AUSTIN, Texas, August 25, 2003 - Motive (Company
Profile, Past
Stories, Case
Studies), the leading provider of service
management software, today announced the availability of Motive Usage
Policy Manager, the company's first product from its Project Krakatoa
initiative to help communications providers automate service policies
that drive more profitable broadband businesses. Sold to DSL and cable
broadband providers, Motive Usage Policy Manager models the
network-subscriber-bandwidth capacity ecosystem, correlates bandwidth
consumption with specific subscriber services, and automates service
policies that optimize provider profits.
Motive created Project Krakatoa earlier this year in response to growing
market demands for a new breed of management software to address
critical business issues such as subscriber churn and excessive use or
misuse of bandwidth. With access to network data only, traditional
management vendors fundamentally lack context of the service at the
subscriber and application level, making their solutions unable to
automate policies beyond packet management at the aggregate level. In
contrast, Motive Usage Policy Manager gives providers maximum
intelligence and tools to enhance profit from existing broadband
services, roll out new services and manage their networks more
effectively.
"Broadband providers are in a constant battle to keep their network
capacity in line with subscriber usage needs, while preventing costly
customer churn," said Michael Harris, president and principal analyst at
leading broadband industry analyst firm Kinetic Strategies. "To ensure
network availability for their subscribers and long-term profitability
for their services, providers must find ways to correlate subscriber,
service and network data to take intelligent actions. Companies like
Motive are helping providers do just that by abstracting network data to
enable business decision makers to manage and enforce customer
policies."
Avoiding Churn and Managing Excessive Bandwidth Use
Subscriber churn represents a major problem in residential broadband
today. High subscriber churn rates are costing providers millions in
acquisition costs and lost revenue. This issue is made worse by recent
pricing changes in the industry and increasing competitive broadband
options for subscribers. Traditional network management tools and
organizations are not equipped to correlate network and service data to
indicate potential churn.
In addition, excessive bandwidth use is creating challenges for
providers. The proliferation of peer-to-peer applications like music and
video file sharing are driving exponential and unpredictable growth in
broadband network usage. Providers are forced to allocate limited
capital expenditures to continually upgrade their networks to meet this
demand. In order to optimize network efficiency and ensure maximum
profitability, providers must understand usage data, pattern-match
subscriber behavior, and automate business policy around their existing
infrastructure.
"Traditional network management tools have done a good job in monitoring
usage and extracting important data for network operators," said Kenny
Van Zant, Motive's executive vice president for Communications.
"However, providers are looking for solutions that leverage this data to
create business policies for managing important issues like churn and
bandwidth misuse. The Motive Usage Policy Manager helps providers use
network information to automate these policies and optimize the
profitability of their broadband services."
Motive Usage Policy Manager
Motive Usage Policy Manager helps broadband providers optimize the
profitability of their networks by offering built-in policy automation
technologies. Motive software gathers data from multiple "collectors," -
including email servers, network provisioning systems, CRM applications,
operational support systems (OSS), and security systems - identifies
subscriber usage patterns, and automates policy actions to help
providers take proactive steps to address subscriber or service issues.
Specific policy automation components in Usage Policy Manager include:
* Business Rules Processor - Provides service and subscriber rules
for policy creation and automates policy variance detection;
* Policy Workflow Engine - Automates handling of subscriber
enforcement or improvement policies, including provider communication to
subscribers through multiple channels;
* Business Operations Viewer - Enables operations and customer
care to maintain current data on subscriber problems and status along
with usage trends.
Motive Usage Policy Manager contains two capabilities that can help
providers optimize network usage. Motive software can identify the
signature of subscribers on the verge of churning and automatically act
based on business rules set by the provider to prevent service
cancellation. The product can also detect inappropriate broadband usage
- such as subscribers who are exceeding bandwidth thresholds, running
commercial Web sites from home, or sharing their connection through WiFi
- and automatically send warnings or upgrade options to them to enforce
providers' policies.
Integration with core network infrastructure technologies will play an
important role in the implementation of Motive Usage Policy Manager. To
that end, the company initially will integrate its product with Juniper
Networks' line of solutions.
"Motive Usage Policy Manager offers broadband providers a valuable tool
for managing and enforcing their network policies," said Tony Scarfo,
director of business development, Juniper Networks. "The integration of
our SDX-300 Service Deployment System with Motive's policy automation
technology gives providers access to the data required to identify any
form of service abuse, as well as the network intelligence to
dynamically enforce policies directly to their subscribers."
Motive's solutions, proven through years of experience, have been used
by broadband service providers to enable more than 15 million subscriber
activations and e-care deployments worldwide. At the current rates,
broadband service providers are leveraging Motive solutions to activate
over 20,000 subscribers daily. Service providers that use Motive
solutions represent 70% of all North American broadband subscribers and
50% of all European subscribers. Motive counts seven of the top eight
North American service providers and ten leading European providers as
customers.
About Motive
Motive is the leading provider of service management software for Global
2000 businesses. The Motive Service Management Suite is the only
software solution that enables companies to manage process and
technology ecosystems in a business-relevant way. Motive's patented
technology and approach have been proven in more than 25 million
implementations worldwide by market leaders such as 3Com, Bell Canada,
BellSouth, British Telecommunications, cablecom, Charter Communications,
Cox Communications, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard,
Hyperion, Mercury Interactive, Microsoft Business Solutions, NTL, SBC
Communications, Telewest, TELUS, Time Warner Cable, VERITAS Software,
and Verizon. Motive was founded in May 1997 and is backed by leading
venture capital firms and private investors. For more information, visit
www.motive.com.
The Motive logo, Motive Communications, Inc., Motive Service Management
Suite, and MotiveSmart are trademarks or registered trademarks of Motive
Communications, Inc. All other products or services mentioned herein are
trademarks of their respective holders.
email this article