Huge benefits to come from LTE, but only with the right approach

Welcome to the winter edition of Evolve. So what are the big mobile developments expected next year? The two key ones that spring to mind involve smartphones (many more on the way) and LTE (Long Term Evolution).

With LTE we go all-IP and with that we finally see the widespread introduction of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) which has become the mobile industry's route to a standard media control plane. As we point out in our feature article, it sets up very clear definitions of online and offline charging models and lays out some standardised interfaces. And that's just for starters.

Most important: it re-starts the clock. With LTE and IMS, operators have the opportunity to start from scratch and forge new and fruitful relationships with over-the-top content and service providers. This is the classic two-sided business opportunity beckoning, with telcos able to offer third parties billing facilities, customer validation, network data and so on. It all sounds very attractive.

But if telcos are going to do that they're going to have to be careful. Using the IMS media control plane to.. well.. 'control' their users and gerrymander access to different services will end in disaster as the regulators swoop in to outlaw what they and any other interested parties will regard as unfair, non-neutral practises. The US FCC is going to set the pace here and who can doubt that Europe will to some extent follow suit.

That huge increase in the smartphone population, the second big development next year, is only going to increase the pressure as we head into the decade. We're going to have lots of enthusiastic users downloading innovative apps, lots of pressure on network capacity and a horrendous clamour from users and Web interests if mobile operators are seen to be using that new LTE 'control' over their networks in a commercially biased way. There is a huge opportunity with LTE, but a real trap as well.

In fact mobile has been a very symmetrical industry, with a technology for each decade: analogue in the 1980s, GSM in the 1990s, 3G licenses auctioned in around 2000, and now in 2010 we should see the beginning of the LTE decade as the first networks are rolled out. Cerillion, appropriately enough, started life 10 years ago with 3G and we're now preparing for LTE and 4G, according to Cerillion's CTO, Simon Matthews, who is interviewed in this issue of Evolve.

Simon notes that the recent advent of dynamic policy management and user controlled policy changes are a big step forward for the industry. Consumer-focused policy management, he points out, has become a core part of Cerillion's solution, specifically in the converged markets.

And to that end in this issue we outline the virtues of Cerillion Mediator Plus, our convergent (online and offline) mediation solution for all types of usage including fixed, mobile, IP, content and transactional systems. And we're happy to announce that, despite the global recession, our preliminary results indicate another very successful year with revenue growth of 21%. Enjoy the festive season and look out for the next edition of Evolve hitting your inboxes in the New Year.

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LTE and the Perfect Storm

It’s sometimes hard to believe that ‘3G’ is now nearly 10 years old. Back in 2000, the now infamous 3G license auction in the UK set off a frenzy of activities that have changed the telecommunications market forever. 3G was used as the catalyst to introduce us to the concept of the “mobile internet” and it was often quipped that 3G stood for Games, Gambling and Girls in reference to the likely new revenue streams it would deliver.

Data rates have improved considerably since the original 3GPP Release 99 specifications that formed the basis for the first 3G (UMTS) networks. The progression through to the latest HSPA+ networks has taken downlink speeds from a theoretical 2Mb/sec to rates as high as 21Mb/sec (see http://hspa.gsmworld.com/) so far.

Long Term Evolution (LTE)

Based on 3GPP Release 8, Long Term Evolution (LTE) is officially a ‘Pre-4G’ technology, and is expected to deliver data rates of 100Mb/sec. The real ‘4G’ (as specified by the ITU) won’t arrive until 3GPP Release 10, known as LTE-Advanced, but LTE is widely banded about as being the first 4G network technology.

Over the past year there have been a number of LTE trials announced by Operators including the likes of China Mobile, Telefonica, Verizon and Vodafone to name but a few. And with these big names committed to LTE it’s fair to say that the bandwagon is now rolling.

Content Value Chain

Though LTE's data rates promise to be a huge leap forward from the early days of 3G, the industry is still talking about the same explosion of data, content and video-based services that were being predicted ten years ago. So is there going to be any real difference with LTE?

During the heady days of the 3G auctions, the best brains of the billing world were gathering in the Global Billing Association (subsequently merged into the TM Forum in 2007) to discuss and agree on the 'next generation' billing and settlement models required for 3G. This covered the whole 'content value chain', from content creator / owner, through aggregators, distributors and sponsors, as well as the Operators themselves hoping to do the billing and settlements.

Looking back at the output of these discussions, it is clear that these models still hold true today. The content value chain has become the 'digital media value chain' but the same principles still apply. So does this mean that Operators' billing systems are already prepared for LTE?

The Perfect Storm

Though most billing systems have been enabled to support a content value chain for several years, the slow take-up of 3G services has meant that these systems have rarely been put to full use. As we approach LTE, a number of different factors are coming together which puts us on the brink of the long-awaited boom in data and content services:

It can be argued that the current combination of devices, content creation and application development are already there. However, the arrival of LTE will set a new benchmark for what can be delivered over a mobile network, and with LTE chipsets being embedded into a wide array of consumer electronics we will also see an explosion in the number of connected devices and widespread machine-to-machine applications.

As LTE deployments commence, we are about to enter the 'Perfect Storm' and the exponential growth in data and content services will pose a huge threat to Operators' back office systems if they are not suitably prepared and stress tested for the processing power that will be required.

Charging Standards

Ten years ago the only charging standards that existed were for managing roaming. Now, though IMS is much-maligned, it is also an integral part of the 3GPP specifications and a mandatory component of LTE. With IMS, comes a very clear definition of online and offline charging models and standardised interfaces using Diameter.

This is a huge leap forward for the industry and requires Operators to upgrade their charging systems to take advantage of the new services that are coming and to ensure they are not cut out of the digital media value chain.

With powerhouses such as Google looking to dominate the whole world wide web, Operators will no doubt continue to face the battle as to who 'owns' the customer. By embracing new convergent charging and policy management systems, Operators can take control of the services and applications being delivered over their networks. However, in addition to protecting their current position, they can also create new opportunities to grow their revenue streams by offering 'Billing as a Service' to other members of the value chain and beyond their traditional market boundaries.

This is a brave new world for those Operators prepared to open up their charging systems to outside parties. Nevertheless, with the Perfect Storm approaching, those who can make the first move into this market will have the opportunity to reap significant rewards.

Dominic Smith
Dominic.Smith@cerillion.com

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Interview with Cerillion's CTO, Simon Matthews

In this issue of Evolve, Dominic Smith talks to Simon Matthews, Cerillion's CTO, about the challenges operators must address in their BSS/OSS infrastructure as the industry moves towards '4G'.

Simon is the CTO at Cerillion and has been with the business for 3 1/2 years. MBA educated, he has 18 successful years experience working for some of the telecommunication sectors largest organisations and start up enterprises including Cable & Wireless, WorldCom, Global One, Tele2, and the iWorld Group.

DS: Tell me a bit about your role and responsibilities as CTO. What's a typical day in the life of Simon Matthews?

SM: The role of CTO in a business whose product set is as comprehensive as Cerillion's is a very busy and exciting one. One of the keys to the success of Cerillion as an organisation is our investment in people, and in any given day the people I am investing time in could be within our own teams, the existing customer base, prospective customers, partners, or fellow industry technologists. It is important when serving our Global market that we remain on top of technology both in our core functional footprint, but also in the surrounding areas we integrate to as a part of our solutions. It is both my job and my passion to maintain this.

DS: Cerillion has a very broad product portfolio. Which areas are you focussing on at the moment and what are the factors driving these developments?

SM: Our current focus is around simplifying our customer's ability to manage the increasingly complex demands of their consumers whilst delivering new technology support and strong industry standards led features. This is most obvious in our TCA (Total Convergence Architecture) programme, where we have realised a solution to support any product in prepaid, postpaid and hybrid account types. As part of the productised solutions we deliver, we ensure that such enhancements to our portfolio are not just technical exercises about the development of our 3GPP compliant charging engine, we look much deeper. The TCA feature set also drives improvements into our billing, service management, business intelligence, and fulfilment functionality ensuring the Cerillion solution manages the complete lifecycle of customers, products, services and revenue.

With the introduction of functionality to enable an account-type agnostic environment we have also seen an increase in demand for solutions that would normally be regarded as in the network space, including session and policy control. Policy control specifically has advanced significantly in the last few years with the advent of dynamic policy management and user controlled policy changes. The comprehensive reference data management capabilities delivered with Cerillion CRM Plus creates a natural and seamless fit to drive and facilitate more in depth consumer-focussed policy management and has become a core part of our solution specifically in the converged markets.

At the same time the desire of consumers to manage all aspects of their service, coupled with telecom operators desire to drive down average call times and volume in call centres has driven the advance in our Web Self-Care functionality. Though Cerillion has been delivering self-service solutions for the past 10 years, we constantly evolve around customer desire and technical advancements. Few would have considered the CRM capability to send instant messages to CSR's for help in 2000, but now, a decade on it is an intrinsic part of our solution driven by needs of consumers. The ever advancing presence of self-care has also fuelled a more demanding consumer who wants everything now. The principles of real-time are no longer exclusive to prepaid calls it is across the entire customer management footprint, driving a consistent output of performance improvements through both software and hardware configuration to keep up with these demands, and our core dynamic architecture has been evolved to ensure real-time is not an exception, it is the modus operandi.

DS: Over the past decade, various approaches to software development have promised to revolutionise the way applications are built and deployed. These include things like rapid application development tools, the agile development methodology and 'virtualisation'. What are the current trends and how does Cerillion use the latest technology to improve the products and services it provides?

SM: A business could spend a lot of time and money dogmatically adhering to the mantra of the moment, and I always salute the brave who choose to do so and continually invest in the market trends and buzzword technologies. At Cerillion we supply services and solutions across a genuinely global footprint, and such inflexibility would be inefficient when agility is essential to our success and we are delivering to an established multi-million Euro environment in Central Europe, an emerging operator in West Africa and an MVNO in high penetration market conditions in North America simultaneously.

Within the development team we have team leaders who are trained in differing methodologies, but we maintain Cerillion-specific processes and procedures that enable us to deliver high quality output whilst utilising the right kind of approach for the situations and challenges of each deployment. It is not uncommon to have the bodies of work in a single project being delivered in different ways due to the dependencies and timeline pressures our customers are under. With that kind of dynamism we then place a huge amount of focus on quality against CMMI and EFQM standards. Our dedicated testing team, who are entirely independent of each project, always places as much focus on non-functional requirements as functional, in order to maintain the high quality levels our customers expect and that we are known for in the industry.

DS: Does having such a diverse range of customers, offering an incredibly broad array of products and services, make it difficult to prioritise where R&D investments should be made?

SM: The telecoms sector we operate in is not for the faint hearted and the level of dynamism and general demand experienced in our operational markets is significant. But with a combination of an agile system architecture and a core team of commercially astute technologists we keep these kind of demons, a plague to some of our competitors, at bay.

The profile that we deliver through R&D is influenced by market, technology, existing customers and performance, and these often conflict or send differing messages. However the key to overcoming this is to design your solutions in a manner that does not limit you to a path of development every time something changes, so your R&D budgets can be protected for key significant advancements. For example at the heart of Cerillion's 3GPP compliant charging engine you can on the same platform where you support prepaid GSM, introduce postpaid GSM, and prepaid-postpaid hybrid charging by only configuring the product behaviour. There are no lengthy development cycles to introduce new account types or long drawn out expansion programmes.

For underlying technology changes, such as the introduction of 4G network technology, these services would need to be configured in the Cerillion product manager component, and only the necessary interfaces established - again no lengthy or painful development to release a whole series of 4G-enabled services.

In recent years Cerillion's R&D investment has been predominantly about realising true convergence, increasing the scope of self-service, introducing the express model and constant and consistent performance tuning.

DS: What are the key challenges that Telecoms operators need to address with their BSS and OSS infrastructure over the next 3-5 years?

SM: The challenges and what influences and causes them is an organic and often cyclical beast within this sector. The market has contracted in general worldwide, through a combination of the economic climate and consolidation from mergers and acquisitions. This will lead to increased competition as new businesses emerge from the ashes of old, putting more impetus on fast and effective mean time to market, and robust and commercially sage churn defence.

Further to this, the ability to speedily and expediently move to new supporting technologies will be key. For example, any mobile provider not able to support multiple charging models and account types across the vast amounts of content that will be available with 4G, risks being relegated to the dreaded 'dumb-pipe'. Similarly, broadband providers not able to support seamless terrestrial-to-mobile service continuation will find themselves in a highly threatened market position.

Cerillion's ability to supply solutions combining multiple forms of charging across multiple account types and multiple technologies provides a strong foundation to address these challenges.

DS: And what are the opportunities?

SM: It is important that the norm is challenged in a highly competitive market. Do all operators know that you can deliver convergent environments within account types as well as between account types? So if your customer base is all postpaid and no prepaid, why not offer hybrid charging based upon the time of day or their consumption rates, and then split these liabilities across multiple invoices? Why not look at fixed to mobile convergence? It's so much more than just 'prepaid' or 'postpaid', and the market potential is huge, presenting great opportunity for a proactive approach that leverages the advantages of balance-controlled accounts and services.

There is also a significant opportunity in targeting products and services for the different needs of nomadic versus static customer bases, combining both usage-based pricing and fixed price bundling. Having a BSS/OSS environment that supports this level of flexibility is crucial to servicing customer and market demand and retaining a competitive edge. This kind of dynamism is at the heart of the Cerillion solution.

The potential in growing new market segments as well is immense, both in terms of conventional mobile content right through to generating revenues from convergence with the media and entertainment industries. Mobile applications and licensing management across re-bill and settlement contracts for royalties are all key solution deliverables in the 4G world.

DS: And finally, having worked on both operator and vendor sides of the industry, what lessons do you think each side can learn from the other?

SM: From the vendor perspective, making sure you understand the drivers behind your customer's demands will lead to a much better business-oriented solution, rather than merely responding to technical requirements. It is also imperative that a vendor can learn from operators' dynamism. In fast changing fluid environments thick with competitors and churn, it is hugely powerful to have a solution that can duck, cover, and attack along with the needs of your customers.

Operators can also learn a lot from the technologist approaches to problems. Though in practical terms the subject matter is often dry and complex, good technologists with a keen appreciation of the commercial world can speak both binary and business and are a font of strong knowledge which should be tapped and consumed. Substantial advantages can also be realised in areas of the operator's business that benefit from proactively dealing with potential needs in a focused manner along the same lines that vendors' R&D programmes operate. The mix of operational, tactical and strategic resolution can ensure certain challenges are met before you know you have hit them.

There are many soft lessons that can also be learnt on both sides. For operators, working with vendors as partners will help to get the best out of them; be prepared to adapt your strategy if the market situation changes; always drive the standards up from your vendors. On the vendor side, proactively look at the needs of your customers; keep on top of general market strategy and technology trends to keep your customers ahead; and put quality at the forefront of your deliverables. These are all key to ongoing mutual success.

Simon can be contacted at: Simon.Matthews@cerillion.com

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Spotlight: Cerillion Mediator Plus

Cerillion Mediator Plus is a convergent (online and offline) mediation solution for all types of usage including fixed, mobile, IP, content and transactional systems.

The new generation of telecom services poses many challenges for existing operators and new entrants alike. The multitude of services and the complex network environment combine to place a tremendous burden on the business support systems infrastructure required to price and bill for usage. The mix of new IP-based networks and legacy circuit-switched environments plus many new overlaid applications and the rapidly increasing record volumes means that a new breed of specialist mediation system is required to support the complex online and offline charging requirements. Mediation has changed from being merely a collection and re-formatting engine, and has been replaced by more sophisticated needs to correlate usage from multiple sources, in real-time, and ensure all possible usage is turned into billable events.

Cerillion Mediator Plus provides all the tools needed to turn new service technology into new revenue opportunity in the IP world, including: collection, correlation, duplicate checking, validation, transformation, filtering, distribution, and auditing. It allows a wide range of offline and online deployment scenarios, and the system will grow and evolve in support of network expansion and new application rollouts. Mediator Plus is already deployed for 3G, 2.5G and 2G mobile; as well as Fixed and IP network services; and supporting industry standard charging protocols such as Diameter and CDR formats including ASN.1, CSV and XML.

Cerillion Mediator Plus - Overview

Revenue-enable new services

Mediator Plus turns new services into new revenue generation opportunities, quickly. It is a fully convergent mediation technology that solves complex data integration challenges in one single platform, supporting any combination of online and offline processing. Mediator Plus is designed to minimize implementation efforts in a user-friendly way, providing an unprecedented speed of deployment and ease of operation.

Future-proofed solution

Mediator Plus is a high-performance convergent mediation platform supporting any data exchange between any systems, in real-time and batch mode. Based on a modular architecture, new functionality and processing capabilities can be seamlessly added over time, effectively providing a future-proof mediation infrastructure that promotes deployment of right-sized mediation solutions. Mediator Plus takes advantage of an open architecture, running on any Unix or Linux platform, and is proven to scale and grow with business demands.

Low total cost of ownership

Mediator Plus makes it possible to implement, deploy and operate solutions faster than ever before. It consists of a highly graphical environment combined with a scale-out distributed execution architecture that makes use of the latest high-performance and low cost computing platforms. Mediator Plus cuts complexity through flexibility by putting the power into the hands of the user, resulting in self-sufficiency and cost-efficient solutions.

For more information about Cerillion Mediator Plus, please contact info@cerillion.com.

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Cerillion Turnover up 21%

London, 16th November 2009 – Cerillion Technologies, a leading provider of next generation customer management systems, today announced its preliminary results for another very successful year, with profitable revenue growth of 21% for the financial year ending 30th September 2009.

Despite difficult market conditions, Cerillion has continued to prosper, extending its footprint in group-level accounts and achieving further success in the emerging markets. Increased efficiency and strong performances across the business have also helped the company to return 10% EBITDA and increase cash by 30%.

"Though economic conditions are challenging, telecoms providers are still investing in their business support systems (BSS) in order to improve the efficiency of their businesses or create new opportunities for revenue growth," commented Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies. "In this environment, our bundled component product suite continues to provide the best value for money and offers the lowest risk implementation on the market."

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Cerillion Celebrates Ten Years of Growth and Looks Forward to a Positive Future

London, 5th October 2009 – Cerillion Technologies, a leading provider of pre-integrated business support systems (BSS), is celebrating its tenth birthday this month. At a time of turbulence for the telecoms industry, the London-based firm has grown dynamically and recorded outstanding successes over the past decade, including some pioneering landmark achievements:

• Cerillion has grown from 5 customers at launch to more than 40 system installations worldwide, including implementations for leading industry players such as Essar, Tele2 and Tiscali.
• Cerillion systems are service-agnostic and are in live operation supporting everything from fixed line, mobile, broadband and convergent multi-service operators to resellers, MVNOs and femtocell-based FMC providers.
• The company has expanded its global footprint and opened its Global Solution Centre in Pune, India. It currently has customers in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
• In 2001, Cerillion provided customer care and billing for the world's first commercial UMTS network.
• Cerillion systems also supported the world's first live launch of HSDPA services in 2005.
• In 2006, Cerillion was named one of Britain' fastest-growing private technology companies in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100.
• In 2007, the company helped Manx Telecom to become the first operator in the world to achieve BABT compliance for billing accuracy of both fixed and mobile services.
• In 2008, Cerillion changed the market with the launch of Cerillion Express, a complete pre-integrated and pre-configured CRM and billing package, which can be delivered in just 10 weeks and offers an exceptionally low total cost of ownership.
• Today, Cerillion delivers a mix of CRM, billing, charging, provisioning, mediation and interconnect solutions.
• The company has grown from just 12 staff at launch to more than 140 employees.

As it moves into its second decade, Cerillion is maintaining its focus on organic product development rather than technology acquisition. The company is continuing to invest in its R&D programme to increase the overall functional footprint and depth of its product suite. Recently, Cerillion unveiled its Total Convergence Architecture (TCA), a new flexible model for telecoms operators based on the TM Forum's highly-respected Application Framework (TAM).

Cerillion is also further developing its routes to market. "We are increasing investment in our relationships with integration partners, providing training and the requisite tools to help them sell and deliver Cerillion solutions" says Louis Hall, Cerillion's CEO. "Though being a full-service company is a core strategy, we recognise that to continue our growth we need to expand our channels to market. This is particularly important in regional markets where local presence is deemed crucial."

"Overall, the billing market still offers a huge potential for growth and we believe we are well placed to take advantage" Hall adds. "There are now fewer players in the market and fewer still who can provide the breadth of solution that we can, which means a great opportunity for us to capitalise on our position and expand our customer base."

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