The Importance of Telecom
style Billing for Cloud Computing
By John D’Angelo, CEO RevX Systems - 6/20/2009
IDC says Cloud providers can learn a thing or two from telecom service providers, namely: Rating does pay.
Cloud computing providers have a ways to go before they can begin to monetize services, said Elisabeth Rainge, director NGN Operations, IDC. But they can gain traction by leveraging the telecommunications industry's proven approach for effectively charging for such services.
She said that while other industries have sought to build comprehensive and flexible billing platforms, cloud computing players are finding it critical to evaluate these telecommunications billing solutions to find a way to put a value on the transaction, which is the function of a telecom rating engine.
Billing vendors like RevX Systems, Intec, Amdocs and others include rating as a core component of a holistic billing system, which also includes capabilities such as customer care, customer self care, data mediation, partner billing, promotions and payment settlement capabilities. The business and consumer experiences of complex bills for technology services is often tightly associated with voice and, increasingly, data services, thereby making the telecommunications example instructive.
"The investment in billing systems for cloud computing is drawing upon the rigor, scale and technology experience of the telecommunications industry,” Rainge said. "In examining the existing deals for cloud billing, we identify telecommunications industry expertise as highly relevant."
In addition to providing a key business operations platform, companies aiming at the cloud infrastructure opportunity are recognizing that the ability to develop and maintain a set of pricing plans requires the rating expertise of the telecommunications industry. Additional findings from the IDC study include:
- 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.
As business and consumer customers adopt Cloud Computing, service providers will need to take a more critical look at their provisioning, data integration and billing capabilities.
The IDC study, Worldwide Telecom Cloud Billing 2009-2013, presents the worldwide market size and forecast for telecom cloud billing, which is a segment of the telecom billing market. It assesses the suitability of telecom billing solutions for nascent cloud requirements as well as customer and vendor interest in addressing cloud billing requirements from the telecom billing context.
About RevX Systems
RevX Systems is a leader in advanced billing, reporting and revenue management systems for information, application and data service providers. RevX provides a highly scalable, end-to-end, customer lifecycle solution for real-time, multi-service data mediation, rating, billing, customer care and reporting. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.revxsystems.com.
For more information, please visit our Web site at www.revxsystems.com.