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Table of Contents:
 Announcing the Winners for the 2007 Billing World & OSS Today Excellence Awards
Amdocs Survey Finds That Inadequate OSS Impacts Time to Market
Internet-Connected Households Favor Online Bill Payment Over Checks
Napster To Launch Mobile Music with NTT DoCoMo
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Announcing the Winners for the 2007 Billing World & OSS Today Excellence Awards
This year's competition was tough, as is generally the case. The good news about a tough competition, though, is that it means the OSS/BSS sector is seeing success. This year's competition included more than 50 companies, many of which submitted multiple customer and product success stories. This year's contest also included new applicants, which speaks to the fact that although the industry is seeing massive consolidation, new players with interesting products continue to emerge.
Info Directions Wins as Best Overall OSS/BSS Company
Although not the biggest player in the industry, Info Directions won best overall OSS/BSS company at the year's awards program. Info Directions demonstrated the best combination of customer success, technology innovation and market dominance in the past 18 months. Its success story with Penn Telecom was so impressive not only because of the results they were able to deliver, but because Info Directions managed to practically double the scope of its product, building out an entire new suite of OSS functionality. Info Directions took a big risk devoting so much of its company resources to one project and made it pay off. At the same time, the company managed not to lose focus for its many other customers. For more on the Penn Telecom case study see the Q&A in the March/April Billing World & OSS Today.
CheckFree Stands Out for Best Customer Success Story
The best single customer success story is typically our most heavily contested category, but this year CheckFree achieved a rare case of clear winner with its customer, Verizon Communications. The decision was based heavily on measured benefits and metrics, as well as customer corroboration. CheckFree's project at Verizon demonstrated that despite modest growth to date in electronic billing, customers are more than willing to switch to electronic billing and payment if they are given the right incentives and an opportunity to 'try before they buy.' Furthermore, CheckFree was able to show the telecom and banking industries how we can cooperate for our mutual success.
Progress Software Introduces Best New Product
The best new product award is given to the company with the best combination of new product innovation, customer success with that product and the product's impact on the market. Progress demonstrated that can take on one of the most challenging and costly issues facing carriers and OSS/BSS providers today, integration. Service providers today regularly complain that the cost to integrate OSS/BSS systems remains too high and that they want solutions that will drastically reduce what is often called the 'integration tax.' Often it is a matter of differences in data models and semantics that create massive problems for integration programs. As SOA becomes more important, these semantic issues continue to be troublesome. Progress tackled this very problem, coming up with an integration solution that has turned the SID from a document into a usable model in complex OSS/BSS environments. Carriers such as BellSouth, Telstra, Cingular and Deutsche Telekom have all begun to use this technology in just the past year, demonstrating that it meets a clear and painful need.
Tekelec Shines for Achievement in Innovation
The award for achievement in innovation is given to the company that demonstrates the most innovative new product. Although Tekelec operates in an area that is tangential to OSS/BSS, as network transformation presses forward toward all-IP infrastructure, technologies that can pave the way to new domains and lengthen the useful life of legacy infrastructure are critical to operators. Technologies like SIP and IMS are starting to take over signaling responsibilities from SS7 to enable new services, and Tekelec is helping its customers to make this transition smoothly, efficiently and economically. Tekelec's Service Dispatch and Control Product addresses a significant need that is otherwise unfulfilled in the industry. Telmar, which implemented the Service Dispatch product along with other Tekelec products, stated that it saved $350 million in capital expenditures for the coming year.
FTS Is Most Promising Company
This year the judges selected FTS as the most promising company. It was chosen as likely to have the biggest impact on the OSS/BSS market in the coming year and demonstrating a strong track record of growth and successful problem solving through solid products.
FTS has been successful on all fronts. Its Leap BCE product is a true multi-domain, multi-market product. It is not a collection of models glued together, but a solution that attacks what the market needs right now. Secondly, FTS bought a number of struggling companies over the last 18 months. In that process, it stabilized the companies and their customers, and made those business units profitable. It is one thing for a major corporation to pull off a successful acquisition; after all, larger organizations have more resources, manpower and capital. When an up and coming company successfully acquires at the rate of FTS, that is impressive. Few among the smaller organizations are capable of such success.
Unibill Achieves Operational Excellence
The award for operational excellence is granted to the company that demonstrates the most significant measurable improvements in its customers' operational processes.
This year Unibill provided an amazing and unique story about living through Hurricane RitaÑfor details see the Q&A in the May/June Billing World & OSS Today. Unibill not only survived the hurricane's destruction but adapted its disaster plan to deal with the unexpected, and also managed to keep its customers' billing and care operations entirely unaffected by the storm. Unibill and all of its employees showed great courage and persistence in the face of a true disaster.
Comments and feedback welcome, please email Jill Morgan at jmorgan@billingworld.com.
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