Service Providers Put Control in the Hands of End Users
Paula Bernier
09/02/2001
Service providers increasingly offer customers the ability to self-provision services. This gives end users more flexibility and trims carriers' human resources and network management costs. And, unlike some early customer-controlled options that were simply web-based front ends to operations support systems, service providers are beginning to tie their self-provisioning systems into tools that check on network resource availability.
"The investment we've made in [the IP Provisioning System 2.0] has been far exceeded by the returns we've seen on this particular application," says Vesna Swartz, vice president of marketing for Telseon. "It drives down our customers costs. It also drives down our costs."
Swartz declined to give specific dollar figures regarding the investment, savings or return of the system.
The Yankee Group reports that about 90 percent of carriers plan to install some sort of online customer self-service tool in 2001. These are mostly online order entry and electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) projects, however.
Telseon's IP Provisioning System 2.0 goes farther than that. It lets customers establish virtual connections (from 1mbps to 100mbps) to other companies on Telseon's network. Version 1.0, launched last year, allowed only for provisioning of connections within a single organization.
New Ties to Forge
"Data networking today is like a Third World country telephone call where you have to go to the post office and reserve the bandwidth," says Bob Klessig, vice president of product development at Telseon. "Once people are freed from that it becomes interesting to establish short-term business relationships with business partnerships. Once that happens, the business explodes."
Swartz believes that's happening even faster than Telseon had anticipated.
"Everest Broadband, a building service provider, needed access to Level 3 to provide IP services to buildings on their network. But then they realized there were other services--like storage services--they could offer via our network from SSPs [storage service providers]. They don't have to invest anything. They go to buildings and figure out what they need and then go to SSPs. We're enabling a network where we're finding custo- mers for our customers."
Another company that recently rolled out a customer-provisioned offering is WorldCom Inc. with its WorldCom IP VPN Select Access Editions, based on Cisco Systems Inc. technology.
The service enables a company to design, manage, monitor and upgrade its dedicated, site-to-site VPN solution, as it requires. WorldCom delivers Cisco VPN gear to the premises and manages it from its network operations center, but corporate network managers get a VPN management tool from WorldCom partner SmartPipes Inc. to set tunneling and encryption policies for specific applications and end-users.
Like Telseon, WorldCom and Cisco believe this type of service will drive e-business and the establishment of new partnerships.
"E-business requires companies of all sizes to create more efficient and secure business processes for their global Intranet and Extranets," said Larry Lang, vice president of marketing for Cisco's service provider line of business, in a press release announcing the service.
Fast Provisioning
Telseon's IP Provisioning System 2.0 was built entirely in-house. "We're using Ethernet technology with wonderful cost properties. We want to leverage the interoperability and use multiple vendors in our network," says Klessig.
Customers can provision their services through a standard web browser, completing a 12-step "transaction" within minutes, he says.
Adds Suzanne Garcia, Telseon's director of services product development, 95 percent of transactions using the system are completed successfully without the customer requiring additional assistance.
Biotech company Incyte Genomics, Inc., anti-virus software company McAfee.com Corp., bandwidth broker Ratexchange Corp. and IP video services company Wire One Technologies are among the users of the Telseon IP Provisioning System.
"We have a bunch of campuses, plus offsite storage with Exodus [Communi- cations Inc.]," explains Philip Kwan, associate director of network infrastructure at Incyte Genomics.
"We use multipoint-to-multipoint and point-to-point to connect all this," Kwan says. "To provision a circuit we have Telseon equipment at each site, and once it's installed it's up to us [as to] how much speed is on each link. We go through a web browser and use certificate authentication to Telseon to pick sites on our network and bandwidth needs-within two minutes the connection is hot. Before we had to wait two weeks to eight weeks [to get a connection through other service providers]."
Kwan also says Incyte Genomics makes changes to its pipes once or twice a month for Exodus connections and has used the self-provisioning option about six times in the last two months to bring up new circuits on its corporate campus locations.
"The thing we like best about Telseon is we don't have to talk to anybody," Kwan adds. "And when you get the bill, it tells you who at your company set up the link and what exactly happened."
Customers are charged for bandwidth used and a "nominal fee" for making changes, explains Telseon's Swartz.
The provisioning system is tied into Telseon's capacity analysis tool, which checks the network for available capacity and back-up paths.
Swartz says this system is in sharp contrast to some web-based provisioning offerings that are actually web-based front-ends that are processed on the back end by people.
"Our data manager is always polling network elements to check configuration vs. what's in our database," says Klessig. "Power glitches, for example, could change the status of that. It's not been a big hurdle, but it has been a challenge in making sure this works."
EUR Systems (www.eursystems.com), a provider of outsourced billing and revenue management products, introduced several new automated features to its Advantacs intercarrier billing platform. The enhancements reduce the time local and access carriers need to perform billing validation and internal auditing function. One feature, Areva, allows a series of checks and balances to be performed automatically during the billing process. Areva ensures that every possible minute is accounted for and billed correctly. It also identifies any out-of-balance condition. Advantacs now offers database maintenance reporting. Customers can create an audit trail, tracking their changes to the system, which can track all changes made, by whom, and when, providing documentation for future reference. It also allows for easy reporting during operational and financial audits. Advantacs also is compliant with the latest version of the industry standard SECABS version 7.0. SECABS defines data formats for billing elements, messages, minutes of usage, circuit information, and other factors. EUR is one of the first companies to be fully compliant with SECABS 7.0.
MetaSolv Software Inc. acquired Montreal-based Lat45 Information Systems Inc., (www.latus.com) which develops geospatial software for planning, design and management of communications networks. The stock and cash deal is valued at $9 million to $11 million. MetaSolv (www.metasolv.com) plans to integrate Lat45's flagship Red Telecom product into its MetaSolv Solution OSS product. MetaSolv also will rebrand Red Telecom and offer it as a separate product called MetaSolv Network and Service Planning.
COLT Telecom Group plc (www.colt-telecom.com) selected System Management ARTS (SMARTS) Inc.'s (www.smarts.com) InCharge suite to manage the network and systems environments within 11 of its Internet Solution Centers (ISCs). The COLT ISCs are a key infrastructure asset of COLT Telecom Group and are located in major European cities.
U.S. Cellular (www.uscellular.com) will deploy teleSys Software Inc.'s (www.telesys.com) MACH7-iSTP Gateway system--a high-speed SS7 signaling network. The system will enhance U.S. Cellular's wireless office service and provide its business customers with affordable, secure network connectivity, while enabling the company to take advantage of the efficiencies of an IP network.
SPSS Inc. (www.spss.com), a provider of analytical technology, has become a strategic software partner in Siebel Systems Inc.'s (www.siebel.com) Alliance Program. As part of the alliance, SPSS will integrate its customer-focused analytical solutions and products with Siebel eBusiness Applications.
TELUS Corp. (www.telus.com), a Canadian telecommunications company, selected XACCT Technologies Inc.'s (www.xacct.com) Network-to-Business (N2B) platform to support its VoIP and point of sale (POS) services. The XACCT N2B platform provides a real-time link between TELUS' network, which includes equipment from multiple vendors such as Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com) and Nortel Networks Ltd. (www.nortelnetworks.com), and its back-office business and OSS applications. The information produced by XACCT's software platform enables TELUS to understand how customers use its VoIP and POS services and then translate this understanding into better service and increased revenue and profit. TELUS also plans on using XACCT's solution to implement automated usage collection for its web-hosting and web-domain services.
Sun MicroSystems Inc. (www.sun.com) awarded Quallaby Corp.'s (www.quallaby.com) flagship Proviso service-level management product SunTone Certification for applications. By achieving SunTone Certification, PROVISO has met the stringent scalability, reliability and availability requirements to be successfully deployed in service provider environments.
TELUS has purchased NetFlare, an Internet test system that had been released by Teradyne Inc. (www.teradyne.com). NetFlare is designed for ISPs and broadband call centers focused on consumers and small businesses. It identifies the owner of connectivity and performance problems in the end-to-end network (meaning from the PC to enterprise website). NetFlare allows service providers to determine whether the problem is in the access network, ISP network, Internet backbone or destination website. NetFlare employs active IP testing using a specialized testing-focused protocol stack to isolate connectivity, service and performance-related calls to the responsible jurisdiction from the consumer PC through to the destination.
Verizon Avenue Corp. (www.baglobal.com/avenue/), a subsidiary of Verizon Communications that provides high-speed Internet access and voice communications services for apartment buildings, condominiums and office buildings, successfully implemented the ViryaNet Service Hub, ViryaNet Ltd.'s (www.viryanet.com) flagship platform for wireless workforce management. Verizon Avenue will use the Virya Service Hub, including ViryaNet's customer service portal, to improve the speed of order processing for its nearly 70,000 customers across nine states.
Motorola Inc. (www.motorola.com) selected ChannelWave Software Inc. (www.channelwave.com) to develop a web-based solutions to increase productivity, efficiency and support for Motorola's channel partners to increase global sales of advanced messaging devices. With ChannelWave's web-based Partner Loyalty System, Motorola's Wireless Messaging Division will provide enhanced sales support for its global partners and recruit new channel partners who are qualified to sell Motorola's wireless solutions. In addition, ChannelWave's PRM solution will let Motorola's sales partners collaborate and deliver end-to-end wireless messaging and e-mail solutions to business customers, increasing sales revenues and profitability. Motorola also plans to use the system to provide online training and certification programs to its worldwide partner network and deploy an intelligent, interactive selling solution for end customers using ChannelWave's eConversations technology.
Billserv Inc. (www.billserv.com) licensed M-Statement, ACI Worldwide's (www.aciworldwide.com) electronic bill delivery and payment software. Billserv, a provider of outsourced electronic bill payment and presentment (EBPP) solutions, will use M-Statement to power its new secure e-mail-based EBPP services.
AperServ Technologies Inc. (http://64.124.125.183) launched three services that give ISPs, ASPs and MSPs greater performance control, flexible customer reporting, robust SLA features and a monetized service for measuring other outsourced services. The new services include: Customer Performance Management System for pinpointing, prioritizing and resolving performance problems; Customer Access for providing detailed performance reports for customers; and a private label Technology Outsourcer Management (TOM) System, a revenue-generating service that monitors the performance of customers' outsourced IT providers and their SLAs. AperServ also debuted an enterprise service offering. The fully automated TOM System allows enterprises to manage the performance of their third-party outsourcers' SLAs. TOM automates the entire SLA management process from pinpointing problems, alerting the appropriate staff and tracking the resolution, to automatically comparing performance to SLA thresholds and requesting credits when necessary.
Billing and customer-care software provider Smarten Software SpA (www.smarten.com) appointed Laura Reed as worldwide marketing director. Reed will be responsible for Smarten's international marketing and was brought in to support the company's growing product line and presence worldwide. Smarten recently expanded its voice and data billing product suite to include GPRS rating and billing capabilities. Reed joins Smarten from Jones Cyber Solutions Ltd. (www.jonescyber.com) where she was vice-president of marketing.
New Tools Introduced for EBPP, Service Tracking
Various carriers are introducing electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) and services that let customers track the status of service orders.
This summer, DSL.net Inc. launched a new web-based order status tool that allows customers to electronically check the status of their new orders from initiation date through installation date, without having to call customer service.
As with customer self-provisioning, the goal is to reduce installation time and associated customer service costs.
"The vast majority of calls placed into our customer service department center are related to customers inquiring about the installation date of their service," said Keith Markley, DEL.net's president and COO, in a written statement.
Also this summer Covad Communications Co. launched a similar tool, called Web Self Service.
And AT&T Wireless selected edocs Inc.'s eaDirect, eaPay and eaPost to enable online customer self care, analytics, dispute resolution, and expanded payment options.
Service providers increasingly offer customers the ability to self-provision services. This gives end users more flexibility and trims carriers' human resources and network management costs. And, unlike some early customer-controlled options that were simply web-based front ends to operations support systems, service providers are beginning to tie their self-provisioning systems into tools that check on network resource availability.
"Data networking today is like a Third World country telephone call where you have to go to the post office and reserve the bandwidth," says Bob Klessig, vice president of product development at Telseon. "Once people are freed from that it becomes interesting to establish short-term business relationships with business partnerships. Once that happens, the business explodes."
Telseon's IP Provisioning System 2.0 was built entirely in-house. "We're using Ethernet technology with wonderful cost properties. We want to leverage the interoperability and use multiple vendors in our network," says Klessig.
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