Alepo's Service Enabler platform is focused on helping its customers manage a wide (and expanding) range of convergent services.

by Jeff Goldman [February 13, 2008]

Alepo was founded in 1994, and purchased the assets of Extent, including its RBS (RADIUS & Billing Software) platform, in 2002. The company now has over 400 customers in more than 60 countries, including larger carriers like Digicel, France Telecom, Telecom Malaysia, and Charter Communications, among many others.

According to Jonathan Garini, the company's vice president of products, Alepo's focus now reaches far beyond just taking care of an ISP's billing needs. "We're a leading provider of enabling infrastructure for service-over-Internet delivery, and we do both software products and consulting and implementation services for WiMax service providers, traditional ISPs, broadband, public wireless LAN providers, competitive voice over IP operators—and, generally, triple play providers," he says.

As a result, Alepo now offers not only the off-the-shelf RBS ISP, RBS VoIP, and RBS Hotspot billing and CRM solutions, but also the newer Service Enabler product, which works with modular versions of the other three solutions to serve as a single convergent revenue management platform. "Customers want to deliver multiple services on a single platform," Garini says. "It's about convergence—with one invoice for multiple services."

Alepo (512) 879-1030 sales@alepo.com

A customized solution
In order to do so, Garini notes, much more integration work is generally required for Service Enabler than for something simpler like the company's off-the-shelf RBS solutions. "There's a little bit more integration, a little bit more customization on each product," he says. "It's about customer self-care, the automation of the activation process, integration with legacy systems. For example, for Digicel, where we supply the Service Enabler platform, we integrated with an Ericsson prepaid system and a legacy postpaid system, so a customer can use the same account for broadband services and VoIP—which are provided by our system—as for mobile services, which are provided by legacy systems."

And that kind of integration doesn't necessarily come cheap. Depending on the ISP's level of expertise and the nature of any legacy systems, it may be possible for the ISP to handle it themselves—or they can get Alepo's help. "Since we have an open set of APIs and documentation, you just need to write the glue to connect both system APIs," Garini says. "Sometimes the legacy system doesn't have APIs, and we need to do a little bit more. It really depends on the customer's own technical capabilities… Some of them, they come to us and they choose to migrate entirely from their legacy systems—and some of them choose to integrate it so there will be a single system."

As a result, pricing can vary widely—it's based on a combination of a license fee and any professional services that may be required. "Obviously, the professional services component with the Service Enabler platform is more significant than with the off-the-shelf platforms," Garini says. "And the licensing also varies depending on the type of services and the number of subscribers."

Garini says Alepo as a company works directly only with larger providers—either public companies, or those with revenues in the multi-millions of dollars. Smaller ISPs that are interested in the RBS solution, he says, should call or e-mail Alepo to get contact information for a local reseller.

Managing next-generation services
Still, regardless of size, Garini says everybody needs something like Service Enabler—it's hard to find an ISP these days that isn't taking on new offerings. "They're looking at new technologies to deliver additional services over their ISP infrastructure—for example, delivering IPTV over DSL, and obviously voice over broadband, and those types of services," Garini says. "So you have to have a platform that either can enable you to do that, or at least can enable you to introduce just these new services and integrate with your existing platform."

And Garini says Alepo's experience with those kinds of next-generation services is a key differentiator for the company. "We're the first company to offer WiMax 802.16e compatibility and IPTV," he says. "It's about the breadth and the depth of our knowledge and experience, and our ability to support all those services and business models. And that's why you see that most of the customers in our customer list are carriers and large organizations that need that type of expertise."

WiMax, Garini says, is a good example. "There's so many opportunities there, and there's so many needs that need to be fulfilled… It requires a complete set of new services," he says. "It's not like you can use an existing billing system to bill or charge for WiMax services—so you have to come to somebody who knows that."

— End