Billing as a Service – all about increased agility and productivity

BaaS holds great potential and can aid unparalleled operational efficiencies for operators.  In today’s scenario, telecoms business dynamics are changing fast and new age Communication Service Providers (CSP’s) are looking for ways and means to reduce operational costs and streamline their operations. Taking a cue from such situations, CSPs are increasingly looking at different options of utilizing cloud driven billing systems in order to create better proposition for their business needs. This is giving rise to Billing as a Service (BaaS) concept. According to market research reports, the overall cloud billing market is growing exponentially and is likely to reach more than $ 9 billion by the year 2018. Operators Business Challenges While there is no doubt about the operational efficiencies and cost-driven advantages that a cloud environment brings for the organization, there has been resistance by operators to move their core billing operations over cloud infrastructure. This is primarily because unlike data storage, content or service delivery platforms, billing is one such function which is quite intrinsically inter-woven inside the core processes and is close to the heart of any organization and hence, it needs to be modified in order to make way for cloud enablement. Moreover, looking at the sensitive nature of the revenue information owned and managed by operator along with in-house legacy systems, it is always difficult to replace the existing systems. However it is not stopping many operators from utilizing BaaS for new services and business models that cannot be billed on existing platforms. Few examples of  cloud based billing are:

• Fring a global mobile VoIP leader has been able to add fringOut to its services portfolio based on Cloud Billing.

• MEO part of Portugal Telecom relies on Cloud Based Billing which helps the operator in launching new services quickly in the market.

While embracing a cloud driven billing approach, operators automatically shift towards reducing Capex in favor of an Opex model which gives more space for the organization to put their focus and effort towards business activities rather than worrying much about the billing processes. Future Outlook At present, BaaS holds a great potential to create real value for the operators and enhance their operational efficiencies. Even though there are issues such as regulatory, compliance, security, high availability, customization and privacy issues, but all this is not likely to deter CSPs to bring vast advantages related with BaaS. It is only a matter of time before all the obstacles are overcome. Since most commercial ventures in the end move to the most monetarily reasonable model; Telecom IT, will not be different. To know more click here.