Cerillion Blog
The Cerillion Blog provides a regular feed of company news, industry insight and informed opinion, all delivered by a team of recognised experts from across the company
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The call of nature: telecoms for a sustainable future
Massive leaps in telecoms technology and capacity have enabled other industries to reduce their environmental impact – but how is the telecoms sector itself decarbonising and diminishing its damage to the environment? In the first of a two-part examination, we explore the measures being taken, and the role digitalisation plays, in the greening of telecoms tech.
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Generation Rent: why the future of subscriptions rests with the kids
Millennials and Generation Z account for a significant majority of users of subscription services. As their share of the public spend increases, how can businesses ensure their offerings meet the expectations of this diverse, difficult audience?
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Balance Management: Adding a new dimension to your subscription services
The latest release of Cerillion Skyline, our subscription billing platform, introduces powerful balance management features, extending the monetisation capabilities of your usage-based services with the addition of flexible unit and money-based allowances.
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Subscription management software: Buy or Build?
The goal of any major software project should be to solve a business problem or streamline a business process in the most cost-effective way. So, when deciding on mission-critical software for your business operations, what are the relative merits of building in-house versus buying an off-the-shelf solution?
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Coronavirus: A clean bill of health for the subscriptions industry?
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to bite into everyday lives, consumption habits have been massively upended by closures and social distancing measures. We’ve previously covered how the telecoms world is faring amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, but how are the many subscription services responding in this time of crisis, and what lessons are there in these cases?
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Nanobusiness: is your business ready?
Service providers are outdoing one another to make 5G and FTTP announcements. But where are the new revenues going to come from to pay for these investments? Many are turning their attention to the business market. But with more people working from home - either for environmental reasons or, latterly, for business continuity purposes during the global coronavirus crisis – and many others becoming entrepreneurs or juggling side gigs, the business market itself is changing. Guest blogger, Teresa Cottam, looks at these changes and offers some pointers as to how to position for the new opportunities being presented.
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Cerillion Product Forum 2020: Taking a bold step online
Last month, Cerillion was joined by clients from around the world for its latest product forum – the first to take place wholly online – setting out the roadmap for its software solutions for the next year. Adam Hughes reports back from the virtual meeting room.
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Cerillion Q&A: Delivering digital best practice from home
Cerillion is a couple of weeks into remote working, with every department striving to ensure that it’s business as usual. Adam Hughes spoke with Amit McCann, Delivery Director at Cerillion, to see what effect the coronavirus is having on the company’s projects.
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Coronavirus: how the telecoms world is answering the call
The global outbreak of novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, continues to dominate the news cycle, as it wreaks havoc on all aspects of life; the telecoms industry has been no different. With providers having their usual processes disrupted and users even more dependent on their communications services while in isolation, how is the industry responding to its greatest ever challenge?
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Read all about it… online: How newspapers are thriving on digital subscriptions
Once the standard-bearers of subscriptions, print newspaper revenues are increasingly under threat in an ever more competitive market of 24-hour and online news. With papers betting big on digital subscriptions to keep the presses running, what strategies are the biggest publications adopting to avoid becoming tomorrow’s fish and chip paper?
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How subscriptions are revolutionising the customer experience
Despite all the focus on the business dividends, it’s the consumer who is the ultimate beneficiary of the subscription billing model. While subscriptions have been around for decades, the unprecedented level of service control now offered has not. But beyond the mere convenience, what are the biggest benefits of subscriptions for customers?
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Automated billing: Five reasons why your sales team should care
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“Do I feel lucky?” Well do ya, punk? Why MoviePass’ subscription service failed
For all the success stories of the booming subscription industry, we cannot forget there are some high-profile failures of the model too. MoviePass, the cinema ticket subscription service, was once the stuff that dreams are made of; now it’s a business for ants. Adam Hughes performs the post-mortem on this now-bankrupt cinema subscription service to see what their mistakes could mean for other subscription businesses.
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Head in the clouds or back down to earth?
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Four hopes and expectations for MWC20
MWC Barcelona is coming up once again, with Cerillion demonstrating its full product suite alongside the latest industry developments, innovations and more. Brian Coombs, Cerillion Product Director, shares what he hopes to see around the exhibition and compares this with what he expects to be the reality.
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Top Five Subscription Business Trends for 2020
As we usher in a new decade for the subscription industry, there is no doubt that businesses in the space will find more ways to engage customers, create new revenue streams and innovate with unique approaches. Shashank Venkat looks into the trends that mark the beginnings of a period where the subscription model is poised to become the default for most businesses.
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OpenRAN gains further momentum with Vodafone, MTN push
Recently, Vodafone surprised the telecoms industry by announcing that it is thinking about shifting its entire European mobile sites to Open Radio Access Network (OpenRAN) technology. MTN has also announced a new partnership with Parallel Wireless to deploy 5,000 OpenRAN sites in Africa. Is this the spark OpenRAN needs to succeed?
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From microservices to hybrid services architectures
Microservices architecture has been hyped as the latest and greatest software model that will increase your flexibility, accelerate time-to-market and underpin your digital transformations. However, it’s not without its drawbacks. Brian Coombs, Product Director at Cerillion, explains why a pragmatic approach is required to ensure microservices are used where there are significant benefits to be gained, and not just for the sake of it.
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Celebrating 20 years of Cerillion
Following our 20th birthday on 4th October, we have been sharing our highlights of #TheCerillionYears on our social media channels. Here’s a special blog post that looks back on Cerillion’s most important milestones and the evolution of the industry over the past two decades.
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Billing grace periods set to enhance subscription experience and reduce churn
The subscription model is all about putting subscribers first and having a ‘grace period’ for payments and renewals is another way to show customers that your subscription business cares about them. In fact, Apple has recently rolled out this feature for App Store subscriptions highlighting its significance.
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Twenty thousand cables under the sea: A brief history of submarine cable communications
The world takes internet communication for granted today, not giving much attention to the backbone driving this phenomenon. In fact, not many people know that 97% of global communications is carried by submarine cables in the sea and not through satellites as popularly believed. Dino Cano presents this interesting story.
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Sharing Economy in the Telecommunications Industry: Open Access in Fibre Networks – Part 3
Open Access models are levelling the playing field for operators by offering a convenient plug-and-play infrastructure without heavy capital expenditure. In the third and last part of this blog series, Mukesh Binani looks closely at the revenue model, technical architecture, key features and implementation of Open Access in Fibre Networks.
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Top Five Telecoms Trends for 2019
MWC 2019 is now behind us, and as usual the event showcased the latest technologies dotting the telecom landscape. Based on our learnings at MWC and the interactions with our customers and partners, we have identified five key trends that will drive the telecoms industry forward this year. There may be no big surprises, but rather a positive reaffirmation of the direction the stakeholders should take.
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Digital Transformation begins with Network Transformation
The recently released results of the TM Forum’s bi-annual Digital Transformation Tracker serve as another reminder to CSPs to fast track their transformation initiatives. This third report in the tracker series, highlights the importance of network transformation and its role as a growth driver for telcos.
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iPaaS: The pipework connecting the clouds
As cloud platforms become ubiquitous, iPaaS solutions are enabling businesses to simplify data integration, streamline integration flows, improve efficiency and reduce costs. Cerillion Skyline helps you maximise the capabilities present within iPaaS platforms.
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5G: Driving change for BSS - Part 1
As telcos prepare for the upcoming 5G revolution, an important next step should be to overhaul existing Business Support Systems (BSS). In the first part of this blog series, Richard Doughty highlights some of the key 5G use cases and builds a case for resetting BSS.
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Sharing Economy in the Telecommunications Industry: Open Access in Fibre Networks – Part 2
Open Access Networks (OAN) help telcos leverage the power of the sharing economy and accelerate progress through a collaborative approach. As OANs are increasingly adopted for mobile communication under the MVNO/E/A model, Mukesh Binani examines the model implemented in Fibre Networks.