NetworkIP Blog

In a post titled, “How Billing can become a Revenue Generator“, the authors of Telco 2.0 cited the many possibilities for a Telco to use their transaction processing and billing capabilities in other verticals to help solve real business problems. The article first pointed to the reliability and security problems recently in the news about the Oyster Card (an electronic ticket system used by Transport for London (TfL). The article suggests that if a Telco had been offering they Oyster Card services such problems would be much less likely to occur because Telcos have developed the infrastructure to handle high volumes of traffic, we understand the importance of reliability of pre-paid systems, and we know all about the importance of security in payment systems too.

The article went on to cite how a Telco’s transaction processing and billing capabilities can provide significant value to other verticals to include Yield Management in the airline industry and another transport system run by the TfL that enforces traffic congestion charges.

We couldn’t agree more with the article and that is why earlier this year we launched our Transaction Services Platform (TSP) which is available through use of Jaduka’s Transaction Services API. We identified that businesses were having significant problems managing huge volumes of transactions in real-time; much like the article described. Rather than these businesses being able to focus on their own product development and services they were caught up trying to manage their transactions and billing for which they really didn’t have the infrastructure or knowledge to fully support.

Over the past 10 years we’ve developed a solution that has stood the test of time and continues to be future-proof. Using our own Transaction Services Platform we successfully process and bill for over 2 million calls a day, we manage transactions for well over 800 million user accounts, and we are processing close to a million API transactions any given day.

At NetworkIP, we understand the value of security and reliability. We have invested the dollars and resources to develop what is now an award winning solution that can manage your transaction processing and billing needs so your company can maintain its focus on its products and services.

Let’s face it, the costs associated with travel are only going to continue to rise & as a result company travel budgets will be strained. Whether we are talking air travel or simply getting in a car to commute for an across town meeting, rising fuel costs are affecting all modes of travel. At NetworkIP & Jaduka we have over 300 miles separating our three offices located in Texas (Austin, Dallas, & Longview). We are part of a growing number of companies that are reducing the number of face-to-face meetings that we have with our teams in order to save money.

Telecom technologies such as voice, web, & video conferencing that have been around now for many years are really beginning to experience an upswing in their usage. We have always taken advantage of our own audio & web conferencing services & today that statement is truer than ever. Given that we can host up to 50 participants on a single conference call & because everyone at the company has access to the conferencing product we host conference calls all day long for any number of reasons. After adding document sharing capabilities to our web conferencing solution a few years back it really did become hard to justify traveling between offices for presentations.

In just the past few months, we’ve seen significant increases in the volume of conferencing minutes hosted through our solution. While a good portion of this increase in conferencing minutes is a result of the new applications & services from 3rd party developers that are using Jaduka’s conferencing API (announced at the Web 2.0 Expo in April of this year), our NetworkIP customers who are rebranding & selling our conferencing solution have seen a significant increase in usage too.

In addition to saving companies money & still allowing employees to effectively communicate these innovative telecommunications products are also creating a greener environment for the world. I read an article in the New York Times this morning that said Cisco alone is avoiding $100 million in yearly travel costs & reducing its green house gas emissions by 10% by making use of these types of products. Imagine that, companies can save money by using these telecom products & at the same time they are supporting a greener environment. It’s a win-win solution.

We are happy to see people talking about the value of APIs & specifically the value of voice APIs. Dameon Welch-Abernathy asked the question, “Is there money in voice APIs?” in a post yesterday on GigaOm. Daemon’s question resulted with mixed comments from the community & also got some real thought leaders like Thomas Howe, Ken Camp, & Doug Mohney giving their take on the topic.

Our answer to the question is absolutely yes, but only if you have an API this is versatile enough for almost any market & you have a scalable infrastructure that supports the growth of the solutions developed using your API.

When NetworkIP decided to form Jaduka the goal was to unleash the power & performance developed in 10 years of engineering a scalable & reliable telecommunications & transaction processing platform. The metrics don’t lie; we do process 450 million minutes each month on average with calls originating & terminating from all corners of the globe. Today we are processing 200 million database queries across a proven & award winning database solution. Our volume of transactions are only increasing too! We don’t hide what we have under the hood. On the contrary, we want to make this already proven solution available for the development community & businesses to take advantage of.

As Jaduka began developing APIs for the development community & businesses they didn’t limit those APIs to voice only. We have an entire suite of APIs to include account management, payment, transaction processing, point of sale, conferencing, & SMS to name a few. Whether you are looking to develop solutions for the web, retail, or mobile space Jaduka provides the API & NetworkIP provides the proven infrastructure to support your business case.

The products that Jaduka showcases in its Labs are only a small example of the products & solutions that companies can develop with Jaduka’s many APIs. We have some exciting news to come about what others have been developing with our transaction processing engine & we are actively involved in developing relationships to support the activity that is taking place in the mobile space.

As Ken Camp stated, “the community is overlooking the basics: Value, Sustainability, Scalability, & Proven Success.” Jaduka, combined with NetworkIP, has all four basic qualities & a whole lot more! Come take part in discovering more about what is under our hood & the value with not just one, but our many APIs.

Last week at the Handsets World conference in Berlin, Dr. Ari Jaaksi who is the VP of Software & Head of Open-Source Operations for Nokia may have gone to far when making an address to the Linux open-source development community. Jaaksi suggested that open-source developers need to obey certain business rules that apply in the mobile industry such as DRM, IPR, SIM locks, & subsidised business models. Jaaksi suggested that that the open-source community needed to be ‘educated’ on how the mobile industry works since this industry has not moved beyond the old business models.

Jaaksi made some valid points about code forking that if not well managed can result in code fragmentation. However valid his points about code fragmentation, the open-source community did not respond well to his approach on ‘educating’ them.

Nokia’s N800-series tablet devices are running Maemo, a Linux-based operating system. If Nokia wants the community to accept this device & continue developing applications, enhancements, for it then Nokia needs to embrace the community & the philosophy that the open-source group is charted by.

When our subsidiary, Jaduka, made its first API available for use they were very in tune with the open-source community & what that community demanded. By embracing this community, rather than trying to change the community’s approach to sotfware development, we believe our approach helped contribute to the success of that first API & the many APIs Jaduka has since released.

It’s my opinion that companies doing business today must embrace the open-source community. Companies must understand that the primary focus of the open-source community is to improve quality, reliability, make things more flexibile, lower costs, & put an end to vendor lock-in. Many of the comments by Mr. Jaaksi this past week were completely opposite of this philosphy & if not careful Nokia stands to loose the many benefits of having such a large & powerful community supporting their devices.

It was almost eight months ago in Las Vegas at IBM’s Information On Demand global conference that we were awarded IBM’s 2007 Innovation Award for Best Informix Dynamic Solution (IDS). This award highlighted one of the key attributes of our ICS8 platform which is our ability to effectively process millions of database transactions daily. Prior to receiving this acknowledgement from IBM & being so highly recognized by the database community we didn’t fully understand what a powerful transaction processing solution we had developed. For us it was just part of the philosophy that we’ve been following since day one which has been to develop a solution that is highly efficient & scalable for whatever business need presents itself. Simply stated, we develop for the future today.

When we realized how many other companies had a need for such a highly effective & scalable transaction processing engine we decided to make this engine available for other companies to access through a simple web services API which we tailor to each company’s processing needs.

Companies that are developing new solutions, especially mobile & web based solutions don’t want to be responsible for managing the abundance of data attributes associated with their user accounts & the associated amount of data kept for each user’s transactions. Nor do these companies have the time, dollars, or knowledge to develop a transaction processing solution that can support millions of transactions without delay. These companies want to & need to focus on their products & deploying those products to market as quickly as possible. With us providing the Transaction Processing Engine, these businesses are now able to deploy their solutions in record times.