Amdocs and IBM Form Global Alliance to Help Telecoms Successfully Transform and Compete as Next-Generation Service Providers

Alliance will introduce market leading solutions to reduce risk and accelerate the business benefits from next-generation networks and communication services 


ST. LOUIS and ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 8  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Amdocs (NYSE: DOX), the leading provider of software and services to enable integrated customer management and the intentional customer experience(TM), and IBM today announced a global alliance to address the next-generation networks (NGN) transformation needs of service providers in the telecommunications industry. Amdocs and IBM are combining resources and portfolios to offer solutions that address the most challenging business issues of telecoms as they transform their business in response to intensifying convergence, consolidation and competition in the marketplace.

Telecommunication providers are confronted with unprecedented change as they build out their NGN capabilities while trying to deliver the business imperatives of reducing cost, increasing business flexibility and achieving the intentional customer experience. Solutions from the alliance will help companies achieve these imperatives, while ensuring that service providers transform their business operations faster, more effectively and with lower risk than the competition.

"Transformation of legacy systems is a priority for many service providers at present, as they attempt to clean up after years of M&A, new service launches and convergence," said Jessica Figueras, practice leader for Service Infrastructure at Ovum. "Yet the sheer size of these transformation projects creates risk, not least because of the number of different suppliers potentially involved. Anything that suppliers can do to help their customers reduce these risks is welcome, and therefore it is good to see Amdocs and IBM formalizing their alliance with this as their focus."

Amdocs and IBM will provide unmatched coverage of the business and technical products required to span and unite service providers' next-generation business support and operations support systems (BSS and OSS): Customer Management, Revenue Management and Service and Resource Management. The alliance will supplement these product capabilities with extensive and proven systems integration and business change services, which will significantly reduce implementation risk and cost for service providers.

Building on insights gleaned through years of working together, the Amdocs-IBM relationship will initially introduce two solutions that will enable service providers to deliver superior customer service and increase revenue: Order to Cash and Triple Play. The Order to Cash solution will help service providers reduce the cycle time and costs of delivering a new product or service upon receiving a customer order.  The Triple Play solution is designed to reduce time to market for new services, bundles or packages, including wireline and wireless voice, data and video.

As part of the agreement, Amdocs will leverage its entire product portfolio for the joint solutions. This will be enhanced with leading service-oriented architecture-based (SOA-based) WebSphere process automation middleware and platform support across the Amdocs portfolio for the IBM System p POWER running the AIX 5.3 operating system. Working together, IBM and Amdocs services organizations will deliver an optimized offering addressing providers' business problems while concurrently optimizing the technical operating environment.

"With this new global alliance, Amdocs and IBM are leveraging our combined extensive experience to offer unparalleled breadth, depth and scale of capabilities to service providers to help them harness convergence and cope with competition," said Michael Matthews, chief marketing officer of Amdocs. "IBM's industry-leading systems integration capabilities, hardware and middleware, combined with Amdocs' innovative software, services and deep telecom expertise, will enable service providers to control costs, increase efficiency and become more agile to deliver a compelling and differentiating customer experience."

"This important alliance between two market leaders represents a long-term commitment between our companies and to our joint customers. Amdocs' offerings are designed to tackle convergence, competition and complexity and the combination of our assets allows us to deliver industry-leading solutions on proven IBM infrastructure, leveraging our combined expertise for the benefit of our clients," said Mike Hill, general manager, Global Telecommunications industry at IBM.

About Amdocs

Amdocs combines innovative software and services with deep business knowledge to accelerate implementation of integrated customer management by the world's leading service providers. By delivering a comprehensive portfolio of software and services that spans the customer lifecycle, Amdocs enables service companies to deliver an intentional customer experience(TM), which results in stronger, more profitable customer relationships. Service providers also benefit from a rapid return on investment, lower total cost of ownership and improved operational efficiencies. A global company with revenue of $2.48 billion in fiscal 2006, Amdocs has over 16,000 employees and serves customers in more than 50 countries around the world. For more information, visit Amdocs at http://www.amdocs.com/.

About IBM

For more information about IBM, please visit http://www.ibm.com/informationondemand

Amdocs Forward-Looking Statement

This press release includes information that constitutes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about Amdocs' growth and business results in future quarters. Although we believe the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be obtained or that any deviations will not be material. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to, the effects of general economic conditions, Amdocs' ability to grow in the business segments it serves, adverse effects of market competition, rapid technological shifts that may render the Company's products and services obsolete, potential loss of a major customer, our ability to develop long-term relationships with our customers, and risks associated with operating businesses in the international market. Amdocs may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, however the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These and other risks are discussed at greater length in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2006, filed on December 13, 2006 and in our quarterly 6-K furnished on February 6, 2007.

  Media Contacts:

  Amdocs
  Normalinda Gonzalez
  Tel: [phone]
  

  IBM
  Jan Walbridge
  [phone]
  

DATASOURCE: Amdocs



CONTACT:  Normalinda Gonzalez, of Amdocs, [phone],

; or Jan Walbridge, of IBM, [phone],

 



Web site:  http://www.amdocs.com/

http://www.ibm.com/informationondemand 

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