TMCnet News
Radical New Company, Celona Technologies, Goes Live with BT Before Official LaunchLondon, 27th April, 2005 - At a time when organisations are streamlining the running of Operations Support Systems (OSS) - Celona Technologies, a radical, dynamic software company in the Telecoms product portfolio management arena, will be publicly unveiled for the first time at this year's Telemarketing World Forum in Nice. Whilst in their embryonic stages, Celona has already successfully gone live with BT Retail as their first client, a testament to the value of the Celona product. The Celona solution enables operators to launch new Telco products and services as well as access revenue streams far faster than ever before. It also provides big increases in customer satisfaction by improving data consistency between applications such as billing and customer relationship management (CRM). This solution is even more enticing for many organisations because Celona seamlessly integrates with current legacy systems, utilising existing infrastructures and investments. This means that with Celona an operator has the flexibility to make any additions and changes to their products and services that they choose to, as business prerogatives evolve, without having to reconfigure the architecture in multiple places in multiple ways. Celona also streamlines the transformation of the enterprise applications and data during low-risk migrations. Celona's unified view of the enterprise data is used to manage migrations in simple steps, removing the need for a high-risk 'big-bang' approach. This exciting new solution provides the capability to transform the telecom operator into a lean and agile organisation. In this way, Celona's solution significantly improves efficiency and greatly reduces operational costs, outcomes which are of real benefit to large organisations such as BT. Richard Saffery, Billing Manager at BT Retail comments: "We have selected Celona and Convergys Geneva to enable the transformation of the OSS and Billing architecture for BT Retail FeatureNet services. This will result substantially lower running costs and open up opportunities to extend the range of services we can offer to our customers through a common product portfolio management and billing platform. I believe Celona fulfils a key function, allowing us to drive the interaction between systems handling commercial customer-facing matters and those managing network elements." It is well recognised that OSS databases are ripe for improvements which would allow them to operate at maximum efficiency, as Sanjay Mewada of Yankee Group explains: "OSS databases today in a well-run operation are at best 80% accurate, while more typical rates are 40%-60% accurate. With reconciliation tools and proper operational procedures, database accuracies above 95% can be achieved." Celona, however, does much more than reconcile data, it ensures that the accuracy of data rules is enforced throughout the Business Support Systems (BSS). Another recent accolade for the Celona product has come from the prestigious IIR Telecoms World Billing Awards where Celona Technologies succeeded against fierce competition to be among the finalists in the category of Best Billing Implementation for their work with BT Retail. Hugh Roberts, Chairman of the World Billing Awards Judging Panel & Consultant Director for BSS/OSS Events at IIR Telecoms commented on their nomination: "The BT FeatureNet/Celona Technologies deployment was a very strong contender for IIR's World Billing Awards 2005 in the category of Best Billing Implementation, being strong in both providing effective revenue management and enhancing operational efficiency. Celona's solution has clearly solved some of the perennial OSS challenges and delivered great benefits in a Tier 1 operating environment. We look forward to seeing many further demonstrations of innovation from them - particularly in the area of rapidly launching and operating complex product portfolios." |