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Motive Rides on Service-Management Concerns Network management vendor Motive today unveiled new additions to its new Digital Home Management Platform, including a component designed to reduce installation and support costs for IP-based TV service.
The IPTV Fast (Fully Automated Service Technology) module gives broadband providers the ability to deliver automated IPTV service management, which will eliminate the need for on-site support. It enables providers to design an IPTV management infrastructure that will work across multiple CPE (customer premises equipment) types, vendors and digital services, such as interactive gaming and personal video recording.
Fueling this new offer is the emergence of IP-based television services from telephone companies, which make up two-thirds of Motive’s customer base.
“The thing that has forced us to prioritize IPTV is the role it plays in the plans of our customers,” said Kenny Van Zant, the Austin, Tex.-based company’s executive vice president, Consumer Business Unit. “For a majority of our customers, it’s the top priority.”
But even the Motive’s cable-industry customers are showing interest, as they ponder IPTV as a way to reduce their service-delivery and support costs, Van Zant added.
The second new component of the home management platform is a Security FAST module, which allows service providers to built automated security threat assessment and remediation into broadband service. This will take the burden of adopting proper online security standards away from subscribers and reduce security-related support calls, which cost providers an estimated $400 million in 2004. Van Zant noted that customers are complaining that their subscribers are either not using intrusion protections for their broadband services or are not updating them regularly.
The module can conduct automated security audits, identifying whether a security system is set up right “so the end user and the CSR (customer service representative) can better deal with issues like spam, Trojans, viruses,” Van Zant said.
The latest releases reflect Motive’s effort to ride on the broadband service industry’s need to control support costs as residential services become more advanced and complicated. The company’s customers are starting to see, based on early market trials of IPTV, for example, the huge impact that management issues have on their costs, Van Zant said.
“Before that, they thought they could just build it and work out the kinks later,” he said.
But Motive is also trying to draw attention from equipment and middleware vendors as well as service providers, he said.
“Providers take cues from the vendor community,” he said. “If vendors don’t prioritize an issue, providers won’t either. Now middleware vendors are making it a bigger deal. A year ago, or even six months ago, we were having trouble getting our voice heard, but not now.”
Other Articles in the Thursday, June 2, 2005 issue:
SBC, Verizon Not Deterred by Texas Setback
Price Pressure Will Befall Cable, Analyst Warns
Comcast Chief Sees VoIP Driving Broadband Growth
Other Broadband Developments
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