Nominations are now open for the Billing & OSS World Excellence Awards 2009. ‘Revenue Management’ is one of the award categories. There is just one obstacle to any would-be nominees: you have to participate in the Billing & OSS World 2009 Conference & Expo. Presumably the organizers think that if you do not attend, you cannot be excellent!? Last year’s winner was Oracle, for reasons that remain a mystery…

Irish mediation vendor Openet has announced the deployment of its revenue assurance solution in Nextel Brazil. Read the press release here.

Openet’s revenue assurance application is built upon their own Fusionworks mediation software. This raises some interesting questions about the boundaries of what can be described as revenue assurance, and how to measure the value it adds. If Openet’s RA application is doing no more than assuring mediation, it begs a question of why this is not considered intrinsic to mediation, instead of being treated as an add-on to it. If it assures more than mediation, how much more, and where are the handovers to other assurance solutions?

Neural Technologies, the UK-based fraud and revenue assurance vendor, has won an award from the British Computer Society, a professional body with over 65,000 members. Neural won the 2008 award for ‘Organizational Excellence’ in the category of ‘Large Technology Supplier’. Read Neural’s press release here. Neural won the award ahead of bigger and better-known nominees Sun Microsystems and IBM. For the full list of this year’s BCS awards winners, look here.

If services delivered by Internet Protocol are the future (and increasingly, the present) then it follows that revenue assurance testing will increasingly revolve around testing IP services too. The market for IP service testing is growing and growing. It is against this background that IPTV quality and service assurance vendor IneoQuest has filed a complaint against rival IP specialists Ixia. The allegation is that Ixia knowingly misappropriated from IneoQuest the technological basis for Ixia’s current video test and measurement solutions. They reportedly did this by abusing a 2004 NDA between the two firms. You can read the press release here.

Hungarian vendor Allround has announced the sale of its Near Real-Time Roaming Data Exchange (NRTRDE) solution to Libyan operator Al Madar. See the press release here.

NRTRDE is the technique du jour for combatting mobile fraud. After the GSM Association recommended it to members, NRTRDE seems set to become a staple for telcos worldwide.

Connectiva Systems, the risk and revenue management software vendors headquartered in New York, have released version 5.0 of their ONEREViEW product suite. According to the press release:

“The new platform integrates revenue assurance, fraud management, credit risk management, test-call generation, re-billing, and re-rating into one comprehensive enterprise revenue and risk management system. Until now, this multi-application platform approach has never been available.”

That is quite some boast. In addition, Connectiva CEO and Founder Avi Basu said:

“Our belief that one-size-fits-all type of solutions will fall woefully short of telecom operators’ requirements has been validated by the market.”

It makes you wonder which competitors he was thinking of, and whether Connectiva is anticipating that some of its rivals will collapse in the economic downturn.

Israeli vendor ECtel has issued a press release announcing the launch of its on-line ’social network’ for revenue management. The Integrated Revenue Management Alliance (IRMA) claims to be the

“industry’s most comprehensive revenue management alliance, providing easy access to resources that will improve fraud detection and prevention and revenue management.”

I would tell you more, but there was a glitch that prevented any further research… the absence of an obvious and/or working link to IRMA in the press release, on ECtel’s website, or even to be found by searching Google :( After fruitlessly looking around the internet for half an hour, the conclusion is pretty simple. For social networks to succeed, people must be able to join them.

TEOCO, suppliers of revenue assurance and cost management solutions, has bought Vero Systems, vendors of least cost routing software. Read the press release here. The price paid by TEOCO has not been disclosed. Both TEOCO and Vero are based in the US, with TEOCO headquartered in Virginia and Vero in New Jersey.

Although the price has not been disclosed, it is possible to speculate where some of TEOCO’s funding came from. In May this year, Razorsight agreed to pay a US$4.5 settlement to TEOCO after they admitted to stealing TEOCO’s intellectual property. It is an odd coincidence that Vero have themselves been recently engaged in legal activity, after Telarix accused Vero of patent infringement.

In the midst of a credit crunch, extra cash comes in handy when trying to keep pace in the M&A race that has gripped the revenue assurance industry. Razorsight’s payout has probably given their Virginian rivals TEOCO a crucial helping hand in the contest to build scale. This purchase signals that the wider trend of consolidation will continue.

UK operator BT and Indian vendor Subex have signed a new three-year framework contract. Subex will supply products and services relating to revenue assurance, fraud detection, interconnect billing and event integrity. According to the press release, the deal is estimated to be worth US$50 million.

It looks like this deal builds upon the existing relationship between Subex and BT’s Global Services division. Some of the elements, like managed services for the BASALT data repository, were anticipated in a previous press release of January this year. The deal comes at a good time for Subex. The vendor is under pressure from investors wanting to see a turnaround in fortunes. Subex suffered big losses for the last financial year. After making cutbacks, Subex needs to show increasing profitability each quarter this year if it is to meet expectations.

Connectiva Systems, the risk management and revenue assurance software firm, has obtained a further US$17m of VC funding. See the press release on Connectiva’s site.