ROC ASSET ASSURANCE. Product Overview. asset assurance

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1 RC ASSET ASSURANCE Product verview asset assurance

2 Introduction Telecom operators across the globe know they have a major issue controlling their network capital expenditure (capex) since they are investing huge sums of capital on new network infrastructure for advanced telecom services like LTE / 4G, IPX, etc in order to meet the demand of subscribers and service the explosive growth in data and content traffic. According to a survey, telecoms operators indicated that they could be wasting up to 20% or USD 65 Billion/year in network capex. At the crux of the problem is the unfortunate reality that operators don t have an accurate picture of what assets and inventory they already own, let alone how these assets are being used. Financial stakeholders across the telecom industry are facing major challenges with respect to audit compliance and cleaning the budget books for procurement of new assets. n the other hand, the CT and the perations team are concerned about the assets and their efficient usage across the network Faced with decreasing EBIDTA and ever increasing pressure on margins, operators can no longer afford to keep on spending like they always have on capital assets and network projects with no questions asked. But operators are not managing their assets adeptly, and these challenges are something that senior management needs to address with some urgency in order that they can control their capital expenditure more effectively. The Asset Assurance Business Problem The business challenges facing carriers today are simple, yet conflicting: argins are continually shrinking, with a subsequent impact on budgets; capital budgets remain at risk as capital preservation and avoidance are now expectations Intense pressure from the market (both customers and competition) to provide increasingly expensive products and services, which force network growth and evolution These challenges are ultimately owned by two groups: Finance and Network. From the finance perspective, the business problem that needs to be addressed is, How can we preserve capital and grow free cash in the business? From the network perspective, the problem is, How can we ensure we are using all available assets at the utmost efficiency? There are multiple dimensions to these problems, highlighted below: Does excess capacity exist on the network? Where? Do all assets exist in inventory? How can we ensure this? Are all assets carrying services? How do we know what to buy, when to buy, where to buy, and for what reason? What is the right amount of sparing and warehousing necessary to ensure network efficacy? When should assets start returning value? How can we track this? How can we choreograph asset retirement to maximize cash return? In most operators today, attempts are being made to manage these questions. For instance, Network Planning typically has significant traffic data and statistics which are used for planning and budgeting. Similarly, asset procurement and warehousing logistics have systems that manage ordering, receiving, stocking, and overall management of pre-deployed assets. What the operators lack, however, is a connected, continuous lifecycle process control that is based on the following features: Views into stranded and unutilized assets for re-deployment Views into capacity management that show node resource consumption and resulting performance impacts (Capacity in most operators today is based on traffic statistics alone) that account for network rate of change and other factors, allowing accurate predictions into necessary warehouse/sparing stocking levels to harvest and retire assets quickly and efficiently, to preserve the most value for resale A connected lifecycle view that allows assets to been seen at every stage (logistics has a limited lifecycle view of what assets it is aware of, without gating or end-of-life management

3 The goal is not to replace existing systems, but instead to compliment them by connecting network analytics into each stage of the lifecycle, which will result in significant capital savings annually for the operator. This is a complex program, going well beyond what simple network planning, forecasting, and logistics tracking have to offer. This problem requires complete, holistic views into current assets, consumption and placement of those assets, spanning all lit assets, warehoused and spared assets. This problem also requires complex analytics that are not only descriptive (show current states, trending, etc.), but also predictive, to accurately predict asset exhaustion, procurement triggering, necessary asset warehouse levels, impacts of failure and growth rates on sparing levels, and retirement strategies. A comprehensive approach to Asset Assurance, factoring all these dimensions, will provide an operator with complete confidence that its network will grow to meet market demands while also guaranteeing it is receiving the most possible value for every dollar of capital budget spent. RC Asset Assurance - Functional verview RC Asset Assurance is a complete solution, designed to fully manage and provide detailed visibility into network asset optimization and supporting capital spending practices. Through RC Asset Assurance, the operator will have complete end-to-end asset lifecycle visibility, and control over asset disposition. The functional architecture for RC Asset Assurance is illustrated below: Field Ticket Requests Asset Recovery Workflow User Console Cash-to-Cash Asset Decommission Executive Network Capex gmt Network RI gmt External Systems Export Field Ticket Requests Network Intelligence Automated Processing Layer 1,2,3 Discovery Capacity Discovery Topology Discovery Inventory ERP Data and etrics Budget Data Procurement Data Stranded Assets Available Capacity Available Assets Exhaustion Data Complex Process anagement Procurement Asset ptimizer Automated KPI Tracking Automated Alerting Issue anagement (Case Workflow) Automatic Correction (Asset Inventory) External Case Tools Financial Tracking Provisioning Platforms Warehouse Data Retirement Data Diamond Data Input odule (Parse, Translate, Normalize, Load) thers Customer Level etrics Vendor SLA Data rder Data Product Data RC Asset Assurance is a solution that is built on the RC (Revenue perations Center) product suite, which provides integration into not only existing Subex solutions (Revenue Assurance, Fraud, Partner Settlements, etc.), but also external systems (billing, order management, ticketing, accounting, CR, etc.). Through its access to the full power of the RC suite, RC Asset Assurance enables users, administrators, and executive stakeholders unprecedented access to tools and analytics that facilitate efficient and effective policy management, process enforcement, and overall Capex optimization.

4 RC Asset Assurance - Technical verview The functional architecture displayed in Figure 1 of the previous section highlights several key areas of RC Asset Assurance functionality. RC Asset Assurance, as a member of the RC suite, is a J2EE-based environment, built on the Spark platform architecture shared by most Subex products today. For web services, RC Asset Assurance employs Apache/Tomcat server functionality, and JBSS, with available connectivity to other common industry web services technologies. Utilizing several features, including DBC/JDBC plug-ins and Hibernate driver technology, RC Asset Assurance supports most common operating systems and database technologies today, including (but not limited to): perating systems Windows Server Sun Solaris HPUX AIX thers Database technologies racle SSQL DB2 thers RC Asset Assurance has taken a technology agnostic approach to its overall support matrix, allowing customers to access its advanced features and capabilities without being tied to any single technology. The technical architecture of RC Asset Assurance is three-tiered, and illustrated in Figure 2 below: Presentation Layer Application Layer Dashboards/ DICE Server Thin Client Application Server Apache Web Server Ajax rhtml others JBSS Caching Hibernate DBC/JDBC Apache Logging JD JTA Java Binaries Collect, Parse, Translate, Normalize and Load Java Classes J2EE Hibernate JDBC SFTP SA Layer / Diamond ETL Layer BSS/SS Systems Assets & Transactions Database Layer Database Server RACLE S SQL Server others Data Warehouse Figure 2 RC AA Technical Architecture

5 Not all RC Asset Assurance components need be engaged to start realizing significant capital savings and avoidance opportunities. However, Discovery capability (DI or existing discovery within the operator) is required. Discovery is critical to understand current state and rate of change in the network. Inventory-only views of the network are often highly inaccurate, since inventory data has difficulty keeping pace with continual network changes, and inventory systems do not shed light into reasoning behind network growth and change. Capacity analytics, however, are not required, but do provide a strong set of data that contribute to procurement gating decisions and overall asset utilization efficiency. RC Asset Assurance Program Deliverables A complete program of RC Asset Assurance would encompass the continual monitoring and management of assets across their lifecycle. This differs from common practices employed by Inventory and Network Support systems, and ERP systems, since those environments lack: Complete visibility across the entire lifecycle Daily updated analytics that factor network rate of change, and asset status changes Ability to connect planning, procurement, staging, and deployment to the revenue generation (or loss) associated with production and eventual retirement Visibility into revenue and production performance analytics The overall industry-recognized network asset lifecycle is pictured below: Forecast Plan Budget Purchase Receive Deploy perate Redeploy Retire Within the Subex RC Asset Assurance program, each section of this lifecycle is instrumented with the following features for daily use by the operator: Process triggers Insightful dashboards with cube analysis KPIs and alerting to important conditions Daily, prioritized case work items associated with: Network asset re-positioning recommendations and supporting analysis Service re-grooming recommendations and supporting analysis Purchasing recommendations, supporting analysis and validated triggers Visualized asset lifecycle statuses, and associated reporting As part of the program, Finance/CF stakeholders will be provided a RC dashboard, giving a holistic, network-wide view of not only asset lifecycles, but to-date tracking of capital spend vs. budget, avoidance realized, and tracking of predicted budget based on network analytics. n the back end, Subex AAS (Advanced Services) will consist of an embedded team that will drive the sourcing, creation, and tuning of all analytics, instrumentation, and overall user interface environments. This will be transparent to the operator user community, thus keeping their focus entirely on consuming and acting on the output intelligence. RC Asset Assurance Solution atrix The following chart highlights the required and optional functionality necessary to support each of the 3 primary RC Asset Assurance solution spaces:

6 RC Asset Assurance Solution atrix The following chart highlights the required and optional functionality necessary to support each of the 3 primary RC Asset Assurance solution spaces: Network Intelligence Capacity Lifecycle Physical Discovery Logical Discovery Topology Inventory Reconciliation Discrepancy anagement Resource Utilization Discovery Time to Exhaust Service Impacts Procurement Triggers Re-homing Recommendations Re-grooming Recommendations Warehouse Balancing Recommendations Decommission anagement = andatory = ptional RC Asset Assurance Summary RC Asset Assurance represents several firsts in the industry: The first program dedicated to complete, end-to-end management and optimization of network Capex The first program to employ complex process management and predictive analytics to network optimization and growth, across the entire lifecycle (not just project-specific planning) The first program to look at current network performance and optimization as a gating factor for additional growth in expenditures The first program to provide comprehensive tools to Network Planning, Field Services, and Finance that support Capex need while also ensuring network optimization The first program to utilize powerful network discovery intelligence as a tool to drive Capex planning (reliance on inventory has been proven to be highly inaccurate) perators have matured in Capex diligence processes as network growth and costs has significantly outpaced network revenues. RC Asset Assurance stands alone in the world today as an agnostic tool to give Network stakeholders tremendous power to drive decisioning, while giving Finance stakeholders robust analytics to drive Capex planning.

7 About Subex Subex Limited is a leading global provider of Business Support Systems (BSS) that empowers communications service providers (CSPs) to achieve competitive advantage through Business ptimisation - thereby enabling them to improve their operational efficiency to deliver enhanced service experiences to subscribers. The company pioneered the concept of a Revenue perations Cente (RC ) a centralized approach that sustains profitable growth and financial health through coordinated operational control. Subex's product portfolio powers the RC and its best-in-class solutions such as revenue assurance, fraud management, asset assurance, capacity management, data integrity management, credit risk management, cost management, route optimization and partner settlement. Subex also offers a scalable anaged Services program with 30 + customers. Subex has been awarded the Global arket Share Leader in Financial Assurance 2012 by Frost & Sullivan and has been the winner of Pipeline Innovation Award 2013 in Business Intelligence & ; Capacity agazine Best Product/ Service Subex has continued to innovate with customers and have been jointly awarded the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award for 2012 with Idea Cellular for anaged Services and in 2011 with Swisscom for Fraud anagement. Subex's customers include 29 of top 50 operators * and 33 of the world s 50 biggest # telecommunications service providers worldwide. The company has more than 300 installations across 70 countries. * TTotal Telecom Top 500 Telecom Brands, 2013 # Forbes Global 2000 list, 2013 Subex Limited RZ Ecoworld, Devarabisanahalli, uter Ring Road, Bangalore India Phone: Fax: Runners-up in Best Global Product/Services Subex Inc Airport Way, Suite 390 Broomfield, Colorado USA Phone: Fax: Runners-up in the Big Data & category Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award, 2012 Subex (UK) Limited 3rd Floor, Finsbury Tower, Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8LZ UK Phone: Fax: Received Global arket Share Leaderin Financial Assurance Award 2012 by Frost & Sullivan Subex (Asia Pacific) Pte. Limited 175A, Bencoolen Street, #08-03 Burlington Square, Singapore Phone: Fax: * for RA & F Subex Limited All rights reserved. Although every endeavour has been made to ensure that the information contained within this document is up to date and accurate, Subex Limited cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracy or error in the information contained within this document Regional offices: Dubai Ipswich Sydney