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RTB - Romeo Juliet: Project Teaser Sequence One

Next Generation Telecom Business Strategic Systems - Integrated Platforms Native Value Added Services - Concepts and Trends

1.      General

The Business Strategic Systems (BSS) of latest generation systems include an impressive range of native building blocks – value added services domain related - integrated into some modular Product/ Solution Suite designed to penetrate saturated Markets and create strategic advantage. Such systems will position the Network(s) Operator to support services growth through a cost effective approach by: 1) capitalizing on existing investments, 2) utilizing the advantages of a full standardized and Plug'n Play modular Product/ Solution Suite and 3) push a set of specific strategic advantage Platform specific and native value added services to achieve Market differentiators using an agile approach. This article is focus on collateral value added services achieved through the implementation of the business strategic systems platforms as seen in the latest developments. It is outlined also the characteristics such platforms bring to be able to orchestrate together the new value added services set as collateral capabilities.

2.      Relevance

The importance of Business Support Systems (BSS) has increased dramatically. This is because these systems play a critical role in generating and managing revenues as well as reducing service providers' operating costs while reaching the business targets which are getting more and more complex. To have a positive impact, such solutions must integrate quickly, simply and cost-effectively into the operating environment this is why modularity and flexibility as well as standardizations are critical. From this perspective capitalizing more functionality natively (in the value added services area) on these platforms is a definite asset for the enterprise.

3.      Market Differentiator

In the context of systems engineering, "modular design" is a complex approach aiming to subdivide the system into modules and layers that can be interconnected. What is aimed is a cost effective proposition of the system through reduction in cost, flexibility in design, modularity offers further benefits such as scalability and service augmentation - adding capacity and new native embedded value added services by just plugging new modules is a definite advantage. The unique bucket of value added services which is sometimes specific only to such implementations (natively embedded) makes a certain market differentiator for the OpCo in promoting unique services and revenue streams.

Players

BSS Suppliers, Convergent Operators, (Multi) Networks Operators, VARs, Resellers, MVNE(s), MVNO(s)

Modules

Operating Companies (a.k.a OpCo) willing to enable an integrated concept of Business Strategic Systems with Platform natively embedded value added services securing collateral revenue streams need the modules enumerated below as minimal foundation while searching suppliers. The Modules can be part of the same Supplier Suite or different Suppliers being plugged as 3rd parties within an integrated blend. The best would be to have an supplier securing all the deliverables rather than multiple 3rd parties to avoid integration overhead

 

1. USSD
2. IVR
3. Service Mediation
4. Service Billing
5. CRM
6. Service Provisioning
7. Service Self Care
8. Roaming
9. IPB (Inter Partner Billing)
10. SCP
11. Business Process (BP)
12. Point of Sales (POS)
13. Customer Analytics
14. Service Creation
15. Loyalty Management
16. Trouble Ticketing
17. 3rd Party Web Service
18. Work Order Management
19. Resource Management
20. Fraud Management
21. Voucher Management
22. Finance Management
23. Accounting Management
    1. Reporting Management
    2. Marketing
    3. OSS/ J Compliance
    4. eTOM Service Management practices compliance
    5. SOA and Web Services compliance
    6. Seamless customer experience on "unified channel" : Self Care Web, IVR, USSD, STK(SIM Tool Kit), Email and SMS – the ubiquitous customer access to the info. on both ways is a critical factor and Suite feature

 

Standardization

Business Strategic Systems (BSS) should be a native enablement for the following collateral Services considered Platform specific (natively) into the deployed platforms:

 

1. Multi-Play
2. Real Time Billing (RTB)
3. Service Controls
4. Spending Controls
5. Services Discovery
6. Balance Management 
7. Notifications Management
8. Raw Counters Services

4.                  Technical

Multi-Play

The implementation of the multi-play product utilizing Business Strategic Systems as enablers may consist:

1)    Pre-Requisites: Use Workflow Manager(BP) to set the Multi-Play Service

2)    To the customer level:

1. Enable the Service
2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service components
3. Use Notifications Management mechanism

Value Service: "Single Bill" Management

Real Time Billing (RTB)

As concept the real time billing (a.k.a hot billing) is the capability to perform real time billing and seamless (post/ pre) customer bill reporting through the "unified channel". The implementation of a Real Time Billing Service utilizing Business Strategic Systems as enablers may consist of:

1)      Pre-Requisites: Use Workflow Manager to set the Real Time Billing Service

2)      To the customer level:

1. Enable the Real Time Billing Service
2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service components
3.  Use Notifications Management mechanism

Value Service: "Bill Shock" Management

Service Controls

The concept of service controls comes from the related "parental controls" implementations. Gated (on/ off) services have been around for some time however enabling them natively through Business Strategic Systems (BSS) proves a superior implementation and approach also.

1)      Pre-Requisites: Use Workflow Manager to set the Service Controls Service

2)      To the customer level:

1. Enable the Service Controls Service
2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service components
3. Use Notifications Management mechanism

Value Service: "Parental Controls" Management

Spending Controls

The spending controls implementation introduces a set of customer services aimed to set limits on various way of managing the costs. The idea behind is to allow the customer the possibility to control and set its own spending behaviour yet preserving a dynamic to this preferences by allowing also interactive changes.

1)      Pre-Requisites: Use Workflow Manager to set the Spending Controls Service

2)      To the customer level:

1. Enable the Spending Controls Service
2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service components
3. Use Notifications Management mechanism

Value Service: "Smart Expenses" Management and avoid "Bill Shock" – this is and it will be a Regulatory demand in many countries as the data services and customer mobility increases therefore roaming is getting more motion as revenue stream.

Services Discovery

Services Discovery means the capability to add, remove and update Services subscriptions based on preferences and context. This Service is presented to the customer as "push menu" through the "unified channel" in active or passive way. Active Subscription Management is pushing Services (context- aware push) – inviting the Customer to perform service/ plan switching actions and Passive Subscription Management is meant to have the customer initiating such actions. The idea is to allow the customer possibility to control and set its own behavioural context dynamically and interactively

1)      Pre-Requisites: Use Workflow Manager (BP) to set the Services Discovery Service

2)      To the customer level:

1. Enable the Services Discovery
2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service components
3. Use Notifications Management mechanism

Value Service: "Push and Pull Value Services" Management

Balance Management

Balance Management related services create seamless means of handling balances for post and pre pay for various use cases. The concept allows the customer to handle various ways the balance.

1.       Pre-requisites: Use Workflow Manager (BP) to set the Balance Management Service
2.      To the customer level:
   1. Enable the Balance Management
   2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service  components
   3. Use Notifications Management mechanism
   4. Enable sub services:

• Balance Value Cost Management
• Wallet Management (e.g. family, corporate, personal...s.o)

Value Service: "Smart Balance" (and account) Management

Raw Counters Services

The Raw Counters (a.k.a customer analytics) based Services implementations introduce customer services aimed to use real time raw counters data based decisions and trigger various actions (or subservices) accordingly (e.g. if congestion on a cell areas (peak hr.) takes place to the cell level tease the customer to postpone the call by giving a $voucher through an SMS code...so). Triggering special tariffs applying various cells and traffic load …for example whenever the load is low teasing the customers to make voice/ data calls "in the next 5 minutes or so" to get special discounted rates. Some other examples would be to trigger advertising based on cell area (or even orchestrated with Location Services) to basically fund calls using partner channels (e.g. advertising and loyalty based). The counters based services capitalize and efficiently use the existing network capacity by taking active decisions using it. Such services are active services.

1)      Pre-Requisites: Use Workflow Manager to set the Raw Counters Services Service

2)      To the customer level:

1. Enable the Counters Services Service
2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service components
3. Use Notifications Management mechanism

Value Service: "Special Value Tariff" Management

Notifications Management

Notifications Management related services create seamless and ubiquitous means of handling interactions with customers for various use cases. The concept allows the Operating Company (OpCo) to interact with the customer to handle in various ways the communications through "unified channel" consisting of: SMS, USSD, Web Self-Care, IVR, Email and STK (SIM Tool Kit)

1. 1.      Pre-requisites: Use Workflow Manager (BP) to set Notifications Management Service
2. 2.      To the customer level:
   1. Enable the Notifications Management
   2. Use Service Creation to set and shape the behaviour of the service  components

Value Service: Promoting "Unified Channel" Management 

5.                  Architecture Definition

To be able to implement the set of Services mentioned above a bit of dive into the concepts of related and supporting architectures is necessary. Decomposition of a Revenue Stream Flow

1)       Network Transport Plane à Charging Interface to Network Element (e.g. SCP Node)

2)       Network Control Plane à Network Transaction done by Charging Interface (e.g. CAMEL Protocol)

3)       Service  Control Plane à Service Transaction done by Network Control Plane (e.g. Prepay Call Session)

4)       Charging Control Plane à Charging Transaction initiated by Service Control Plane (e.g. CDR Spooling )

5)       Business Control Plane à Business Transaction done by Charging Control Plane  (e.g. CDR rating)

6)       Presentation Control Plane à Presentation Transaction done by Business Control Plane (CDR Report)

 

Functionality and Interactions

The charging mechanism is very important for Platform Specific BSS Services. Although they can be considered within value-added-services area the situational environment is different. Let have a quick recap how most commonly the charging for Services takes place in Telco environment:

• Flat Fee – Recurring charge or one time charge
• CDR – Usage based and discounted on usage
• EDR – Event based and discounted per event occurrence
• Bundle Flat - Recurring or one time charge discounted through bundled product association
• Bundle CDR / EDR – Usage/ event based and discounted through bundled product association, amount$, usage

Recommendation: Business Strategic Systems Platform Specific (native) Value Added Services will be more appropriate to be charged as combination of any of the below methods:

-          Bundle Flat Fee

-          Flat Fee

-          Both (of the above)

There is an explanation behind this approach and that is such collateral set of Services can be properly handled as add-on(s) to the existing Customer Plans. There is no real Network Transport behind such Services therefore there will be no Network Transactions (e.g. xDR). The BSS Platform Specific native embedded Services are based on Service Creation building blocks leveraging on features and orchestrated functionality of the other Network Elements.

Revenue Flow Diagrams

Multi-Play 

• Internet + Phone + Wireless + TV (Quad Play)
  • Aggregated Revenue Flow  - Multi Play Bundle

 

• Considering 10% ARPU margins in our commercial business model for the "Bundle Product" the aggregated margins are higher than any of the Services offered independently (silos) before any discounting is applied.
• The Bundle Multi Play Service is an integrated product having an aggregated type margins commercial proposition with enough room for discounting and other marketing warfare related tools to sustain and even grow the Market – that is, a strategic advantage consolidated into few customer value propositions:

-          "You will have one bill for all the services"

-          "You will enjoy more discounts than ever before"

Real Time Billing (RTB)

Offerings of RTB (real time billing) can occur in pre pay as well as post pay use cases – the RTB service can be offered to competitive prices on various customer segments:

• Business Users (B2B) – business users on the go or heavy usage
• Consumers Users (B2C) – heavy intensive usage (on the go customers)
• Corporate Users (B2B) (global account) – set limits on corporate basis

Notifications Management Service will be by default enabled as part of this add-on Service. During Service Creation on RTB shaping this Service behaviour various notifications will be triggered. It is important that balance information to be broadcasted through the "unified channel" and as such communicated within value proposition

There are some related commercial value propositions:

• "You will know your bill at any moment"

Spending Controls

The Spending Controls Service is a set of services focus on spending limits. The ability to allow the Customer to manage its own balance either post or pre is an important business advantage and soon to be a Regulatory one ("bill shock"). Notifications Management Service mechanism has to be triggered also within Spending Controls account activation to be able to inform the customer on reaching limits and actions to be taken. Within such actions Service Discovery activations may be required also to push on-the-fly subscriptions to the new plans more adequate the spending habits of that particular context or customer. Among some of the value propositions:

• "You will control your spending habits"

Service Controls

The main scope for the Service Controls is to allow the customer some way of gating (on/ off) the Service behaviour entirely or on various configurable portions of the Service

 

The "gate" Service concept provides a mechanism to shape service behaviour and push few customer value propositions as such as:

• "Your calling parties will be always screened"
• "Your kids will be safer with parental controls"
• "You won't get any call you do not want"

Services Discovery

Services Discovery consists of a set of push services meant to increase the customer satisfaction with the overall subscription. That being said push services discovery reduce churn and offer an enjoyable experience of triggering the customer online and on the fly subscription the right plans shaped to its situational behaviour

 

Balance Management

Balance Management services are means/ ways of managing the customer account balance both post/pre pay customers. There are various ways to manage the account transactions:

1.  Prepay2prepay
2.  Debit2postpay
3.  Debit2prepay
4.  Postpay2prepay
5.  Prepay2postpay
6.  Credit2postpay
7.  Credit2prepay
8.  Loyalty2prepay (Loyalty à air miles / fidelity points)
9.  Loyalty2postpay (Loyalty à air miles / fidelity points)
10.  Ads2postpay (Ads à advertising channel)
11.  Ads2prepay (Ads à advertising channel)
12.  remium2postpay
13.  Premium2prepay
14.  Voucher2postpay
15.  Voucher2prepay
16.  Cash2postpay
17.  Cash2prepay
18.  ScratchCard2prepay
19.  ScratchCard2postpay 
20.  Postpay2postpay

The payment tools should be mapped to seamless experience making possible payments on all customer channels (a.k.a "payment channel") and using Notifications Management as mechanism of acknowledge of such actions.

• IVR
•  USSD
• Self Care
• SMS
• STK (SIM Tool Kit)
• Email

 

• Wallet Management

Through Business Strategic Systems (BSS) the customers can manage their balance over the day between corporate time and personal time enabling and alternating at time intervals the right wallets. The opportunity is for blending B2B and B2C within the same account and as strategic advantage of such service is the ability to differentiate on corporate and personal wallet per time intervals within the same account. Wallet Management is add-on to the Balance Management BSS Service

• Balance Value Cost Management  

Through Business Strategic Systems based on the amount ($) on various account wallets the cost of balance can be paid for more value ($) replenishments/ payments. (e.g. buying 20$ top up (post/ pre) will secure 5c per min. while buying 30$ top up will drop to 3c per min. for example). Balance Value Cost Management is add-on to the Balance Management BSS collateral Service

Notifications Management

The notifications management mechanism is key stone in defining a proper user experience – it means mainly communications with customer as well as timely acknowledge and information about actions and transactions which were taken place either initiated or recommended by both: Operating Company (OpCo) or Customer.

6.                  Specifications and Standards

The Business Strategic Systems (including additional services) as Practice have as requirements the Service Creation Environment (SCE) along with Workflow Manager (Business Process (BP)) to support process and service creations as well as to shape the behaviours whenever the services and processes are triggered.

• Graphical Call Flow Representation — Service Creation Environment  (SCE) users easily build applications using drag-and-drop Action Components (a.k.a building blocks) to enable various built-in operations, linking them in a flow-chart style representation to construct the Service.
• Workflow Manager(BP) is based on open internet standards
• User authentication through Single Sign On (SSO)(e.g. active directory or LDAP)
• Collaborative process modeling architecture
• Export process models to PDF, PNG, RDF for further processing, analysis, and reporting

• Services built with the Service Creation Environment (SCE) building blocks are translated into XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and then executed via handlers when the trigger is fired
• The Service Creation Environment (SCE) and Workflow Manager runs in a web browser, zero software installation
• The Business Process Engine (BP) is a process platform - stakeholders can process model based on Web and integrations with wikis 
• Service Creation Environments and Workflow Manager (BP) are extensible, can be added as plug-in(s)
• Workflow Manager(BP) should support process modeling languages (e.g. BPMN)

Environment Requirements

• Support of all basic editor features like Copy & Paste, save (as), print, undo/redo and so on
• Creation of shapes by dragging the shape from the shape repository onto the canvas
• Creation of shapes by using the context specific shape menu
• Step-by-step modeling of processes via shape menu and following nodes to the user
• Changing of a shapes properties via the property window with property types
• Editing labels by double-clicking on a shape
• Grouping of shapes
• Syntax checking for process models

The business process execution language (BPEL) is XML-based language to specify environment business processes. The activities of the business processes are implemented as Web Services (WS-*). BPEL was defined by Microsoft, IBM and BEA in 2002 as BPEL4WS 1.0. Version 2.0 was defined by OASIS as WS-BPEL 2.0 in 2004. BPEL processes can invoke other web services and they can be invoked from other web services. The web service interface is defined in the web service description language (WSDL). The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is used as transport protocol between Web Services.

Technology Implementations Solutions

The technology supporting such Business Strategic Systems (BSS) native value added services platforms functionality is usually Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services based. Highlights over the technology descriptions and solutions characteristics can be enumerated below as such:

• Modular components Web based (front end)(e.g. XHTML)
  • Accessible through Mozilla and Firefox from within various Operating Systems (OS)
• Modular components Linux EE open source (back end)
  • Red Had OS (critical) based platforms (EE)
  • Fedora OS (non critical) based platforms
  • Apache Software Foundation (Apache Web Server)
  • JBOSS Application Server (EE)
  • Open Laszlo (for Self Care)
  • jBPM BPEL ( JBOSS)
  • Layer 7 content based  Load Balancers
  • Nagios (performance monitoring)
  • IN components (C/ C++) (cluster)
  • USSD/ IVR SIGTRAN M3UA Cards (RFC4666)
  • Mediation (C/ C++)
  • MIB based Fault Management
  • MySQL Cluster DB
  • N+1 architecture for critical nodes
  • SOAP/ xml based Provisioning
  • Eclipse based Service Creation Environment (SCE)
• OSS/J and SLEE compliance (www.jcp.org)
• Web Services based modules plug-in(s ) and connectors for extensibility
• jBOSS ESB (Enterprise Service Bus)
• Integrated Business Process (BPEL)
• xml based Graphical Service Creation Environment
• eTOM business compliance (user plane – service plane – network plane)
• x86 based processors and 19" rack able units (42U Cabinets)
• DC power and CAT6 STP cabling with multimode fibre optics to SAN

In terms of roadmap short term evolution the Open Source will dominate this area however the web stack is probably the most exposed to a quicker evolution due capacity and agility demands…let have a quick recap on Web Stacks over the past decade:

• 1998 – Netscape – Bea/ SAP – Oracle
• 2008 – Apache – PHP/ Perl/ Python – MySQL
• Soon to come…- lighttpd – Hadoop - MogileFS

What is long term evolution of such integrated services platforms…?

"It's one of the foundations of the next generation of computing. . . It's a world where the network is the platform for all computing, where everything we think of as a computer today is just a device that connects to the big computer we're building. Cloud computing is a great way to think about how we'll deliver computing services in the future."

Tim O'Reilly, CEO, O'Reilly Media

The Cloud Computing is coming into Business Strategic Systems domain also with a clear trend recent to push public and private clouds in solving such business needs. The explanation behind these trends is considerable drop in prices driven by the strong footprint the Open Source is taking into this domain. Enabling technologies for cloud computing can deliver capabilities on unprecedented scale.

• Sophisticated file systems (such as ZFS) can support unlimited storage capacities, integration of the file systems and volume management.
• Patterns in architecture allow for accelerated development of super scale cloud architectures.
• Machine images can be instantly deployed simplifying and accelerating resource allocation while increasing agility.

The long term benefits of migrating and employing in the future cloud computing are:

• Efficiency/Economy - promoting clear "green"-computing concept. It enables server clusters to function more efficiently and saves costs on energy, cabling, HVAC minimizing capital expenditures
• Reliability/Availability - service-level availability through the built-in hardware-level availability features from failover to clustering to dynamic reconfiguration
• Density/Scalability - high density and large number of Cores per rack and transactions per rack unit
• Agility - multiple hardware architectures to customize systems to workloads enabling sharing of resources (and the associated costs) for:
  • Centralization of infrastructure in areas with lower costs (e.g. real estate)
  •  Peak-load capacity increases without engineering for highest possible load levels

"The rise of the cloud is more than just another platform shift that gets geeks excited. It will undoubtedly transform the IT industry, but it will also profoundly change the way people work and companies operate."

—The Economist, "Let it Rise," 10/23/08

Case Studies

• Operator A (Italy)
  • Loyalty based Value Added Reseller (VAR) and MVNO using TIM Network. It has its own Global Title(s) range but SIM range is within TIM ranges. The company uses Business Strategic Systems to co create value blending streams of loyalty points on top of the corporate B2B discounted offer from TIM for their existing customer base. The customers are provisioned within Business Strategic Systems with the following collateral  value added Services :
    • Real Time Billing (RTB) Service for all the calls (voice/ data)(leveraging 1) strategic advantage on web self-care and real time bill reporting)
    • Notifications Management Service (leveraging 2) strategic advantage on Customer Care on "unified channel" and "payment channel")
    • Balance Management (which will leverage 3) strategic advantage on two(2) methods: loyalty2account and ads2account)
• Operator B (Holland)
  • Loyalty based MVNE using KPN Network to provide services to various MVNOs. It has its own Global Title(s) (GT) ranges and its own SIM ranges (e.g. it has its own MCC - MNC). The company uses Business Strategic Systems (BSS) to co create value partnering with various retail channels blending their loyalty points on top of its MVNE B2B discounted wholesale rate with KPN. The following Business Strategic Systems collateral  Services are enabled:
    • Real Time Billing (RTB) Service for all the calls (voice/ data)(leveraging 1) strategic advantage on web self-care and real time bill reporting)
    • Notifications Management Service (leveraging 2) strategic advantage on Customer Care on "unified channel" and "payment channel")

• Balance Management (which will leverage 3) strategic advantage on two(2) methods: loyalty2account and ads2account) 
• Operator C (Israel)
  • Service Discovery àRoaming Services – intercepting through SCP (and CAMEL IDP) the VLR ID will give an indication that the customer is roaming not homing. The Service Creation will trigger in the Business Strategic Systems (BSS) SCP to push and list a set of Roaming Products through BSS USSD on the screen (and SMS, Voice Mail also). This service gives an option for better user experience by subscribing (1) to Real Time Billing (RTB) and (2) opt-in to Services Discovery.
  • Spending Controls –Balance Management limits capabilities along with the notifications and related triggers will help operators increase their customer satisfaction offering an option to the customer base to self manage the expenses and behaviours turning into an agreeable and peace of mind user experience any potential costly usage of the service (e.g. roaming)
  • Operator D (Poland)
    • Service Controls – parental controls are very important services. Intercepting (SCP) Calling Party (CAMEL IDP) the Business Strategic Systems can restrict and/or redirect the CS Calls and Diameter (Data). The subscription would be to (1)Real Time Billing as well as (2)Service Controls
    • Operator E (Romania)
      • Quad Play – The Service Creation Environments of various network adapters helped leveraging a large number of chargeable service points both post pay and prepay and across various domains as Wireline, Cable and Wireless. The offline and online charging as well the automation of discounting (usage based) across domains for the overall Quad Play bundle was a strong value proposition for B2C customers and a considerable market differentiator on B2B segment
      • Grab and Go – Promoting "hot" handsets kits (MSISDN/ IMSI activated in HLR) through sales channel partners this implementation of Service Controls will get the account activated via USSD code or SMS or IVR ( or through any methods within customer "unified channel")
    • Operator F(Moldavia)
      • Off - Peak Calling – Implementing Balance Value Cost Management through Customer Analytics Module (subset of Raw Counters Services) offers real time reporting of the SCP load therefore for the customers subscribing to the Real Time Billing (RTB) the customer analytics would help increase customer satisfaction by teasing customers to make calls into areas (or cells) where the load is low to better capitalize on existing traffic available capacities.  The dynamic calling plan tariff can be added on top of RTB as add-on offering large discounted calls on various destinations teasing customers for more traffic.

7.      Technology Evolution

Technology direction trend is to be used considerably the open source developments employing highly redundant architectures. Open Source evolves rapidly making an attractive cost benefit propositions for Carrier Grade Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The current evolutions of existing technologies – mentioned above – are to harden more and more the critical areas of the real time processing which is still close source dependent (e.g. Oracle DB and Windows OS for example in some supplier implementations or mediation and SCP implementations to others). Few other trends:

• Hardening SCP/ USSD/ IVR – Network Hardware (HW) Components with fault tolerant capabilities
• Solution Architecture (including Security) - SOA and Web Services
• Increased open source solution availability and reliability (moving from 3 x 9s (open source) to 4 x 9s (mixed) to 5 x 9s (close source) through open source only)
• Increase solution performance and flexibility (including User Interface) through Java/ Web  only technologies (some areas are still C/C++ especially where real time processing is required(e.g. SCP)
• Enrich Ease of Use and open standards integration points especially on critical User Experience
• Achieve Carrier grade OAM (including Backup and Restoration)
• Enhanced Reporting – see below what it has to be as minimal implementation

Dynamic Decision

Reports done in real or near real time to support tactical decision based on call volumes including customer analytics and interpretations related to them

Performance

Reports on commercial criteria based on any database field product combinations to support new product development introduction or existing commercial portfolios

Forecasting

Reports on problem management on topics as such as dimensioning and traffic analysis based on historical data to be able to support the planning process on commercial and technology also

8.      Market Overview

Telco markets are saturated in Wireline and near saturated in Mobile, leaving Telco to explore developing nations as potential growth or innovating disruptive business models and services approaches. Business Model variations bringing new value propositions and making commercial difference in the existing landscape are considered critical. Business Strategic Systems Platform Specific collateral Services are part of such innovative set of new services making a difference

Ecosystem

Usually the Value Chain of the Business Strategic Systems is the following:

1. USSD
2. IVR
3. Service Mediation
4. Service Billing
5. CRM
6. Service Provisioning
7. Service Self Care
8. Roaming
9. IPB (Inter Partner Billing)
10. SCP
11. Business Process (BP)
12. Point of Sales (POS)
13. Customer Analytics
14. Service Creation
15. Reporting Management
16. Loyalty Management
17. Trouble Ticketing
18. 3rd Party Web Services
19. Work Order Management
20. Resource Management
21. Voucher Management
22. Fraud Management
23. Finance Management
24. Accounting Management
25. 25.   Marketing 

9.      Market Predictions

General trends in the last yrs. driven by Standardization bodies (TISPAN and 3GPP) the Business Strategic Systems start approaching convergence (for both post pay and pre pay) and multi networks across the business lines related integrated products as new business enablers and market differentiators to:

-       Generate revenue

-       Reduce CAPEX and OPEX

-       Increase attractiveness, reduce churn

-      Create strategic advantage through native value added services

Strategy and Evolution Trends

The integrated products and services offerings are taking larger footprints within Telco. Higher margins specific of such offerings are becoming more attractive within the overall commoditization process of Telco services and a constantly saturated market. The current ongoing experience of the Operators into the silos services (e.g. wireless only, or Wireline only) has proved not viable into the existing competitive business environment. Combined revenues coming from large integrated products and services across networks and line of business addressing a full spectrum of communications can secure strategic advantage on such complex markets and be the next steps forward maintaining service profitability. Most of the existing Telco Business Strategic Systems cannot support, based on their current technology, new coming differentiated value propositions as having certain limitations and the most critical being their implementation is not flexible and agile enough to cope with the business pace in terms of requirements and technology.

Key Concepts

Few key concepts from this article: Integrated Services Platforms (BSS + VAS) are going to take a larger footprint due their strong native support to fast pace business requirements and higher ARPU margins as well as their agile approach (cost/ benefits) (native VAS) to the enterprise. The standardization and modularization are critical as next step will be cloud computing implementations which will cover module to module migrations. The price per subscriber within such integrated approach is under 3$ for Tier 2 and under 1$ for Tier 3 OpCo(s) within a 10 yrs. period (see below).

Today's implementations of such platforms are not securing the integrated services platforms concepts, even the main function(BSS) is tampered in various of its dimensions either through missing functionality or not completed implementation of such functionality and this is for most of the implementations which gives a lot of drawback to properly implement and support the business beyond such technology.

Costs

Let have a quick look over the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of acquiring such Business Strategic Systems in the presented ecosystem presented above as integrated services platforms and enablers

OpCo Size à less than 1 mil. Customers

• 5 yrs. time frame between 3$ to 5 $ / sub.
• 10 yrs. time frame between 2 $ to 4 $/ sub.

OpCo Size à less than 5 mils. Customers, higher than 1 mils. Customers

• 5 yrs. time frame between 1$ to 3 $ / sub.
• 10 yrs. time frame under 1 $/ sub.

 

Benefits

• Reduces Churn and build loyalty

-      Stimulates usage

-      Enriches end-user experiences

-      Improves new user experience & usage habits

-      Increases and optimizes revenue through enablement of new services

• Business Assurance

-       Immediate service creation

-      Customize to changing needs

Unified customer experience by enabling all channels: Web Self Care, USSD, SMS, STK, Email and IVR – the "unified channel"

10.  About the Author

Marinel Rosca is senior market and technology development professional having a successful track record in the advancement and leadership of regional, national, and international ventures. The broad experience in Telecom was acquired being part of various initiatives over the last +15 yrs. in companies as such as AT&T Mobility in USA, Ericsson Canada (www.ericsson.com), Fido Canada (www.fido.ca) and recently with Wind Mobile  (Orascom Group) spear heading telecom enterprise technology developments and innovation initiatives as head of various departments. Marinel has a masters' degree in engineering from Carleton University in Canada and can be reached at: mrosca@connect.carleton.ca

11.  Acknowledgements

The work at this article was supported through an extensive research on both Operating Companies (OpCo(s)) as well as Telco Suppliers Lab Trials during the summer of 2010. The author of this article has spent a large amount of time collecting information and interviewing stakeholders for this study (and article) with various suppliers and OpCo(s) which are Industry top of the class of such integrated services platforms to determine and classify various flavours of implementations of Business Strategic Systems native embedded Value Added Services as well as their immediate (or long term) benefits for the OpCo enterprise.  Whether you plan to create a sophisticated BSS RFI/ RFP or just invite various suppliers on workshops to see how they meet your requirements (implicitly your business needs) this article is guiding you to get the maximum of such time.

12.  References

• Ioakim (Makis) Marmaridis, Bhuvan Unhelkar, "Challenges in Mobile Transformations: A Requirements Modeling Perspective for Small and Medium Enterprises," International Conference on Mobile Business, 2005
• Cloud Computing for the Enterprise—Forrester Research, February 2009
• Software-As-A-Service Adoption Expands—Forrester Research, February 2009
• Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010  

About the Author

About the Author

Marinel Rosca is senior market and technology development professional having a successful track record in the advancement and leadership of regional, national, and international ventures. The broad experience in Telecom was acquired being part of various initiatives over the last +15 yrs. in companies as such as AT&T Mobility in USA, Ericsson Canada  (www.ericsson.com), Fido Canada (www.fido.ca) and recently with Wind Mobile  (Orascom Group) spear heading telecom enterprise technology developments and innovation initiatives as head of various departments. Marinel has a masters' degree in Engineering from Carleton University in Canada and can be reached at: mrosca@connect.carleton.ca

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Frequently Asked Questions...

Where am I going wrong in this trig problem?

Right triangle A has an angle of 35* and one side (not the hypotenuse) of 85m.
Right triangle B, superimposed over RTA, has the same given side but an angle of 38*.
I need to figure out the difference in lengths of the third side that is not the hypotenuse (side x).

Finding the cos(35*) and cos(38*) gives me the hypotenuses, which I can then use to get the length of side x.

The problem I run into is cos(35*) gives me a negative value, which then makes my hypotenuse negative. I'm rusty on my trig, so I don't know how to turn that into something kosher.

Likewise, I'm sure that makes my answers incorrect since it makes the x of RTB shorter than the x of RTA.

What step am I missing? It's been a few years since my last trig class.

Answer:

Did you get cos 35 = -0.90369? Your calculator is in radian mode. Put it in degree mode then recalculate.

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