TV Connect 2013 Show Daily > Q&A, Agama Technologies Digital TV Europe March 19 2013 Q&A: Jonas Palmér, Agama Technologies Jonas Palmér, sales director at Agama Technologies, spoke to Show Daily about Quality Assurance over IP and OTT networks. What are the main quality assurance challenges faced by service providers in launching TV Everywhere-type IP video services, catch-up and on-demand service, and network DVR? To maintain visibility and transparency of the delivered service quali- ty and to assure the individual user experience. All these features and services add complexity to the operations of services. There’s a lot more technology involved, plus there’s no longer merely one way for a service to reach a customer. To maintain visibility and transparen- cy of the delivered service quality throughout the whole operator’s organisation, there’s simply a lot more to understand. Increasingly individual TV services, and the dynamics of the whole distribution process, definitely drive the need for real understanding of delivered service quality to each individual customer. After all, that’s where the revenue comes from. Paimér: the OTT space is evolving and operators are finding their position in this market. What are service providers – of all types – currently prioritis- ing in terms of their investment in Quality Assurance? How high in their list of priorities does this type of investment sit? First of all we see high demand for solutions that will support an understanding of the individual viewing experience, focused on mon- itoring closer to the point of actual service consumption. Second, we have seen a continued shift towards an end-to-end system perspective over recent years, going together with the increased complexity of dis- tribution and a wish to understand the systematics of video delivery. There are several indications showing that investment in these kinds of business support systems are high on the operators’ agenda. For example, a recent industry study showed that while reducing OPEX remains an important driver, an even more significant goal is to improve customer satisfaction. We also see more and more operators formulating explicit and company-wide targets on customer experi- ence management. Agama’s Enterprise GUI: Agama enables quality assurance for a range of service providers How significant is the market for Quality Assurance solu- tions in the pure OTT space? How do you think that will evolve in the future? Right now we’re experiencing high demand for our Analyser OTT product to understand playout and headends within this domain – an essential part of the service delivery chain, as problems arising here potentially can affect all viewers. I see this is an indication that the same wish for transparency on delivered quality that has been a driver for managed services will also be a driver here. In more general terms, the OTT space is evolving as we speak and operators are finding their position in this market. With this evolution, the need will emerge to evolve assurance of services to increase every- thing from the technical visibility of delivery, to supporting cus- tomer care with information on individual experience in order to support customer retention. How close are we to using Quality Assurance systems to provide useful data on user behaviour to service providers that could influence their business decisions? We are already supporting our customers with this, and have done so for a number of years. One good example is our recently launched Churn Identification Application. This is based on a com- bination of user behaviour insight and service quality information and provides the foundation for understanding which customers need extra care and attention. This is an area that, together with more evolved and advanced analytics, will grow significantly over the coming years. To support service providers in retaining their customers and managing increased service delivery complexity, they will demand more actionable information and refinement rather than mere ‘data’ from their QA systems. What are your own current product development priori- ties? What market developments are you anticipating that is influencing the direction you take? We are definitely focusing on providing further refinement to meet service providers’ new needs as they evolve their operations. This will include: more monitoring applications as new services and technologies move forward, just as in the case with OTT; more analytics applications and business intelligence support; as well as more system level understanding to meet ever-increasing com- plexity. ● Visit us at www.digitaltveurope.net 20