Tuesday, April 29

9:30 – 11 a.m.

Plenary Session: OSS Transformation
OSS transformation, in the context of industry mergers and acquisitions and general IT transformation, is critical to communications service providers’ plans for next-generation service success. In addition to rectifying disparate legacy architectures and consolidating systems and organizations, service providers must prepare their operations to support real-time, on-demand services; open service-creation models and mash-ups; multiple trading partner relationships; and more sophisticated customer support. Experts from several innovative service providers and enablers discuss the transformational challenges service providers face today and ways to successfully meet them.
Moderator: Tim McElligott, Editor in Chief, Billing & OSS World
Speakers: Scott Jenkins, Manager, Application Development – IT Network Systems, Sprint Nextel
Dhananjay Pavgii, Senior Consultant, OSS Product Management – Americas, Tech Mahindra
Robert Pucci, BSS/OSS Global Solutions Technical Lead, IBM
Felipe Alvarez, President, RCN Metro
Leonard Sheahen, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Oracle
Allan Zendle, Senior Director of Voice Operations, Time Warner Cable

11:10 a.m.-12 p.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Managing the Content Lifecycle — Enabling the Digital Marketplace
Turning the convergence of entertainment, information and communications services into a manageable and profitable “digital marketplace” is the key to sustainable growth. The players in these new value chains must find ways to forge win-win business relationships or the customers will spend their money elsewhere. A new wave of collaboration between the TM Forum, major studios and other organizations is bringing the communications and media industries together to “crack the code” on achieving this goal. This presentation looks at the common technologies being developed plus new content services that turn talk into reality.
Session Leader: James Warner, Vice Chairman, TM Forum
Speakers: Lee Chow, Director, Video Product Management & Strategy, AT&T
Stephen Fleece, Sr. Manager - Telecom North America, Cognizant Technology Solutions
Frank Korinek, Director of Technology Portfolio & Fellow of Technical Staff, Network Management Solutions & Engineering, Chief Technology Office, Motorola
Johanne Mayer, Director, Communication, OSS, Alcatel-LucentMark Weiss, Solutions Executive, IBM

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
When Good Enough Isn’t: OSS for the Video Onslaught
In the face of dramatic growth projections, carriers are struggling to roll out IPTV as fast as possible without sacrificing the service’s quality of experience. With rivals offering mature competing services, hitting the QoE mark is critical. Video is changing the game for carriers and they must be sure that their operational support systems can support these new services. No single OSS will provide comprehensive functionality. Rather, carriers will look to a combination of OSSs including network-resource planning, service assurance and fault management to enable their video services. This session will lay out how these OSSs will work together to ensure carrier networks can support today’s and, more importantly, tomorrow’s video services.
Moderator: Jeff Heynen, Directing Analyst – IPTV and Next-generation OSS/BSS, Infonetics Research
Speakers: Robert Cruickshank, Chief Architect, Operations & Business Support Systems, C-COR Inc.
Mike Devlin, Director of Product Management, VPIsystems
Diethard Kumpf, CEO, Dimari GmbH

SESSION C: REVENUE ASSURANCE
Building a Revenue Operations Center
Much like a network operations center (NOC) enables an operator to monitor the status of the network and services, a Revenue Operations Center (ROC) enables an operator to monitor network operations and correlate their impacts on revenue, costs and financial statements. A ROC is the convergence of assurance functions – from revenue assurance to inventory accuracy to data integrity. This presentation will describe the fundamental requirements for a ROC and provide examples of revenue-management techniques that have been adopted by operators.
Moderator: Jeffrey Cotrupe, CEO, MarketPOWER LLC
Speakers: Kathy Romano, Executive Director, Revenue Assurance and Billing, Verizon Communications
Mark Nicholson, Chief Technology Officer, Subex
Randall Guthrie, President and CEO, Advanced Technologies and Services, Inc. (ATS)
Mark DiCamillo, Vice President Marketing and Product Management, Primal Solutions Inc.

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Driving EBPP Adoption
While the benefits of electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) for communications service providers are obvious, its adoption rate remains mired in the single digits despite lofty investments. This presentation will address ways to make EBPP a success and allow service providers to realize the promised returns on their investments. It covers defining success, effective models and approaches, and observations on differences and similarities from other industries and market segments.
Moderator: Dan O’Shea, Editor in Chief, Fierce Telecom
Panelists: Carl Brady, Chairman, PayDQ
Steven Dubner, Director Strategic Alliances, OSG Billing Services
Debbie Newell, Director, Product Management, DST Output

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Case Study: Power of ONE – Level 3 Communications
Prior to the acquisition of eight companies, Level 3 Communications initiated a comprehensive plan to develop a unified information technology (IT) and business process platform. Through this multiyear effort, the company plans to consolidate more than 600 applications, deploy a new operating infrastructure and increase IT development capacity. The effort has transformed the strategy and culture at Level 3 to better align people, processes and technology into ONE. 
This presentation will review the challenges and opportunities of such large-scale initiatives, as well as the impact of IT-based efforts to drive enterprise change management.
Speaker: Kevin Hart, Group Vice President and CIO, Level 3

1-1:50 p.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Case Study: BT 21 Century Network Boosts Web 2.0 Consumer and Enterprise Applications with Voice, Presence and Messaging
Enterprise and consumer applications are incorporating various information sources with voice, video and presence. Click-to-dial applications, presence as a trigger for business processes and video calling are being integrated easily using standards-based middleware to develop and deploy applications that blend previously separate Web and network communications capabilities. This session will discuss best practices in delivering innovative services in a Web 2.0 world, implementing end-to-end production solutions, and leveraging Internet and standards-based technology for rapid and cost-effective delivery. This presentation will include a customer case study and a live demonstration.
Speaker: Vittorio Viarengo, Vice President of Development, Oracle

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Delivering Superior QoE with Real-Time Application-Level Monitoring
Enterprises have recognized the ultimate costs and productivity savings IP telephony can offer and, in turn, service providers are under pressure to deliver a superb end-user quality of experience to meet customer expectations. This session will discuss why it is critical that service providers monitor quality not only on the network but also at the application level — in real-time, on a per-session, per-device basis — to ensure superior end-user QoE. This method allows providers to rapidly detect service-affecting issues, identify the root-cause of quality problems and apply laser-focused corrective action. This overarching view of activity enables providers to reduce support costs by conducting preemptive customer care — alerting users to problems and abating complaints before they have a chance to snowball. Ultimately, monitoring call quality on both the network and application levels allows service providers to bill with confidence and also ensures that enterprise end-users embrace service offerings in the long term.
Speaker: Mike Hollier, CTO, Psytechnics

SESSION C: REVENUE ASSURANCE
Cost-Effective Business Analytics
Whether a company is a service, content or cable provider, tomorrow's market leaders will be those providers that achieve customer intimacy through highly versatile and scalable operational Business Intelligence (BI) strategies. Executives managing these strategies will be challenged to implement the most powerful tools available, while meeting real-time and budget constraints imposed by a fiercely competitive landscape. The best of tomorrow's operational BI strategies will leverage current assets. Fraud management and revenue assurance are two such systems with great untapped potential. Learn how to extend these solutions to not only meet your BI objectives, but take your operational BI strategy to a new level, using an investment-wise approach.
Moderator:Susan McNeice, Program Manager, OSS/BSS Global Competitive Strategies (OSSCS), Stratecast
Panelists: Bruce Bednarksi, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Razorsight Corp.
Jim Hayden, Executive Director Business Intelligence, TEOCO Corp.
Stephen Rickaby, Director - Revenue Assurance Products, Intec Telecom Systems
Bill Zimmer, Media & Entertainment Solutions Portfolio Manager, HP Communications

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Case Study: Bringing the Back Office Front and Center to Target New Markets
Rural wireless carriers face a myriad of competitive challenges these days from the merger of regional rivals and the entrance of national carriers with seemingly endless marketing budgets. Facing this situation, Einstein Wireless decided to modify its value proposition to its current customers and target new customers with an innovative overhaul to its OSS/BSS and point-of-service system.
Speakers: Don Culeton, President, Info Directions
Greg Selig Sr., Director of Operations and Engineering, Einstein Wireless

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
On-Demand OSS: Driving OSS and Policies to the Edge
New services and applications bring an “order-it-now” paradigm that shortens the order-to-consumption cycle to seconds, compared to days in the previous subscription-based model. In order to support this new world, service providers need to take the capabilities that exist in their back-office OSS layer and extend these capabilities and intelligence to applications at the network edge. This will drive the need for a redefinition of how we currently think about OSS systems.
Speaker:Preston Gilmer, VP of Product Marketing, Sigma Systems Inc.

2-2:50 p.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Are Back-Office Systems Ready to Turn Web 2.0 and IMS Services into Revenue?
With communications service providers anxiously looking for innovative services and new sources of revenue, Web 2.0 and telecom convergence provides an opportunity to deliver the next killer applications. But service providers’ B/OSS infrastructure must be ready to support the real-time functions necessary to mediate, converge, charge and bill for these new services. This session will explore the challenges and opportunities of using an IMS foundation to converge the B/OSS infrastructure that will handle sessions, resource allocation, subscriber information and billing convergence required for turning a telco-Web 2.0 service offering into revenue.
Speakers:Ravi Chamarthy, Chief Architect, Internet Usage Manager Product Group, HP
Camilla Dahlen, President, Highdeal Inc.

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Transforming the Customer Experience Using Business-Process Modeling
Achieving true competitive differentiation in today’s quad-play environment is becoming increasingly difficult in a communications industry that is mired in pricing and product parity. Perception is changing among communications companies as they look ahead and recognize their customers to be more important assets than their networks. Leveraging the power of business-process modeling (BPM) tools and technologies to transform back-office processing, application development, customer data integration as well as to fuel real-time performance monitoring will enable companies to leverage customer data like never before, driving increased customer satisfaction, retention, cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, and lower costs.
Moderator:Larry Goldman, co-founder and senior analyst, OSS Observer
Speakers: Steve Izzo, Principal Consultant, Alcatel-Lucent
Wayne Miracle, Director, Customer Experience Management Bearing Point Inc.

SESSION C: REVENUE ASSURANCE
Revenue Assurance Challenges in Managing Third-Party Content Partners and High-Value Multimedia Services
The global market for content is growing exponentially and service providers need to put the proper systems in place to assure their revenue. There are some risks associated with working with third-party partners to deliver multimedia content services. This session will identify those risks and discuss how to accurately monitor revenue sharing and compliance with service-delivery agreements, how to tackle the billing complexities of third-party content services as well as the fraud-detection mechanisms required to support high-value content services.
Moderator: Rob Purks, Partner, Accenture
Panelists:Sanjay Mehta, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Oracle
Brad Soutiere, President and COO, Vertek Corp.
Brian Gratch, CEO, Sixteen30

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Charging Ahead with a Real-Time, Advertising- and Policy-Driven Billing Model
The telecom business model is undergoing a significant shift, led by the importance of content, advertising and shared/sponsored models that will result in a personalized, interactive and real-time charging environment. Strong consumer interest in personalized content, advertising and commerce demands the industrywide migration of billing and charging to a real-time, advertising-rich and policy-driven model. Through the implementation of this emerging model, service providers truly can differentiate offerings by delivering services that are in lockstep with their subscribers’ need for highly individual and interactive services. The speaker will evaluate market shifts and implied business models, and discuss what is in store for the future -- from the challenges, opportunities and rewards perspectives. Real-world examples will be discussed showing how top operators are differentiating their offerings and taking market share by putting the customer at the heart of services with innovative business models.
Speaker: Grant Lenahan, Vice President and Strategist, Service Delivery Solutions, Telcordia

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Case Study: Global Crossing Assesses Total Cost of Operations
For existing telecom providers with established operational support systems, the enormous speed of change driven by technology presents an almost overwhelming challenge to those responsible for providing the OSS architecture needed to support the business and manage the total cost of operations. The old rules for what processing is done and where are no longer adequate. This discussion will review how to approach this new paradigm created by both organic and inorganic change. It will identify new synergies as a result of the shift to distributed open systems and support for converged services while reducing costs and simplifying the overall complexity of systems topology.
Speakers: Michael Armstrong, Senior Director, Product Development, Global Crossing
Patrick Gennette, Director of Global Mediation and Billing Systems, Global Crossing

3-3:50 p.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Case Study: Lessons Learned in Deploying IMS-Based Mobile Video Services
IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) has been the topic of discussion from network architects to business analysts. This session will focus on best practices in implementing IMS solutions and provide an architecture for delivering end-to-end services. In addition, this session will review a production IMS deployment by Korea Telecom Freetel (KTF), including lessons learned, business drivers and best practices in launching IMS services.
Speaker: Ty Wang, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Oracle

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Beyond CRM: New Technologies for Improving the Customer Experience
High-quality customer service is becoming a key differentiator for many communications service providers in today’s saturated market. As retail prices have fallen, differentiating on price alone is no longer enough; therefore, communications service providers are investing in new technologies to help improve the quality of customer service.
Speaker: Paul Watson, general manager of multi-channel self care, Convergys

SESSION C: REVENUE ASSURANCE
Revenue Assurance is Dead – or Is It?  
Revenue assurance, once a hot topic, has become a back-burner item for many carriers in the United States. Does that mean the key problems that plagued carriers, such as loss of up to 15 percent of revenue, been solved? Have carrier efforts expanded and matured to the point of diminishing returns? In this session, attendees will be able to compare their organizations’ performance with the results of a poll conducted by Excelerate Partners in 2007 and can come to their own conclusions.
Speaker: Ed Shanahan, AVP Operations, Sybase 365

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Regulation and Compensation: The Rules for Developing Next-gen Revenue Streams
Take a look at recent regulatory and industry developments affecting how service providers get paid by consumers for communications and information services. This session will focus on the legal challenges presented by emerging payment options and technical innovations, the interplay of bank and telecommunications regulation, and card association and NACHA rules. The speakers also will explore regulatory guidance and its impact on provider payment models, emerging trends in merged services and the challenges being created from a compliance perspective as well as what the future holds in terms of opportunities for expanded consumer and service provider payment choices.
Speakers: Joan Griffin, Of Counsel
Joel Hewer, Partner, Kelley Drye & Warren
Danny Adams, Partner, Kelley Drye & Warren

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Establishing a Program Management Office to Replace a Legacy Billing System
Replacing a legacy system is a multimillion-dollar, multiyear project. What is the best way to manage risks? By establishing a Program Management Office (PMO) executives can better control and manage risks to ensure that the program is on time and within budget. Through this presentation, service providers will gain an understanding of PMO best practices when undertaking a replacement strategy.
Speaker: Salah uddin Khawaja, Senior Manager, Deloitte & Touche

4-4:50 p.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Open Media Distribution: A Field of Dreams — If We Build It, Will They Come?
IP-delivered content (video, games, music, etc.) is on track to start hitting the mainstream in 2008, creating a host of new and exciting distribution models. What exactly is the opportunity, and how can content providers drive a profit from the delivery of content on demand? What are the best practices to support the steps along the content-delivery chain as well as deliver a memorable experience for online community members? Most importantly, is the market ready and will consumers (or advertisers) pay? This roundtable discussion asks prominent players in media distribution how IP-delivered content can be used to promote and extend a service provider’s brand, provide new revenue streams, and engage customers/users through interactive social networks.
Moderator: Kent Steffen, Vice President, CSG Interactive, CSG Systems Inc.
Speakers: TBD

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Harness the Power of Self-Service to Drive Sales, Reduce Costs and Improve Care
Two-thirds of telecom consumers say they prefer self-service options to calling a call center for assistance. As a result, self-service is poised to become the main source for sales and support. Yet, today many communications service providers still only are able to consistently attract a small segment of their subscribers to their self-service sites and, thus, are failing to fully harness the power of self-service to drive sales, improve service and reduce costs. In this session, attendees will learn best practices for developing and implementing a winning self-service strategy through real-world success stories.
Speaker: John Hughes, Assistant Vice President of Product Marketing and Management, Comverse
Chandra Wong, Assistant Vice President of IS, StarHub

SESSION C: REVENUE ASSURANCE
Case Study: Attaining Cost and Operational Gains via Automated Invoice and Cost Management
Even in today's technology-driven environment, many communications and entertainment companies still receive large volumes of paper or electronic invoices in non-standard formats. As a result, service providers face significant manual invoice-entry burdens and must dedicate scarce resources to repetitive, low-value tasks. In addition, cost- and financial-management operations are hindered because detailed invoice data is not available in a common platform for auditing and reporting purposes. However, competitive and cost-cutting pressures compel service providers to streamline invoice processing and advance cost-management and audit practices. This case study session will provide practical insights on how a complex service provider solved a pervasive industry problem by instituting streamlined, automated invoice- and cost-management practices.
Speakers: Todd Elmer, Principal, TEOCO Corp.
Gerard De Souza, Director Finance-Carrier Cost, Rogers Communications

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Making Mobile Payments Work: Exploring the Pros and Cons of Leading Methods
As did the Internet, the ubiquitous use of cell phones is changing the game for customer self-service and electronic payments. Most mobile payments solutions and their early pilots have been focused on the use of one of three technologies: simple message service (SMS), mobile wallets and near field communication (NFC) chips. This session will contrast and compare the results of real-life deployments for each of these technologies as well as the inaugural release of a yearlong pilot of a completely new mobile payment technology specifically geared to telco, cable, utility and other recurring bill payments along with customer self-service via cell phones. This session also will provide an interactive forum for objectively contrasting and comparing the pros, cons, risks and costs of each of the technologies, approaches and market-making strategies for mobile payments and mobile-based customer self-service.
Speaker: Richard Crone, Founder, Crone Consulting LLC

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Transforming Operations Through Data Integrity: Enabling the Lean and Agile Operator
The transformation to a leaner operation starts with proactive data-integrity management — the process of managing the quality and accuracy of data that drives key operational processes in the areas of fulfillment, assurance and billing. Furthermore, data integrity influences the effectiveness and efficiency of carrier OSS throughout the next-gen OSS transformation lifecycle. Carriers will continue to face infrastructure data issues as they migrate to next-generation services and supporting systems. New data-integrity issues at the subscriber level will further affect underlying operations. This presentation addresses both the continued need for infrastructure data-integrity management solutions, the broader challenges faced in the subscriber-centric networks being built today and how service providers can adopt lean-operator best practices while improving service agility and overall competitive edge.
Speaker: Adam Boone, Vice President, Strategic Marketing, Subex

5-6:30pm

Airing it out: A Dialogue on Next-Generation Service Revenue

Sponsored by:

Developing and deploying new enabling technologies such as IMS, Web 2.0 and fixed-mobile convergence is the easy part for service providers and their technology partners. It’s what they do. Making the business case for undefined next-generation services and applying solutions that will ensure their profitability and generate consistent revenue is the tricky part. It also is the risky part. A multitude of new services will put incredible pressure on support systems and decision makers who must weigh the risks against the needs of the business. This panel of service provider decision makers will discuss their experiences in and strategies for enabling next-generation services profitably and risk-free.
Moderator: David Croslin, Chief Technologist of Communications, Media and Entertainment, HP
Speakers: Curtis Elswick, VP of Architecture, EchoStar
Melinda White, Senior Vice President and General Manager of New Business Operations, Citi-zens Communications Company
Vercie Lark, Vice President of IT, Embarq
Steve Taff, Executive Director of IT Integration, XO Communications

Wednesday, April 30

7-8 a.m.

Continental Breakfast

8-8:50 a.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Understanding the Relationship Between OSS/BSS and the SDP
Telecom service providers are looking for ways to deliver compelling, revenue-generating services, and the service-delivery platform has been touted as the vehicle to enable that. However, it has become increasingly clear that the SDP is linked intrinsically to the OSS/BSS environment; without taking OSS/BSS into account, operators will not be able to offer the next-generation services that they are counting on to defend themselves against new competitors in the market. This presentation will address the relationship between OSS/BSS and the SDP and discuss how both vendors and service providers are addressing this interdependency.
Speaker: Shira Levine, Senior Research Analyst, OSS & Billing, IDC

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Getting More Value out of Multivendor Networks
In today’s service provider networks, delivering even the most basic service-fulfillment function requires orchestrating a complex web of multivendor networks transporting data across multiple domains (optical, Ethernet, IP/MPLS). In this increasingly complex environment, carriers often have to revamp and reconfigure their infrastructures to ensure end-to-end integration. Wherever possible, they must reduce OSS and data transport complexity, optimize overall network management and “sweat existing assets” by leveraging installed SONET/SDH equipment and avoiding stranded assets and bandwidth. This session, presented jointly with a tier 1 service provider, will discuss how carriers are reducing network complexity and improving governance by implementing a new breed of network management called a Network Operating System (NOS). Pioneered by Nakina Systems, a NOS combines the capabilities of an EMS and an NMS for multi vendor, multitechnology networks, with a carrier-grade scalable and secure architecture built using open, standards-based interfaces. The NOS mediation and abstraction function allows service providers to roll out their next-generation services and network infrastructure much faster than traditional operations models.
Speaker: Sergio Pellizzari, Chief Solutions Architect, Nakina Systems

SESSION C: CUSTOMER LOYALTY MANAGEMENT
Using Billing Data to Promote New Services and Build Customer Loyalty
Most providers see billing data as just a repository of transactions. In fact, careful analysis of billing data enables providers to better understand their customers' behaviors and propensities. As a result, this information can help them offer more meaningful and better targeted services to customers, mitigate churn, extend customer lifecycles and build brand loyalty. This session will show providers how to take existing data and transform it into useful information that serves both customer and provider needs in a multitude of ways.
Speaker:Paul King, President and COO, Aperio CI

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Case Study: Building a Back-Office Royalty Clearinghouse
Increasingly, communications service providers are being pushed into the royalty business. They are held accountable to accurately bill their customers and reimburse their content partners for everything from ringtones to wall paper to TV programs. A heavy onus is being put on billing and OSS providers to act as clearinghouses to collect and distribute revenues. Using a sound recording royalty distribution agency, Sound Exchange, as a case study, this session will cover what is required to process these types of transactions and different options that a service provider can pursue to accommodate this internally or through outsourcing.
Speakers: Andy Schoka, Managing Director, Communications and Media Practice, Acumen Solutions
Barrie Kessler, COO SoundExchange

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Key Integration Issues in Building a Strategic OSS Platform
In recent years, OSS has become an area of considerable focus as well as concern for service providers. OSS integration has been a major challenge and is often a serious impediment toward delivering true business value with new system implementation and augmentation projects, as end-to-end business processes rarely are supported by a single application. This presentation addresses the key OSS integration issues faced by operators today. It looks at the point-to-point integration solution, the EAI solution and the unified OSS solution, and provides suggestions for transformation and improvement.
Speaker: Shivakumar Ravi, Telecom Practice Manager, Tata Consultancy Services

9-9:50 a.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Understanding the Service Delivery Framework
This session will educate the audience on the Service Delivery Framework (SDF) architecture, Key areas of discussion will include how SDF helps to enable next-generation services and top-line revenue growth, what efforts are being made to drive standards in this area, how mature the SDF standard is today and when it will be ready for mass deployment.
Session Leader: Johanne Mayer, Director, Communication, OSS, Alcatel-Lucent
Panelists: Rich Erickson, AT&T Labs
Lucia Gradinariu, Senior Solutions Strategist, Communications, Media and Entertainment, CA
David M. Mangini, Global Solution Owner – SDP, IBM Global Telecommunications Industry
Eric G. Troup, Platform Strategy Advisor, Telco, Microsoft

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Managing the Peer-to-Peer Traffic Burden
As new waves of increasingly-powerful handheld mobile devices connect to high-speed 3G networks, there inevitability will be a growth of free over-the-top and peer-to-peer applications. The experiences of wireline providers, which have been limited to being purveyors of connectivity, need not apply to wireless operators. Peer-to-peer applications create a burden on network bandwidth and degrade the performance of other operator-provided content and applications. This challenge creates an opportunity for mobile operators to create perceived value by managing and controlling access to their networks to ensure a better user experience and through mass personalization.
Speakers: Joe Hogan, CTO and Founder, Openet
Rick Galatioto, Product Manager, Cisco Mobile Services
Rolandas Ryliskis, Vice President Network Technologies, Omnitel, Part of TeliaSonera Group

SESSION C: CUSTOMER LOYALTY MANAGEMENT
Examining the Relationship Between Customer Loyalty and Credit and Collections
There is an inextricable relationship between customer loyalty and credit and collections. Find out more in this session, which will cover trends in the credit and collections industry, including how to minimize and manage bad debt accounts, how to drive employee engagement in credit and collections call centers, how to managing credit risk, how to develop a competitive but cooperative team, and how customer service drives customer loyalty.
Speaker: Joe Pisano, Vice President, Qwest Customer Financial Services, Qwest

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Achieving and Maintaining PCI Compliance for Credit Card Transactions
Any organization or software system that stores, transmits or processes credit card data is subject to a security regulation commonly referred to as the PCI standard, which is required by the credit card brands -- Visa, MasterCard, etc. Achieving PCI compliance is not a trivial task. However, there are many ways an organization can streamline the readiness process and ensure a successful audit. This session will allow attendees to learn from a PCI compliance expert who will provide an overview of the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) and the most common mistakes organizations make in their efforts to comply. The presenter also will give attendees valuable tips on how to avoid making those same mistakes in their organizations.
Speaker: Michael Gavin, Security Strategist, Security Innovation

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
The Inevitability of OSS/BSS Transformation
OSS/BSS transformation has become inevitable as service providers move to IP-based next-generation network (IP NGN) architectures that deliver a variety of services across converged networks. The IP NGN architecture eliminates network stovepipes, promising a significant reduction in operational expenditures. This session discusses the OSS/BSS landscape transformation that is occurring in order to derive maximum benefits from IP NGN architectures.
Speaker: Dhananjay Pavgii, Senior Consultant, OSS Product Management – Americas, TechMahindra

10-10:50 a.m.

SESSION A: SERVICE CREATION & DELIVERY
Innovation ≠ Anarchy: Improving Your Service Creation and Delivery Efficiency by Using a Process-Driven Framework
New and innovative services are the lifeblood of any communications provider. To rapidly create and deliver new services, agility always has been critical. But agility can come at the expense of order. Communications providers quick response to changing market demands has resulted in different operating models, standards, toolsets and business processes across their organizations — none of which are sustainable in the new world of rapidly evolving technology, increased service diversity and intensified competition. It is crucial for communications providers to have a comprehensive operating model that defines how they will create and deliver innovative new services to the marketplace. This session will discuss how using a process-driven framework, service providers can identify operational inefficiencies and determine the most effective service- creation and delivery model for their organizations.
Speakers: Nick Semple, Managing Consultant, PA Consulting
Andrew Sheahen, Consultant, PA Consulting

SESSION B: SERVICE ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Case Study: Cox Realizes the Promise of Self-Service
Automated provisioning and self-managed customer care are promises that are as elusive as they are attractive. Provisioning is often considered one of the black arts of operations management. In moving from proprietary, siloed solutions to open standards, there are a number of new challenges. The convergence of product delivery across video, voice and data heightens the need for an integrated service provisioning platform. This session will discuss one provider’s experiences in the pursuit of self-service
Speaker: Skip Kline, Provisioning Architecture Analyst, Cox Communications Inc.

SESSION C: CUSTOMER LOYALTY MANAGEMENT
Case Study: Sergel-TeliaSonera Tackles Pricing and Loyalty Programs in a Converged World
Customer loyalty can be linked not only to pricing strategies, but to stickiness of new product bundles that cater to customer and enterprise needs. This session will review how one carrier used next-generation billing and pricing to build loyalty while at the same time convergent services fueled personalization and collaboration. A close look will be paid to current flat-rate pricing and the necessary evolution to usage- and quality-based pricing models.
Speaker: Magnus Lindgren, Vice President, Business Development, Sergel-TeliaSonera

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Breaking Through the Billing Bottleneck
CRM and billing need to catch up to provisioning and OSS in terms of standardized commands and language that will enable next-generation product catalogs to be flexible and changeable according to dynamic market requirements. Translating increasingly complex product codes can compromise the speed with which products are deployed or modified. To expedite activation and provisioning, billing vendors should be working to evolve their systems so multifarious products and feature sets are understood by all partners in a common language. Find out how vendors are working to break through the billing bottleneck.
Moderator: Dan Baker, Research Director, OSS/BSS KnowledgeBase, Dittberner Associates
Panelists: Alon Meller, Lead, Enterprise Product Catalog and PLM business unit, Amdocs
Doug Zone, CTO of MetraTech
Ricky Boyle, Director, Pre-Sales Engineering, NetCracker

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Case Study: How Viral Marketing and Social Networking are Changing the Role of BSS/OSS for Service Providers
Increasingly, service providers are being expected to manage not just subscribers but communities of users. Companies like Google and Yahoo! are moving to encroach on traditional telecom service provider activities. To stay competitive, service providers are fighting back by moving in the opposite direction -- attempting to manage user communities and launch new communications and messaging services. Service providers also are learning to use viral marketing as a technique for faster and more economical launch of new services. This session features a case study about Poland-based Play Mobile, which launched a new company and brand using this viral-marketing technique. The speaker will explore what lessons learned on this frontier could be applied to other markets.
Speaker: Will Rotch, CTO, Comverse

11-11:50 a.m.

Plenary Session: It’s More than Acquisition and Retention. It’s about Experience!
Communications service providers are building new business models focusing on customer and service experience. A panel of service providers will discuss how they are reinventing their business models to attract and retain new customers; how they are using new technologies to deliver the services their customers are asking for; and how they are leveraging data in their OSS/BSS systems to improve the customer experience.
Moderator: Jeffrey Boozer, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Martin Group
Panelists: Laurinda Pang, vice president of customer experience engineering, Global Crossing Ltd.
Ashvin Vellody, Director, Enterprise Architecture, U.S. Cellular
Skip Kline, Provisioning Architecture Analyst, Cox Communications Inc.
Paul Hughes, Vice President, Enabling Technologies Service Provider - Software Solutions, Yankee Group

12-1 p.m.
Lunch in the Expo Hall

12-6:15 p.m.
Expo Hall Open

Thursday, May 1

9-9:50 a.m.

Session A:  Vendor Presentation
Understanding and Maximizing your Network Cost Score
This interactive session will help you understand what Network Cost Score is, and why it is important to optimize your network costs. The presentation will walk you through the process of how you can double your network cost management efficiency, and share best practices on how you can maximize the return from each dollar invested in network cost management. Key areas of focus will be improved business intelligence and data integrity; increased process automation and inefficiency; and maximized visibility into the operation of your cost management results. Presenters include Thomas Kins, vice president of client services for Razorsight, and Job Clopton, Vice President, Carrier Relations & Cost Management at Neutral Tandem.
Presented by :
 

SESSION B: VENDOR PRESENTATION
What's Wrong With My Postal Address?
Billing systems are frequently required to guess at the correct local tax jurisdiction due to address limitations. This results in small tax errors that occur on an average of one in eight invoices. The root of the problem is in the postal address. In this session, participants will learn how to measure the frequency and financial impact of geography-based tax errors. The limitations of ZIP+4 and other data sources will be discussed with a methodology that builds on their strengths. Examples will show how parcel data and location intelligence can be used to reduce the billing error rate and related customer relations and administrative costs.
Speaker: Phillip Siewerth, Vice President of Tax Solutions, First American Proxix Solutions
Presented by :
 

SESSION C: WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT
Optimizing Your Workforce for Multiservice Offerings
Ace Communications Group provides a variety of telecom services across three states.  To keep its operations running smoothly, Ace needed the ability to maximize the use of its resources in the field and to give it the tools to be productive and safe. Through a combination of software tools, GPS systems and ingenuity, Ace has been able to successfully optimize their workforce and increase customer service.
Speakers: John Nitecki, Information Technology Manager, Ace Communications Group
Gary Martini, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, CommSoft

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Billing and Customer Care Implications of Becoming a Fully Integrated Provider
Conventional wisdom dictates that integrated services are the way of the future for communications service providers seeking customer loyalty. Testing this assumption, this session will examine the short- and long-term sustainability of fixed, mobile and full-service (converged fixed-mobile) business models by assessing the positive and negative implications such a move has on billing and OSS functions. This presentation will discuss the viability of achieving best practices in a full-service environment as it relates to rating, charging and billing; customer and information management; systems architecture; revenue assurance; and customer retention.
Speaker: Colin Orviss, Senior Vice President, Patni Computer Systems Ltd.

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Addressing the Legacy Problem
Most established service providers have evolved from voice-only businesses. In their continuous attempt to improve efficiencies over what may now have been several decades, they have implemented a great many IT systems to automate business processes and improve the customer experience. Over time, these systems have become increasingly integrated and interdependent.  However, in the absence of a long-term IT strategy to guide this evolution, the legacy estate is hugely complex, poorly documented yet utterly critical to operating the business. The modern service provider business is vastly different from its predecessors, for which these legacy systems were developed. Billing, provisioning, call control, assurance and partnership management all present different problems now than in the past. Moreover, the legacy problem is not something new entrants must contend with, which means inertia on the part of established service providers to address it is now damaging their abilities to compete. They have longer times to market for new products and constantly are putting revenues and brand at risk by making changes.
Speaker: Steve Lewis, Senior Consultant, Analysys Mason

10-10:50 a.m.

SESSION A: VENDOR PRESENTATION
Extreme Transaction Processing (XTP): Revenue Management on Steroids
With the telecom, media and technology worlds colliding, business-critical systems like billing are being pushed well past their limits. This session will explore how Extreme Transaction Processing (XTP), a concept defined by Gartner Group, supports new, ground-breaking front-office and back-office capabilities in the quest to find new revenue streams in this connected, multiservice world. Among the topics addressed will be SOA-based enablement, transaction complexity and velocity, and the impact of XTP on charging and policy management. Attendees will gain insight into the disruptive XTP paradigm and will never view OSS/BSS systems the same way again.
Speakers: Ravi Chamarthy, Chief Architect, Internet User Manager, Hewlett-Packard Co.
Camilla Dahlen, President, Highdeal Inc.
Presented by :

SESSION B: VENDOR PRESENTATION
Mergers and Acquisitions in the B/OSS and Network Management Sectors
As a result of the transformative trends in the telecommunications industry, service provider requirements for BSS, OSS and network management systems are changing rapidly. Of the hundreds of companies competing for share in the estimated $19 billion market for telecom software, many are developing leading-edge technology that is instrumental in driving industry transformation. This session is intended for the management and board members of privately held companies considering exit opportunities via M&A, as well as corporate and business unit level executives of companies seeking to acquire. The session explores trends in mergers and acquisitions in the BSS, OSS and network management sectors, including the following topics:

• Catalysts for M&A in the sector
• Assessing the buyer universe
• Considerations for buyers and sellers
• Valuation trends

Speaker: James Turino, Partner, Redwood Capital Group
Presented by:

SESSION C: WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT
Best Practices for Reseller Management
Business VoIP represents a vast, dynamic and new opportunity for competitive communications providers. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) represent the vast majority of businesses, and service providers are becoming more reliant on resellers, distributors and agents to help them capture and maintain these business customers. Service providers need an effective, intelligent, integrated and automated means of managing these resellers, offering convergent billing services, providing timely sales commissions, and delivering enhanced services (e.g. managing numbers/ANIs, CPE inventory, collections) to ensure success. Service providers need a means of adding new resellers and distributors; providing timely, accurate commissions for their sales; and ensuring a seamless, intuitive process that takes a customer from sign-up with distributor A in region X, to a paid, happy customer.
Speaker: Frank Peregrine, CEO and Co-founder, CustomCall
Steve Kruse, New Global Telecom

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
Managing the Convergence of Telecom and Banking
As the line between telecom and banking blurs, many questions arise. Can our infrastructure handle an influx of new financial transaction data? Which e-tailers and financial institutions will we partner with? How will we split the millions of new fees between these e-tailers and financial institutions? How will we ensure the many-to-many payments are settled accurately and on time between the subscribers, merchants and financial institutions? How will we prevent fraudulent charges and bad debt from happening? This session will offer some answers to these questions.
Speaker: TBD

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
NOCs and SOCs in a Service-Oriented Environment
This session will explore the high cost and complexity of managing and maintaining multiple network operations centers (NOCs) as well as the challenges associated with transitions from a network-focused business to a highly nimble service-oriented company. It will discuss new control-center approaches, such as service operation centers (SOCs), and the transformation tools and techniques needed to create and deploy a service-oriented approach to service creation, management and control. Attendees will learn how to develop a lifecycle approach to defining, creating, delivering and managing new telecom services by leveraging key technologies and industry standards, such as SOA and Web 2.0 collaboration tools, to achieve a competitive advantage in delivering new telecom services. Actual telecom case studies in OSS transformation will be presented.
Speaker: Roger Bales, Senior Marketing Manager, OSS/BSS Transformation, IBM

11-11:50 a.m.

SESSION A: VENDOR PRESENTATION
Delivering Top Quality of Service and The Best Customer Experience with Next-Generation OSS/BSS and SDP
As new telco environments are converging around the Internet, IP and IT standards and platforms, the traditional network-based service-assurance solutions are not enough any more. In this new environment, how can operators ensure deep visibility into customer-facing revenue-generating services and applications delivered through non-telco technology?
Speaker:Presented by Vadim Rosenberg, Director of Worldwide Marketing for Telecommunications, CA Wily Technology
Presented by :

SESSION B: VENDOR PRESENTATION—
Managing the Enterprise Order: A Case Study on Managing Automated Service Fulfillment and Exception Management
In today’s rapidly changing, fragmented business environment, companies have a critical need to aggregate, coordinate and manage orders and inventory across multiple channels, divisions, trading partners and suppliers. ConceptWave's Order Care solution provides the core orchestration backbone to enable companies with complex value chains to respond to shifts in customer demand and supply more quickly, driving down cycle times and costs while driving up order fill rates and customer satisfaction. Solid architecture underpins ConceptWave's infrastructure layer — a common data model, transaction workflow, participant management and event management — from the ground up to meet four objectives: interoperability, scalability, extensibility and multi-enterprise order management.
Speaker: Rick Kapani, Vice President, Americas, ConceptWave
Corey Farrell, Principal Enterprise Architect, Comcast
Presented by:

SESSION C: WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT
Organizational Development as a Strategic Tool
Few companies have a formal program to develop their managers beyond initial corporate training. In part this is because few companies have the ability to assess the talent pool in their organization. They are unable to the number of employees who are sufficiently skilled to be promoted into more senior line-management roles. What’s needed is the ability to assess the promotional value of their employee base and to set goals for increasing that score annually based on specific management development programs. This session will describe this approach and how it could allow a company to grow faster and develop their management team as a competitive advantage.
Speaker: Marc Goyette, President, ROI International

SESSION D: BILLING/PAYMENT PROCESSING
The Impact of Proposed Taxes on Printing, Mailing and Postage
The Streamlined Sales Tax effort will standardize taxation for mass mailers across all 50 states. Taxation of postage is arguably unconstitutional, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Increased taxation on print and mail services also comes into play. The speaker will address the newly proposed rules, the liability for service providers, and what can be done to drive fair and equitable tax laws.
Speaker: Rich Hoffman, Vice President, Technical and Operations, OSG Billing Services

SESSION E: OSS TRANSFORMATION
Transformation of the OSS Environment
Deployment of next-generation networks, demand for low-cost integrated services and the costs of supporting these technologies have caused carriers to transform existing OSS/BSS infrastructures. The expenditures across the industry have been significant, but with mild success. This presentation will evaluate the driving forces around the changes and architectural models that permit deployment of multiple technologies and services. In addition, deployment of self-service technologies that reduce operating costs also will be presented.
Speaker: Mark Nachajski, Solutions Partner, BusinessEdge Solutions, an EMC consulting practice