Xacct turns network usage data into revenue opportunity

Software developer Xacct has moved beyond its network activity accounting and billing application roots to unveil a platform that tightly integrates back-office applications with a service provider's IP infrastructure.

The company's Network-to-Business (N2B) software is designed to provide a bidirectional, "real-time" link between a service provider's physical network infrastructure and its operations and business systems. This linkage ties network usage to automated service provisioning, in addition to billing.

N2B captures detailed usage data from network and service provisioning devices, analyzes the data based on business policies and correlates it to a subscriber's usage profile. From this data, service providers can generate additional revenue based on actual network usage, Xacct says.

The software collects and aggregates usage data from routers, switches and network probes, and from applications such as e-mail, Web browsers and servers, and video. N2B sends this data to back-office business applications for further analysis, which then execute Xacct's transactional service provisioning engine to turn up new services.

This type of automation reduces or eliminates the need for a subscriber to interface with a service provider's call center and network engineering personnel, which are typically required when services are provisioned manually, Xacct says. N2B is accessible from a Web browser so service options can be added or quickly modified by a service provider's customer service agents or end users.

N2B is comprised of two components: Xacctusage and the Xacct Interface Server (XIS). Xacctusage captures IP session and transaction information from network devices and translates the data into intelligible usage information.

XIS includes a data export engine and transaction-based service provisioning engine. The data export engine feeds back-office applications with application-specific data streams. The service provisioning engine can be configured to execute provisioning commands across multiple devices in different locations.

Any back-office application integrated with XIS can then activate, deactivate, configure, modify or delete a service or service option, Xacct says.

N2B is available now and in use by 60 customers worldwide, Xacct says. Pricing is dependent on the number of network elements, services and subscribers, but a typical entry price ranges from $300,000 to $500,000, Xacct says.