For the past 20 years, ETIS has been at the forefront of the telecoms industry sharing knowledge and best practices on the innovative use of IT in Telecoms with the major European Telcos. To celebrate this landmark anniversary, ETIS is pleased to announce that the next ETIS Community Gathering will be hosted in Cyprus on 13/14 October 2011 at the Intercontinental Aphrodite Hills Resort. The theme for the Gathering will be ‘ETIS 20th Anniversary – Innovative use of IT in Telcos’. The Gathering will also be held in conjunction with the 42nd Management Board hosted by CYTA on 12 October 2011.

The keynote presentation will be made by Roberto Saracco, Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre on: ’Looking back, looking ahead: Telecommunications & IT, a success story’. The talk will present the main events that have led to the marriage of Telecommunications and Information Technology during the past 20 years. This will serve as a stepping stone for the next 20 years where telecommunications will be embedded in the environment and IT will be part of many objects, creating an intelligent, aware and responsive environment. The morning session will also showcase presentations on our members’ success stories in using IT to improve business performance and operations as well as enable innovative new business models and change the way people work together.

The remainder of day 1 and all of day 2 will be dedicated to the following ETIS Working Groups: Information Security, Enterprise Architecture, Procurement & Vendor Management, Business Intelligence & Data Warehouse, Billing, Customer Self Service and the CIO Executive Forum. There will also be a special Gala dinner at the end of day 1 to celebrate ETIS’ 20th Anniversary as an organization.

The gathering is an ideal opportunity for all of the ETIS members, associates and partners to get to know one another, learn about each other's activities, plans and expectations and above all, share knowledge. In addition to the education programmes, there will be plenty of unique opportunities for networking, with lunches, networking breaks and Gala dinner.

We are also pleased to announce that Sybase has signed on to be the Gold Sponsor for the Gathering 2011.

This Gathering is open to ETIS Members, Associate Members, Partners and Working Groups participants. If you would like to sponsor this event or learn more about how to join ETIS and attend this event, please contact Fred Werner at: fw@etis.org .

>> Gold Sponsor - Sybase <<

ETIS recently had its 41st Management Board meeting & CIO Executive Workshop which was hosted by A1 Telekom Austria in Vienna on 26/27 May. The meetings were attended by 21 participants from 11 companies such as A1 Telekom Austria, Belgacom, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Oger Telecom, OTE, Slovak Telekom, TDC, Telecom Italia and TeliaSonera.

ETIS is pleased to announce that during the Board meeting Tora Tenden was re-elected as Chairman and Andreas Asimomitis, OTE was elected as Secretary Treasurer. The Board also re-elected Kees Stok, KPN and elected Armin Sumesgutner, A1 Telekom Austria, Michael Hughes, Oger Telecom / Turk Telekom and Luca Franco Varvello, Telecom Italia as new Council members.

The focus of the CIO Executive Forum was to discuss the ’IT Implications of Product Portfolio Management’. The goal of the workshop was to look at how to optimize the Product Portfolio Management in Telcos and how a better co-operation between business and IT can contribute to the success. Some of the topics covered were: Product Portfolio Management, Active Product Portfolio Rationalization, Product Retirement, Product Portfolio Optimization, Building and Managing an NGN Product Portfolio and improving co-operation between business and IT.

The next CIO Executive Workshop will be held in Cyprus during the ETIS Community Gathering on 13/14 October.

A good part of 2010 was spent designing and building the new ETIS members corner. The goal of the new site was to take advantage of web 2.0 technology, social networking and collaboration tools in order to build a new and improved ETIS website and Members’ Corner. By introducing these new technologies to our Members’ Corner we have created a members corner that aims to encourage more openness and sharing of information online and in between the physical meetings.

The new Members' Corner has several new features and we would like to encourage you to take the time to try them out. The first thing you might notice is the new ‘Activity Stream’ feature which always shows the latest files & photos uploaded, discussion posts, wiki updates and member tweets in a dynamic way.

Also, please take the time to update your profile as much as possible in the ‘view my profile’ area.
Here you can:
- Upload your photograph
- Update your contact details
- Add links to your LinkedIn (add public profile url) and Twitter (add just username).

In the ‘Working Group' areas you can:
- Download the presentations, favorite the presentations or discuss them directly
- Use the discussion forum function
- Use the Wikipedia function
- If you have interesting documents to share, you can also upload them to the ‘Reference Documents' sections
- We also have quite a few amateur photographers among us so if you have some nice pictures that you would like to share, please upload them in the photo gallery function.

Please note that we now have an ‘advanced search function’ that allows you to search through the actual contents of all files in the repository. Additionally, if you would like to see which of your colleagues are involved in ETIS, a convenient overview is provided in the ‘Members’ section.

We hope that you enjoy the new website and that you will use the new features to share knowledge more effectively in between meetings. Please check out the new ETIS Website at: http://www.etis.org

During the past year the members of the ETIS Anti-Spam Co-operation Group, started to formulate ideas on a project which would help reduce the spam volume of incoming mail streams by optimizing existing data and resources. Led by KPN and TDC the basic idea was to utilize the data each ISP has on the spam being sent to each other to create statistics and identify the sending culprits on each other’s networks.

Reporting back to the sending ISP details on abusive mail originating from their mail system in a format which can be machine read and therefore automated was an essential part of any labour saving spam detection system. Individually each ISP has great data about what is hitting their network but sadly an inefficient amount about what is leaving.  What leaves your network... arrives into someone else’s and collectively the ETIS members are the best qualified to help each other. Together they have the bigger picture.

Most external data sources are expensive and never deliver a 360 degree view.  This ETIS project allows each member to share complaints with all other participating members, while fully adhering to European data privacy regulations, and delivers useful statistic measuring successful spam reduction, relative to each other and over time.

This project is not only open to all ETIS members, even those who are currently not participating in the Anti-Spam Co-operation Group, its success depends on it. We would like to take this opportunity to ask those not yet participating to come forward and join this project either by attending our regular meetings or by participating online.

This project is being run with the support of Return Path: http://www.returnpath.net
For more information and details on first steps, please contact Fred Werner at  fw@etis.org

ETIS is pleased to announce that Orga Systems has recently joined ETIS as an Associate member. Orga Systems contributed to our last Billing working group meeting hosted by OTE in Athens and joined us shortly after. We are looking forward to welcoming Orga Systems to the ETIS Community and they are set to contribute to the Billing Working Group (WG), Business Intelligence & Data Warehouse WG and the Enterprise Architecture WG.

Ramez Younan, CEO, Orga Systems, had the following to say on ETIS membership: “Orga Systems is very pleased to become a member of ETIS. Orga Systems’ vision for the industry is to improve business performance by personal exchange of information on using ICT effectively within the organization”, says Ramez Younan, CEO Orga Systems. “Various options for collaboration between the members enable all parties to further enhance their knowledge and help on developing the ICT future.”

About Orga Systems
Orga Systems’ convergent real-time charging and billing portfolio enables profitable business for Telecommunication Companies, Mobile Finance Institutions and Energy Suppliers.

Orga Systems’ products and consulting services are designed for living in a connected world: scalable architecture, outstanding performance, lowest rating latency and consequent customer-centricity ensure reliable access to any kind of next generation mobile services.

Worldwide 40+ customers, serving 350+ M subscribers, rely on Orga Systems and achieve competitive advantages in their industry: reduced OPEX, real time-to-market, short-termed ROI as well as beneficial  access to new value chains and revenue streams.

For more information on Orga Systems, please visit: http://www.orga-systems.com

>> Gold Sponsor - Introducing Sybase
Sybase, an SAP company, serves hundreds of communications service providers of all types in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. These providers depend on powerful Sybase technologies to answer questions that were previously impractical or impossible, and deliver the business-critical information they use to ensure efficient network utilization, customer satisfaction, and service reliability.

More than 250 operators use Sybase IQ technologies to dramatically reduce the “time to answer” in the battle to grow revenues and protect profits in highly saturated markets. Sybase products and services empower Communications Service Providers to harness the value of data to reduce customer churn by giving carriers the network and business information they need to resolve problems quickly. Using Sybase technologies CSPs are increasing their ARPU and AMPU with new service offerings based on precision analysis of customer usage and profitability.

Sybase is recognized globally as a performance leader, proven in the most data-intensive industries — including telecommunications — and across all major systems, networks, and devices. Sybase is proud to sponsor the ETIS Community Gathering 2010.

For more information: www.sybase.com. Read Sybase® blogs: blogs.sybase.com. Follow us on Twitter at @Sybase.

If you are interested in sponsoring this event please contact Fred Werner at, fw@etis.org

Below is an overview of the confirmed Working Group meeting dates and locations for the rest of 2011.

Customer Self Service WG
16-17 June
Hosted by Deutsche Telekom, Berlin

Anti-Spam Co-operation Group
15-16 September
Hosted by Swisscom in Zurich

TOGAF Certification Training
20-23 Septmber
Hosted by Detecon in Bonn

42nd Management Board
12 October
Hosted by CYTA in Cyprus

ETIS Community Gathering
13-14 October
Hosted by ETIS in Cyprus

For additional information on how to join these meetings please contact Fred Werner at fw@etis.org

Media Partner:
Telecom World Congress 2011
21-23 June, Amsterdam
The TWC unites global leaders in the industry at the definitive leadership forum for fixed line, mobile, satellite broadband and wholesale operators across 3 days with over 10 hours of networking time. The conference provides a unique opportunity to gain insights from A list speakers on how to structure business strategy and create a sustainable business model. The TWC is a definitive leadership forum for fixed line, mobile, satellite broadband and wholesale operators. A 15% discount is in effect for ETIS members.
More info:
https://www.terrapinn.com/2011/twc

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e-telit Editor
Fred Werner - fw@etis.org