Irish web services software firm Cape Clear has joined forces with network equipment giant Ericsson to roll out a major customer care application for Switzerland’s national telecoms carrier Swisscom.
It is understood that Swisscom recently decided to use internet and web services standards as the basic building blocks for its new customer care solution and asked Ericsson to integrate its Multi Activation (EMA) service provisioning system with the new Swisscom customer care application.
In turn Ericsson decided to deploy Cape Clear’s Business Integration Suite to integrate EMA by creating a graphical environment for transferring information between two applications and then providing the runtime platform to integrate information passing between the two systems using web services technology.
The deal with Swisscom and Ericsson follows hot on the heels of Cape Clear winning a major online services deal with Sony PlayStation as well as the company securing an additional €10m in venture capital during the summer.
“Swisscom is focused on delivering the best possible level of customer service,” commented Pierre-Andre Roubaty, Solution Manager at Ericsson AG. “We selected Cape Clear to provide the tools and platform we needed to extend EMA into Swisscom’s infrastructure within the required time frame. The result is a powerful customer care application that delivers more functionality and higher levels of customer service.”
In August Cape Clear had said that it plans to target the telecommunications industry with the release of its next-generation product family Cape Clear 4.5. The range incorporates several new features designed to meet the requirements of the telecoms sector and support the creation and deployment of business services. These services typically tackle issues such as easing the integration of third-party content for mobile operators, and improving remote and third-party access to network management systems for both fixed and wireless operators.
Dublin-based Cape Clear was established in 1999 by Iona co-founder Annrai O’Toole and in 2001 the firm raised US$16m in venture capital from Accel Partners, Greylock Capital and Dublin-based ACT Venture Capital.
Last year, Cape Clear accelerated its drive into the financial services industry when it succeeded in joining SWIFT, a major global network of financial institutions, with a view to speeding up the integration of the banks’ ability to exchange messages valued at trillions of dollars every day. SWIFT is a worldwide community with more than 7,000 financial institutions in 197 countries, which are active in payments, securities, treasury and trade services, and collectively exchange trillions of dollars worth of transactions over a dedicated messaging platform.
In terms of the telecoms and interactive services industries, Cape Clear has scored deals with BSkyB and BT. In particular, the company says it sees enormous opportunities in the mobile sector, enabling mobile network operators to increase revenues from new content services.
By John Kennedy
