NEC Corp. and Netcracker Technology have announced that Grupo Gtd, the Chilean-based service provider with customers across South America, has expanded its professional services relationship with Netcracker.

Following the successful launch of Netcracker’s full-stack BSS/OSS suite across its business lines, Grupo Gtd has signed a multi-year agreement to use Netcracker’s comprehensive support services for SLA management, problem lifecycle management and resolution, quality assurance and testing and more.

Grupo Gtd is leveraging Netcracker’s full-stack solution as part of its large-scale B2B transformation program, which is focused on introducing new enterprise services, digitalizing the customer journey and experience and automating ordering and fulfillment processes. The Netcracker BSS/OSS suite is being used to enhance business operations across Gtd Teleductos, the national B2B arm of the company; Gtd Manquehue, which serves residential and business customers in Santiago, Chile; and Telefónica del Sur, which delivers residential and business services across southern Chile.

Grupo Gtd will use a broad range of Netcracker’s services, including its Billing Operations, Order Processing Management, System User Consultancy, SLA Management & Reporting, Problem Lifecycle Management, Incident Management, Solution Problem Management, Solution Release Management and QA & Testing services. The use of Netcracker’s managed services post-launch will ensure Grupo Gtd’s ability to maximize its use of the Netcracker solution and experience long-term success across all of its B2B lines of business.

Via Netcracker.

Ericsson has been re-selected by Orange as its managed services provider in five European countries in a deal that will also see the deployment of Ericsson Operations Engine.

The deal covers Orange operations in Spain, Belgium, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova, supporting about 40 million customers.

Under the three-year contract, that can be extended to five years, Ericsson will provide a fully managed end-to-end operations service to include network operations, field support, and maintenance, as well as a spare parts management service for Orange’s fixed-line access, 2G, 3G, 4G and future 5G access. Network performance, optimization and network expansion are optional components and delivered in some of the countries.

As part of the agreement, Ericsson will further transform operations by deploying Ericsson Operations Engine to capitalize on previous automation. The new AI-based Ericsson Operations Engine managed services model transforms operations to become data-driven, predictive and proactive. The advanced automation tools will allow Orange to increase operational network efficiency and further enhance customer experiences for its subscribers across the five countries.

Via Ericsson.

Netadmin, a provider of software purposely built for fibre operators starting, transiting to or operating a fibre business, has announced that toob Ltd. has selected Netadmin to create a fully automated customer journey. 

toob, with a goal of delivering gigabit broadband speeds to more than 100,000 premises by the end of 2021, needed a software solution to fully automate the customer journey.

Working closely alongside the toob team, Netadmin has delivered Netadmin Nine, including its main capabilities such as Order Management, Provisioning, Ticket Management, Inventory Management, Monitoring.

The solution also includes Add-ons such as a fibre installation portal and a self-service portal to enable a single flow for the entire order process, from registration of interest until the customer receives the active service.

This will provide toob with a fully automated solution supporting both their business model as well as their every-day operations.

Netadmin’s solution will play an important role in toob’s customer journey, from the availability check for the customer’s address to creating the customer’s invoice. Via Netadmin Nine’s API the software integrates with other systems such as SMS services and billing software.

toob is Netadmin’s forth customer on the UK market. Other Netadmin customers in the UK are Gigaclear, OFNL and JT.

Via Netadmin.

Amdocs has announced that it will provide VodafoneZiggo with its NFV solution to enable Dutch enterprises to design, deploy and monitor virtual cloud networks on-demand.

Amdocs will provide VodafoneZiggo with an agile, feature-rich solution set for enterprise customers to create their own virtual private networks, with the ability to add-on future functionality including security and other enterprise applications, all managed in the cloud by Amdocs. This can be scaled and provisioned immediately and cost-effectively, so VodafoneZiggo’s enterprise customers will be able to rapidly spin up innovative services and utilize cloud infrastructure resources more efficiently.

“VodafoneZiggo, is focused on building the network of the future,” said Matthias Sauder, director, Mobile Networks at VodafoneZiggo. “We are aggressively driving network virtualization and service innovation across our infrastructure, and Amdocs’ NFV solution will help us ensure our customers can introduce and deliver new communications services rapidly and cost-effectively.”

As part of the project, VodafoneZiggo will reduce network total cost of ownership by avoiding costly on-premises hardware and moving to a single virtual capability located in VodafoneZiggo’s NFV cloud data center, which is capable of handling parallel sessions for multiple enterprise Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).  Amdocs will introduce a new network and service orchestration and automation layer, by delivering its NFV Orchestrator (NFVO) and Generic Virtual Network Function Manager (G-VNFM), which will handle the automation of VodafoneZiggo’s service lifecycle management, based on KPIs and policy – from service onboarding, policy definition and order management, through to service fulfilment and resource management, all the way to ongoing operations and assurance.

Via Amdocs.

Ericsson Expert Analytics has been selected by Batelco Bahrain to improve customer experience, boost network performance, and enhance operational efficiency.

The real-time, end-to-end, big data analytics solution helps organizations to predict customer satisfaction, detect experience issues, understand root causes, and automatically take the best actions to improve experience and operational efficiency.

The unique Service Level Index approach of Ericsson Expert Analytics  provides actionable insights to understand how network issues impact customers’ perceptions of the service experience.

Maha Abdulrahman, GM Consumer division, Batelco says: “Delivering high-quality customer care is at the heart of our business. The implementation of Ericsson Expert Analytics solution gives us the optimal tools to monitor the customer experience and to proactively make adjustments as issues arise. This will enable Batelco to resolve customer-care issues in a faster and more efficient way than was previously possible. As a result, the end-user experience will be greatly improved.”

Ahmed Ben Messaoud, Country Manager, Ericsson Bahrain, says: “Operators must become agile as they support services across networks, offer a range of plans and push the limits of innovation. Batelco undertook a rigorous evaluation process of Customer Experience Management solutions to meet its requirements. Ericsson is proud to be selected as Batelco’s sole preferred Customer Experience Management solution provider and we look forward to partnering on this important initiative.”

Via Ericsson.

Blue Planet, a division of Ciena, has announced a new intelligent automation solution that gives service providers a unified view of network and service inventory, helping to eliminate costly and tedious manual processes.

The new Blue Planet INS solution reduces order-to-service fallout by up to 40% and speeds up the trouble-to-resolve process by up to 30%, according to Blue Planet estimates based on customer data.

Ensuring greater alignment across IT and network operations, INS helps service providers realize the vision of a network that can quickly adapt to ever-changing end user demands, driving greater efficiencies and faster time-to-market for 5G, video, IoT and more.

According to Analysys Mason, many top tier service providers report only 70% accuracy in their inventory systems and as a result, this causes high service order error rates, slow fulfillment, and inefficient use of network assets.

INS tackles this challenge head-on by providing a dynamic view of network assets and services across Layer 0 to 3. Engineered specifically to synchronize resources with operational support systems (OSS), INS proactively discovers network equipment, federates OSS/BSS data into a unified view, and reconciles discrepancies to show how assets are being utilized.

The solution can interface with OSS and other management systems without significant disruption to current business operations, ensuring openness and reducing vendor lock-in while also enabling automation of holistic business processes. Additionally, with INS’ flexible policy engine service providers can program the network to adapt and take specific actions when a change in inventory is detected, thus simplifying and accelerating the reconciliation process.

Via Blue Planet.

Netcracker to digitalize optical and IP service delivery, automate network visualization and reduce cost for DT.

Netcracker’s Network Domain Orchestration solution will enable DT to automate multidomain network discovery and visualization; multi-layer traffic optimization; IP and optical backbone provisioning; and multi-vendor network orchestration.

By digitalizing these complex functions, DT will gain end to end network insight; automate complex service provisioning processes; and massively reduce cost and effort.

Netcracker’s ability to work with DT using a collaborative approach based on Agile methodology and DevOps processes proved significant in this selection. To automate such a broad range of processes and to deliver multi-vendor orchestration requires an interaction among teams. By working collaboratively, the customer’s knowledge of its business is combined with the strategic partner’s skills and experience. The result is a solution that suits its users and the business while automating network services in truly novel ways.

Delivered in phases, this program will begin by automating network discovery and visualization to gain end to end network insights. That will pave the way to automate IP and Optical trunk provisioning. In the network, Netcracker’s Network Domain Orchestration solution will integrate dozens of IP devices and SDN controllers from more than 5 different major hardware vendors. This degree of automation is expected to reduce provisioning time and effort by more than half. Future plans for this program include adding intelligent network planning and simulation as well as enhancing service assurance with AI.

“It is an honor to be chosen by Deutsche Telekom from more than a dozen competitors and to have an opportunity to deliver end-to-end network automation that will play a catalyzing role in one of the most ambitious network automation projects in the industry,” said Bob Titus, Chief Technology Officer at Netcracker Technology.

“A combination of innovation, solution quality and ability to work using Agile/DevOps in a collaborative fashion demonstrated Netcracker’s value as a strategic partner as we work together to revolutionize the way network services are delivered  through end to end automation,” said Rainer Steege, VP IP Core at Deutsche Telekom.

Via Netcracker.

Industry-leading service assurance and network performance management capabilities strengthen Blue Planet’s Intelligent Automation Solutions.

Ciena Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Centina, a leading provider of service assurance analytics and network performance management solutions. Centina’s industry-leading technology and engineering expertise will be integrated into Blue Planet, a division of Ciena. Specifically, the Centina solution will expand Blue Planet’s assurance capabilities by collecting and collating fault, event, and performance data from multiple vendors and network layers, including virtual domains such as NFV as well as more traditional optical, Ethernet and IP/MPLS networks and services.

Integrating Centina’s robust service assurance capabilities with Blue Planet Multi-Domain Service Orchestration (MDSO) and Blue Planet Inventory (BPI) will allow continuous optimization of service performance, quality and availability on a proactive basis by resolving problems automatically before they impact the service and user experience.

“The acquisition of Centina advances Blue Planet’s position as an emerging leader in operational support systems (OSS), focused on closed-loop automation. By continuously monitoring the performance of services, Centina’s multi-layer, multi-domain service assurance solution will help our customers resolve issues more quickly and optimize network performance,” said Rick Hamilton, senior vice president of Blue Planet. “This is a key step to achieving more adaptive networks that are critical in today’s digital society where the customer experience is the ultimate differentiator.”

The transaction is expected to close by the end of calendar 2019 and is subject to customary closing conditions.

Via Ciena.

Sigma Systems announces the advancement of Sigma Catalog, the enterprise commercial product and lifecycle management application of the Sigma Create-Sell-Deliver Portfolio.

Sigma Catalog is a centralized product, service and resource catalog, which provides a single point of truth in order to eliminate inconsistencies across the enterprise.

The advent of 5G technology and the Internet of Things will give rise to the creation of an unprecedented amount of data. With the rollout of next-generation networks set to transform the way in which operators create, sell and deliver digital services, the ability to interact with ever-increasing volumes of product and service data will be critical. To meet the requirements of communications services providers (CSPs), Sigma Catalog 8.0 includes user-experience enhancements and brings new capabilities to Sigma’s core catalog product, offering additional features for service providers as they look to capitalize on opportunities driven by 5G and virtualized networks.

It is accompanied by Sigma Catalog Services 3.1, which brings additional rule validation and enforcement extensions, allowing more complex offers to be configured without the need for additional CPQ or order management system logic. Furthermore, with Sigma Catalog 8.0, all configuration tooling is now fully web-based.

Robert Hingston, Vice President of Products, Sigma Systems, commented: “A 5G-centric marketplace is set to change the game as far as the create-sell-deliver process is concerned – and CSPs need to be equipped to not only handle new forms of complexity, but also tap into the opportunities that such technology offers. At Sigma, we are attuned to the needs of the market, with the continuous evolution of our products being informed through mutually beneficial interactions with our valued customers. With the latest iteration of Sigma Catalog, we are enabling CSPs to capitalize on the potential of next-generation technologies.”

Via Sigma Systems.

Amdocs has announced that it has signed a strategic digital transformation agreement with Altice Portugal, the largest communications company in Portugal.

Using open and modular solutions and services from the amdocsONE portfolio, Amdocs will help Altice Portugal centralize, automate and digitize operations across its wireless, wireline, broadband Internet and television lines of business, for both consumer and enterprise customers. By migration from multiple legacy systems to amdocsONE, Altice Portugal will be able to improve business agility and IT velocity to ensure a true digital-first experience for its customers.

“We recognize the need to continually modernize in order to provide world-class services to our enterprise and consumer customers,” said Alexandre Fonseca, Chief Executive Officer at Altice Portugal. “Amdocs will help us deliver on customer expectations for simplicity by transforming several critical business processes, such as product definition, lead management, enterprise price configuration, order entry and billing. With Amdocs’ business-value-driven approach focused on the customer experience, we will be able to bring a rich set of innovative new services and experiences to our customers, faster.”

“Organizations that focus on customer experience outperform the market by a significant margin,” said Gary Miles, chief marketing officer at Amdocs. “We are very proud to have been chosen to modernize, automate and digitize Altice Portugal’s business, and enable it to deliver on its commitment to improve people’s lives and businesses.”

Via Amdocs.