Optimized pricing, QoS and segmentation of managed ICT services

Abstract

Managed service (MS) markets in Information and communication technology (ICT) are tightly competed in Finland and Sweden. Teleoperators and traditional players like IT houses are sharing nowadays the same managed service markets. Customers want to buy more and more often an end-to-end (E2E) managed service solution from the service provider (SP). It is expected that SPs' continuously develop their services and offer services based on an agreed service level agreement (SLA).SPs have to focus their sales, marketing and service development in order to succeed in the competed Nordic MS markets. This thesis presents an advanced segmentation model, which supports the SPs focusing activities. The segmentation model contains six segments of which two where found especially interesting by the managed service SP’s. Implementation of a new segmentation model is often laborious and sets quite a few requirements for customer relationship management (CRM) systems. It requires involvement and commitment not only from the sales and marketing department, but also from other departments including the research and development. The mean of pricing, optimization service and product pricing as well as customer perceived value is crucial when developing MS services. The mean rather than actual price is considered, because the actual price is not the only and most crucial selection criteria when selecting SP. In many cases SPs' pricing is hidden in product and quality of service (QoS) elements, and therefore an example optimization of the pricing of a single network element is required as well. Based on case examples in the thesis it is possible to crate an algorithm which shares limited resources to different traffic flows in a fair way and at the same time optimizes the revenue of an SP. In the case studies most of the work is based on analyses of different simulations and their corresponding results.