Kenan adds Internet options

Kenan Systems is targeting Internet service providers with its new Arbor/Internet billing platform. The platform, based on Kenan's Arbor/BP system for telcos, gives ISPs the ability to offer a combination of flat-rate and usage-based billing and to streamline the customer service experience.

An iCARE Web-based interface lets customers handle routine customer service transactions such as address changes and service requests without a customer service representative.

This self-serve capability gives customers immediate satisfaction and frees representatives to take care of "high touch" issues, said Paul Varley, product manager at Kenan's Internet Business Unit.

Kenan also announced agreements with NetCentric to integrate NetCentric's FaxStorm Internet faxing software and with Software.com to integrate that company's InterMail messaging service.

Although other companies such as Portal Software, Solect Technologies and Bridgewater Inc. are providing billing software based on often-complex billing structures, the main competition for these systems is still ISPs' in-house information technology departments, said David Cooperstein, an analyst at Forrester Research.

"Somewhere around 95% of ISPs are still using billing solutions developed in-house," he said. "If these providers want to get to a multiservice environment, they'll have to move to a product-based solution."