Stratecast’s evaluation criteria for the award included “Uniqueness of Strategy”, “Improves Market Position” and “Leverages Competitive Intelligence”. DigitalRoute emerged with the highest ranking among the evaluated vendors.

Founded in 2000, DigitalRoute has evolved from a pure-play billing mediation supplier to a real-time data collection, aggregation, and correlation provider for any group of business functions. DigitalRoute refers to this approach as “Horizontal Mediation”.

Together with partner solutions, MediationZone from DigitalRoute has been deployed by 240 communication service providers (CSPs) around the world. Its revenue has grown sharply, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 25% between 2007 and 2010, during a global recession.

According to Stratecast’s research, DigitalRoute is one of very few companies in the mediation space, or any other part of the end-to-end CSP billing space, to effectively utilize an OEM partner strategy. Stratecast also highlights the fact that DigitalRoute has focused on mediation since its inception and even its recent expansion into policy control is built around its strength in mediation. This strategy is a key ingredient in the innovation process at DigitalRoute, as according to Stratecast’s research it results in “deeper insight into the longer-term needs of the marketplace from direct interaction not only through its customers but also from its OEM partners.”

“Our conclusion is that DigitalRoute’s competitive strategy is absolutely unique among mediation vendors and it has allowed the company to grow faster than the competition,” said Karl Whitelock, director OSS BSS strategy at Stratecast.

“We are delighted to receive this prestigious award in recognition of the impact that we are making on the industry. Our focus on technical innovation and go-to-market strategy is the base for a global eco system of service providers, vendors and system integrators that benefits not just DigitalRoute but customers and partners alike,” said Jan Karlsson, CEO at DigitalRoute.

Karlsson continued, “DigitalRoute will continue to grow as we expand into new areas with maintained focus on mediation. Big Data, Policy and Usage Management, M2M Connectivity Services and Service Assurance are just a handful of examples where our technology will play an important role in the years to come.”

The report 2011 Stratecast Global Competitive Strategy Innovation, Global CSP Billing – Mediation is available for download here.

DigitalRoute added more than 40 service providers to its list of more than 240 MediationZone customers during 2011. These include Tier-1 service providers in the USA and Europe that went into live operation with MediationZone within 6 months after project start. As a result of the recent success DigitalRoute has accelerated its revenue growth in 2011, achieving 59% year-over-year growth while also increasing profitability.

DigitalRoute has seen its revenue grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 50% since 2002. DigitalRoute’s unique go-to-market strategy has resulted in a large number of successful partnerships with leading vendors, network equipment providers, system integrators and a loyal customer base among the world’s leading communication service providers.

In response to the growing demand for DigitalRoute solutions, the company has continued to strengthen its regional presence in the Americas, Asia and Middle-East through new and expanded regional offices in Atlanta, Singapore and Dubai.

“The telecommunications industry is going through far-reaching changes that have a massive impact on service providers’ data centers. We provide solutions that help our customers to simplify the data infrastructure and adapt to new business requirements,” said Jan Karlsson, CEO at DigitalRoute.

Karlsson continued, “DigitalRoute’s value proposition is not just for telecommunications. In many industries, including finance, utilities and transport and logistics, there is a need for the type of Horizontal Mediation layer that only DigitalRoute can provide”

MediationZone was selected to replace existing mediation solutions after a careful evaluation including a successful proof-of-concept.

“MediationZone stood out as the best technical solution and it received particularly high scores in the areas related to flexibility, usability and processing performance,” said Paulo Pereira, Manager of IT Architecture & Strategy at Vodafone Portugal.

The recent deployment is the first part of a five-phase program at Vodafone Portugal to create a unified mediation layer based on MediationZone. The new solution will speed up the introduction of new services.

Commenting on the progress of the program, Paulo Pereira said: “We are pleased with the swiftness and quality of the solution delivery as well as the successful competence transfer. The cooperation between DigitalRoute, Vodafone Portugal and our outsourced operations, maintenance and development teams has worked perfectly.”

MediationZone will have a strategically important role in the IT architecture of Vodafone Portugal as it provides the capability to take full advantage of the usage data in the network while streamlining the data infrastructure.

“We have already enabled new a new set of innovative services with this first phase of our mediation program. One example is a new capability to provide real-time spending control to postpaid subscriptions,” added Carlos Fernandes, Project Manager at Vodafone Portugal.

DigitalRoute has recently won contracts with several of the leading operator groups in Europe. Together with its partners, DigitalRoute has deployed MediationZone for more than 100 communication service providers in the region.

“The world’s leading CSP’s and CSP Groups are running our software. We attribute this success on the global market to our focus on bringing the best mediation technology as well as our partner friendly strategy,” said Jan Karlsson, CEO at DigitalRoute.

Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), the country’s sole wireless provider is targeting to roll out its 4G network during 2011, enabling 20 to 30 times faster data speeds compared to what is available today.

For major communication service providers in the world, massive volumes of usage records are processed every day in order run mission critical applications. Mediation reduces the number of point integrations and provides the functions to efficiently manage usage data before it reaches the business support systems.

With the rapid uptake of mobile data services driven by new network technologies, mediation is an essential component in the service providers’ business operations.

“The planned introduction of 4G, enabling high speed mobile broadband for all our subscriber and visitors makes a flexible and high performance mediation solution such as MediationZone a necessity”, said Marlon Johnson VP Marketing at BTC.

“I think Digital Route is well positioned to meet our mediation needs and our partnership to date has been great. We are very impressed by the rich set of off-the shelf functionality that MediationZone can provide”, added Sheldon Mundle CIO at BTC.

DigitalRoute has enjoyed a strong business momentum in North America during 2010 and 2011, where it has selected by some of the leading service providers to replace legacy mediation and data integration systems.

“We value the opportunity to work with BTC and it fits perfectly with our plans for continued strengthening of our presence in the region”, said Stephen Rickaby General Manager at DigitalRoute Americas.

Dagens Industri, awards the Diploma Di Gasell (Gazelle) every year to companies in Sweden that fulfill the newspapers’ criteria of yearly increase in revenue and profitability. The award selection is based on annual reports data provided by the Swedish Companies Registration Office.

The criteria for the award include consistent, organic and profitable growth from 2007 to 2010. DigitalRoute achieved a 115% revenue increase in this period.

DigitalRoute continues on its success trajectory in 2011, adding 40 new customers around the world for its MediationZone product. License revenues for the first half of the fiscal year increased by more than 50% compared to the first half of 2010.

“We haven’t yet closed the books for 2011 but it is clear that our growth is accelerating in parallel with an increased market share”, said Jan Karlsson, CEO at DigitalRoute.

DigitalRoute^®, a leader in mediation software for service providers, announced today that the latest release of its flagship MediationZone^® platform now incorporates advanced unified Usage Management capabilities to count usage and trigger events towards external systems.

For communications service providers, the ability to manage usage data is becoming increasingly important to enforce usage policies, maximize their revenues, as well as meet customer expectations of accurate and timely information about their data consumption.

“As the frequency at which low-value usage events must be captured from the networks increases, propagating data volumes in downstream systems becomes a challenge. For this reason, duplication of Usage Management processes is bound to be untenable for service providers that are looking to simplify their data infrastructure,” said Thomas Vasen, Product Manager at DigitalRoute.

“Reducing cost and the need to achieve consistent and accurate usage counting across a range of applications beyond billing are some of the reasons why a unified solution is needed.”

A recent survey conducted by DigitalRoute also indicates that flexibility in meeting new business requirements is one of the primary challenges for service providers when implementing Usage Management.

With MediationZone 5.1 FR3, DigitalRoute offers service providers a solution that serves any business process while enabling a smooth transition towards a new revenue management environment optimized for personalized tiered bundles rather than rating of individual events. The latest release features new Usage Management capabilities that enable counting of individual usage, rule-based triggering of user-alerts, service limiting actions, and transfer of consolidated billing data.

DigitalRoute’s white paper on effective Usage Management is available for download at http://www.digitalroute.com/solutions/usage-management/.

U.S. service providers have agreed to follow the guidelines to prevent bill shock among consumers of wireless services. The steps to be taken include the sending of notifications to users when they reach monthly plan limits for voice, data, and text that would result in overage charges. Service providers must also provide tools that enable users to monitor balances and set their own usage limits.

In response to similar regulations in Europe, DigitalRoute has delivered a proven bill shock prevention solution that enables rapid and cost-efficient deployment with minimum impact on existing infrastructure. The solution, based on its MediationZone® platform, was recently deployed at a pan-European service provider, where it is currently serving seven international affiliates.

DigitalRoute, together with its partners, has delivered MediationZone to more than 10 operators in the Americas Region during the last 12 months. All of these installations are now in live production.

With its extensive experience in bill shock prevention and its strong presence in the region, DigitalRoute is ready to start deploying the solution across the Americas.

“Bill shock prevention is a challenge that confronts service providers throughout the Americas region. With our proven bill shock prevention solution and established support center in Atlanta, GA, DigitalRoute is ready to deliver solutions to its customers and partners as they address this key initiative,” said Stephen Rickaby, General Manager at DigitalRoute Americas.

Prior to joining DigitalRoute Björn held the position of Nordic Sales Director at Samsung Nordic. Björn has also held several executive positions at Telenor and Ericsson.

Together with partners, DigitalRoute has deployed mediation, data integration and policy solutions for more than 100 customers in Europe; including the world’s leading operator groups.

“I look forward to continue to build on the very strong presence that DigitalRoute has in the region. MediationZone®, the core product of DigitalRoute represents an opportunity for any service provider that require cost efficient solutions to manage large data volumes, not just in the communications industry,” said Björn Hansen.

“Björn’s sales and managerial talent is a great addition, both to the European unit and to the management team of DigitalRoute,” said Jan Karlsson CEO at DigitalRoute.

MediationZone 5.1 has been designed for the consolidation of all online-, offline- and mediation events in one single platform supporting the mediation functions of billing, PCRF, OSS, fraud, revenue assurance and data warehouse.

For this transformation project, Orange has selected NEWCON, an Austrian based Management and System Integration Company, focused on Telco- and Finance- Industry. NEWCON has gained over the years a significant expertise in integrating MediationZone and has also created value added business support systems on top of the platform, particularly in the interconnect/wholesale and revenue assurance domains.

Gerald Haidl, Chief Executive Officer at Newcon:
“We have a long and positive partnership with DigitalRoute, gained on several projects across Europe. Our recognized functional technical expertise and international reputation positioned us as a new services integration partner at Orange Austria in addition to all of our other well established customers”.

Arnaud brings over 15 years of experience in the communications industry and has held key executive positions in marketing and business strategy at former LHS, now an integrated part of Ericsson. Arnaud is also a well-renowned thought leader in the field of telecoms revenue management.

Speaking of his new appointment, Arnaud Lassalle said:

“DigitalRoute has maintained a high-growth trajectory since shortly after its inception in 2000 and has a well-established reputation as the leading mediation and policy management vendor. I’m delighted to join such an innovative and fast moving company.”

“We look forward to further strengthening the DigitalRoute brands with the addition of our new CMO as we continue to launch innovative solutions that will help service providers to simplify their data infrastructure,” said Jan Karlsson, CEO at DigitalRoute.