Stratecast presented Amdocs with two Global Market Share Leadership Awards for 2011, but what’s perhaps most compelling about the announcement is how Stratecast defines the billing market – it’s about a lot more than just billing.
Statecast named Amdocs the top vendor in “rating and charging and other core billing” which sticks to the more traditional definition of what billing is perceived to be. But Amdocs was also named the top vendor in the “overall billing” market which covers mediation, policy management, interconnect and settlements, and partner management. Stratecast also called out Amdocs’ convergent charging capabilities, which points to the increasing role of communications billing in enabling digital commerce transactions.
Mediation is a traditional piece of the billing process in regards to data collection, but mediation has also evolved to play a greater role in real-time transactions, such as any debit mechanism or authorization of on-demand service delivery. Policy management similarly plays a role in determining things like real-time entitlements that control access to subscribed or on-demand services.
Interconnect, settlement, and partner management all speak to the need for measuring and accounting for events that occur as operators exchange traffic, customers transit across networks, and third-party services are utilized or transactions conducted across different network environments.
Collectively, this represents the enabling infrastructure for concepts like mobility, e-commerce, service ubiquity, cloud-services, and over-the-top (OTT). Billing isn’t just about generating a monthly statement – though it is still about that important capability. But, Billing is also about a much bigger concept of commerce enablement that’s at the very heart of where the communications industry is headed, and digital media and online retail are along for the ride.
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