Amdocs on Network Optimization Competition

During Amdocs' Q4 2015 earning call, a question was asked about the network optimization market, to which the company has entered using several acquisitions - Celcite (2014, $129M, here) and Actix (2013, $120M, here)

[related post - "Amdocs CEO: 'Network Optimization Business is Slow'" - here]

[Q]  Tom Roderick [pictured], Stifel Nicolaus, Analyst

.. Eli. Curious for your additional thoughts on the competitive landscape and the network optimization business. You mentioned, I think, obviously you guys have been the disruptor in that market. I know Cisco has made some moves competitively. Some of the other NEPs have, as well. What are they doing, what are the traditional network equipment providers doing to protect their position, whether it's through pricing or bundling or things of that nature and how, what are they doing as a response to your disruption in the market?

[A] Eli Gelman [pictured], President & CEO. Amdocs:
    

To be honest, the first thing they do is they try to use a lot of fear against us, because we are the new guys in this area. They will try to slow this thing as much as they can. They will not announce it necessarily, but we see from everywhere. It's not like a specific company I can tell you all the guys that are producing a lot of boxes are trying actively to slow down this trend. I don't think they can do it. Even if they slow it down, it would not take, let's say, five years to come to full fruition. Maybe it will take seven years. You can not slow this down.

And I'll tell you more than that. Carriers cannot afford not to do it, because otherwise, the big guys will do it themselves. Level 3 will do it. Amazon would do it. They will build their own networks. And if the carriers are not careful, both, by the way, MSOs, the Comcasts and the Charter of the world, and the AT&T and Verizon of the world, if they would not do it, other people will do it for them or to them. So they have to do it.

The providers will try to slow it as much as possible. They say that they are investing in it and all of that. I don't think so. And every time that they see that they are a buying company, we've seen in several cases like this, they kill the company. In other words, they buy companies that have some momentum in this area and especially to kill them and not to build them. And we have a very different opinion. We have a different opinion that we have infrastructure and new components and new theory and new approach to this entire thing. And we'll see. We'll have the best man win.

See "Edited Transcript of DOX earnings conference call or presentation 10-Nov-15 10:00pm GMT" - here.

Amdocs CEO: "Network Optimization Business is Slow"

In the past two years, Amdocs entered a new space of managing networks' traffic  by acquiring two companies - Celcite (2014, $129M, here) and Actix (2013, $120M, here). See also "Amdocs Integrates RAN Management and Optimization Solutions" - here.

Was this a successful move? 

Amdocs Q3 (June 30) earning call (revenues of $908M, here) provides some insights into Amdocs' network business: 

Question by Amit Singh - Jefferies: " .. you have previously highlighted network optimization as one of the avenue of growth. And I believe a few quarters ago you had even said that it could be about $100 million plus revenue this year. So just wanted to get a sense of how that business or the growth in that business is playing out and what is your expectation going forward from here?"

Answer by Eli Gelman [pictured], President and CEO, Amdocs: "So network software in general, including network optimization, is moving along well. Its lumpy, because the deals there are not so smooth I would say in terms of the deals, the deal flow, not the execution.

So we see progress. We actually expanding the offering, so it’s not only specific in the network optimization, it's not only around that product that we acquired we are now talking about more services, a broader view of the problem, not only the red optimization other network optimization as well. And as we are talk about that we are also trying to make our first moves into the network visualization which is the even the bigger potential in this network software space.

But it’s slow, its – we are executing on some development, we have some dialogue with some customers. But these are completely new topics. So the ones that we have already are progressing well. The new ones are a big unknown. And what we are learning is that it is lumpy as many other projects" 

See "Amdocs' (DOX) CEO Eli Gelman on Q3 2015 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha, here.

[Analysys Mason]: No Change in the $5.8B SDP Market Leaders

A new report by Glen Ragoonanan [pictured], Principal Analyst, and Gorkem Yigit,Research Analyst, Analysys Mason finds that "The service delivery platform market generated USD5.8 billion in revenue worldwide in 2014, up 11% from USD5.2 billion in 2013. LTE's impact on the overall service delivery platform (SDP) market increased, first in subscriber data management (SDM), then policy management (PM), followed by mobile content management and delivery (CMD), and finally, telecoms application servers (TAS) for mobile data and VoLTE services. Virtualised SDPs were being introduced in 2014.

.. the top-five SDP vendors were unchanged. Amdocs returned to the top six, thanks to a severe decline in Cisco's fixed CMD (FCMD): 

• Ericsson retained its leadership with 9% year-on-year revenue growth – primarily in the content management and delivery (CMD) sub-segment thanks to its acquisitions of Azuki Systems, Fabrix Systems, as well as Microsoft Mediaroom, which forms part of its Media Delivery Network (MDN) solution portfolio. Its other SDP revenue grew, though slower than the overall SDP market
    
• Huawei Technologies achieved the highest organic growth – 30% year-on-year – thanks to strong growth in the number of LTE subscribers in China because all three major communication service providers (CSPs) are rolling out LTE. It continued to win SDP business from other vendors in EMEA
   
• Nokia Networks’ revenue only grew by 5% year-on-year, compared with 11% for the overall SDP market. It remained the SDM leader, enjoying wins worldwide. Its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent could make it the SDP market leader
    
• Alcatel-Lucent’s revenue growth declined by -7% year-on-year as it restructured and refocused on network virtualisation and VoLTE, which were not significant drivers of SDP spend in 2014
    
• Oracle had low 4% year-on-year organic growth, compared with 35% inorganic growth in 2013, when it acquired Acme Packet and Tekelec
   
• Amdocs’ SDP revenue growth was flat in 2014, which reduced its market share, compared with 2013. It re-entered the top-six thanks to Cisco’s decline in fixed CMD (FCMD).

See "Service delivery platforms: worldwide market shares 2014" - here.

Amdocs Integrates RAN Management and Optimization Solutions

Amdocs announced an ".. integrated solution to optimize multi-vendor, multi-technology, heterogeneous networks (HetNets). The Amdocs Centralized Management and Optimization solution is the only radio access network (RAN) optimization solution that embeds multi-vendor network intelligence to enable mobile network operators to deliver optimal coverage and capacity in complex, multi-vendor networks across 2G, 3G, and LTE/ 4G and deliver a seamless quality of experience (QoE) for customers.

The Amdocs Centralized Management and Optimization solution includes: 

• Amdocs Customer Experience Geo-Location [see "Amdocs Acquires Actix ($120M) to Provide Geo-located Network Information" - here] - reduces customer experience issues by up to 75 percent by automatically building traffic and quality of experience maps that enable the identification of congestion hotspots, quality issues and network problems, linking to customer data to allow service providers to focus activities where they will drive greater profitability
   
• Amdocs SON  [see "Amdocs Positions Actix/Celcite as its SON Solution" - here] - reduces dropped calls by up to 20 percent by simplifying network management and maximizing network potential through automated optimization, enabling service providers to deliver effective customer experience improvements by targeting optimization based on customer revenue and business value.
   
• Amdocs Automatic Intelligent Correlation (AIC) - a RAN management solution that reduces time to diagnose network problems by up to 86 percent through automatic detection problems, proposing short-term operational and maintenance fixes along with long-term optimization solutions.
   
• Amdocs Benchmarking - provides automated benchmark diagnostics to enable an up to 80 percent2 reduction in processing time to plan network improvements, correlate benchmark results with subscriber experience and improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
   
• Amdocs Network Acceptance implements automated, independent verification of network quality and detailed problem investigation prior to network launch, enforcing transparent and unambiguous KPIs, ensuring launch quality in LTE and small cell rollouts, reducing network acceptance time by up to 80 percent.

See "Amdocs Introduces Industry’s First Centralized, Intelligent, Multi-Vendor Network Optimization Solution" - here.

[Infonetics]: Huawei and Cisco ($89M) are the PCC Market Leaders

 
Maywun Wong announced in Cisco's Service Provider blog that "Last week, we were thrilled to receive the news that Infonetics scored Cisco Policy Suite as a Leader in the Policy Management Scorecard. 

Cisco was one of only two leaders recognized by Infonetics in this space and was recognized for building “… up its position in the market rapidly after its acquisition of BroadHop [Dec '12; here], demonstrating strong momentum around policy virtualization”.

See also - 

• Policy Management Market Rises 27 Percent in 2014; VoLTE, Data Monetization Play Big Role" - here 
• [Infonetics]: "significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape" - here.  

See "Cisco Scores as Leader in the Infonetics Policy Management Scorecard" - here.

Amdocs Adds Communications-Specific Analytics Applications

Amdocs announced "new communications-specific applications that allow service providers to aggregate data from multiple marketing, network and customer care sources and generate business and customer insights with actionable recommendations..

Amdocs' new big data actionable analytics applications:

• Amdocs High Definition Marketing Analytics accesses the large volumes of usage data, web surfing trends, social feeds and care channels to help service providers transform the practice of customer management and upselling by using dynamic micro-segmentation for improved targeting and contextual analytics to offer customers the most appropriate new product or services. This includes multi-channel engagement and interfaces into the service provider's product catalog and campaign management systems.  

• Amdocs Deep Network Analytics provides a holistic set of network insights from the combination of radio access feeds, deep packet inspection from the network, and customer value parameters from business support systems. The network suite helps service providers to more effectively target their network capital expenditure towards more valuable customers, improve the connectivity experience, identify network issues before they occur and obtain a deeper understanding of the network factors that drive customer satisfaction.
   
• Amdocs Consumer and Business Satisfaction Analytics spans a wide array of data sources which allows executives to break down the siloed approach of different business units in order to assist business managers understand what drives customers' Net Promoter Score (NPS) and resolve issues before they impact customer satisfaction. These analytics also improve the performance of the call center and self-care capabilities helping to deliver an optimal customer experience.

See "Amdocs Introduces New Big Data Actionable Analytics for Service Providers' Marketing, Network and Customer Care Operations" - here.

Linkem: The Bigger Picture

Following my yesterday's post on Amdocs' PCC deployment at Linkem (here), a friend sent me a presentation delivered by the Italian MNO' CTO, Rino Buccio [pictured], at the Policy Control 2015 event, that took place in Berlin last month.

Here are some of the slides, showing the challenges of providing "Residential Broadband Internet Wireless Access For Consumer and SOHO" in a "Copper Free Zone", and the overall solution for a dynamic, QoE controlled, LTE based, service.

The architecture includes Allot Communications' DPI device that analyzes flows and maps them into one of Linkem service classes (such as mail, FTP, streaming, Gaming and VoIP), controlled by Amdocs' PCRF.

Allot and Amdocs are long time PCRF-DPI partners, since the days of Bridgewater Systems, the origin of Amdocs' PCRF.

PCC Deployments [355]: Linkem [Italy] Selected Amdocs' Virtual Solution

  

Amdocs announced that "Linkem, an Italian provider of wireless broadband services, has selected an Amdocs virtualized network control solution to support the company's transition from WiMAX to LTE, and provide subscribers with a superior data experience based on differentiated service quality for high-bandwidth content.

The pre-integrated, virtualized solution combines Amdocs Policy Controller, an industry-leading policy control (PCRF) solution [see "Amdocs Announces Virtualized PCRF" - here], with Amdocs Home Subscriber Server for dynamic subscriber management. As a result, Linkem can deliver application-specific quality of service (QoS) to improve subscribers' end-to-end experience with streaming HD video, voice over IP, gaming and other data-intensive multimedia applications.

Source: Amdocs

Rino Buccio, CTO, Linkem said: "Amdocs' virtualized Policy Controller allows us to provide wireless data plans with tiered quality of service, enabling a consistent and optimal user experience in any network condition .. This implementation supports our strategy to launch advanced LTE data services today while laying the groundwork for a full network functions virtualization (NFV) architecture for even greater cost efficiencies and faster time to market for future technology enhancements"/

See "Italy’s Linkem Selects Amdocs Virtualized Solution for Premium LTE Services" - here.

SON Deployments [331]: Vodafone Hutchison [Australia] Uses Amdocs

Amdocs announced that "..Vodafone Hutchison Australia has deployed Amdocs Self-Optimizing Networks (SON) solution [see "Amdocs Acquires Celcite for $129M; 2014 Expected Revenues (w/Actix):$68-103M" - here and "Amdocs Positions Actix/Celcite as its SON Solution" - here] to help with the program to improve its 4G coverage and customer experience across Australia. The solution helps Vodafone to free up 850 MHz spectrum previously used for 3G, so that it can be used for LTE. The 850 MHz spectrum is the most widely supported low-band spectrum currently supported by 4G smartphones and tablets, and provides a superior customer experience with fewer dropped data sessions.

Benoit Hanssen [pictured], CTO Vodafone Hutchison Australia, said: "The Self-Optimizing Network technology is playing an important role in the deployment of our low-band 850 MHz 4G network," said . "…and it allows us to differentiate our network experience across our 3G and 4G networks, in particular where we see dynamic traffic behavior",

See "Vodafone Hutchison Australia Deploys Amdocs Self-Optimizing Networks Solution" - here.

Survey: Operators Satisfaction from OSS/BSS Vendors

Jason Marcheck [pictured], Research Director, Current Analysis, published a summary of a "OSS/BSS purchase drivers and vendor satisfaction from large operators around the globe representing approximately half of the global telecom CapEx spend".

The main conclusion is - "The companies that topped the list in questions related to vendor satisfaction seem to be better known as large SI players than as OSS/BSS specialists"

Jason describes his thoughts on the grades and concludes - "I hear a lot of OSS/BSS vendors beam with pride that that they are “product companies,” with the clear implication being that operators value the product more than the SI that comes in and pulls it all together. That is a good story. However, our results say that delivery matters most" 

See "OSS/BSS Vendor Satisfaction – Are “Product Companies” Missing the Boat on Delivery?" - here.

[Analysys Mason]: Oracle and Amdocs Lead the $3.6B Customer Care Market

A new report by Mark H. Mortensen [pictured], Practice Head, BSS, and Atul Arora, Research Analyst, Analysys Mason finds that "The customer care market generated USD3.58 billion in revenue in 2013, an increase of 9.1% from 2012. The market was driven by communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly offering packaged service bundles, consumer demand for self-service and control over their accounts, and the need of CSPs to increase customer satisfaction (thereby reducing churn), bring many new digital services to market quickly and reduce customer support costs.

Oracle and Amdocs continue to dominate the market, with a combined market share of more than one third of the worldwide market, while China-based vendor Huawei Technologies dominates its domestic market. However, more than 60 suppliers that constitute the ‘Other’ category command revenue of several hundred million dollars in this market, many of them smaller, geographically focused suppliers.

Customer care systems were originally ‘add-ons’ to billing systems and provided the basic functions of ordering and supporting CSRs in answering queries from subscribers. Billing system vendors still provide these functions as subscriber management systems. However, CRM systems have grown in importance, providing advanced features to CSRs (and customers through other channels) as well as access to the subscriber management system functions.

See "Customer care systems: worldwide market shares 2013" - here.

Amdocs Expands its Big Data Analytics Offering (with something)

Amdocs announced the ".. expansion of its big data analytics capabilities to become the first end-to-end provider of communications-specific big data solutions encompassing business and operational support systems (B/OSS), network and social media. The Amdocs big data analytics offerings include:
Amdocs big data applications .. Amdocs Insight Big Data platform ..  Amdocs DSaaS and Amdocs BI and Data Warehousing Services".

Somehow similar to a previous announcement from February - "Amdocs Announces Big Data, Hadoop Based Solution" - here. Unfortunately, it is not clear what are the new features and some of the new products mentioned above are not presented in the site.

See "Amdocs Announces Industry’s First End-to-End, Communications-Specific Big Data Analytics Portfolio" - here.

TIM Brazil Uses Amdocs UC to Fight OTT Services

Amdocs announced that "TIM Brasil has deployed Amdocs Unified Communications to power its new "blah" service. blah provides an unmatched user experience across all the subscriber's devices centered on a unified address book, merging device and social network contacts. The app saves money for the subscriber and keeps them inside the TIM Brasil brand while they use messaging and communication services such as VoIP, video chats and rich instant messaging .. The blah app is available to any mobile subscriber, not just TIM Brasil customers"

Roger Solé, CMO, TIM Brasil said: "With the launch of blah, we are the first Brazilian operator to enable mobile subscribers to enjoy state of the art, over-the-top type experiences with an intelligent address book, keeping the interface with customers and facilitating all communication".

Rebecca Prudhomme [pictured], VP product and solutions marketing, Amdocs said: "Service providers are facing increasing competition for voice and messaging revenue from over-the-top players, and one way to combat this is to leverage their relationship to offer enhanced communication services to subscribers"

With blah you can talk simultaneously with up to four people via blah calls (VoIP) and Video calls, and up to 100 people in group chat. In the contact list, all contacts are identified by circles. This helps to identify contacts who are TIM Brasil customers, helping TIM Brasil customers make calls to other TIM Brasil customers and so save costs.

• Multi-device support: Multiple devices using a single account
• Smart Call: Automatically corrects the number format when placing a call.
• SMS Interception: send and receive text messages alongside instant messages
• Send Files: Share files like PDFs and Word documents with your contacts
• Send location, pictures, videos and voice messages.

See "TIM Brasil Deploys Amdocs Unified Communications to Power "blah"" - here.

Infonetics Identifies the Leading Policy Management Vendors

A new "Policy Management Scorboard" (based on "direct feedback from service providers, market share data, and publicly available financial data") by Shira Levine [pictured], directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research ranks the 8 largest global vendors of policy management solutions: Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, Ericsson, Huawei, Openet, Oracle, Juniper, and Redknee.

"Huawei’s and Ericsson’s strong financials and market share [see "[Infonetics]: Huawei Leads the $1B Policy Management Market" - here] growth, along with solid scores in the service provider feedback categories, propelled them to the top of the list .. However, we believe that Oracle and Amdocs have the potential to provide a real challenge to the leaders if and when they’re able to work through some of their post-acquisition issues, and Alcatel-Lucent will likely move up the list once its financials are sorted out.”.

In Infonetics' 2013 and 2012 reports, Openet led the market (here and here).

See "Huawei and Ericsson top Infonetics policy management scorecard; Oracle and Amdocs in hot pursuit" - here.

Report: LTE does not Increase Data Traffic Exponentially; No Shift to Video

 Amdocs released new "research into mobile traffic, showing an almost complete shift from voice to data. based on the analysis of more than 4 million voice and data connections from more than 100,000 mobile devices at some of the busiest network locations around the world in the past twelve months. 

Key findings include:

• 2013 was the busiest year to date for mobile networks. Traffic doubled with the busiest square kilometers carrying up to 100 GBytes per day
   
• The share of network traffic from data has grown to 98 percent – up from 90 percent in the previous 12-month period .. 

• LTE (4G) improves customer experience but does not increase data traffic exponentially..
   
• Data traffic becomes the primary source of subscriber issues
   
• The Impact of LTE:  Better data experience, Data dominates even more, No shift to video (we didn’t detect subscribers using mobile data in new ways. We didn’t see an increased usage high bandwidth data services (i.e video))

 See "Amdocs Research: 98 Percent of Mobile Network Sessions Now Data" - here.

Amdocs Launches (Industry First?) VoLTE-Dedicated PCRF

Amdocs announced the ".. availability of Amdocs VoLTE Controller, a standards-based, virtualized policy control and charging rule function (PCRF) solution specifically designed to support the stringent feature requirements that enable a high definition (HD) quality and differentiated VoLTE experience. Already supporting VoLTE services at a Tier-1 North American operator [MetroPCS? - here], Amdocs has also been selected for policy control support of VoLTE by a European Tier-1 service provider".  

While Amdocs claims for "Industry first", a year ago Tekelec added to its PCRF product support for VoLTE (see "Tekelec Enhances PCRF with VoLTE, Wi-Fi and more" - here), deployed by KT (here).

By leveraging the Amdocs VoLTE Controller as a dedicated PCRF solution for VoLTE, service providers can deploy it alongside legacy PCRF systems, which can continue to support basic policy needs such as fair usage control. With VoLTE features already proven in Tier 1 networks, and further enhanced to include additional services, the Amdocs VoLTE Controller supports key IP voice requirements that go beyond guaranteed quality of service (QoS), to encompass emergency call prioritization, voice roaming with QoS assurance, voice call reliability with session geo-redundancy, and differentiated IP voice services for flexible service plan bundling and customer-specific services".

See "Amdocs Announces Industry’s First Policy Control Solution for Voice over LTE (VoLTE)" - here.

Amdocs Announces Big Data, Hadoop Based Solution

Amdocs announced the availability of "Amdocs TeraScale, a carrier-grade, big data solution designed to cost-efficiently store, manage and extract real-time charging usage data for analytical use cases. The new solution leverages big data storage technologies based on the Hadoop ecosystem, and enables deeper, more rapid real-time analytics through innovative usage data modeling and embedded ETL (extract, transform and load) processes. Amdocs TeraScale is a new offering within the Amdocs CES 9.1 product suite.

  .. The solution is capable of streaming the massive volumes of usage data generated by Amdocs Convergent Charging directly into TeraScale data clusters based on Hadoop, providing fresh, granular data for analytics applications. Amdocs TeraScale allows service providers to explore and visualize usage data using optimized usage queries and extracts as well as native Hadoop query tools. Amdocs TeraScale can be initially deployed as a side-by-side solution alongside existing usage data storage and ETL solutions, with no impact on charging and billing operations".

See "Amdocs Announces Carrier-Grade Big Data Solution for Real-Time Usage Data Management and Analytics Enablement" - here.

Product Announcements: Ixia, Ulticom, RADCOM, NSN, SAP, DigitalRoute, Avvasi, Centri. Smith Micro

With MWC starting today, the number of product announcements made in the last few days does not allow a separate post for each .. so here is a short digest:

• Ixia Provides Three Times More Network Visibility In Half The Rack Space (here) : Ixia ".. introduced, as part of its Visibility Architecture, its most advanced, highest capacity platform that is designed to provide three times the visibility in half the rack space for enterprise and service provider applications .. Ixia’s newest network packet broker, the Net Tool Optimizer 7300, .. helps service providers and enterprises to improve real-time insights into the data traversing the network".

• Ulticom Diameter Signaling Controller is Virtualization Ready (here): Ulticom announced that "more than half of their Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC) deployments are in Virtualization environments. The Ulticom DSC is being deployed using both traditional dedicated server solutions and in Virtualized environments. As a software solution, Ulticom’s DSC is architected and ideally suited for deployment using virtualization. The product is hypervisor independent and can be scaled dynamically during operation. It has a proven track-record in operational deployments using virtualization and cloud technologies. Compatible hypervisor technologies include VMware, KVM, and Virtual Box.

• RADCOM Rolls-out Enhanced End-to-End VoLTE Monitoring Capabilities (here): RADCOM announced that it has ".. added new Voice over LTE (VoLTE) monitoring capabilities to MaveriQ, RADCOM’s NFV-based network analytics probe. The enhanced VoLTE capabilities allow service providers to monitor the VoLTE service end-to-end across the LTE and IMS domains. MaveriQ continuously monitors VoLTE calls in multiple network areas, including eNodeB, EPC, policy and charging, and in the IMS network itself. With real-time and historical end-to-end call tracing, proactive alarming and KPIs that constantly monitor service QoE, RADCOM’s MaveriQ gives operators clear visibility into all quality aspects of high-speed 4G LTE, VoLTE and LTE-Advanced networks. Providing advanced troubleshooting tools for VoLTE service degradation, MaveriQ assists in achieving VoLTE accessibility, retainability, integrity and availability. The MaveriQ solution has already been deployed in four Tier 1 service provider networks in APAC and LATAM"

• Enhanced Flexi Zone controller powers up indoor, outdoor capacity and coverage, brings Liquid Applications to small cells (here): Nokia Solutions and Networks is "extending its award-winning Flexi Zone architecture, making it the most versatile small cell solution able to cover all deployment scenarios. A Flexi Zone controller application can be added to existing macro-cellular base stations to run a large number of nearby small cells. Flexi Zone’s cluster approach can now be used for indoor deployments. In addition, Flexi Zone controller supports the integration of NSN Liquid Applications to deliver locally-relevant, fast services directly from small cell base station clusters
  The third major development enables the Flexi Zone controller to support the integration of NSN Radio Application Cloud Server functionality to enable Liquid Applications on a cluster of small cells. Radio Application Cloud Server provides processing and storage, together with the ability to collect real-time network data. These features can be exploited by applications to offer context-relevant services that transform the mobile broadband experience. Liquid Applications offers caching and local offload for street level deployments, as well as enabling operators to provide value added services indoors to enterprises and public indoor locations".

• SAP and DigitalRoute Join Forces to Enrich Customer Experience for Telcos (here): SAP AG  today announced a "..significant expansion of its relationship with DigitalRoute .. The targeted result is an enhanced solution that shall bring together data from both operational and business support systems (OSS and BSS), providing unique insights that are expected to help communications service providers (CSPs) navigate toward monetizing their Big Data in today’s stormy market conditions".

• Avvasi Launches “Xperium Video Minutes” (here) Avvasi announced the launch of its “Xperium Video Minutes solution .. Xperium Video Minutes allow networks, for the first time, to measure and manage a video’s quality in real time and to charge for video traffic on a duration basis, rather than by volume (megabytes). This innovation has the double benefit of simplifying the usage, consumption and purchase of video services, while providing a new revenue stream for network operators".

• CENTRI Technology’s BitSmartCX Solution Ready for Wireless Operator Integration (here): ".. On the heels of completing successful trials in Latin America of its BitSmartCX solution, CENTRI Technology announced that its flagship product is now ready for wireless operator integration. Designed to help mobile network operators intelligently optimize and manage the flow of data across their networks in real-time, CENTRI’s BitSmartCX reduces the need for operators to invest in additional network infrastructure while lowering backhaul, spectrum and transport costs".

• Smith Micro and Amdocs Validate ANDSF Interoperability for Seamless Wi-Fi Access and Traffic Optimization (here): Smith Micro Software announced the "successful completion of interoperability tests between the Amdocs Smart Net intelligent offload solution and the Smith Micro NetWise® traffic management client. Amdocs used Smith Micro’s NetWise I/O toolkit to validate ANDSF interoperability that would enable seamless Wi-Fi offload and traffic optimization over heterogeneous networks".

Amdocs Positions Actix/Celcite as its SON Solution

Amdocs announced the "..Amdocs Self-Optimizing Networks (SON) solution, which automates the optimization of radio access networks (RANs) .. Amdocs SON gives mobile service providers a market-proven [See "Amdocs: Telus [Canada]; TIM, Nextel [Brazil]; Vodafone, Telefonica [Germany] Selected Actix/Celcite" - here] solution that efficiently manages increasingly complex heterogeneous networks (HetNets), maximizes capacity utilization and improves network performance and quality for their customers.

Amdocs SON is: Vendor-agnostic, Customer experience/value-driven, Able to support 2G and 3G services as well as LTE  and Offered with a comprehensive range of services to integrate SON into existing equipment, operational/business support systems and processes - streamlines adoption while reducing operational risk".

Rebecca Prudhomme [pictured], VP product and solutions marketing, Amdocs said: "Our acquisitions of Actix and Celcite, [see "Amdocs Explains Celcite/Actix Business" - here] and their complementary product and services offerings, provides us with an impressive installed base of existing customers - making Amdocs today one of the leading independent providers of vendor-agnostic SON solutions. And, with Amdocs' in-depth knowledge and expertise in deploying mission-critical systems within highly complex service provider environments, the risk associated with SON deployments is reduced.

See "Amdocs Announces Self-Optimizing Networks Solution For Customer Experience-Driven Network Automation" - here.

Amdocs: Telus [Canada]; TIM, Nextel [Brazil]; Vodafone, Telefonica [Germany] Selected Actix/Celcite

Amdocs announced "a number of customer wins [and expansions] for mobile network optimization capabilities resulting from its recent acquisitions of Actix [see "Amdocs Acquires Actix ($120M) to Provide Geo-located Network Information" - here] and Celcite [see "Amdocs Acquires Celcite for $129M" - here]:

[see also "Amdocs Explains Celcite/Actix Business" - here]

• TIM Brasil [here] to improve data traffic transmission across Brazil
   
• TELUS (Canada) for 3G and LTE geo-location and radio access networks (RAN) consolidation into a single, unified solution that will enable TELUS to improve customer experience while realizing significant engineering efficiencies
   
• Nextel Brasil (NII Group) selected ActixOne to be one of the network optimization solutions for its recently deployed 3G network in Brazil
   
• Vodafone Germany to continue Vodafone's strategic RAN optimization program to increase efficiency, improve customer experience and enable advanced optimization
   
• Telefónica Germany added 2G optimization to the company's existing ActixOne optimization platform and extended 3G and LTE coverage to 100 percent"

See "Amdocs Announces Customer Sales Momentum for Mobile Network Optimization" - here.