Cloud providers can learn from telecoms

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 04 June 2009 16:29

IT Industry - Market

Rainge also says that, in addition to providing a key business operations platform, companies aiming at the cloud infrastructure opportunity are recognising that the ability to develop and maintain a set of pricing plans requires the rating expertise of the telecommunications industry.

For example, Rainge says, a fixed line subscriber calling a local number during weekend hours would typically be rated at a lower tariff rate than a roaming mobile user accessing email internationally during peak hours. “The kind of subscription — prepaid, postpaid, data, voice, business, or consumer — drives a further level of complexity for which the telecommunications industry offers mature and real examples of business processes and systems.”

Additional findings from IDC’s study include:
•    Two metrics fuel the cost of billing systems: the volume of subscribers and the number of transactions
•    The emerging telecom cloud billing platforms are increasingly smaller and lighter investments, particularly in comparison with legacy telecommunications billing platforms
•    For telecom billing platform vendors to offer compelling solutions to cloud players, they must demonstrate business process agility