ETIS Community Gathering to be hosted by Belgacom

ETIS is pleased to inform you that the next ETIS Community Gathering will be hosted by Belgacom in Brussels on 13/14 November 2008. The ETIS Community Gathering will bring together people from the Business and ICT Management of the European Telecom operators to share knowledge on key ICT issues facing the Telecom industry. These are some of the key executives driving the transformation of the Telcos and future business models.

The gathering will kick off with a welcome address from Belgacom and a keynote presentation from EU Commissioner, DG Information Society & Media, Viviane Reding who will speak about the 'EU's policies driving a competitive Telecommunications market and its impact on ETIS members'. Presentations will also be made by Jean-Louis Previdi, Vice President & Program Director, Gartner on 'New Telecom Business Models' and Brendan Logan, Senior Vice President, Patni Telecoms Consulting on 'Billing challenges in the future Telco Business’.

The second half of the day will focus on ETIS success stories which will show members how to get even more value out of their membership covering topics like Anti-SPAM, Customer Self-Service, Enterprise Architecture, Procurement and Vendor Management ending with an Exchange of information to succeed with Telco Transformation from the CIO Executive Forum.

The second day will be dedicated to the working groups who will have a full day meeting. There will also be an ETIS CIO Executive Workshop which will focus on new business models and revenue streams for the Telcos. Plenty of opportunities for interaction and networking will be provided without forgetting the evening social event.

As you can see the Gathering has a packed agenda that should be of interest to the entire ETIS Community. This gathering is an ideal opportunity for all of the members, associates, partners and working groups to get to know one another, learn about each other's activities, plans and expectations and above all, share knowledge.

This meeting is open to ETIS Members, Associate Members, Partners and Working Groups participants. However, if your company is considering ETIS membership and would like to attend this event, please contact Mr. Fred Werner at fw@etis.org

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ETIS Billing Workshop Summary

ETIS would like to thank everyone who participated in the ETIS Billing Workshop 2008: ''Telecom Billing Strategies in the IMS'' which was hosted in Brussels on 17/18 April 2008. The conference covered topics like Opportunities & Challenges for Billing of IMS Services, Billing Operational Efficiency and Cost Reduction, Data Retention and Electronic billing.

The workshop was Chaired by Jürg Haseloff, Vice President of Information Systems & Postbilling at Active Billing. The keynote speaker for day 1 was Brendan Logan, Senior VP from Patni Telecom Consulting who explained how Billing is a critical enabler as well as once of the biggest challenges facing telcos today. The keynote speaker for Day 2 was Jean-Louis Previdi, VP & Program Director EMEA from Gartner who discussed how much to invest in your next generation billing system & how IMS is changing the industry landscape. Some of the other presenters were from Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom, OTE, Telekom Austria, Atos Origin, Comarch, LHS, Openet, INTEC, CA Wily, Comverse and TNO.

The event was well attended by over 80 participants from 35 companies and much positive feedback was received. We would like to thank all of the speakers, session chairs and sponsors (HP, Openet, CA Wily and Intec) that all helped to make this event a success. We are looking forward to meeting all of you again at the 'ETIS Community Gathering' which will be hosted by Belgacom in Brussels on 13/14 November 2008. All of the Billing Workshop presentations can now be found at the ETIS Members Corner.

If you would like to sponsor our next ETIS Billing Workshop please get into contact with Fred Werner at fw@etis.org

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35th Management Board meeting & CIO Executive Workshop Summary

Last week ETIS held its 35th Management Board meeting which was hosted by Eircom in Dublin on 28 May 2008. An ETIS Executive CIO Workshop was also held the following day on the theme of ''Turning Strategy into Reality''. The meetings were well-attended by over 20 senior ICT Executives from our member companies like Eircom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Belgacom, OTE, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Telekom Austria, TeliaSonera, Lattelecom and Turk Telekom.

During the first day the Management Board meeting focused on administrative matters, ETIS strategy and the election of Council members. As a result, ETIS is pleased to announce that the Management Board unanimously voted to re-elect Bjorn Reimers from TeliaSonera as the ETIS Secretary Treasurer. ETIS is also pleased to announce that Gerry Quinn, CIO of Eircom, was elected as an ETIS Council Member. The Board Members also took the opportunity to network and update each on their company's overall organizational structure, the latest changes and future perspectives.

The second day was dedicated to the CIO workshop during which the CIOs exchanged knowledge on their future transformation plans and IT strategies, Telecom separation issues, operational efficiency and Green IT. The workshop featured presentations from the CIOs and round-table discussions during which a lot of knowledge was shared. The Workshop also received a visit from Eircom CEO, Rex Comb who was interested in getting real feedback from our member CIOs.

The next CIO workshop will be held during the ETIS Community Gathering hosted by Belgacom in Brussels on 13/14 November 2008.

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Telefonica joins ETIS for Trial Membership

ETIS is proud to announce that Telefonica Group has joined ETIS for a trial membership and is set to share knowledge with our members in our upcoming working groups and events.

Telefonica's recent involvement in ETIS events has resulted in a trial membership being the next logical step. Mr. Juan Benavides, Systems Architecture Director, Telefonica Group, is the member representative and Telefonica has shown most interest in the following ETIS activities: Enterprise Architecture working group, Customer Self Service working group and Information Security working group.

Judging by their recent contribution to our events, ETIS is optimistic about this new partnership and is looking forward to welcoming Telefonica and its employees to the ETIS community.

About Telefonica Group
Telefónica is a leading private company in the global telecommunications market, with headquarters in Spain; it is listed on the main international stock exchanges. With a presence in 23 countries, Telefónica's revenue represents an average of 1.5% of the GDP of the economies of the countries where it operates. With a revenue of more than 52.9 billion euros in 2007, over 63% of its earnings come from outside Spain. In 2007, the company offered a return of 31.2% to its 1.7 million shareholders.

Telefónica employs over 240,000 persons and provides access to more than 218 million customers: 160 million mobile phones accesses, 42 million landline telephones accesses, 9.6 million broadband accesses and 1.4 million pay-per-view accesses.

For more information, please http://www.telefonica.com

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Upcoming ETIS Working Group Meetings

Business Intelligence & Data Warehouse meeting hosted by TeliaSonera in Stockholm

The next Business Intelligence & Data Warehouse Working Group meeting will be hosted by TeliaSonera in Stockholm on 8/9 September 2008. The meeting will begin with a group dinner hosted by TeliaSonera on the evening of 8 September followed by a full day's meeting on September 9th.

The meeting will focus on the following topics:
Becoming business driven & ensuring business value
- Understanding & handling business requirements
- Business case and ROI
- Governance (ownership, decision making)
- Important business metrics & KPI (TDB)

Master Data Management & Info Quality
- Strategies for handling information quality
- Information modeling (3nf, Dimensional)

Participation in this working group is for ETIS members only. If you are not yet a member and would like to take part in this working group, please contact Fred Werner at: fw@etis.org

Information Security Meeting Hosted by Slovak Telekom in Bratislava

The next Information Security Working Group Meeting will be hosted by Slovak Telekom in Bratislava on 10/11 September 2008.

Below are some of the topics that will be covered:
- Internet Security Threats
- Information Security Benchmark
- Information Security Governance
- Multi-focus security compliance and assurance
- Information Security standards developments
- Information Security Best Practices

Participation in this working group is for ETIS members only. If you are not yet a member and would like to take part in this working group, please contact Fred Werner at: fw@etis.org

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Progress Software Corporation joins as an ETIS Member

ETIS is pleased to announce that Progress Software Corporation has joined as an Associate member. Progress is an active supporter of standards in the communications industry and has been working closely with the TM Forum to promote their NGOSS Frameworks. A notable member of the Progress team is Chief Technical Architect for Communications, John Wilmes, who is also co-chair of the TM Forum’s SID Technical Program and co-lead of the TM Forum Interface Program (TIP) Service Assurance and Catalog Management teams.

Progress Software Corporation provides application infrastructure software for the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. Progress, enables architects and developers to create, maintain and govern common model-based data services (like the TM Forum’s Information Framework, commonly called the SID) in an SOA. The free DataXtend SID Model Browser comes with a complete copy of the SID model and full documentation so you can visualize the model as you explore it. Starting at the highest level, you can navigate through any of the eight distinct domain areas, inspecting the hierarchy within a specific domain, and viewing the details of the classes and attributes contained within the hierarchy.

“We welcome Progress Software to the ETIS community and believe that their experience with large-scale IT transformation projects within the Telecom industry will be of particular interest to our members.” Terje Tondel, Managing Director.

“Many of our Telecoms customers and prospects have told us that ETIS is a community that provides an important forum for the exchange of information and sharing of best practices and have encouraged us to become involved. We look forward to contributing our practical experience in applying Telecoms industry standards in the adoption of SOA and to leveraging our involvement with ETIS to more fully understand the IT priorities of European Telecoms carriers.” Ken Rugg, VP and General Manager, DataXtend, Progress Software.

Visit the website at www.progress.com/dataxtend to learn more about Progress Software and DataXtend Semantic Integrator.

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Interview with HP BSS Products General Manager, Nigel Upton

At the ETIS Billing Workshop 2008, held in Brussels, billing challenges for new generation services provided for lively conference discussion.  HP was pleased to be the Gold Sponsor of the Workshop, and presented its approach to real-time charging as the foundation for new service revenues. ETIS recently interviewed Nigel Upton, HP BSS Products General Manager, Communications, Media and Entertainment (CME) on the HP approach to solving charging and billing challenges. In his role, Nigel has world-wide responsibility for Product Development, Marketing, Support, Business Development and Training with P&L accountability. Prior to his current role, Upton has led various software businesses within HP.  

What is the business and mission of HP BSS Products in Telecom?
My role is to manage HP’s BSS products within HP’s Communications, Media and Entertainment (CME) vertical. I have the portfolio of BSS products which includes active mediation and real-time charging, data retention for compliance, and business intelligence, revenue assurance and fraud management. We have been doing a lot of work in the BSS space with real-time charging, and its impact for billing vendors. So, we are very pleased to have participated in the recent ETIS Billing Workshop.

Who are your clients within the telecom industry and what problems are you solving for them?
We have an installed base of over 150 tier-one and tier-two clients using HP IUM for mediation and real-time charging. These customers include Vodafone Spain, China Telecom, Telcel, KTF, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Polkomtel and a host of other wireline, wireless and broadband providers around the world.

Our customers tell us they are under tremendous pressure to introduce, change or remove services very rapidly. The market is becoming more dynamic, more competitive and content is driving more and more traffic. In order to provide new services rapidly, change them quickly, introduce promotions and have the flexibility to support many other initiatives, operators need to upgrade their prepaid and billing systems to online charging to stay competitive. As we have proved to our customers, we can help them very quickly deploy and bring in new services and provide a tremendous amount of flexibility across a range of solutions and between different systems. This is not at all the case with the vertical approach that some legacy billing companies continue to use, which is to create a new vertical stack every time you introduce a new service to support the offer. Such an approach is extremely expensive, very complex and also an inflexible way of dealing with the rapid change that operators have to respond to.

What is your approach to Real-time Charging?
We see the trend to new services being based on customer lifestyles and social interaction enabled by a flexible, multimedia-based IP world. With unproven business models and unknown customer uptake on services, CSPs need charging flexibility and affordable scalability to reduce costs and mitigate risk.

HP is committed to billing and charging architecture transformation with a portfolio of products that enable a service-driven environment. HP Real-time Charging solutions form the foundation that supports real-time authorization of service requests and provides access control, session management and charging control combined with powerful business rules on a single platform to manage complex pricing plans and service promotions designed to keep customers loyal. With HP Real-time Charging products, service providers can bring new revenue-generating services to market faster, harvest profits from new services at lower risk and on high performance, low cost standard HP platforms to achieve low total cost of ownership. HP has breakthrough benchmarks on HP servers that prove costs approximately 50 times less than other servers typically used by service providers for their online charging applications.
 
We find most service providers do not want to change anything in their infrastructure because it is expensive and painful. Therefore, what we offer is a modular approach, where we complement and supplement their existing systems. In fact, HP IUM’s online charging capability supports their existing systems and gives them the charging flexibility they need. From an architectural point of view, most operators believe in the value of having IMS-compliant architecture.  For example, China Telecom has tested and certified an IMS-complaint online charging system (OCS) based on our HP IUM Charging Manager product that is deployed in several provinces, serving millions of customers today.

What are the solutions you provide to the Telecom industry?
We provide our customers with the flexibility to bring in new services, which is much easier to do on a best-of-breed component architecture than in a tightly integrated vertical solution. We enable dramatic price reductions, particularly for the cost of hardware and software infrastructures, as well as for the services required to support the system, because it is all based on industry standards. Service providers who have a monolithic legacy system cannot enjoy this flexibility because such systems are frequently too complex and too expensive to change.

What sets HP apart from other companies?
HP is uniquely capable to deliver quality, proven products and services in the BSS market that will help service providers transition from the legacy voice world to the new IP world. We have already helped many of our customers make this transition by delivering value along the customer touch points from usage and billing through business intelligence and data retention and compliance. HP Consulting and Integration and Services are the cornerstones of successful implementation and delivery of HP BSS solutions for the new IP world. Only HP has this combination of products, proven support and thriving customers, with a vision for the future and a history of more than 30 of expertise in the Telecoms industry.

What do you see in the future for the industry?
As we look out over the next three years, we see service providers moving everything to IP, which greatly increases the volume and the complexity of transactions. Therefore, being able to introduce new services and to charge for them or to rate them, becomes more and more crucial. The tremendous traffic increase is staggering: an IP event generates seven to 10 times the number of records than a voice event.

We are starting to see a real convergence between different devices, home and office solutions and a proliferation of services on offer. The implication for the systems that provide the rating, the charging and the account balance capabilities is that as the volume of data increases quickly, so will the need for flexibility. We particularly see this in Asia, where telecom operators launch new services extremely rapidly and may offer promotions for a period of just one week.

For more information on HP Charging solutions, visit us at: www.hp.com/go/charging

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E-Invoicing & EBPP – 4th European EXPP Summit 2008

September, 29 & 30, 2008
Sheraton Frankfurt Hotel & Towers
Frankfurt/M., Germany

The European EXPP Summit is the leading European meeting point for users of EBPP & E-Invoicing solutions and services. First-rate speakers from British Telecom, Swedbank, Rentokil, Schenker, AOL, European Expert Group for Electronic Invoicing and many more will report on their experiences with E-Invoicing and pass on their recipe of success.

Key insights include:
1. Market trends and perspectives
Workflow-based processing of incoming invoices
E-Invoicing and VAT management
Workflow-based processing of incoming invoices
How to break through in B2C E-Billing VAT compliance and E-Signatures

2. Panel-Discussion: Roll-Out Strategies

NOTE: Members of ETIS receive a 20 percent discount on the regular price. To receive the discount, please write “ETIS” in the remarks field on the online registration form.

For registration and further information, please visit: www.expp-summit.com .

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