Newsbyte: SAP Announces "Telco 2.0 Challenge," Enabling Most Innovative Business Models Free of Charge

BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today the public launch of the "Telco 2.0 Challenge" to help telecommunications companies envision and prototype innovative "Telco 2.0" business models. The announcement was made at Mobile World Congress 2012, being held February 27–March 1 in Barcelona, Spain.

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Through the challenge, SAP invites telecommunications companies to submit their best ideas for new service offerings and revenue streams — ideas that potentially cannot be deployed with existing infrastructure due to cost or inflexibility. SAP will use a proven value prototyping methodology and ready-to-run packages to configure a solution in the form of a proof of concept. This can then serve as a blueprint for helping the service provider make the transition from legacy environments that constrain innovation toward a flexible operations architecture that enables Telco 2.0 business models.

"Telco companies today face intense pressure from severe competition and an ever more complex market environment," said Simon Torrance, CEO, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative. "They don't have time or money to replace the host of assets already in place, but need to partner with companies like SAP who can quickly deploy configurable solutions that leverage and extend these existing capabilities to support new, sustainable market growth. SAP's approach to solving Telco 2.0 challenges is refreshing and I believe SAP's offer to invest with operators to rapidly turn concept into reality accelerates much needed innovation in this area."

During the pilot phase of the program, SAP brought to life an operator's innovative vision to have closer collaboration with retail partners and create a new relationship with consumers. Based on IT constraints, this business model was not possible and too expensive to create with legacy systems. The solution was configured, without writing one single line of code, via an intuitive, easy-to-use user interface, within a couple of weeks instead of several months. As a result, the operator is able to incent independent retail channels to promote a trial of their services to tablet consumers and provide a self-service interface for those consumers to convert to subscriptions for data and other value-added services.

"We truly believe that telecommunications solutions from SAP are unique with regard to both our flexibility to realize highly complex business models as well as the efficiency and speed to implement them," said Jens Amail, senior vice president, Telecommunications, SAP. "We are ready to prove to our most innovative customers that our solutions enable them to operate at Internet speed in a Telco 2.0 environment."

Based on the success of the pilot, SAP will launch the program more broadly at Mobile World Congress 2012. The company is now accepting business scenario nominations from the wider telecommunications community, and will choose scenarios to participate in the challenge from among the submissions. To learn how to join the Telco 2.0 Challenge, visit www.sap.com/telco20.

For more information, including further coverage from Mobile World Congress 2012, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @SAP_Telco.

Media Contact:
Kate McNeel, +1 (484) 624-2256, [email protected], CST

SOURCE SAP AG

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