REDMOND, Wash., and CUPERTINO, Calif., June 24, 2003 — Microsoft Corp. and Portal Software Inc. (Nasdaq
“PRSF” ), a provider of convergent billing solutions, today announced a strategic alliance to ensure that the exciting new services, devices and features offered by telecommunications and media providers worldwide are quickly delivered to customers, effectively managed and accurately billed. Microsoft and Portal will integrate Portal’s award-winning billing and subscriber management software platform with Microsoft®
.NET technologies to provide the communications industry with a .NET-connected solution that enables service providers to quickly and successfully roll out new voice, data and content services, as well as offer superior support for legacy and business-to-business (B2B) integrations, minimizing time and cost.
Service providers today are working to offer customers new services and features such as multimedia messaging, Internet Protocol-based telephony, and new devices that offer greater interaction with the Internet, but they are often hindered by the functionality of the network elements that make up their existing operation and business support systems (OSS/BSS). With a shared vision of how Web services will transform applications in the industry, Microsoft and Portal have partnered to offer BillingAgility(, a solution that will allow service providers to bill for new services while avoiding the recurring costs of upgrading or developing new code to enhance legacy functionality.
Utilizing Web services, BillingAgility is a scalable, high-performance solution designed to meet the billing and subscriber management needs of service providers today, as well as support the new services of the future. The solution combines Portal’s Infranet( software with Microsoft Windows Server (TM) 2003, SQL Server (TM) 2000 and BizTalk®
Server to deliver to customers unmatched flexibility, superior performance and reduced total cost of ownership.
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Unmatched flexibility. BillingAgility has the flexibility customers need to easily make changes to complex billing systems and interface with third-party business applications. The architecture of BillingAgility, utilizing Web service standards such as XML and SOAP, enables faster and easier integration with other applications and legacy systems, and also facilitates easier B2B integrations enabling service providers to rapidly build content partner communities. For example, the seamless connection of data from a CRM or general ledger system to BillingAgility will require less than 50 percent of the previous programming effort.
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Superior performance. BillingAgility is a billing and subscriber management solution built on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (64-bit) with the SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit). Service providers utilizing a 64-bit architecture and BillingAgility will be able to support more than 25 million subscribers and achieve faster rating and billing runs. This dramatically reduces the amount of hardware necessary to run and manage mission-critical applications and meets the processing needs of the world’s largest tier-1 carriers.
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Reduced total cost of ownership. Portal’s product-based solution model combined with Microsoft technology-based computing platforms sets a new standard for total cost of ownership benefits. BillingAgility provides an advantage to telecommunications service providers in reducing implementation time, and ongoing infrastructure costs can be significantly reduced compared with alternative approaches using custom-developed solutions.
“We are excited to partner with Portal — one of the most advanced billing companies innovating on Microsoft technology and an industry leader with a wealth of experience,”
said Goetz Kauschka, general manager of Network Service Providers at Microsoft.
“We look forward to our continued relationship to deliver service providers a rock-solid infrastructure to support their future success.”
“Microsoft is widely recognized as delivering some of the most advanced Web services technologies,”
said Bhaskar Gorti, senior vice president of marketing and alliances for Portal.
“Partnering with Microsoft, Portal is driving the adoption of Web services in the billing industry and setting new standards for business agility and reduced cost of operations to service providers.”
Portal and Microsoft will continue to work together at a strategic level to align longer-term product road maps and customer goals.
About Portal
Portal Software provides flexible billing and subscriber management solutions to enable organizations to monetize their voice and digital transactions. Portal’s convergent billing platform enables service providers to charge, bill and manage a wide range of services via multiple networks, payment models, pricing plans, and value chains. Portal’s flexible and scalable product-based solutions enable customers to introduce new value added services quickly, providing maximum business value and lower total cost of ownership. Portal’s customers include thirty-five of the top fifty wireless carriers as well as organizations such as Vodafone, AOL Time Warner, Deutsche Telekom, TELUS, NTT, China Telecom, Reuters, Telstra, China Mobile, Telenor Mobil, and France Telecom. For more information, please visit http://www.portal.com/.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, Windows Server and BizTalk are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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