Openet announces launch of Evolved Charging Suite 8.0
abril 15, 2020 - Openet
Latest version of Openet Charging System delivers 30% processing efficiency gains
Dublin, 15th April 2020 – Openet, a leader in the supply of Digital BSS, today announced the launch of Evolved Charging Suite (ECS) 8.0, the latest version of Openet’s market-leading convergent charging system. Providing a 30% improvement in processing efficiency, ECS 8.0 is designed to cater for the high volume of data traffic that will be generated by 5G, as well as to the rapidly expanding use cases and numbers of devices.
Built on the Openet microservices platform, ECS 8.0 is cloud-native, containerised and based on a Service-Based Architecture (SBA). ECS has been 5G compliant since early 2019, and the latest version adds improvements in efficiency to further lower operating costs along with new usability and observability features.
It also delivers improvements to enable 5G distributed and edge based charging & rating, to support reductions in bandwidth and traffic routing for the increasing number of transactions expected in 5G. These improvements are our first step towards the future needs of edge based urLLC use cases.
ECS 8.0 leverages open source in order to provide a more efficient solution. This includes the use of software such as Docker, Kubernetes, elasticsearch and Kafka. Tony Gillick, GVP Product Management, Openet describes that, “with a range of open source we are able to use the right tools for the right task, without being wedded to a specific technology, promoting choice and thereby reducing implementation risk. We combine the best of open source with our own software for optimal effectiveness”.
To deliver the systems that are built to enable service providers to quickly generate revenues from digital and 5G services, Openet has had to take a pragmatic approach to modern system design. Tony Gillick explains: “In some cases we found that certain open source software—such as open source mesh technologies—were not 5G telco-grade. So we developed our own. Testing has shown between 30% and 50% overhead in using pure open source mesh compared to the Openet-developed version. We believe that taking a practical approach to telco-grade microservices implementations rather than following purist microservice development patterns works best. This allows us to deliver on the business benefits of using microservices without compromising the network grade performance and latencies that 5G charging systems will need. Of course, 3G and 4G services also need to be efficiently catered for while networks evolve with 5G.”
In addition to the core charging services, and to ensure seamless migration, convergence and backward compatibility, ECS 8 provides a range of “Bridge” microservices. These ensure 3G /4G and 5G support by converting legacy interfaces such as Diameter to REST to provide a common charging core for all networks and services.
About Openet
Headquartered in Ireland with operations across the globe, Openet is the leading independent software and services provider to communications companies. Our deep domain expertise & understanding of complex systems, underpinned by the tenacity and determination of our people, enable us to radically transform how our customers do business, providing best in class digital and 5G business support systems.
In an industry where the only constant is change, our open and innovative technology is built for change. For the last 20 years we have helped the world’s most innovative communications companies manage and monetise their business and evolve from communications companies to digital service providers. This gives our customers the power to enter new markets, open new revenue streams and increase profitability.
www.openet.com
