• Scalability — can grow from
supporting zero customers to
millions
• Reliability — guaranteed uptime
and application availability
• Lower cost of ownership than
competitive platforms — utilizes
a lower number of products, thus
costing less and requiring fewer
people to operate them
What makes it work:
Cluster Configuration of:
•
1 Compaq AlphaServer GS140
system (EV67 CPU, 8 CPUs,
8 G of memory)
• 3 Compaq AlphaServer GS140
systems (EV67 CPU, 4 CPUs,
10 G of memory)
• MC2 Cluster Interconnect
• 2 Terabytes of disk space
•
Operating System: Compaq
OpenVMS 7.2-1
• Jupiter Series 1 version:
V1.21-01
• Number of active subscribers:
1+ million
• Number of online users: 500
So it’s no surprise that the telecommunications industry
is undergoing exponential growth — which leads to increased demands on call processing, billing, and customer care services. Staying ahead of this frenetic growth
curve is Edinburgh-based KSCL, Ltd. (www.kscl.com) — one of the top providers of software solutions to the world’s
telecommunications markets.
As one of Europe’s largest software companies, KSCL has international headquarters in Edinburgh and offices in Paris,
Munich, Leeds, Hong Kong,
and New Delhi.
An Independent Software Vendor (ISV), KSCL supplies total end-to-end solutions through its comprehensive portfolio of products — particularly customer care and billing applications. KSCL also supports clients through consulting, implementation, training, and help desk services.
Working together, KSCL and Compaq provide the most scalable, reliable, and high performance billing solutions to the telecom industry worldwide. KSCL’s roster of clients includes companies in the wireless, wireline, satellite, cable, and Internet segments — from start-ups to tier 1 operators of blue chip companies such as BT Cellnet and France Télécom Mobiles.
KSCL considers its jewel-in-the-crown to be Jupiter Solutions, a comprehensive framework that includes billing, customer care, and all other business management applications needed by the telecommunications industry.
According to Peter Burke, KSCL Technical
Director, “Jupiter was designed as a high performance convergent billing system. Jupiter Solutions extends that offering to cover all key elements of a
telco’s business model, such as customer relationship management, advanced document management, fraud protection, mediation, and interconnect that can stand
alone or integrate with Jupiter. As a result, we can accommodate the needs of any size customer — from low volume start-ups who only want a billing system, to
the more sophisticated operators who want a total end-to-end solution.”
Released in 1993, Jupiter is KSCL’s third-generation
billing system and runs on the Compaq OpenVMS and UNIX®
operating systems, including Compaq Tru64 UNIX.
According to Calum McCready, KSCL’s Director of
Strategic Sales, “Compaq is our platform of choice for high-volume billing applications.” KSCL has unrivaled experience that benefits both
start-up and established telecoms.
Burke expands, “We give clients what they want.
As a result, we develop in OpenVMS and UNIX in parallel. Some of the start-ups demand a UNIX platform, while the more established clients understand that OpenVMS
has benefits for larger installations, including scalability and low cost of ownership.”
In with the bricks
KSCL entered the wireless business before the
word wireless entered the mainstream vocabulary. McCready, whose father founded the original company, SCL, in 1965, explains, “We got into the wireless market in
the late ‘80s for a UK company that was reselling airtime. The very first billing system we had, which was called Mobile, was written for OpenVMS, so OpenVMS was
very much in with the bricks and integral to the foundation of our solution. We had two major billing systems that were successors of Mobile before we got to Jupiter,
and the original Jupiter was written on OpenVMS. Today, much of our high-volume customer base still sits on OpenVMS.”
McCready states, “Technically, OpenVMS offers all
kinds of things that other systems can only layer on top. Its scalability, lower cost of ownership, and ease of use are unmatched. To get the same kind of features
and functions, you would have to have half a dozen layered products in another technology. OpenVMS gives you all that as part of the base product. As a result, you
get far more performance, lower costs, and simpler maintenance and support needs.”
Breakthrough performance
The combination of OpenVMS and the next-generation,
high-end Compaq AlphaServer systems enables KSCL to deliver high performance systems that can handle the explosive growth telecommunication carriers and service providers
are currently experiencing.
Using Compaq’s latest technology, KSCL has demonstrated
performance that is a quantum leap faster than the previous performance level for Jupiter. This technology combines
the bandwidth offered by Compaq StorageWorks Fibre Channel technology, the increased CPU performance of Alpha CPU EV67,
the high-end Compaq AlphaServer GS160 system, and new functionality of OpenVMS version 7.2-1H1. As a result, KSCL
claims the lead in scalable telecom billing systems, and is able
to offer its customers scalability options that previously only mainframe vendors could provide.
Commenting on this increased performance, Michael Lacey,
Managing Director and CEO of KSCL, says “In telecoms, technology boils down to performance, scalability, and profitability. The first two lead to the third. The
result of benchmarking on Compaq’s latest
high-end AlphaServer provides tangible proof of Jupiter’s exceptional performance and scalability, whilst demonstrating
KSCL’s ongoing commitment to exceeding the performance needs of its clients and prospects.”
Proven scalability
Says McCready, “OpenVMS undoubtedly has a
proven track record of being able to scale, whereas some of the other technologies haven’t been around long enough to prove that. Sometimes a start-up may have
zero customers. In a very short space of time they can have hundreds of thousands, and in a very short time after that, millions of customers. They need to have a
comfort that you have a solution that can grow with them without having to change the system. Our largest customer supports over 10 million subscribers on OpenVMS —
a huge number by any definition.”
Burke adds, “We use OpenVMS clusters for superior
throughput — that is, to get the horsepower we need to handle the large amount of data and number of users we need to support. The benefits that follow from that
are resilience and guaranteed uptime.”
When can we have it?
Fast implementation is also a key customer need.
Burke explains, “Generally the customer criteria is base functionality and time to implement. They want to know, ‘What can it do today?’ and ‘How
quickly can I have it installed?’ And then long-term cost of ownership comes after that. They ask, ‘As our subscribers scale exponentially, what will happen
to the cost of supporting it?’ OpenVMS offers a lower cost of ownership than other platforms we support. It is also very easy to operate.”
Partnering to win
The Compaq/KSCL partnership has deep roots.
According to McCready, “We first did business with Digital in 1969 — and have been with them ever since. Back then, SCL was providing bureau services in
the UK, primarily to manufacturing industries. Why have we been with Compaq for so long? Primarily because of the engineering excellence. They’ve always produced
very, very good boxes. We have found them to be good partners. They’ve always been a very easy company to work with.”
Burke says, “We use Compaq technical services in
concert with our own for technical audits and start-up operations. It’s important that we get the procedures right on the first day. Some of our customers —
especially start-up operations — have never run a mission-critical billing system in their lives and it’s important that it can run up to speed from the first
day.”
WAP-enabling the future
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is the emerging
industry protocol and is where mobile Internet is going. One of KSCL’s innovative offerings is a customer care application called WebCare. According to
Burke, “WebCare is a GUI application that runs across the Internet and allows subscribers to view their bills, pay bills, change plans, and so forth over the
Web from their mobile phone. KSCL is one of the first billing vendors to announce that its billing system supports the provisioning and rating of WAP services, and
that the application itself is soon to be available in WAP form.
“In terms of the future of KSCL, we can see nothing
but good news. Customer care is exploding, and with Internet IP, mobile Internet,
and deregulation in Europe — it’s a wonderful place to be. We see OpenVMS for the high-end players who understand that
there are serious criteria by which they should be evaluating solutions.”
TOLL-FREE PHONE: 1-800-282-6672 WEB SITE: www.compaq.com/openvms
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Patent and Trademark Office. Alpha, AlphaServer, OpenVMS, Tru64, and StorageWorks are trademarks of Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.P. UNIX is a registered
trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company, Ltd. Product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of
their respective companies. Compaq believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without
notice. Compaq is not responsible for any inadvertent errors.
Printed in U.S.A. Project #11LE-0200A-WWEN Copyright ©2000 Compaq Computer Corporation
