profit from a practical ip billing solution suresh balasubramanian senior product manager...

Profit from a practical IP Billing Solution

Suresh BalasubramanianSenior Product Manager

Macrovision

Agenda

• IP Billing – Lets break it down• Software / Hardware Electronic

Licensing• Next generation IP Billing

Technology• Q & A

IP Billing Systems

• Enable service providers to bill for any Internet Protocol related business

• Flat fee billing

• Usage based billing

• Feature based billing

Service provider needs to be creative!

• Integrated real-time service management

• Fast time to market with new services and features

• Self-configured enhanced services• Billing-on-the fly

Flexibility of billing is KEY

IP Billing providers are at a critical junction

• Deep expertise in voice billing• IP networks – orders of magnitude more

complex than voice / data• Need a comprehensive billing framework

which can track, monitor, record and bill multitude of data elements– Routers, firewalls, switches, web servers,

proxy servers, license servers

System needs to keep up with increasing complexity

Total US Wireline/Wireless Billing

IP Billing grows to over 50% by 2004

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

IP

Non-IP

Source: IDC Research

IP Billing system architectureBusiness System Layer

Mediation Layer

Network Element Layer

Billing Customer care

Reporting

Network Ops

Fraud Detectio

n

Provisioning Usage

Network and hosting elements

Evolution of Mediation Layer• Dynamic provisioning

– Configurable hardware– Self-aware software

• Usage based billing– Complex usage models– Pay-per-use`

• Multitude of data elements on the network– Flexible billing required to reconcile usage

Critical to the success of next generation IP Billing system

What is Electronic Licensing?

• “Electronic Licensing is the ability of a vendor or customer to authenticate,offer and vary the terms of usage of a particular product to the end user”.

Electronic Licensing

• Reduce unauthorized use of software through authentication

• Flexible configurations, pricing, change and create on-demand “soft bundles”

• Gather critical customer usage data, by module, package

• Support next generation software delivery and usage models

Compliance

Flexible Pricing &

MarketStrategies

BusinessIntelligence

eBusiness

Industry Directions in Software Licensing

License pmt. & duration One time/perpetual right to use recurring payments

expiring licenses

Full s/w load a la carte per moduleS/W

Granularity

Paper, CD Paper / Electronic mix On line ordering, payment & download

Ordering &fulfillment

Little visibility when indirect Vendor resident customer data

CustomerData atVendor

Protect IP rights Competitive differentiator, Business enabler

IS/IT responsibility Company responsibility

VendorlicensingMindset

Manual process call home ability self updatingPlatformupgrades

FOC

US

Key benefits to software vendors

• Increased revenue opportunities• Flexible pricing and packaging

– Offer “soft bundles” on the fly• Deeper account penetration in large

enterprises• Lower opeational costs• Usage based billing models

Key benefits to hardware vendors

• On-site hardware configuration• Dynamic provisioning of hardware

features• Enormous reduction in

manufacturing costs• Uniformity in product development

efforts

Next generation IP Billing System

• Meet the demands of next generation customers with a highly evolved Mediation Layer

• Smart Mediation Layer incorporates the benefits of “electronic licensing” to help solve billing

Mediation Layer

Provisioning Usage

• Hardware can be flexibly licensed depending on application and usage– Licensed hardware can now be “counted”– Counting produces -> Usage Data

• Electronic licensing encodes data source on the network with an unique signature

• Equipment manufacturer can standardize on “super hardware”– Turn on required features based on service

provider needs– Dynamic provisioning, on-the-fly configuration

Mediation LayerProvisioning

• Authentication through electronic licensing– Collect highly granular usage data

• Generation “accurate” usage data for each network element

• Electronic licensing provides the flexibility to “adapt” usage gathering based on hardware and service type

Mediation LayerUsage

What does it look like all put together?

• Need system diagram with flexibility points showing how things can be changed on the fly.

Summary

• Electronic licensing represents a clear evolutionary path for mediation layer

• Smart mediation layer is the fundamental building block for the next-generation IP Billing Systems

• Incorporate the best of breed technology to provide high quality IP billing systems

Questions?

Thank You