History and Vision

MetraTech History

In 1995, prior to founding the company itself, what was to become MetraTech’s core team unexpectedly hit the proverbial wall with the innovative business model that they were implementing. Their Business Support Systems (BSS), both externally purchased and internally developed, were forcing unacceptable compromises in their desired business model, internal processes and their ability to interact with customers and partners.

The systems in question had a broad range of modules and were chock-full of features, but the recurring theme was that many of those features weren’t a fit. In fact, every time the team tried to innovate or simply diverge from what the systems had been specifically designed to do they incurred significant timelines, costs and risk. Surely, they thought, there must be a better approach.

MSIX to XML to SOA

During a brainstorming session, the team had an epiphany. The key to the explosive growth of the Internet was its protocols, HTTP and HTML. These enabled anyone to connect to a website running on any operating system, any hardware, any middleware, and any web server – anywhere in the world. Even more significantly, each user’s experience could be completely unique and completely tailored.

HTML, a derivative of SGML, was simple, extensible, and made use of natural-language identifiers. HTTP enabled trouble-free network connectivity.

Shouldn’t it be possible to derive an HTML-like protocol from SGML that enabled network elements and applications to connect to BSS in a similarly seamless fashion?

In 1996, the team developed the Metered Services Information eXchange (MSIX) protocol. It was derived from SGML and used natural-language identifiers to dynamically define and submit service usage. Using HTTP/SSL for network connectivity and security, MSIX transactions could be safely and seamlessly transmitted across corporate networks or the Internet.

The team submitted MSIX to the IETF in 1998, and it was embraced by IP-centric technologists. However, the majority of people with whom we shared it with at that time viewed it as a “stupid idea.” It should be noted that in 1998 the W3C released the first draft of XML, which was also derived from SGML and is substantially similar to MSIX.

Recently, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on XML and HTTP have become the Holy Grail of the OSS/BSS market and this is exactly what the MetraTech team has been doing since 1996.

Tyrants and Dictators Not Welcome

In looking at the progression of the BSS market the team realized that BSS solutions had already transitioned through two distinct generations (see Figure 1 below). In the first or “Bespoke” generation, the only empowered user was the developer. To make even a simple rate change, a software developer would need to actually change code resulting in high cost, risk and timeframe. The reason for this was that both the business logic and the data were hardwired into the underlying technology.

The tyranny of the bespoke model clearly drove a large number of entrepreneurs to revolt and create next-generation products (referred to “traditional” below). These products brought value in many areas, but if you boil it down their core value innovation was their creation of an application which empowered a non-technical user to quickly change rates and offerings. The creation of the Offering Administrator role resulted in a profound reduction in the time, cost and risk associated with changes to or the creation of new offerings. ISVs accomplished this by liberating the data from the underlying technology and storing it in a relational database (reference data).

So how did their promising and successful revolt itself end in tyranny? While they were very successful liberating the data values from the underlying technology the business logic, processes and data model were still entangled with the underlying technology. Thus the system’s fit was only as good as the ISV’s ability to predict the team’s specific future. In essence, their well intentioned features began to dictate how the team could evolve their business model.

The tyranny of this approach drove the MetraTech team to revolt and to envision a radical new approach.

Why Compromise?

MetraTech Corp. was founded in 1998 with a vision to develop a new approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care. One that enabled organizations in any industry to invent new models and embrace change without compromise. The team realized that their dynamic billing protocol was about as useful as a Ferrari on ice to a “traditional” product, so they set another high design bar – to build a product that liberated the business logic, processes and data model from the underlying technology.

To accomplish this, the team created an application that enabled a business analyst to configure these areas. This profoundly reduces the timeline, cost and risk to change a business model. While the business analyst’s role previously existed, they were only empowered to write specifications for developers to implement.

Consider just the product catalog and rating modules. As previously discussed, the primary value innovation of the prior generation was liberating just the data values for an offering. Unlike traditional products our product, MetraNet, also liberates the business logic, processes and data model that operates on that data.

To accomplish this, MetraNet makes pervasive use of metadata and componentization. Since XML was by then becoming the business language of the Internet and MetraNet’s APIs were XML-based, we chose XML as our metadata implementation technology.

MetraNet, now in version 6.0, is completely metadata-driven. Using an application a business analyst is able to dynamically create a service. Then, MetraNet will do the rest – dynamically generating a database schema, a workflow, a set of web GUIs, and SOA-compliant APIs in a matter of minutes. These dynamic services have been used for a wide-range of OSS/BSS operations including: rating usage events, supporting advice of charge inquires, calculating revenue shares and commissions, creating accounts, provisioning satellite TV viewing rights, IN-based SIM card activation, etc.

Stupid Network and Stupid BSS

If you are conceptually wondering why MetraNet’s approach is fundamentally superior to a traditional approach, you need to look no further than the success of IP itself. Michael Isenberg, in his prophetic white paper, “The Rise of the Stupid Network,” clearly articulated why IP would replace the Intelligent Network (IN).

In summary his thesis argues that the IN is intelligent and therein lies its problem: The IN tells the data what to do. IP, on the other hand, lets the data tell the network what to do. Thus, Isenberg coined the term “Stupid Network” to describe IP.

The IN guys predicted a future that revolved around switched voice circuits. They were right for a long time, but eventually the tyranny of having voice completely entangled with the underlying technology drove the IP revolt.

It is IP’s data-up (“stupid”) rather than IN’s network-down (“intelligent”) philosophy that has enabled IP to change the world as we know it. It is also why IP, by definition, is at the core of all SOA and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) solutions. Isenberg correctly predicted that the “Stupid Network” would lead to services that were “mixed and interspersed at will,” a precursor to IMS Composite Applications.

Traditional BSS products are conceptually similar to the IN. They are flexible within their defined context, but they have a top-down (“intelligent”) view of the world. They run into significant issues when attempting to support requirements for which the system was not explicitly designed because their business logic (intelligence) is entangled with the underlying technology.

MetraNet, on the other hand, is conceptually similar to IP. It has a data-up (“stupid”) view of the world resulting in a “tell me what to do” rather than a “I know what you want to do” philosophy. This is accomplished through the pervasive use of metadata to separate business logic, processes and data models from the underlying technology.

Thus, “IP is to networks as metadata is to BSS.”

Market Need

Is there a market need for MetraNet’s unique ability to automate business processes and business models that address rapidly changing, complex or radical business strategies?  MetraNet is deployed globally, enabling diverse customers to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 17 currencies and 52 countries. These MetraNet implementations have already provided a wide range of solutions that no other product could have achieved without a massive amount of time, cost and effort.

For example:

• Swisscom Eurospot invented a very sophisticated, custom negotiated, dynamically weighted hotspot commissioning model. It was implemented on MetraNet with two people in just over two months.
• EchoStar’s Dish Network had a business imperative to be first to market with an innovative pre-paid satellite TV offering. MetraNet was implemented by four people in 42 days resulting in EchoStar presenting MetraTech with an award for the “Fastest Implementation of a Major IT Project.”
• Premiere Global Services focuses on one-to-one marketing by creating a completely tailored contract for each customer. The company has more than 300 services and 40 million active rates and rules. Using metadata modeling, the implementation team was able to programmatically create the product offerings, subscriptions, volume discounts and migrate the rates and rules via XML in one day. Furthermore, one of the usage-based services had a 121-field CDR and required 67 distinct rating keys.

Market Recognition

Further proof of our approach is MetraTech’s recent award of two of the six 2005 World Billing Awards. Hugh Roberts, consultant director of BSS/OSS events at IIR Telecoms and chairman of the Judging Panel, said:

"We received a very large number of worthy nominations for ‘Most Innovative Billing Product’ and the competition was fierce, so MetraTech’s success in this category is notable. The judging panel believe that their metadata-driven approach represents a significant development in billing methodology and is highly compatible with the evolving role of billing systems to cover end-to-end financial transaction management.

“Most importantly, MetraTech’s approach potentially allows for much greater agility in the development and fulfilment of new business models - a critical requirement in the new generation environment where complex multi-channel services will need to be deployed to ensure service provider profitability. The implementation of MetraNet for Swisscom Eurospot is a good example of this and was one of the most highly regarded of all the nominations we received in all categories. The participants in the project not only faced up to the challenges of complex partner management involved in the Wi-Fi environment but also introduced new and highly effective business logic to allow for intricate, elegant and configurable commissioning structures. All in all a great service provider success story which fully deserved the win in the ‘Best Non-Voice Billing Category’.”

Conclusion

While MetraTech’s dynamic, metadata-driven approach of separating business logic, process and data models from the underlying technology may seem unattainable to some. Most people thought the same way about IP in the early nineties; “IP, the protocol of the future that will replace the IN? I think not,” they said. No one is having that debate today. IP and IMS are enabling the deployment of services and business models that were previously inconceivable.

Business realities and intense competition continue to validate MetraTech’s innovative approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care. MetraNet is the platform of choice for organizations that demand agility and excellence without compromise.

Were our early critics right about our approach? Ironically, yes – in the same way that most dismissed the notion that IP would replace the IN. It was a “stupid” approach, but they completely missed the point. The traditional BBS providers use their intelligence to predict and then dictate rather than providing the means for a business analyst to configure their desired business model.