CellMining Raises $5M to Further Develop SON

Another Israeli startup in the fast growing SON space (see "SON Market to Reach $4B (2017)" - here) raises funds  (see "Cellwize Secures $24.5M to Boost its SON Solutions" - here) following  the success of Intucell ("Cisco to Acquire SON Vendor Intucell; $475M" - here)

CellMining announced that it has" successfully closed a Series A funding round with a total value of $5 million, led by Lazarus Israel Opportunities Fund. This investment will help fund the Company as it further develops its pioneering subscriber-centric mobile network optimization capabilities, and will help it to expand into new markets. 

CellMining’s Behavior-Based SON™ solution analyzes the subscriber network experience in a unique way, identifying usage patterns to optimize network performance based on Customer Experience Management (CEM) metrics. This goes far beyond the capabilities of existing SON technologies, which offer mobile network operators (MNO) only limited ability to understand, measure and improve their subscriber experience" 

See "CellMining Raises $5M to Advance CEM-based SON" - here.

Guavus Launches New Customer Experience Analytics Apps

Guavus announced the "..launch of a new suite of applications to enable the next generation of contextual customer experience analytics that fully illustrate the customer journey across networks and services.

The new application suite enables Service Providers to correlate and fuse petabytes of streaming and operational data with customer data in real-time transforming the Customer Experience Management (CEM) and Marketing functions towards real-time, contextual customer care and proactive business processes. 

The Customer Experience Analytics suite leverages the same data framework as Guavus’ Service Reflex application, which provides insights into service operations, thus providing customers with a complete end-to-end view of the operating environment.

The next-generation Guavus Customer Experience suite is built around two core analytics applications that leverage a common framework for maximum reusability and extensibility:

• Care Reflex: provides customer care agents with unprecedented and granular near real-time insights to determine the precise impactful events affecting the quality of experience at critical points in the customer journey by subscriber. As a result, problems are identified and resolved faster and subscribers receive personalized service that improves customer satisfaction and reduces churn. 

• Marketing Reflex: enables operators to gain a greater understanding of subscribers’ interests to strengthen their competitive position against digital providers and find new revenue opportunities to overcome flat ARPU. 

See "Guavus Introduces a New Customer Experience Analytics Suite Powered by Fast Data Operational Intelligence" - here.

RADCOM Adds Virtual Manager to its CEM Solution

RADCOM announced the ".. launch of MaveriQ Manager, completing the full virtualization of its MaveriQ solution .. With the launch of the MaveriQ Manager, RADCOM has now completed the virtualization of all layers of its MaveriQ solution, enabling the entire solution to reside on Cloud infrastructure. Many Tier I operators are progressing towards virtual architectures, which are proving to be faster and easier to deploy and maintain than traditional network architectures, while also being more flexible and technology-independent"

Related posts - "RADCOM: $3.6M Order for Customer Experience Solution by Tier1 MNO"  - here

 

"MaveriQ Manager is an ETSI-compliant VNF (Virtual Network Function) manager, responsible for communication between RADCOM’s VNF, the orchestration layer, and the infrastructure layer, providing full lifecycle management of the virtualized solution.

See "RADCOM Bolsters Its NFV-Based Customer Experience Management Solution" - here.

Procera Enables MNOs to Measure Applications' QoE

Last month Procera Networks published the results of a survey, showing that although mobile users have QoE issues on a daily basis (here) they do not complain. To solve this user's laziness, Procera now unveiled a way for MNOs to measure users' QoE - their "biggest announcement of 2015", I am told.
 

".. ScoreCard, a new solution enabling improved visibility and measurement of the quality of experience (QoE) that operators’ networks are capable of delivering to subscribers. The solution reports scores separated into application categories that matter the most to subscribers, providing actionable insights about where QoE issues occur in the network and where to target investments and actions for operators to achieve maximum impact on the subscriber experience, network performance and ROI.

ScoreCard measures activities such as web surfing, streaming video, social media, real-time gaming, uploads, downloads and voice applications and scores each of these seven application categories using letter grades from A to F, clearly showing what level of QoE the network can deliver. 

The solution offers different views to visualize QoE by subscriber tier, device or location for operators to fix bottlenecks and prioritize investments. It scores the network by isolating potentially problematic factors including applications, devices, cell towers, latency or throughput and creates value for customer care, marketing, engineering and executive management departments at fixed or mobile broadband providers.

ScoreCard is an out-of-the-box ready solution for operators to deploy physically or virtually that visualizes scores by application, device, location, and subscriber tier. It gives operators the power to fix bottlenecks and make informed decisions about how to deliver an improved subscriber experience and manage subscriber expectations.

Its simplified intelligence enables CAPEX prioritization for improved ROI to justify the cost of network upgrades and build the best network while also benchmarking performance for engineers and consumers to analyze, contrast and compare service levels. This means that operators can avoid over-engineering in the wrong areas, create a more accurate investment plan and clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of any improvements made.

See "Procera Networks Defines Broadband Subscriber Experience with Scorecard" - here.

NI Deployments [354]: Telecom Italia Uses Sandvine for Customer Experience Management

Sandvine announced that Telecom Italia is a customer since 2012. TI was one of the first incumbent fixed carriers to use DPI for traffic shaping, initially with Cisco gear (see "Telecom Italia DPI Policies - Limiting only P2P Traffic" - here), This is the first time that Sandvine publicly names TI as a customer. 

 

The company declined to comment whether they had displaced Cisco 3 years ago for the traffic shaping tasks as the current announcement is about the network intelligence aspects of DPI: 

"Telecom Italia is using Sandvine solutions as a key part of its service operations center (SOC) and customer experience management (CEM) platform .. using data generated by Sandvine’s Business Intelligence and Usage Management products to generate key performance indicators (KPIs) for their fixed and mobile networks in Italy. The data is fed by Sandvine’s Record Generator directly to big data and SOC/CEM systems used by Telecom Italia’s internal operations, planning and marketing teams". 

"Ensuring a high quality web-browsing and video experience are essential for helping Telecom Italia provide the best possible service to their subscribers. Sandvine provides Telecom Italia with numerous attributes used to measure both web and video quality, so that Telecom Italia can proactively diagnose network issues and identify quality-related network trends before they impact their subscribers".

See "Sandvine Helps Telecom Italia Elevate Customer Experience Management" - here.

CEM Deployments [349]: Etisalat [UAE] to Use Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent announced that it and Etisalat have "signed an agreement to deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Management (CEM) portfolio for Etisalat’s mobile and fixed-line customers in the UAE.

• Etisalat will use Motive CEM solutions to automatically detect, diagnose and resolve device issues to substantially reduce call resolution times
   
• Etisalat will be able to offer subscribers self-care channels to resolve technical issues at their convenience, reducing the number of calls to the care centers
   
• Alcatel-Lucent is providing elements of the Motive CEM portfolio, including device management, service management and orchestration, analytics and content management.

See "Alcatel-Lucent and Etisalat to give customers in UAE greater control over their service" - here.

Zettics Acquires Velocent Systems to Provide Subscriber-centric, Real-time Analytics

Zettics (see "Citrix Adds Zettics' Big Data Analytics to ByteMobile" - here) announced it has ".. acquired Velocent Systems. The combined entity will provide a subscriber-centric, real-time analytics suite that integrates data usage, network performance, and customer experience metrics into a single, unified view for the operator. Having these data sets in one solution will allow operators to realize unique business benefits that were previously unavailable in the market.

.. Zettics technology will now derive an unparalleled amount of unique intelligence from a combination of a subscriber’s data usage and corresponding network performance. This includes behavioral metrics (engagement, interests, and segmentation) combined with experiential metrics (latency, throughput, and tonnage) across a variety of apps and services such as browsing, video, audio, and VoLTE. Zettics enables this business critical information to be accessed through an interactive UI, a low-latency API, or integrated via real-time alarms or extracts into operator systems. Multiple tier-1 operators across the world use Zettics and Velocent to improve their business today".

See "Zettics Acquires Velocent to Provide the Most Comprehensive Real-Time 360 Degree View of a Subscriber’s Experience Available Today" - here.

Amdocs Acquires Actix ($120M) to Provide Geo-located Network Information

Amdocs announced "..it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Actix for approximately $120 million in cash .. This acquisition expands Amdocs’ customer experience portfolio further into the network domain to manage customer experience across both networks and IT .. Amdocs will be expanding its CES (Customer Experience Systems) portfolio with geo-located network data that will drive a variety of optimization use cases.

Source: Actix 

Geo-located network information provided by Actix’s solutions, combined with customer data and capabilities from Amdocs’ market-leading policy management, BSS and OSS systems, will allow service providers to support sophisticated customer experience use cases and take proactive action based on network performance to modify and improve the experience of a specific customer or group of customers. As a result, service providers will be able to differentiate the customer experience and achieve cost-efficiencies with improved automation and optimization of their existing networks, as well as when rolling out new network technologies, such as LTE and small cells".

See "Amdocs Has Signed a Definitive Agreement to Acquire Actix, the Leading Independent Provider of Software for Mobile Network Optimization" - here.

CEM Deployments [231]: touch [Lebanon] Selected NSN INMS

Nokia Siemens Networks announced that "touch, the leading mobile telecommunications operator in Lebanon .. has selected Nokia Siemens Networks to implement its Integrated Network Management Solution (INMS) and related services. This solution, comprised of a set of solution blocks, will allow touch to cost efficiently improve its service operations to ensure the best service quality".

touch is a subsidiary of Zain. At the end of 2012, it had 2M active subscribers, 6.2% growth compared to the end of 2011.

"Under the contract, Nokia Siemens Networks will implement its INMS including its NetAct network management system to enable consolidated configuration, monitoring and network optimization across the various technologies. The company’s Service Quality Manager (SQM) provides real-time service quality insight for touch. Nokia Siemens Networks will also deliver its consulting and care services for the operator".

See "touch to enhance customer experience with Nokia Siemens Networks" - here.

[ABI] CEM Market $1.3B; Needs Policy and DPI; HP, IBM, Amdocs Lead

A recent research by Aditya Kaul (pictured), practice director, ABI Research concludes that "..  it’s only recently that CEM has been applied in mobile .. sizes the CEM opportunity in 2013 at $1.3 billion across the network and IT domains, although roughly 80% of the market is dominated by the IT domain in areas like BSS/OSS, CRM, and SDP"

“The Mobile CEM landscape today is dominated by IT vendors such as HP, Amdocs, and IBM which are leveraging strengths in IT combined with a heavy focus on customer analytics and data mining. However, for CEM to succeed, the network piece including network monitoring, optimization, DPI and policy, has to go hand-in-hand with the IT piece, which is where traditional network vendors come in .. Ultimately, CEM only becomes relevant if done end-to-end, with a single point of ownership within the carrier; something like a NASA mission control with a CEM commander at its helm, having multiple views across Network and IT domains.”

See "Customer Experience Management for Mobile Is a Billion Dollar Market Opportunity in 2013, Spanning Both Network and IT Domains" - here.

NI Deployments [210]: Vodafone [Ireland] Uses Tellabs to Analyze Network Data

  

Tellabs announced that "Vodafone Ireland is deploying Tellabs® Insight Analytics Services to analyze the network data contained in its multi-vendor 3G mobile network. The service provider will use the information to optimize network performance and provide a higher quality of service. It will also enable Vodafone Ireland to perform capacity management and root-cause analysis quicker and more cost-effectively".

On September 30, 2012 Vodafone Ireland had 2.2M mobile subscribers.

Tellabs Insight Analytics Services' Customer Experience Management (CEM) allows "operators to collect, correlate and deliver actionable information on subscriber behavior and network performance. This capability is enabled by Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). DPI provides effective access to the subscriber data flow at the higher levels of the OSI stack. Simply having access to data is not enough. The analytics engine  that consumes all this information is what turns the data into actionable information. CEM is about having access to the right data which is processed efficiently at the right time. With this capability, operators can measure the quality of experience of each subscriber within the context of network performance".

  

See "Vodafone Ireland invests in Tellabs® Insight AnalyticsSM Services to turn big data in the network into actionable intelligence" - here.

CEM Deployments [207]: BT Selects ALU to Track Home Device Performance

Alcatel-Lucent announced that it was selected by BT ".. to strengthen its customer service capabilities by using a new set of data collection and management solutions in its broadband and IPTV support departments .. Under a four-year contract extension with Alcatel-Lucent, BT will upgrade its suite of Motive Customer Experience Solutions with latest-version software to support new features, and will deploy the new Motive Data Collection Manager (DCM), which is used to track the performance of the rapidly proliferating number of communication devices in peoples’ homes. The data is then made available to BT’s customer service teams – safely and securely – so they can proactively manage how the network and devices perform, ensuring a better overall experience for BT customers".

ALU's Motive Data Collection Manager

See "Motive Customer Experience Solutions from Alcatel-Lucent selected by BT" - here.

[F&S]: CEM Market to Reach $2.5B by 2018 ($865M in 2011)

A new analysis by Olga Yashkova (pictured), Program Manager, Frost and Sullivan concludes that "The need to assess the quality of communication services from an end-user's perspective has presented the global customer experience (CE) monitoring market with immense growth opportunities. To understand the impact of broadband data proliferation and consumer desire to do everything on-the-go with network efficiency and quality of experience (QoE), service providers world-wide are turning to CE monitoring systems .. the market earned revenues of over $865.1 million in 2011 and estimates this to reach $2.54 billion in 2018".

"The link between customer churn and QoE has been clearly established, which is why CE monitoring solutions have become a necessity ..With new high-capacity radio frequency access technologies gaining ground, such as long-term evolution (LTE) and LTE advanced, there is a real need to understand customer experience with networks and services .. Vendors need to build cost-effective systems with high performance and scalability .. Advanced solutions that can collect relevant information and provide applicable metrics will help boost adoption".

See "Frost & Sullivan: Network Operators Count on Customer Experience Monitoring Systems to Solidify Consumer Loyalty Globally" - here.

[Yankee Group]: "Aito Technologies and Neuralitic will play key roles in CEM"

  

A new research by Declan Lonrrgan (pictured), VP, Yankee Group, concludes that "While today’s U.S.$1 trillion mobile broadband marketplace presents many challenges to operators, it also provides many opportunities. Operators that embrace OTT, adopt new business models for network data, cloud and video, and leverage their unique subscriber relationships to deliver optimal customer experiences will be best positioned to not only cope with but capitalize in this volatile segment".

"Operators will look beyond connectivity for sustainable differentiation. During the next two to three years, we expect to see more bundling of OTT communications apps with LTE subscriptions as well as operators increasing their portfolio of cloud-based solutions, including offering bundled content-storage and backup with premium LTE services" 

"Vendors will step up in the customer experience realm. New players including Aito Technologies and Neuralitic will play key roles, as will traditional stalwarts such as Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei".

See "What's Next for Mobile Broadband" - here.

CEM Deployments[182]: Telefonica to Use HP in the Americas and Europe

HP announced that ".. Telefónica is using HP Customer Experience Assurance (CEA)—a comprehensive network-analysis and customer-experience monitoring solution developed by HP and specialized software developer Zhilabs [here] —to improve the total customer experience, thereby increasing loyalty, reducing “churn” (customer defection) and lowering the costs associated with customer care". 

 

"Telefónica will deploy HP CEA progressively in all its properties across the Americas and Europe".

Related post - "Update: Sandvine/ALU Agreement Signed; $2.5M Orders Received" - here (note the "DPI" connectivity in the chart below).

See "HP Helps Communications Service Provider Telefónica Improve Service for Millions of Mobile Users" - here.

CEM Survey: Solving Problems is Important, Prioritizing QoS - Less

  

Heavy Reading survey (sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent) finds that "..Communications service providers are committing ever-increasing budgets to improving the customer experience in an effort to distinguish themselves from competitors. As importantly, the survey indicates that service providers are extremely interested in understanding the experiences that their customers have with various products and services, so that any problems can be corrected and customer loyalty can be improved".

".. Customer experience management will be an area of focus and investment for service providers in 2013, with two-thirds of respondents expecting to increase next year’s expenditures in this area .. Service providers view CEM as strategic, with more than three-quarters of respondents indicating that improved CEM provides an opportunity to attract new business, two-thirds agreeing that it could improve their brand image and nearly six-in-ten confident that it will provide competitive differentiation".

".. Respondents agreed on several ‘bread and butter’ activities that impact the customer experience, including nearly nine-in-ten citing the importance of answering customer queries and resolving problems in a timely fashion. Other activities (such as prioritizing network quality of service based on the value of an individual customer) are seen as relatively less important".

See "Two-thirds of service providers plan to increase customer experience management spending in 2013" - here.

NI Deployments [178]: Belgacom [Belgium] Uses ALU's to Manage SLAs

Alcatel-Lucent announced that it ".. is giving Belgacom .. the ability to measure the performance of mobile services offered to business customers, enabling Belgacom to guarantee that service level agreements (SLAs) are being met ..  with Alcatel-Lucent’s Service Quality Manager (SQM) .. Belgacom can accurately report on a range of key performance and quality indicators (such as service availability and reliability) that are important to its corporate clients. In turn, Belgacom can use this information to take actions to improve their clients’ customer experience"

Belgacom also uses ALU's PCRF product (see "Belgacom Uses ALU DSC" - here) and its 7750 service routers (see "Belgacom Uses ALU 7750 to Provide Application Visibly to Enterprises" - here).

"SQM will help Belgacom manage service quality in five core areas: Monitoring .. Informing .. Demonstrating .. Improving and  Committing"

See "Belgacom to offer mobile service quality guarantees thanks to Alcatel-Lucent" - here.

CEM Announcements: Comptel Adds Contextual Intelligence

The CEM trend continues ... this time suggesting a revenue opportunity.

Comptel introduced a new concept of "..Contextual Intelligence for Telco (CIQ4T), which was created to help communications service providers (CSPs) take customer experience management to the next level .. CIQ4T builds on Comptel’s proven expertise in collecting and processing large volumes of data and automatically executing actions involved in the deployment and launch of rich communications services. Key characteristics of CIQ4T include contextual, real-time data, advanced predictive analytics and automated actions".

".. IQ4T uses predictive analytics to allow communications service providers (CSPs) to better understand individual subscribers and convert that knowledge into business opportunities. For instance, CSPs can combine historical and real-time data with predictive modeling to gain unique insight into current and future customer behaviors. In turn, this enables CSPs to better segment customers for more targeted mobile advertising and offer personalized service bundles, and open up the possibilities for many other revenue opportunities".

"Comptel implements this approach with its Customer Engagement solutions that includes event data processing and real-time action-taking tools. Already, trials of Comptel’s predictive analytics product have demonstrated a 21% reduction in churn and 25% increase in revenue among CSPs".

See "Comptel Raises the Bar for Telco Customer Experience Management with Advanced Analytics-Based Approach" - here.

CEM Announcements: ALU Offers Managed QoS Assurance Service

The recent popularity of CEM (as Shira Levine tweeted today "At #nokiasiemensnetworks analyst day, where #CEM is the phrase of the day") encourages creativity.

Alcatel-Lucent announced it is "launching a new managed service for telecommunications operators and service providers that will allow them to assure consistent quality of service for their subscribers. Drawing on Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Solutions portfolio – launched in February – as well as patent-pending methodology developed by Bell Labs, the new managed service will monitor and improve aspects of a consumer’s experience that have the most impact on their satisfaction with the service provider – anything from dropped calls to issues with video downloads and connecting to the Internet".

See "Alcatel-Lucent launches new customer experience service to assure consistent quality for users of smartphones and tablet devices" - here.

Consumer Survey: "Major service problems are slow Internet connections and high prices for data"

A recent mobile survey conducted by Prosper Mobile Insights™ included 328 smartphone and tablet users reveals that "the major service problems Mobile Users experience with their devices are slow Internet connections, high prices for data and dropped calls. The analysis also shows that men and women take different approaches to deal with these problems and other gadget glitches".

  

“Do you ever experience any of the following problems with your mobile device service provider? (Check all that apply):”

Source: Prosper Mobile Insights

See "Slow Internet Connection #1 Service Problem for Mobile Users; Cost of Data and Dropped Calls Follow, According to Latest Mobile Survey" - here.