Transcription
Aria Systems: digital transformationAria Systems: digitaltransformationJohn Abraham
2Aria Systems: digital transformationCompany summaryAria Systems is a provider of a natively cloud-based, multi-tenantbilling platform for telcos and enterprises. Founded in 2003, Ariawas one of the pioneers of cloud-based billing platform foreffectively monetising recurring/subscription business modelswith the aim of improving customer lifetime value (CLV) forenterprises.The Aria Crescendo billing platform offers end-to-end billingfunctionality that includes usage rating, invoice calculation,electronic payment collection, invoice presentation, dunning, etc.The company has over 100 deployments mostly within largeenterprises across a number of verticals and geographies.Since 2014, Aria has placed greater emphasis on addressingdigital transformation projects within CSPs and has signedmultiple tier-1 CSP customers in developed markets of APAC,Europe and North America. Within telcos, Aria’s aim is to supportnew digital lines of business and provide an agility layer toaugment incumbent billing systems. The company is investing inits portfolio to address telco-specific challenges such as complexmulti-vendor environments and legacy silos. In addition Aria isalso expanding its regional coverage by partnering with systemintegrators (SIs) and technology vendors in APAC and EMEAregions especially.This profile discusses Aria’s monetisation portfolio with a specificfocus on its relevance within the telco vertical.Figure 1: Aria Systems company factsFounded2003OfficesSan Francisco, PhiladelphiaEmployees200 Regional focusNorth America, Western Europe, AustraliaCustomers100 customers across multiple industries.Selected keycustomersComcast, TelstraPartnershipsSalesforce, Matrixx, Vlocity, Vertex, Avalara, ChasePaymenTech, Adyen, Vantiv/Worldpay, Softrax
3Aria Systems: digital transformationStrategic directionAria has seen increasing traction within the telecom vertical inrecent years driven by a growing interest from CSPs to embraceSaaS based systems to rein in costs and enable business agility.The company’s expertise in serving non-telco customers inaddition to the telecom vertical is viewed as an advantage byCSPs who are considering enterprise offerings.Communications is Aria’s fastest-growing industry vertical, ontarget to grow from 16% of overall revenues in 2017 to 22% in2018. While NA continues to be the biggest contributor in revenueterms, Aria is focussing specifically on expanding its business inthe APAC and EMEA regions. The company is working onexpanding its partner channels with both system integrators andtechnology vendors.Aria does not compete directly with mainstream CSP billingvendors. Instead the company positions itself as a digitaltransformation accelerator that co-exists with incumbent telcobilling and ERP systems. Billing systems traditionally account for alarge portion of CSPs software systems spending and Aria plansto offer a cost effective means of digitising the legacy billingsystem by deploying an overlay billing platform.The company continues to make significant R&D investments,mainly to ensure a broader compatibility with legacy systemswhich is an important requirement for multi-vendor environmentsthat is typical in most telcos.Figure 2: Breakdown of Aria Systems’ worldwide revenues byregion, 2017 [Source: Aria Systems and Analysys Mason]14%APAC22%EMEANA64%Figure 3: Breakdown of Aria Systems’ worldwide revenues byindustry, 2017 [Source: Aria Systems and Analysys Mason]Business ialTechnology5%42%AutomotiveCommunication
4Aria Systems: digital transformationTelco strategyAria System’s unique selling proposition is to help acceleratedigital transformation by providing an agile overlay layer toaugment legacy billing systems. This helps CSPs to supportstreaming content and third party services which may not bepossible on legacy platforms.Aria has designed its platform to coexist with incumbent legacysystems which often is a huge bottleneck for CSPs deployingadjunct or overlay systems. This is also a key differentiator for Ariaas compared to SaaS billing vendors without telco expertise.The Aria platform makes use of an extensible object model whichsupports complex hierarchical relationships between individuals,corporate entities, devices, and locations. The platform also offersembedded business process automation tools for codelesscreation of proprietary business rules swiftly.Another key differentiator for Aria cloud billing platform is itsability to process streaming records including non-billable ones.Because of the large volumes of records generated by CSPs,many cloud based billing systems filter out non-billable recordswhich may hold important information regarding the customer.Aria has a strong focus on ensuring high levels of availability forits services to allay any concerns around reliability. In 2017, thecompany’s uptime was 99.998%Figure 4: Aria Sample Telco Ecosystem [Source: Aria Systems,2018]Enterprise Service RP/GLOrder OrchestrationCRMEcommerceMediationRatingProduct CatalogCustomer SupportBillingAccount ManagementRevenue ManagementCustomer InsightsIntegration-Ready APIsActive OrchestrationLegacyCore BusinessBillingOSSNetwork InventoryService InventoryService OrchestrationService AssuranceCustomer ServiceEntitlement / mentPaymentProcessorExternal BICustomer CareContract MgmtField ServiceEPC/OMEcommerce
5Aria Systems: digital transformationArchitecture overviewFigure 5 : Architecture overview of Aria Systems cloud-billing platform [Source: Aria Systems 2018]Recurring Customer Lifecycle ManagementModern dling,& PricingBilling &PaymentsAccountManagementCollections& tensibility & IntegrationFront &EntitlementAria forSalesforceGeneralLedgerBack OfficeBI &Analytics
6Aria Systems: digital transformationTier 1 US based cable provider transforms enterprise billing by deploying Aria’scloud-based billing platformSTATE OF THE BUSINESS 1 40BTotal companyrevenues(USD)FOCUS OF THIS EFFORTPROJECT APPROACH 440M5017111805%MultitenancyRevenue fromnew lines ofbusinessEmployeesdedicated tomanual billingImpacted linesof businessNumber ofcurrent billingsystemsCountriesCapexexpenditureEffort ondevelopmentand SS DRIVERS Focus on augmenting traditional lines ofbusiness with new “digital first” initiatives.Achieving end-to-end automation andeliminating manual processes is required. Many new lines of business are the result ofacquisition, with disparate technology stacksassociated with each one. Legacy on-premise billing systems notdesigned for non-traditional telco offerings.Flexibility often requires time consumingand expensive customization.STRATEGY Launch 17 new LOBs on a new convergedbilling platform in 18 months. Focus on shifting from price competition toservice innovation, quality and value-addedbundles. Adopt an opex-based, cloud-first strategythat achieves adherence to proprietarybusiness practices via configuration ratherthan custom coding.ANALYSIS Aria’s native cloud billing platform wasselected as the underlying billing platformfor the initiative. First 12 of 17 LOBslaunched successfully in first year of theproject. The project has provided significant costbenefits to the operator in terms of lowercapex, reduced development efforts andfaster time to market for new offerings. Moving to a cloud-based configurableplatform has improved overall operationalagility.BENEFITSRapid launch of new servicesSignificant cost savings17 new LOBs launched in 18 months on singleplatform
Aria Systems: digital transformationSignificant customersFigure 8a: Aria System’s key customers and scope of deployment across all industry verticalsIndustrysegmentBusiness challengeCustomer and solution scopeTelcoAggregation of multiple B2B non-core-telco services frommultiple legacy systems onto single cloud based platformTelstra – Ability to bill for any measurable unit of any service. Full support forindividually contracted rates. Multi-level hierarchical billing. Tight integrations withmultiple best-of-breed cloud systems and incumbent legacy systems.TelcoEliminate manual processes. Required scalable singlesystem to replace collection of legacy systems andradically improve time to market.Comcast – Embedded business process automation (Aria Workflow). Support forcomplex hierarchical billing. Out-of-the-box customer care user interface. Supportfor combinations of subscription and usage-based billing models.PublishingMovement from “shrink-wrapped” software delivery modelto SaaS/subscription model.Adobe - Rapid implementation and time to market. Tight integration to externalcustomer master system (SAP).InfrastructureMulti-layered channel distribution model with billing needsat all levels.Vmware – N-level hierarchical account billingAutomotiveRollout of first-ever recurring digital business underStarlink branded connected vehicle services.Subaru – Fully PCI compliant integration with mobile application and web-basedself service portal. Multi-currency support.HomeAutomationBundling of new IoT-based remote monitoring servicewith existent physical goods.Generac – Integration with external product catalogue (SAP), service provisioningwith cellular carrier (Verizon), and third party service providers (dealer network).Home SecurityBundling of new IoT-based remote monitoring andstorage services with existent physical goods (homesecurity cameras).Netgear (Arlo) – Support for complex product bundling. PCI Level 1 compliance.EntertainmentMassive product catalogue, constantly changing mixturesof free and paid content, high volume serviceactivation/de-activation, significant holiday activityspikes.Roku – Fully automated proration. Tight integration with bespoke user interface(proprietary set-top box) and service entitlement platform.7
Aria Systems: digital transformationSignificant customers (continued)Figure 8b: Aria System’s key customers and scope of deployment across all industry verticalsIndustrysegmentBusiness challengeCustomer and solution scopeHealthcareNew usage-based “pay per scan” model for avoidance ofcapex expenditure for large medical equipment atsmaller medical facilitiesPhilips Medical – Rating of complex usage records. Tight integration with SAP.Hierarchical B2B billing.MunicipalServicesMassive product catalogue (200K SKUs). Unsupportedand inflexible bespoke legacy platform.Falck – Hierarchical product catalogue eliminated SKU proliferation. Business userconfiguration to create/sunset products without engineering support.PublishingLegacy system designed for print media, not digitalsubscriptions.DePersgroep – Support for hybrid physical/digital product bundles. Tightintegration with external customer care platform and op new lines of business based on subscriptionreplacing physical service delivery. No native supportwithin incumbent systems.Pitney Bowes – Rapid implementation within 2 months. Support for all geographiesand currencies. Integration with external product catalogue and SAP generalledger.PublishingLegacy system designed for print media, not digitalsubscriptions.DePersgroep – Support for hybrid physical/digital product bundles. Tightintegration with external customer care platform and entitlement/deliveryplatform.8
9Aria Systems: digital transformationAnalysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threatsST R EN GT HSOPPOR TUNITIES Aria Systems is the leading cloud-based provider of billing solutions fortelcos. Aria has multiple tier-1 telco customers and continues to attractinterest from CSPs across all regions. Aria Systems is well placed to address the emerging opportunity drivenby the increasing emphasis by telcos to move their infrastructure to acloud based architecture framework. The company’s cross industry expertise is viewed as an advantageespecially as telcos are increasingly considering opportunities in servingenterprise customers. The high cost of supporting and maintaining legacy billing systems aredriving telcos to experiment with cloud-based solutions for emergingdigital economy use cases. Aria’s focus on developing and pre-integrating a large number of legacyintegration points is a key advantage in working with telcos with multiplelegacy systems.WEAKN ES S ESTHR EATS Aria Systems portfolio is limited to billing which makes them reliant ontechnology partners in order to sell to operators who are keen onbroader solution suites. Large, well entrenched telco product vendors are slowly waking up toaddress the SaaS billing opportunity which will lead to higher competitionin this segment. Aria Systems ability to expand to new regions and successfully delivermultiple large scale projects will be dependent on partnerships with SIsand other local service providers. Selling to telcos usually involves long sales cycles that could be 2-3times as long as selling to enterprises. This can be challenging for smalland mid sized vendors.
Aria Systems: digital transformationAbout the authorJohn Abraham (Principal Analyst) is a member of Analysys Mason's Telecoms Software and Networks Research team. He leadsour Monetisation Platforms programme and our research into digital experience for monetisation platforms, as part of the DigitalExperience programme. John also contributes to our research into cloud-native architecture models, which is covered as part of the DigitalInfrastructure Strategies programme. John has been part of the telecoms industry since 2006, and joined Analysys Mason in early 2012. Hehas worked on a range of telco projects for operators in Africa, Europe, India and the Middle East. Before joining Analysys Mason, he worked forseveral years for a BSS vendor and before that for Dell Inc in India. John holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Anna University(India) and an MBA from Bradford University School of Management (UK).10
11Aria Systems: digital transformationAnalysys Mason’s consulting and research are uniquely positionedAnalysys Mason’s consulting services and research portfolioCONSULTINGWe deliver tangible benefits to clients across the telecomsindustry: communications and digital service providers, vendors,financial and strategic investors, private equity andinfrastructure funds, governments, regulators, broadcasters,and service and content providers.Our sector specialists understand the distinct local challengesfacing clients, in addition to the wider effects of global forces.We are future-focused and help clients understand the challengesand opportunities that new technology brings.RESEARCHOur dedicated team of analysts track and forecast the differentservices accessed by consumers and enterprises.We offer detailed insight into the software, infrastructure andtechnology delivering those services.Clients benefit from regular and timely intelligence, and directaccess to analysts.
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Aria Systems: digital transformationPUBLISHED BY ANALYSYS MASON LIMITED IN NOVEMBER 2018Bush House North West Wing Aldwych London WC2B 4PJ UKTel: 44 (0)20 7395 9000 Email: research@analysysmason.com www.analysysmason.com/research Registered in England and Wales No. 5177472 Analysys Mason Limited 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher.Figures and projections contained in this report are based on publicly available information only and are produced by the Research Division of Analysys Mason Limited independently of anyclient-specific work within Analysys Mason Limited. The opinions expressed are those of the stated authors only.Analysys Mason Limited recognises that many terms appearing in this report are proprietary; all such trademarks are acknowledged and every effort has been made to indicate them by thenormal UK publishing practice of capitalisation. However, the presence of a term, in whatever form, does not affect its legal status as a trademark.Analysys Mason Limited maintains that all reasonable care and skill have been used in the compilation of this publication. However, Analysys Mason Limited shall not be under any liability forloss or damage (including consequential loss) whatsoever or howsoever arising as a result of the use of this publication by the customer, his servants, agents or any third party.
Comcast -Embedded business process automation (Aria Workflow). Support for complex hierarchical billing. Out-of-the-box customer care user interface. Support . DePersgroep -Support for hybrid physical/digital product bundles. Tight integration with external customer care platform and entitlement/delivery platform. Business
