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 Members met in Cyprus on October 13/14 to share knowledge at the ETIS Community Gathering 2011. The theme of the Gathering was ‘ETIS 20th Anniversary – Innovative use of IT in Telcos’. The Gathering was also held in conjunction with the 42nd Management Board hosted by CYTA. This highly successful event brought together over 150 participants from 47 companies to share knowledge on key ICT issues facing the Telecom industry.

The Gathering began with a common session to discuss the main events that have led to the marriage of Telecommunications and Information Technology during the past 20 years whilst looking ahead at the next 20 years. The session also showcased our members’ experiences 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 the Gathering was dedicated to parallel sessions for the following working groups: Information Security, Enterprise Architecture, Billing, Procurement & Vendor Management, Business Intelligence & Data Warehouse and Customer Self Service. The Gathering also featured a CIO Stream that focused on sharing knowledge on our members’ mid to long-term IT strategies whilst looking deeper into the IT road-maps, managing IT & network resources, the business value of IT and IT cost cutting strategies and scenarios. Last but not least, we used the occaision to bring together some ETIS veterans.

This Gathering was an ideal opportunity for all of the members, associates, partners and working groups to get to know one another, learn about each other's activities, plans and expectations and above all, share knowledge. ETIS would also like to thank its’ sponsors that helped to make the event a success such as Sybase (Gold sponsor), IBM (Silver Sponsor), Netclean (Silver Sponsor) and the Cyprus Tourist Organisation (Supporter).

ETIS will be hosting the next Community Gathering in Athens on Cyprus on 18/19 October 2012. This meeting is open to ETIS Members, Associate Members, Partners and Working Groups participants. If you are interested in membership or sponsoring this event please contact Fred Werner at: fw@etis.org

It is with great pleasure that we are able to present the 2010/2011 ETIS Annual Report to our members. The Annual Report provides an overview of our activities, working groups, workshops and members as well as updates on the ETIS Council, Management Board and Central Office. We would like to encourage you to take the time to browse through its contents and see first hand how your company is gaining value from ETIS membership by participating in the various working groups, workshops and benchmarking studies.

We hope that you will find the contents of this annual report useful and informative. An electronic version of the Annual Report can be downloaded at:
http://assets.etis.org/ETIS_Annual_Report_2010-2011.pdf

If you need paper copies of the Annual Report please feel free to contact the ETIS Central Office and it will be sent to you.

The meeting was hosted by Swisscom in Zurich on 15/16 September and was attended by 36 people from companies like Telecom Italia, TDC, KPN, Telenor, Telefonica, Fastweb, Turk Telekom, Telecom Slovenia, France Telecom, Swisscom, 1&1, Cloudmark, ReturnPath, Symantec, Eleven, Abuse.ch, Trend Micro and Spamhaus.

The goal of the meeting was to discuss how to reduce spam levels on the Telcos networks and how to deal with the latest threats. The group also discussed blacklisting policies, Mobile spam and DNS Security. The group was pleased to welcome several new members from France Telecom, Telefonica, FastWeb and Telekom Slovenia. The group has also decided to work on a set of common and acceptable criteria for anti spam blacklists.

One of the main topics of the meeting was the ETIS – Return Path Feedback Loop Project. Return Path and ETIS have teamed up on a project to assist ETIS members with identifying and stopping spam leaving their networks. Participating ETIS members have setup networks of spamtrap email addresses, and they have configured these spamtraps to forward all mail that they get to Return Path. Furthermore, ETIS members also setup one or more addresses to accept a feed of spamtrap hits originating from their networks and will funnel this feed to their standard abuse handling processes. Return Path’s role in this project is to take in all the messages hitting any ETIS spamtrap, sort out the ones that originated on any participating ETIS member network and route them to the network owner for processing as part of a feedback loop, or FBL. This data can then be used to better fight spam on an EU network level.

The group has made progress with the Feedback Loop project and Belgacom, TDC, Telenor and Telecom Italia are now actively exchanging data. There was also strong interest from Swisscom, Telefonica and France Telecom to join the project. American ISP Cox has also joined the project and Verizon is set to join shortly. With this project the more companies that join from across borders the better the quality of the data will be.

Last but not least we are pleased to announce that 1&1 and Vade Retro will be supporting the spam group in 2012. The Spam group will have two meetings in 2012 at the following dates and locations:
- 8/9 March 2012 – Hosted by ENISA in Crete, Greece
- 20/21 September 2012 – Hosted by Eleven in Munich, Germany

ETIS has reached its 20th Anniversary! For associations such as ours this is a remarkable result when one looks at the number of associations that have closed down due to lack of funding, relevance and, above all, lack of interest by the member companies. This proves to me that ETIS is truly unique and well worth all the work and effort that is put into continuing the organisation initially started in the early 90’s.

The objective of this Anniversary Booklet is to provide a short history and record of a remarkable organisation, ETIS, the ideas behind it and the motives of the people who were involved with it from its earliest beginnings until present time. It also tries to identify and describe some of the major underlying themes characterising the changes which have taken place since ETIS began, in the domains of telecommunications and information technology. On a lighter note, we have included various tidbits of sporting, entertaining and historic events, so that you can try to remember where you were at that time.

We sincerely hope that this ETIS 20th Anniversary Booklet brings back fond memories to those initiated this adventure and to all others who joined this incredible journey during the past years. Seeing so many positive outcomes to our activities really brings home the importance of our motto: "Sharing knowledge is our Strength!" ETIS Chairman, Tora Tenden

We hope that you will find the contents of this anniversary booklet useful and informative. An electronic version can be downloaded at:
http://assets.etis.org/ETIS_20_Years_Anniversary_Bookletvf.pdf

If you need paper copies of the booklet please feel free to contact the ETIS Central Office and it will be sent to you. Please also use the chance to update your contact details on the ETIS Members Corner.

TeBIT - The ETIS Annual IT Benchmarking Survey Report has been produced in November with the support of The Boston Consulting Group. TeBIT aims to analyze the cost of leading European Telcos as well as potential relations between business and IT figures and their drivers. Particularly, IT costs are analyzed with respect to their drivers, distribution over various types of expenditure, and breakdown over FTEs. The costs and success of outsourcing are studied, as well as the participants' provisioning process.

The Results are shared only among participating companies, however a summary report will be at all members disposal by early next year. For more information on TeBIT, please contact Eirini Markoula at: em@etis.org

FROST & SULLIVAN white paper:
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About Comarch
Comarch, one of the largest Central European software houses and IT service providers, apart from delivering IT solutions for the telecommunications, financial services and government market segments, as well as for large enterprises and small and medium businesses, has been an active player in the mobile, embedded and automotive open software domains since 2001. Through a variety of projects in the area of mobile software development, integration, quality assurance, interoperability and cross-platform consulting services, Comarch has proven its deep technical knowledge, know-how and market understanding. With more than 3500 employees Comarch offers flexibility and scalability in building business partnerships and expertise alliances.

More information at: telecoms.comarch.com
Media Contact:
Katarzyna Gajewska
GSM: +48 691 464 119
E-mail: pr-telecom@comarch.com

23-25 April 2012 Scandic Hotel Potsdamer Platz, Berlin

Telecom Cloud Services Summit 2012 is the world’s leading event exploring Cloud Computing from a telecom operator perspective. Our internationally acclaimed agenda follows the steps of operators trying to become full-fledged Cloud service providers while also delivering solutions on overcoming related challenges, from regulation to infrastructure.

Last year’s Summit gathered more than 150 industry experts from around the world with a record 63% operator attendance! Now in its 3rd year, the Summit is the established meeting place for the who’s who in Telecom Cloud computing.

The Summit will feature practical operator case studies, expert presentations, training masterclasses and informal brainstorming sessions that will enable delegates to find answers to their most pressing Cloud questions while enjoying an interactive, fun atmosphere.

A 10% discount is available to ETIS members who wish to attend. Please click here for more info: http://telecomcloudservices.com/

>> Gold Sponsor - Introducing Sybase
Sybase, an SAP® company, is an industry leader in delivering enterprise and mobile software to manage, analyze and mobilize information. We are recognized globally as a performance leader, proven in the most data-intensive industries and across all major systems, networks and devices. Our information management, analytics and enterprise mobility solutions make it possible for data-driven companies to compete and innovate in previously impossible ways. Over 350 worldwide operators depend on powerful Sybase technologies to ensure efficient network utilization, customer satisfaction, and service reliability.

Read what Ari Banerjee, Sr. Analyst at Heavy Reading, writes about how real-time analytics can provide measurable benefits to service providers by analyzing and correlating data into actionable information; how real-time analytics play a critical role in meeting service providers' business objectives; how network performance can directly affect the customer experience; and how real-time analytics can act as a key enabler for accurate operational planning.  www.sybase.com/detail?id=1092842.

Find out more about how Sybase enables data-driven companies to successfully compete and innovate at www.sybase.com/solutions/telecommunications.

Silver Sponsor
NetClean develops technology that stops the spread of child sexual abuse material. Our solutions identify illegal images and videos that are still being distributed on public and corporate networks. The NetClean approach is your strongest safety measure because we stop images from being circulated inside or outside network firewalls. This is why NetClean works with ISPs, enterprises, governments and law enforcements in more than 25 countries.

By working closely with police forces around the world, NetClean achieves the highest understanding of how the globally increasing problem of child sexual abuse material evolves and uses this knowledge to develop world unique solutions to effectively put a stop to it.

For more information, please visit: http://www.netclean.com/

Silver Sponsor
IBM signed up as a Silver Sponsor of the ETIS Community Gathering 2011. IBM also contributed to some of our working groups at the event. Skev Ioannou, Global Telecommunications Industry Leader for IBM made presentations in both the Business Intelligence & Data Warehouse Working group and the Billing Working Group along the theme of ‘Smarter Communications through Analytics - Harnessing the Power of Data and Analytics to Maximize the Value of Each Customer’.

For more information on IBM, Please visit: www.ibm.com . 

The ETIS Gathering 2011 was kindly supported by the
Cyprus Tourism Organisation: www.visitcyprus.com

If you are interested in sponsoring the next Gathering, please contact Fred Werner at, fw@etis.org

Below is an overview of the confirmed Working Group meeting dates and locations for the first half of 2012.

EU Cert Network Meeting
10 January
Hosted by Belgacom, Brussels

Information Security WG
2-3 February
Hosted by A1 Telekom Austria,
Vienna

Procurement & Vendor Management WG
16-17 February
Hosted by TeliaSonera, Stockholm

Enterprise Architecture WG
1-2 March
Hosted by Turkcell, Istanbul  

Anti-SPAM Co-operation Group
8-9 March
Hosted by ENISA, Crete  

Customer Self-service WG
15-16 March
Hosted by ETIS, Brussels              

Business Intelligence &
Data Warehouse WG
29-30 March
Hosted by Baltic Data Center
Vilnius, Lithuania      

Billing WG
19-20 April
Host TBA

Information Security WG
3-4 May
Hosted by Telefonica, Madrid   

ETIS 43rd  Management Board
31 May
Hosted by DT, Bonn

ETIS CIO Executive Workshop
1 June
Hosted by DT, Bonn

Procurement & Vendor Management WG
7-8 June
Hosted by Lattelecom, Riga

ETIS Security BM 2012 meeting
12 June
Hosted by TNO, Delft

Customer Self Service WG
14-15 June
Hosted by Telecom Italia, Rome

Enterprise Architecture WG
20-21 June
Hosted by Swisscom, Zurich/Bern 

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

Media Partner:
Business Cloud News is the leading source of strategic insight, news and analysis from the world of Cloud Computing. To stay up-to-date with all the latest from the industry, visit their site and subscribe to their weekly newsletter via: www.businesscloudnews.com

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