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Shopping malls are often built around anchor stores. Major department stores like Bloomingdales and Macy’s might be the big-brand anchor stores that book end a mall full of smaller retail shops, some of which are major brands like GAP, others of which are so specialized, you wonder how they exist (how many chrome plated, engraved razors or bottles of roasted jalapeno olive oil can one little shop sell?). Transforming IT shops look somewhat similar. One or two major IT supplier’s platforms will be selected to cover the vast majority of the functional scope laid out in the architecture. A limited number of specialized components, many of which likely are proven to integrate well with the bookends, then fill in the gaps.

Is Your Billing Platform a Realistic Anchor?
In many cases a robust billing platform is the anchor, or one anchoring bookend, in the mall that is a major CSP’s new IT architecture. Billing platforms tend to cover billing, rating, payments, and some level of product management, order management, and customer management. In other words, in theory they can cover a broad scope. Because billing and payment makes up the lifeblood of most CSPs’ businesses, it makes sense that a billing platform would be a major component in any new architecture. Further, the end goal of many IT transformations has been to reduce the number of individual billing platforms, responsible for disparate products, customer bases, and geographies, massively.

It is at this point, however, that what is under the hood of the anchoring billing platform becomes paramount. Can it scale? Can it bundle? Can it handle traditional telecom services as well as it can application-based or even hard goods services? Will it provide a robust enough customer profile to support an integrated CSR desktop? Does it allow customers to use any form of payment through any channel they choose? Can it

Comverse Seems to Get It
Comverse’s Comverse One billing solution is demonstrating in a number of different markets that it’s an appropriate anchor for major billing transformations. Part of what’s impressive about what Comverse has done is that none of the other major players that owned the technology and intellectual property at Comverse One’s core ever managed to bring it to fruition as Kenan Sahin originally envisioned.

The term visionary is bandied about quite a bit, but Kenan Sahin really was one. His ability to cash out of Kenan Systems for a cool billion prior to the Internet bubble’s burst is one testament to this fact. The billing technology he produced, however, was clearly another. He understood in the earliest days of the Internet that CSPs ultimately, would need a billing platform that could literally bill for anything. Minutes, messages, elephant feed – it didn’t matter. In his vision, a billing platform needed to bill for any product – be it conceivable or inconceivable at the time – with any rating scheme possible. Sahin was arguably ahead of his time.