to one particular segment, so there is a lotof variation in terms of their needs and responses. Ingeneral, CSPs are surveying their existing analyticalassets and capabilities, and evaluating what will servethem in the future. As I mentioned earlier, CSPs havebeen using analytics since the beginning, but thesesolutions were typically deployed to fulfill a specificpurpose in a specific department, resulting in verticalstacks of business intelligence. CSPs understand that tobest serve their customers they’ll need to bring the datawithin those vertical silos together along with new sourcesof data into a horizontal platform so it can be utilised bythe entire organisation efficiently and with as muchautomation as possible. So we’re starting to see atransition away from analytical solutions that no longer fitthe purpose either because they don’t have real-timecapabilities, they aren’t horizontally integrated or theyinvolve using older tools and technologies that are moreexpensive than what’s available today.

VanillaPlus: What are the key use cases that aredriving CSPs to enhance their big data and analyticscapabilities?

RB: The typical use cases are network planning andoptimisation of course, but they are moving way beyondthat into using analytics for proactive care and for whatwe call experience-based marketing, includingpersonalised offer recommendations in real-time.

VP: What do you mean by experience-basedmarketing for CSPs?

RB: A simple definition is the use of analytics to triggerchanges in the network or systems to affect theexperience that is in progress or to proactively engage thecustomer as a result of a previous experience. When real-

time analytics are integrated with real-time charging,policy, self-care and a centralised catalogue – this visionof experience based marketing becomes possible – andoffers the operator the last remaining opportunity fordifferentiation – the customer’s experience.

CSPs can set themselves apart if they can capture,manage and use both the data traversing their networksand the systems powering those networks better thantheir competitors. Add to that a deep customerunderstanding of what is valued in a communicationsexperience – and create business rules that driveautomated action to deliver that value profitably. Theheavy lifting is in uncovering what customers truly value,and defining those automated business processes; youcan’t get that just by deploying a tool or a platform. Thisis the type of proprietary intellectual property that willdifferentiate CSPs. All competitors have access to thesame tools, platforms and technologies – they’re onlylimited by their budget. The long-term sustainabledifferentiation comes in the form of how they put them towork. We think experience-based marketing is a vision forhow to put them to work. In fact, there was a study doneby McKinsey in 2012 that found that more than 50% ofservice providers that employed customer level marketingachieved 10% or more improvement in their EBITDAperformance.

VP: What’s the future of big data and analytics?

RB: Do you mean after service providers have realizedthe vision and benefits of experience based marketing?Well – I’m not sure, since things are moving so fast. Asour industry has in the past, this leap in capability willmake us innovate the next cycle of capability even faster.

I do think that another area for the future of big data andanalytics is the ease of use and accessibility – to the pointwhere an everyday person is accessing an analyticalengine to perform a task as they go through their daywithout even thinking about it. Concepts aroundvisualisation of data and voice querying of data sets willmake the insights more accessible to more people,driving even more innovation. Analytics has always beenand will always be the lifeblood of communicationsnetworks – in the end, the more it is used by morepeople, the more growth there will be.

L E A D I N T E R V I E W

“CSPs can set themselves apart if they cancapture, manage and use both the data traversingtheir networks and the systems powering thosenetworks better than their competitors”

Whether you’re a car manufacturer, a utility company or a communications service provider(CSP), one thing is for sure: the amount of structured and unstructured data generated in youroperations is only going to continue to rise dramatically. That data represents a greatopportunity, writes Mikko Jarva

isco estimates that mobile data traffic willgrow at a compound annual growth rate(CAGR) of 61% from 2013 to 2018, reaching15.9 exabytes per month. A significantcontributor to this traffic growth is the Internet

of Things (IoT); forecasts say that there will be 50billion connected devices by 2020.

The growing amount of data and its inherent insightspresents an opportunity, but right now a lot of thatinformation is not being utilised to its full potential.Research from TeleTech shows that 95% of CSPbusinesses collect and store multi-dimensionalcustomer information, but only 60% are able totransform it into usable form. In addition, while 30%are able to regularly identify value generationopportunities from it, only 20% are able to turn theopportunities into action. If data isn’t integrated,analysed and acted upon across all sources,companies will never be able to unlock the true

potential of their customers or operations.Instead of analysing and acting on old big data,businesses need to start thinking about how to utilisestreaming information in the moment, enabling themto quickly determine the immediate actions theyshould take and maximise their opportunities. For

example, someone who is about to hit a bandwidthcap while watching a movie will be more willing to topup their data quota at that exact time rather than threedays later. CSPs need to make sure they don’t missout on that potential revenue.

To fully monetise data, organisations need to be ableto have unfiltered access to it and be able to refineand analyse it in real-time. As customers’ digitalbehaviours get more sophisticated, so too must thesystems that process all of their transactions andinteractions. Comptel’s vision of Operation Nexterdaywill help bring this sophistication into companies’systems, so they align with and best serve, meet andrespond to the needs of the cloud generation.

Intelligent, automated analyticsGartner predicts that advanced, pervasive andinvisible analytics will be one of the top ten technologytrends of 2015. As data floods back-end systems, inorder to reduce manual work, analytics-drivenenrichment and automated decision-making will haveto become the cornerstone for operations, customerexperience and business growth.

Managing the expansive growth in informationcomplexity, volume and speed requires that intelligentmachine-learning algorithms are employed andautomated. Machine learning can be used to identifypatterns in data streams that can be then used forpredictions or early detection of new signals – the twomost important aspects of proactive insights.

With an automated analytics layer that utilisesmachine learning, businesses will be able to gainproactive insight into operations through in-streamcontextual intelligence. For example, such in-streamcontextual intelligence can be used to detect andwarn about emerging negative sentiment and topics insocial media or predict future service degradation dueto unusually high loads, so CSPs can proactivelyensure an optimal customer experience.

Intelligent, fast data to fulfillevery need is what nexterdaymediation will look like

CThe author, MikkoJarva, is chieftechnology officerfor Intelligent Dataat Comptel


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Mediation systems have already evolved beyondcollecting network data for billing and should expandto meet the needs of nexterday. A nexterdaymediation platform should consist of a dataprocessing layer that integrates information from everypotential source such as customers, operations,locations, social media, apps, cars, houses andwearables, and offers in-stream contextual intelligenceto drive the right actions, at the right times andthrough the right channels. But what will this new kindof in-stream contextual intelligence layer actually looklike? And how will it work?

Data refinery: embedded intelligenceA data refinery takes the best parts from ComptelEventLink, Comptel’s big data mediation technology,specifically its massive scalability and ability to integrate,aggregate and correlate virtually any data sources, andadds in machine learning, which enables in-streampattern matching, anomaly detection and predictions.Machine learning is an iterative process, so the moredata that is used for learning means that over time thebetter the results, such as predictions, become. A data refinery establishes an intelligent datamediation layer that can collect and analyse all dataacross all platforms, from mobile devices to networksand cars, and delivers insights and actions toappropriate destinations such as mobile applications,customer relationship management systems, networkoperations and campaign management systems.

Examples of such insights and actions include: • A recommendation for a Netflix-tailored data package sent to a mobile application, when the customer is about to run out of data quota while watching a movie • Upsell campaign triggers sent to a campaign management system based on customer affinity• Early warnings on abnormally high cell utilisation levels sent to radio network operations

• A list of network elements most likely to have issues in the next 24 hours sent to network management systems• A notification sent to fleet management systems when a connected car drives to an unexpected area

With such a multitude of potential uses, use casesand users, it’s very easy for things to get complicated.Fortunately, a data refinery provides a modern,intuitive and clean user experience, which allowsusers to keep it simple, while building easilyconfigurable workflows fast around different usecases. In the back end, a data refinery provides richreporting capabilities on the integrated data streams,which enables the evaluation of the success of thedeployed use cases as well as delivers insights fordesigning new ones.

With so much data coming through every business,it’s critical for companies to have an intelligent dataprocessing layer that can ensure no valuableinformation goes to waste. They must harness raw,real-time data across every possible source and turnthat into business opportunities. An intelligent,automated and real-time data refinery is the logicalnext step – data is already everywhere, and only byenriching that information with analytics, canbusinesses make sense of it all. www.comptel.com


D ATA A N A LY T I C S

otential short term gains may seem attractivebut when planning data analyticsdeployments, communications serviceproviders (CSPs) should keep the long andmedium term potential of the technology in

mind, or risk losing a far larger pot of gold furtherdown the line.

Caught between the competitive race to lower pricesand soaring consumer expectations, there’s a demandto deliver a near immediate return on investment. “Thebudgetary environment remains challenging for mostCSPs, and investment proposals need to be fullyjustified to receive management and procurementapproval,” says Mounir Ladki, the president and CTOof Mycom OSI.

When creating business cases for successfuldeployments, advocates should push the messagethat these are not the same as old-fashioned businessintelligence rollouts; these are root and branchtechnology solutions that enable and inform newbusiness opportunities.

The challenge may seem huge: “Companies might bediscouraged by the fact that their data is in acombination of legacy and new systems housed invarious locations. They may think that a lengthyinstallation process or custom tool development isnecessary to answer this question,” explains RupertNaylor, the UK vice president at Applied PredictiveTechnologies. “Organisations can use the largeamount of data they now have available to run tests todetermine the impact of each new business idea.[This] helps organisations determine cause-and-effectrelationships between business actions and keymetrics, and identifies opportunities to tailor and targetthose initiatives to improve ROI.”

There is potential for fast return. “The positive impactof data analytics deployment should be seen fairlyimmediately, whether that’s improving marketingperformance, customer care or network optimisation,”explains Matthew Roberts, the director of marketing forbig data analytics and strategic innovations at Amdocs.

Gartner recently predicted that an average CSP couldpotentially generate US$300 million a year in additionalmargins, including cost savings and revenue uplift, by

using data analytics.

CSPs can use data analytics technologies in numerousways to address challenges such as customer churn,or to precisely address identified problems in capacityprovision, enabling significant cost savings andimproved service agility.

“It’s not about how many petabytes or exabytes ofdata a CSP can store. It is about how much value canbe extracted from these data records,” adds Ladki.

For Chris Purdy, the CTO of CENX: “Data analyticscan be used very effectively within CSP operations todrive revenue due to improved level of service withcustomer self-service portals for dynamic provisioningand real-time monitoring of data connectivity services.”

Data will “typically include geo-location, demographicdata, statistical models, as well as items calculatedfrom a combination of external and internal sources,such as proximity of customers to the organisation’snetwork assets,” says Steve Farr, a product marketingmanager at TIBCO Software.

In the long term CSPs will eventually be able to createuser profiles for customers in order to develop tailoredservices; even further down the line. “CSPs can enablenew revenue streams from partners and third parties,such as advertisers, content publishers and socialmedia by providing access to the valuable insightsextracted from user data,” says Neil Lilley, Ericsson’sOSS product marketing director.

From JIC to JITPart of CSPs’ strategies should address requirementsto reduce opex and capex and position themselves forlong-term gain. “The long term possibilities of dataanalytics are that the CSP can move from a Just-in-Case (JIC) approach for managing capacity in theirnetworks to a Just-in-Time (JIT) upgrade capability tosignificantly reduce capex and opex while stilldelivering quality user experiences,” adds Purdy.

Additional opportunities may include:• Providing CSPs with a deeper understanding of traffic trends to enable predictive deployment of virtual services.

P

Data analytics deployments by their definition are long-term projects but they need to be rolledout in a climate in which short-term ROI is required to gain investment. Jonny Evans exploreshow business cases be constructed that deliver the short-term gains necessary to receiveinvestment approval

Does revenue todaymean lost potential?

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Matthew Roberts:The positive impact of

a data analyticsdeployment should be

seen fairly immediately

Mounir Ladki:Budgetary

environment remainschallenging for most

CSPs

Neil Lilley: CSPs can enable

new revenue streamsfrom valuable

insights extractedfrom user data


• Helping CSPs to understand app and content provider relationships as they become OTT service partners• Enabling CSPs to offer appropriate analytics identified services to the right users at the right time, such as providing high quality video to travellers.

To bring such opportunities in on time and on budget,while making good deployment decisions, CSPs shouldfocus on what they want out of the analytics system,keeping costs down and the value proposition defined.“Combining this with cloud engagement will help keepthe costs justifiable but also enable the transitionbetween technical choices in the longer term,” saysFergus Wills, the director of product management atOpenwave Mobility.

However, this is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. “Thereis no single solution that can address all the use cases,so interoperability is extremely important,” says Purdy.

Ladki urges caution. “A rushed decision made todaymay mean that a CSP is unable to use real-timeanalytics for customer experience management or todrive network planning and operations or to bestsupport the smart world tomorrow,” Ladki warns.

Purdy points out that the best analytics solutions makeoptimal use of open source software, which keeps theminteroperable and faster to deploy. Among many otherthings, good data analytics systems could enableefficient and reliable services, paying a loyalty dividendthat, arguably, in this age of customer churn, may proveeven more valuable in the long-term.

“It’s really important for CSPs to realise that dataanalytics isn’t about generating revenue, that’s only asmall proportion of it. It’s about improved customer careand marketing, and more efficient networks andoperations,” Roberts observes.

“It is all about the business case, and there is a strongbusiness case here,” Ladki points out.

Nevertheless, decisions must be made carefully withinteroperability and extendibility at their heart. “If thewrong technology is used then there is a high risk ofrising costs and declining responsiveness – whichis a negative spiral for any project,” warns Wills.

Rupert Naylor:CSPs might bediscouraged by databeing in acombination of oldand new systemshoused in variouslocations


Communications service providers (CSPs) are starting to take advantage of new technologythat enables them to analyse the sheer volume of their data, much of which is in motion. Dataanalytics tools are transforming CSPs' businesses by allowing them to gain actionable insightsfrom their vast data sources, write Linda Austin and Neil Lilley

ervice provider networks and systems, andother sources such as social media, producevast amounts of data, much of which is inmotion in this increasingly mobile world. Untilrecently the sheer volume of this data and

added complexity of mobile data sources made itimpractical to extract many of the key insights offered.Technological advancements, combined with thehyper-competitive and increasingly mobile world, aredriving service providers to differentiate themselves byextracting and utilising this data more effectively.

To that end, many CSPs have begun makingsignificant investments in big data analytics tools thathandle not only data at rest, but also data in motion.However, CSPs should ensure that their efforts arefocused on gaining actionable insights – rather thansimple exploration – to maximise the value of analyticsinvestments. CSPs can gain actionable insights andderive the maximum return on their big data andanalytics investments by:

1. Implementing horizontal analytics architectures2. Including real-time capabilities3. Supporting specific use cases based on domain expertise4. Adopting closed-loop action

Delivering data in real-time is insufficient unless there isa process to convert that real-time data into actionsthat drive value. CSPs need to make sure they areanalysing the right data, converting this data intocustomer insights quickly, and making use of thoseinsights across the entire organisation in order tocreate value for the business. This process is what wecall the insights in motion framework.

Traditionally, CSPs have focused their analyticsinitiatives in one of three different domains – network,IT and business. Understanding all three areas, as wellas the relationships between them, is essential tohelping organisations use their data effectively. Thisframework looks at three key components:

• Quality-of-Insights (QOI): determining which information is relevant and where to get the data in order to create reliable insights

• Time-to-Insights (TTI): making sure the data is immediately available to generate actionable intelligence across the organisation

• Return-on-Insights (ROI): ensuring that the insights created will drive business advantages across the organisation. Understanding the potential business advantages from strategic intelligence is what determines the QOI

Recent and current investments in analytics solutionsare still dominated by analytical silos; that is, analyticssolutions focused on a specific type of data andsupporting a specific application. Examples of suchinvestments are probe solutions or CDR analyticaltools. These vertical solutions are a natural evolution,using existing, but comparatively narrow, data sets.Taken one implementation at a time, vertical analyticssolutions appear to require relatively low investmentsof time and expense. However, these economiesdisappear as more data sources become the subjectof analysis, and as more internal users seek to developapplications that address their particular needs.

By contrast, horizontal solutions are designed to pullkey data from multiple and diverse sources, performpre-processing, and make this big data available to avariety of applications, each tailored to the needs ofdifferent users and use cases. These horizontalplatforms lower investment of both time and money toincrementally meet the needs of various internal usersand external partners.

Perhaps the greater drawback of vertical analyticssolutions is that they miss many of the possible anduseful insights that could be attained simply byincluding diverse data from multiple sources. Incontrast, horizontal analytics architectures cancorrelate data from all possible – network and non-

CSPs handle data in motionto gain actionable insights

S

Linda Austin is thedirector of strategicmarketing at RegionNorth America atEricsson


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network and physical and virtual – sources. Forexample, consider that probes can provide detailedinsights into the quality of service that each individualcustomer is receiving. If that quality is inadequate,probe data typically cannot explain why. However,session events, performance metrics and other datasources can reveal the cause, even for an individualcustomer. A horizontal analytics platform can collectcause and symptom data from multiple sources, andcorrelate those metrics by customer identifier andsession, creating a customer experience record that isvaluable to several different use cases – such ascustomer care, operations, or marketing – and whichcannot be derived from any vertical, siloed analyticsenvironment.

Existing analytical deployments mostly consists of off-line – (batch) – tools. This approach can reveal patternsand trends, which can be useful for a number of usecases, including long-term capacity planning andcustomer segmentation. However, newer approachesmake real-time analytics possible and practical,supporting many more use cases, such as pro-activecustomer care or real-time resource optimisation.

Consider targeted marketing, where many use casescan be supported by offline analytics. Robust,experience-based marketing can be supported if real-time capabilities are available and analytics areintegrated with policy, a centralised catalogue andself-care. In this case, the actual, recent customerexperience can be added to the customer profile, thusallowing a more appropriate offer – such as retention,cross-sell, or usage incentive – to be matched to theindividual customer based on whether the customer’srecent experience was below or above average. CSPscould even develop a Service Level Index (SLI) thatweights recent experiences to better predict risk ofchurn as well as receptiveness to various incentives.According to McKinsey’s 2012 article ‘Using big datato boost marketing capabilities’, more than 50% oftelecoms companies that conduct Customer LevelMarketing (CLM) projects achieve a 10% or greaterimprovement in their EBITDA performance.

Domain expertise is the secret ingredient for derivingactionable insights for service providers from big data.After all, most analytics tools are akin to blankspreadsheets. Just as a spreadsheet must beconfigured with formulas and formats to be useful, sotoo must big data analytics tools such as big datastorage tools or complex event processing engines beconfigured with data models, business rules,thresholds and the like in order to support a given usecase. In order to gain useful insights, you must knowwhat data elements, in what combinations, and atwhat thresholds truly matter to the question at hand.

Primary customer research, network expertise andother knowledge guide the development of these rules.

Many CSPs still have manual analytical steps tosupport their business. Real-time automated analyticswill enable closed-loop action, driving decisionsefficiently. The greatest value is derived when big datainsights are connected to business processes, thusenabling closed-loop action, where data drives insightsand insights drive actions – network configurations,work orders, customer marketing offers, and so on –without human intervention. This ‘data to cash’process is where the horizontal architecture, real-timecapabilities, and tailored applications supportingspecific use cases all come together to drivesignificant improvement in operations and customerexperience, and ultimately return on investment.

Neil Lilley isdirector ofmarketing for CEMand Analytics atEricsson

www.ericsson.com


Communications service providers (CSPs) are under attack from new and traditionalcompetitors and at the same time usage of services is dramatically shifting. Thomas Vasenadvocates that CSPs move from managing the service to managing the subscriber experience.

ommunications service providers (CSPs) arebeset by challenges. Over-the-top (OTT)service providers are taking their revenues;customers perceive the handsetmanufacturers as the providers of their good

experiences and as mobile markets approachsaturation, growth opportunities only exist incompeting for subscribers with other CSPs. This iscausing customer acquisition costs to increase, aswell as churn. That cycle is unlikely to decelerate soCSPs need to redefine how they approach deliveringgood subscriber experiences.

However, there still remains plenty of upside for CSPsif they can create and assure high-quality experiencesfor their customers. Higher quality results in higherusage, and with data consumption-based price plansnow the norm that means more revenue for the CSP.

At times it seems as if CSPs have been stuck in areactive mode. Traditional networks are static, serviceprofiles are provisioned by the CSP in isolation andnew offers are made through sales calls to customers.Rarely does a CSP contact its customers about theirexperience proactively. Typically, the customer needsto call in and complain if they’re unhappy. When theydo, the CSP’s focus is on reducing the number ofcalls to support centres and in shortening waitingtimes not on improving the subscriber experience.

However, initiatives that result in fewer calls and morerapid call centre responses are of little value because96% of unhappy customers typically do not complain.They just leave when it’s time to renew their contract.

It’s time for CSPs to become more proactive andleave their passive approaches in the past. What’sneeded now is automated action. CSPs need tobehave more like OTT providers. For example,

Amazon automatically issues a refund when it detectsthe quality of video delivered over its video-on-demand systems is insufficient. Customers love thisbecause they want the experience they receive to beacknowledged. The key to achieving this is tomeasure, manage and be aware of the device,location and content used to create a completepicture of the experience.

What’s needed is a new approach that provides acomplete loop comprising data collection that deliversthe required perspective and insights needed to takethe proper action.

In addition to a transformation in business model andcompetitive landscape, the telecoms industry is goingthrough a technological shift. The services themselvesare changing and so are networks. Traditional probesystems that have been the key tools to capture userexperience based on signalling are becoming outmodedbecause the signalling data doesn’t provide the levelof insight required to assure the user experience.

All networks are migrating to internet protocol andwith the introduction of LTE the circuit-switchednetwork has almost completely disappeared frommobile environments. Even voice has become justanother form of data.

This technological change is shifting the monitoring ofuser experience from the signaling plane to the userplane. With deep packet inspection (DPI) technology,full insights can be gained into the content beingtransferred from just a few central locations in thenetwork and, with in-line deployment, the experiencecan be managed.

However, despite providing a sophisticated degree ofinsights, traffic management using DPI alone is not

CSPs are finished with beingpassive – it’s time toproactively manage thesubscriber experience

CThe author, ThomasVasen, is subscriber

experience evangelistat Procera Networks


�

enough because the radio access network (RAN)perspective also needs to be added. With informationabout the original location of each of the packets,better informed and more balanced decisions can bemade that enable effective management of thecrowded access networks.

Once RAN monitoring is added to the insightsprovided by DPI, the magic can start to happen. Forexample, congestion control can be applied for theusers located in a cell that is suffering congestion andit can be done in a service- and user profile-awareway. In this way, CSPs can eradicate congestionaffecting key services such as OTT voice, includingVoLTE or premium streaming video.

CSPs can now ensure a fair and consistent service isdelivered for all subscribers. This is a major step

forward in comparison to passive probes that see onlythe details about the start and end of the session andcontain no insight into whether the session delivered apositive experience. Furthermore, the duration of datasessions is making this type of insight irrelevantbecause some sessions can last for weeks.

DPI-based experience management is a far betterapproach because it enables the detection of irritatingabnormalities – the issues that annoy users. Its valueis further emphasised because DPI-based experiencemanagement systems are real-time and deployed in-line so action can be taken whether that’s tuning athird party system – such as a video server – ormanaging the traffic in a band. It’s that ability to takeaction immediately that makes the difference in asubscriber experience system. For CSPs, it means thedays of being passive are over.


www.proceranetworks.com

B I G D ATA V A L U E


o paraphrase one of the experts quotedbelow, there’s gold in CSPs’ data sets. Theindividual elements scattered about thestorage landscape contain information onbehaviour, tastes, location and

demographics that, if combined by a marketingalchemist, could make CSPs richer than Facebook.

Gold, like big data, has many applications beyondsales. Both are vital components in making businesssystems run more efficiently, with gold being acomponent in computers and electronics to speed theaccurate transmission of information. Gold has dentaland medical applications – as indeed does big data,which provides the basis of the nervous system andimmune responses of the increasingly organic andself-regulating networks of the CSPs.

In other words, there’s so much you can do with bigdata it’s terrifying. It is literally causing panic in somecompanies. “Many departments are under pressure toboost their customer revenue and optimise theirnetwork and even to improve the customerexperience,” says Ravi Palepu, the head of telcosolutions for management system vendor Virtusa.

The biggest mistake a CSP can make is to run all theirprogrammes at the same time, says Palepu. FirstCSPs need to decide which of their ambitions –improving customer experience, boosting revenue,

improving operations or creating pro-active marketing– is their priority. “Running all the different streams inparallel will be counter productive,” he adds.

Having decided on which seam of data is to bemined, the next priority is assembling the tools andthe personnel.

Contrary to popular marketing messages, manycompanies have impressive data mining systems likeHadoop and SAP’s HANA, but haven’t worked outwhat they really want from the data sets, nor do theyunderstand the domains or know what they want todo, says Palepu.

Too often CSPs lack the expertise needed as there’s asmall talent pool, says Matthew Roberts, director ofmarketing at Amdocs’ big data analytics and strategicinnovations division. “Data scientists are in highdemand, particularly those with a telecoms specialismwho can understand the data in context,” he says.

Meanwhile, the staff charged with striking gold arehaving to blend data from different sources and makesense of it. “It’s like a cocktail, blending differentingredients and you don’t know what works untilyou’ve found the winning formula. The trick is to find itfast before you drown in data,” says Roberts.

If it’s difficult to find the staff for that ambitious deep

TAll communication service providers (CSPs) have silos of data that could yield pure gold.Nick Booth warns that, in the rush to extract it, there could be a lot of casualties

CSPs careful not toget swept away in thebig data gold rush

Matthew Roberts:Data scientists are inhigh demand

Ben Parker: CSPsmust sift out theexcess data to bringhome the valuablenuggets

�

dive into the data, why not create a more realistictarget? While other CSPs are tying themselves upsearching for the meaning of life in their data, it mightbe a lot more worthwhile going for some quick wins,according to Ben Parker, chief technologist forGuavus.

“When panning for gold, you do it in the river, sifting outthe excess, and bringing home the nuggets – you don’tshovel all the soil into a truck to take back home andsort, that would be a waste of time and money,” he says.

Yet this is what many CSPs do when they take a storeand query approach to data analytics. “By applyingstreaming analytics at the edge, sifting out the uselessdata and keeping the nuggets of gold, CSPs arebetter set up for success,” says Parker. The best wayto immediately improve network operations, customerexperience and revenue streams is to work on thedata streams not the stored silos, Parker argues. It’s amore practical way of showing the top managementthat results are being achieved.

Another practical approach that CSPs – and thecompanies that promise to solve their big dataproblems – could take is widening the talent pool bymaking analytics easier.

Not many people can create the algorithms forinterrogating big data, but why should they anyway,

asks Steve Bowker, the vice president of technologyand strategy for Teoco. “Once the data has beeninterrogated with a specific use case others can makeuse of it,” he says.

Big data isn’t as scary as everyone makes it out to be,argues Andy Stubley, the vice president of sales andmarketing at SysMech, which creates big data appsfor CSPs.

“You just need to know what you want to get fromthe data,” says Stubley, “half the battle is asking theright questions.”

The idea that big data can only be understood andtranslated for practical use by data scientists is acommon misconception anyway, says Mark Davis,Citrix’s senior director of product marketing. “Yesthere’s a shortage of big data scientists but a newclass of big data analytics platforms makes theinsights more widely available.”

For big data’s benefits to be fully realized, more peopleneed access to insight, which includes marketers andcustomer care organisations, who will want immediateand continuous use, Davis adds.

That may be true, but that leads to another intelligenceconundrum: there are so many big data solutions outthere. How do we make sense of them all?

Steve Bowker: Oncedata has beeninterrogated otherscan make use of it, too

Mark Davis: A newclass of big dataanalytics platformsmakes the insightsmore widely available


“When panning for gold, you do it in theriver, sifting out the excess, and bringinghome the nuggets – you don’t shovel allthe soil into a truck to take back home

and sort, that would be a waste of timeand money”


Everyone knows that the volume of data communicationsservice providers (CSPs) generate is immense. Thechallenges of that near-overwhelming volume, though, arebeing addressed and the focus has turned to extractinguseful information from the data. Analytics tools are beingdeployed and they go much of the way to enablingorganisations to extract maximum value from their data

owever, the tools alone are not sufficient.Analytics relies on asking questions of thedata to generate insight and, given thatCSP data is useful to many different teamsand departments within the organisation,

there is a real risk that non-expert users will find theanalysis process difficult.

The need to obtain insight and capture value will growmore pressing with the increased focus on customerexperience, the advent of VoLTE and the surge ofdata that this will create. Moreover, the ability toassure the experience the customer has when usingthe CSP’s services and networks is crucial in order tominimise churn.

Robert Eriksson, director of customer experiencemanagement at Polystar, gives the example of a CSPthat is deploying VoLTE: “CSPs have an edge on OTTvoice services when it comes to the quality of theservice. When deploying VoLTE it is important to beable to monitor and assure that the quality of the voice

service maintains the high level expected by users. Atthe same time, VoLTE is a complex technology thatneeds to work in some complicated scenarios,” heexplains. “The CSP has to pay particular attention tohow all of those can work together. They must havethe information they need to be able to assessnetwork performance, service quality, predictive tasks,and have early visibility into any problems that mayaffect the perceived quality of the service.”

The problem, though, is that one size does not fit all. Itis not possible to have a single set of big data, andcommon dashboards to visualise it: such an approachwould not suite the needs of all users within a CSP.Different teams have different needs for data - anddifferent ways in which they need to visualise it. Whatis required is a way to adapt the data and the way inwhich it is visualised, so that different teams will beable to extract the maximum value from it.

In other words, CSPs need a means to short-circuitthe analytical process to make function-specific data

CSPs must capitalise fully onthe surge of big data fromnew services, such as VoLTE- What do they need to do?

H

Robert Eriksson: Thechallenge with services

such as VoLTE is todistribute the data theygenerate to the people

and places where it willhave an impact, in a

way in which it can beunderstood, quickly

and easily.

�


available to the different types of user within a CSP.

“What Polystar is talking about is how the informationthat exists with CSPs’ big data can be directed to thepeople who actually need it,” adds Eriksson. “We arecollecting huge amounts of data, we’re addressinghow we can choose sub-sets of that data and thendeliver it to the people and places where it will have animpact. We need to make this accessible, so thatCSPs can assure their customer experiences anddeliver new services securely and profitably.”

Polystar has developed a proposition that takes careof the capture, sorting and the storage of data fromnetworks and services, so that it can be accessedand utilised by the different teams and departmentswithin a CSP. “It has got to be made easy for eachuser to interpret the data,” says Eriksson. “We have toconvert it into something that is relevant to them.”

That means a technology product on its own is notsufficient because it can’t know the operationalpriorities of a CSP business unit. For that reason, thePolystar proposition involves working with the CSP tounderstand what is relevant to it. “Which keyperformance indicators are required and how theyshould be presented can only be identified byunderstanding the underlying needs of the users. Inturn, this can only be understood by working closelywith the CSP,” says Eriksson. “It’s not about us givingyou what we think you need or giving you everythingwe think you might want. Instead, it’s about us gainingan understanding of each customer’s priorities andtailoring the proposition for their specific situation. Youcan focus on doing your job, while we will interpret yourneeds and deliver the appropriate technical details.”

Polystar acknowledges that CSPs typically havesimilar key goals, which is useful when identifyingareas in which to make data available to CSP teams.However, he points out that CSPs are not all the same.

“A greenfield LTE operator will be different from a CSPthat has 2G and 3G and a new group of LTEcustomers to serve,” explains Eriksson. “What weoffer is designed to support not just what we thinkmatters but also what matches the needs of ourcustomers.”

Polystar’s approach is to create solutions aimed atspecific stakeholders within CSPs. The solutionsprovide the data that is relevant to different functions,and is visualised in a way that supports the workflowof the users.

The solutions already cover the majority of daily

needs, but for queries that demand a very high level ofdetail, Polystar’s system also provides drill-downcapabilities to enable insight from the lowest level ofsignalling events.

Within that context, operations could be a specificuser group that needs specific data to assurecontinuous network performance and consistentcustomer experience. To achieve this, they needpowerful analytics tools adapted to their needs. Othergroups can then use the same sources of data, butfiltered and adapted to support their needs, such ascustomer care, marketing, and other functions. It’sinefficient to have each group analysing the completeset of data to obtain the insights required.

“Having the single platform that we offer enables theneeds of different groups to be met in group-specificsolutions without duplicating effort or the resourcesused,” says Eriksson.

It remains early days. “We’re only beginning to scratchthe surface of the practical application of big dataanalytics but we have identified clear use cases andneeds,” Eriksson adds. “This process will be iterativeand we fully anticipate the use, to which CSPs put thedata we present them with, will evolve dramatically.”

Use cases Eriksson identifies include: • Analysis of near real-time data when introducing new services like LTE and VoLTE to provide insight into trends and provide predictive information to support network engineering and service operation centres (SOCs);

• Improving first-call-resolution and customer experience in customer care by providing information on the likelihood of specific types of problems;

• Supplying product management and marketing with actionable customer insights to identify user behaviour that could help in designing a new service, bundle or marketing campaign.

Those examples are only the tip of the iceberg when itcomes to data analytics and Eriksson anticipatesincreased usage of data insights stimulating furtherdemand. Use cases will proliferate and the number ofgroups needing data presented to them in a way thatis readily accessible and understandable will increaseexponentially as a result.

“As a telecoms supplier, we intend to support CSPsthrough the CSP’s entire LTE and VoLTE journeys toensure they achieve significant returns on theirinvestments in data analytics,” Eriksson concludes. www.polystar.com

We’re only beginning

to scratch the

surface of the

practical application

of big data analytics

but we have

identified clear use

cases and needs

Be the firstto know fromthe globalvoice of B/OSS

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NEWS ■ COMMENTARY ■ WEBINARS ■ ANALYSIS ■ INSIGHT

Virtualisation is at the top of communications service providers’ (CSPs) agendas. It doesn’t justaffect network hardware, software and BSS in particular need to virtualise as well. Here,Mathias Liebe introduces Orga Systems’ GOLD Convergent Charging and Billing Release 3.0and explains why the system has gone virtual

irtualisation is one of the hottest topicsdiscussed in the telecoms industry today butin practice it is not new at all. During the pastdecade server virtualisation for x86 hostshas matured and won acceptance in the

data centres, being used by more than 90% of allcompanies around the globe. Today, the amount ofvirtualised workloads exceeds the amount ofworkloads running on bare-metal.

But server virtualisation is just the beginning of thejourney. Software defined networks (SDN) andnetwork functions virtualisation (NFV) are now enteringthe IT landscape, changing CSPs’ ecosystems and IToperations by pushing data centre automation andcloud-based services into the headlines. CSPs haveto face a growing complexity and have to pro-activelymanage their computing base in order to become asversatile and agile as the virtualised architecture itself. Therefore CSPs will need a scalable and robust billingsystem that can be deployed as an online chargingcloud that is IT-based and supports virtualisednetwork functions (VNF) such as policy control andreal-time session management.

Tasks like balancing workloads, managing downtimeor simplifying and extending disaster recovery have tobe mastered; all of them being compelling attributesto operate mission-critical applications such as billingand charging on virtualised systems.

Virtualisation support for all revenuemanagement functionsTo support CSPs in applying virtualisationtechnologies, Orga Systems will launch a new releaseof its flagship product GOLD Convergent Chargingand Billing (GOLD CCB) at this year’s Mobile WorldCongress in Barcelona. In this context Orga Systems

initiated a comprehensive programme to qualify itsGOLD product family for virtualised systems byworking together with hardware and software vendorssuch as VMware, Red Hat and Dell.

This includes the offering of a reference architectureand an operational concept to plan and operate allrevenue management functions in a virtualisedenvironment. While the reference architecture serves asa baseline for any CSP to plan his systemenvironment, the operational concept will providepractical advice for integration and operation of thevirtualised stack. With this approach and the releaseof GOLD CCB 3.0 Orga Systems tremendouslyenhances capabilities to support cloud services andNFV orchestration.


V

Virtualisation takes centrestage for CSPs of all types

The author, MathiasLiebe, is director ofproduct marketing atOrga Systems

www.orga-systems.com

GOLD CCB 3.0 product highlights include: • a SID compliant data model to ease and speed up integration• a full virtualisation support for all revenue management functions• a comprehensive NextGen platform strategy aligned with latest

VMware and Red Hat technologies


Communications service providers (CSPs) are about to enter a revolution that will transformtheir businesses through virtualisation. However, to realise the benefits they must master thecomplexities of the orchestration layer, writes Justin Paul

he telecoms industry is approaching a periodof revolution that will change its world. Theimpact of network functionsvirtualisation/software-defined networking(NFV/SDN) will deliver significant benefits to

CSPs in terms of business agility and reduction inoperational and capital expenditure. Ultimately, thisrevolution will drive down the total cost of networkownership. However, to realise these benefits theymust be able to master the complexities of theorchestration layer because without such mastery,the actual benefits of NFV/SDN deployments couldbe minimal.

NFV drives OSS transformationNFV is highly disruptive. In particular, NFV will have asignificant impact on the operational support systems(OSS) deployed today. OSS will have to evolve tosupport NFV introduction, and future OSS systems ornext generation OSS must support a number offunctions that are merely optional today. This means asignificant disruption in the OSS market is inevitableover the next few years, with major vendors makingsignificant investment in OSS development as theylook to launch OSS for hybrid networks. For others,the advent of virtualisation will see an accelerateddecline in their business, as their OSS becomes

T

The hybrid reality - Why theability to master complexityis critical for NFV success

�

The author, JustinPaul, is head ofOSS marketing atAmdocs


increasingly unable to support the requirements ofthe new technologies. We will also see some newentrants to the market, but these typically provideniche NFV orchestration systems rather thanproviding the breadth and depth required of a nextgeneration OSS.

Where are we in the NFV/SDN hype curve?2014 was, arguably, the peak of the hype curve.Recognising the potential, many CSPs outlined theirstrategic vision to embrace NFV/SDN but now, a yearlater, there is also recognition that these technologiescreate significant operational challenges. Withoutdoubt, the potential for NFV is huge. One use case I’vediscussed with many CSPs is the ability to spin up newDistributed Denial of Service (DDoS) servers in responseto an attempt to disrupt a corporate organisation.

This is a great demonstration of NFV because it issimple and effective. The use case involves purelyvirtualised network functions (VNFs) which areinstantiated based on a simple trigger. Unfortunatelythe reality is that 99% of the telecoms market is muchmore complex than this because of the huge installedbase of existing equipment, some of which will remainoperational for the next 20-30 years. Service providersneed to accept that NFV/SDN will increase complexitywhile it runs in parallel with their existing networks.These hybrid networks, combining physical and virtualnetwork elements, create a serious challenge to ourutopian vision.

The best partner for thefuture networks journeyThere are four main contenders in the NFV/SDNarena: cloud vendors, network equipment providers(NEPs), virtualisation specialists and operationalsupport system (OSS) vendors, each with their ownspecific strengths and weaknesses. The NEPs have astrong affinity to the VNFs (virtual network functions)that replace their current physical network elements,while cloud vendors understand virtualisation at theserver level, and many of the specialists provide best-in-class capabilities in niche areas. However, in hybridnetworks, Amdocs believes that OSS providers areset to dominate with their ability to manage andorchestrate physical, logical and contextual networks.This is because these providers have experience andexpertise in managing the complexity of today’s multi-vendor, multi-technology networks, which puts themin the best position to manage these more complexnetworks of the future.

Evolution of OSSThe impact of NFV/SDN on our industry will be huge.At the OSS level we believe significant changes needto take place to realise the full benefits of these newtechnologies. Currently, OSS systems are not requiredto be real-time. They were never designed for aconstantly changing network environment wherestandard computing platforms change functionalityand parameters in response to planned andunplanned network events. This is a fundamental

change. In the future, networks will dictate how theyare configured based on network performance. Theadvent of hybrid networks requires a differentapproach to OSS and is driving the development ofnext generation OSS to meet the needs of these nextgeneration networks.

Emerging capability for OSSThe OSS of the future will have five key functionalitiesover and above those seen today. Firstly, OSSfunctionality will be focused on the rapid on-boardingof new VNFs and the agile design and creation of newservices. Time to on-board and to design newservices will be cut to just days, and serviceimplementation to minutes or seconds. Theseprocesses will obviously have to cope with thecomplexity of hybrid networks.

Secondly, to support dynamic, ever changingvirtualised networks, the OSS must work in near-realtime and be able to recognise the changes to thenetwork configuration as they happen. It must alsoprovide visibility across all domains and vendors toensure a holistic view to support fulfilment andassurance of dynamically changing services.Thirdly, the evolved OSS must be able to orchestratenot only VNFs, but also SDN controllers and physicalsystems. One of the important precepts of NFV is theability to rapidly create new services, particularly in theenterprise domain. The fourth functionality is the creationand management of complex end-to-end fulfilmentfrom order to cash across multiple service stacks.

The final functional area for next generation OSS is theability to fulfil services. Service fulfilment has becomemore complex, and will become even more so in thefuture. Services themselves have become morecomplex, the fulfilment environments are morecomplex and the introduction of SDN/NFV requiresfulfilment across hybrid networks. Strong servicefulfilment capability is an essential functionality for nextgeneration OSS.

Mastering complexityNFV/SDN will deliver great benefits to CSPs who areable to overcome the operational challenges ofmanaging and utilising these complex hybridnetworks. While we see many worthy new entrantsinto the NFV/SDN domain, the vendors who areevolving their OSS are best placed to manage thecomplexity of hybrid network orchestration, becausethey can combine a solution designed for virtualnetworks with their experience and expertise inmanaging today’s existing complexity. www.amdocs.com

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AN EVENT OF

DIARY Upcoming eventsMobile World Congress 20152-5 March, 2015Barcelona,SpainOrganiser: The GSM Associationwww.mobileworldcongress.com

Connected Fleets Europe 201510-11 March, 2015Amsterdam, The NetherlandsOrganiser: TU Automotivewww.tu-auto.com/fleeteurope

NGMN Industry Conferenceand Exhibition 201524-25 March, 2015Frankfurt, GermanyOrganiser: NGMNwww.ngmn.org

Cloud MENA13-14 April, 2015Dubai, UAEOrganiser: Informamena.cloudworldseries.com

Policy Control14-15 April, 2015Berlin, GermanyOrganiser: Informapolicycontrolconference.com

Telco Cloud 28-29 April, 2015London, UKOrganiser: Informatelecomcloudservices.com

Smart to Future Cities28-29 April, 2015London, UKOrganiser: Informasmarttofuture.com

Ovum Industry Congress 201512-13 May, 2015 London, UKOrganiser: Informaovumindustrycongress.com

TM Forum Live!1-3 June, 2015

Nice, FranceOrganiser: TM Forum

www.tmforum.org

D I A R Y

E V E N T P R E V I E W

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, to be held in Barcelona, Spain on 2-5 March,communications service providers (CSPs) and manufacturers will showcase the very latestservices and devices in machine-to-machine (M2M) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Here,event organisers the GSMA preview the M2M and IoT highlights

n essential part of the exhibition is theGSMA Innovation City, which expands uponthe highly successful Connected City thathas been a major feature of Mobile WorldCongress in recent years. The Innovation

City is a virtual urban environment comprised of trains,connected cars, a café, a theatre, shops and even adental spa. Exhibits presented by GSMA partners,AT&T, Jasper, KT Corporation, Oral-B, Sierra Wirelessand Vodafone will demonstrate the most advancedmobile-connected products and services.

One of the central themes of this year’s InnovationCity will be transport. There will be variousdemonstrations of the connected car, including amore detailed view of telematics and diagnostics froma manufacturer’s perspective. Much has been said in

the last six months about the mass market appeal ofwearables, and at the Innovation City this year, therewill be a wide-range of wearables and connectedequipment available for any attendee to test and try. The goal of the GSMA’s Connected Living programmeis to accelerate the growth of M2M and the IoT. Toachieve this, the programme aims to promote industrycollaboration, appropriate regulation and createstandards that will optimise network functionality. Lastyear, nearly 18,000 people visited the Innovation City,which is a great indicator of the power and interest inthis showcase. We are keen to demonstrate thebenefits that the Connected Living programme bringsto the industry and invite all attendees of this year’sMobile World Congress to engage with us in ourefforts to bring greater cooperation, technologicaladvancement and new revenue opportunities to the IoT.

The Innovation City: Mobilisingthe IoT to transform your world

A

www.mobileworldcongress.com



C L O C K I N G O F F !

n this modern era of big data, there are many heartsinking moments brought on by the excessive useof information.

Infographics are one of the modern scourges of theinformation age. I can’t be the only person in the worldwho feels a wave of anxiety whenever one of thesevisual interpretations is mooted. They’re supposed tobe quick and fun ways of graphically illustrating acomplex point – but somehow they’re not. Anythingthat’s pre-announced as fun usually isn’t. It’s such ahard billing to live up to. But the creators of infographsalways seem to make the subject even more confusing– to me at least.

There’s nothing wrong with infographics, just the waypeople use them. Sometimes it looks like the author ofthe report has started with the intention of creating apretty diagram, then rapidly tried to backfill the variousfields with headings.

Typically, you’ll be presented with a diagram resemblinga biological deconstruction of flower parts. Instead ofheadings like stamen, sepal and stigma, the big datachart’s regions have headings like customer data,supplier data and financial data. But there didn’t seemto be any order in them, or relationship between thedifferent entities.

Unlike the flower diagram, which gave some idea howof how, say, the nectary helps to enable the function ofthe flower’s ovules, there were no such obviousrelationships between the big data categories. It’salmost as if, in haste, someone just put as manycategory names onto a chart as they possibly could.

It was ever thus, of course. I can remember presentinga report for a large UK telecoms company, which shallremain nameless. This company, which had recentlyenjoyed a near monopoly, was now facing competitionfor its channels to market. The pros and cons of theCSP’s offering could have been summarised on asingle sheet of A4 paper but the marketing boss didn’twant that. So I had to make up 45 minutes worth ofspider charts in order to pad out the presentation.These charts were created out of the values typed intothe cells of an Excel spreadsheet. These scores were

themselves pretty random as the interviewees I wasasked to quiz became so bored with rating so manyattributes they just scored everything seven out of ten.

So we could have created a short, punchy memorablefeedback report. It would have been more valuable togive each person one useful tip they could have putimmediately into practice. But instead, thanks to a databinge, many of the sales staff dozed off and had to beresuscitated from a trance. And it wasn’t my fault – wellnot entirely. Big data was to blame. In the wrong handsit can be lethal.

The tool of presenting big data actually made it harderto understand. This happens everywhere. With all thefunctions available on broadcast media, we should beentering a golden age of TV. Instead, I find mostdocumentaries on telly unwatchable. The narrative isusually so ploddingly slow that it insults the intelligenceand tests the patience to the limit. This is usuallybecause the programme makers want to include everyplot device available to them from the vastsmorgasboard of televisual delights on offer. So insteadof following the story of why and how rogue builder Aripped off pensioner B, we’re forced to watch thepresenter describing his journey of discovery and hispreparations for the final confrontation scene. In theold, small data days, the smug ugly show-off wouldhave been kept behind the camera, and hisinvolvement in the narrative kept to a minimum. But notnow. If you watch a consumer affairs programme, forexample, you get the impression that the show is allabout the presenters – and their journey.

The problems of both infographics and broadcast TVare to do with big, rich data. In each case, the user isgiven so many options for mining and presentinginformation that they have lost the plot. They feel as ifthey have to use them all, forgetting that the mostimportant discipline in the information age is to makeeverything appear to be simple and clear.

I think some data austerity is needed. Or perhaps a datadiet and some simple exercises. Otherwise we’ll all getbloated, lethargic and liable to fall asleep at our desks.

The author,Nick Booth,is a contributor toVanillaPlus and atechnology journalist

IThey’re all saying that visualisation tools make big data come alive. Nick Booth is not so sure

Are we reaching the point wheredata has become just too big?

DATA

DATA

The problems of

both infographics

and broadcast TV

are to do with big,

rich data

THE NEW WORLD OF

CUSTOMER E PERIENCE

© 2015 Amdocs. All rights reserved.

Amdocs Order Delivery Orchestrator Delivers Added Agility

Reduce order delivery cycle by up to 70% for your enterprise customers.

The Amdocs Order Delivery Orchestrator enables dynamic orchestration of complex orders.

Our solution provides enriched visibility and monitoring tools for the overall sales process; and accelerates the service delivery process for enterprise customers through dynamic orchestration of their bundled services, including SDN and NFV based solutions.

Visit www.amdocs.com/service-fulfilment or come to the Amdocs booth 3G10, hall 3 at Mobile World Congress for more information.

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Find out more about Orga Systems and our GOLD products and visit us:Mobile World Congress 2015, Hall 5, Booth 5B40, main aisle

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Van+ Feb 2015 aw Layout 1 - VanillaPlus · PLUS: Teradata buys Appoxee to enhance integrated marketing ... elekom and Orange joint-Mobile UK – formerly One2One – together with