Platforms for Partners

As service providers move from owning and operating all the services they deliver to more of a middleman relationship, the need to build platforms for on-boarding, integrating and settling payments with third-party partners has come to the fore.

It's a challenge that vendors are scrambling to help operators address. Such third-party engines must tackle a number of complex tasks. Content and service partners must be brought onto whatever platform they are providing services over. Where content partners are integrating into an application or inserting content onto a telco platform, interfaces must be created. And service providers must deploy new, or tweak existing, billing systems to not only collect money for third-party content and services, but also to handle settlements.

Third-party relationship management is the “part service providers have the most problem with,” said Tony Poulos, head of the revenue management sector for the TM Forum. “They have to buy services and content from multiple sources. Every sale transaction, including bundles, must have a cost associated with it and details of the provider of the content.”

Third-party integration capabilities are emerging as one of many functions on horizontal service delivery platforms (SDPs). For instance, Oracle this summer released its Communications Gatekeeper platform, which helps open up telco networks to partners while allowing carriers to retain control. Service providers need to “share the network capabilities they have locked up inside of their network and expose them to a wider pool of developers and content providers,” said Ken Lee, director of product marketing for Oracle.

Similarly, CSG Systems recently unveiled a platform, called Content Direct, to help operators and content providers deliver video over IP networks — and divvy up the money to be made from these new services.

Today, telco payment and billing systems are still fairly static. What's needed to support dynamic content models are real-time charging and settlement engines, said Lorraine Reynolds, director of strategic solutions management for Convergys.

“If you look at triple-play content bundles, service providers have to have pretty powerful settlement capabilities and the ability to integrate all sorts of billing relationships with third parties,” Reynolds said.

But as wireless operators begin to wrestle with open content environments and IPTV deployments start to flourish, partner management issues are becoming much more pressing, said Alice Bartram, associate vice president of marketing for Comverse.

“2008 is the year we've seen this becoming much more of an issue and concern,” Bartram said.