Solution Profile

August 2023

Optiva
Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Author: John Abraham, Principal Analyst

www.appledoreresearch.com
Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Published by Appledore Research LLC • 44 Summer Street Dover, NH. 03820

Tel: +1 603 969 2125 • Email: info@appledorerg.com• www.appledoreresearch.com

© Appledore Research LLC 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without the publisher's prior written permission.

Figures and projections contained in this report are based on publicly available information only
and are produced by the Research Division of Appledore Research LLC independently of any client-
specific work within Appledore Research LLC. The opinions expressed are those of the stated
authors only.

Appledore Research LLC recognizes that many terms appearing in this report are proprietary; all
such trademarks are acknowledged, and every effort has been made to indicate them by the normal
USA publishing standards. However, the presence of a term, in whatever form, does not affect its
legal status as a trademark.

Appledore Research LLC maintains that all reasonable care and skill have been used in compiling
this publication. However, Appledore Research LLC shall not be under any liability for loss or
damage (including consequential loss) whatsoever or howsoever arising because of the use of this
publication by the customer, his servants, agents, or any third party.

Publish date: 21 August 2023

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

www.appledoreresearch.com © Appledore Research 2023

 Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

INTRODUCTION
Optiva, previously known as Redknee, is a Canada-headquartered publicly listed company that
primarily provides business support solutions (BSS) and real-time charging for the
telecommunications industry. The company has been around for over two decades and counts more
than 50 CSPs as customers of its various offerings.

Optiva is a mid-tier vendor with a full-stack cloud-ready BSS offering, an increasingly rare
proposition as most small and mid-tier vendors are increasingly focussed on a specific product line.
A series of mergers and acquisitions in the space over the past decade has concentrated full stack
solutions mostly in the hands of tier-1 vendors. This has created an opportunity for mid-sized
players, with end-to-end product capabilities, to lead the transformation conversation with small
tier-2/3 CSPs and bigger operators inclined to work with smaller vendors. Optiva is well positioned
to fill the vacuum of a full-fledged mid-sized BSS vendor.

Redknee shot into prominence in the early 2010s for its inorganic approach to growth with a bold
acquisition strategy. The company acquired the BSS assets from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and
followed that by the acquisition of Orga Systems out of bankruptcy proceedings. These acquisitions
transformed the company and made it a tier-1 vendor supporting a large customer base across
multiple product lines. The company faced financial challenges over the next few years as it tried to
balance its debt load while trying to grow the business. During this time, the company streamlined
its portfolio, revised its strategy, and rebranded itself as Optiva. Optiva today is a smaller and more
nimble vendor with a distinct opportunity to play a leading role as a mid-tier full-stack BSS provider.

This profile is focussed on Optiva’s suite of solutions for the telecoms industry and analyses how
they fit into the broader ecosystem.

Table 1: Company Snapshot

Name Optiva, Inc.

Year founded 1999

Headquarters Mississauga, Ontario Canada

CEO Robert Stabile

Company Type Public (TSX: OPT)

Revenue FY 2022 USD 61.7M

Employees 394

Product segments Digital BSS, Charging Engine, Partner Monetization

Geographic focus Global

Source: Optiva

© Appledore Research 2023 www.appledoreresearch.com Page 1

Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

ACQUISITIONS
Optiva made four significant acquisitions between 2007 and 2015. Two acquisitions, Argent and
Nimbus, complemented Optiva’s product portfolio by adding billing, settlement, customer care,
revenue assurance, and real-time billing. The other two, Nokia Siemens and Orga Systems, expanded
Optiva’s geographic reach and added new customers.

Table 2: Notable Company Acquisitions

Year Company Comments Value

2015 Orga Systems Optiva acquired Orga’s convergent charging and billing EUR 38M
platform. Orga was headquartered in Germany.

2013 Nokia Siemens BSS Optiva purchased the BSS business from Nokia-Siemens USD 52M
joint venture. It added 1,200 employees from Berlin,
Bangalore, and Poland and several tier-1 clients.

2010 Nimbus Systems Nimbus was a privately held company specializing in Undisclosed
billing, content settlement, and customer care. It
provided Optiva with real-time billing and customer care
services.

2007 Argent Networks Optiva purchased Argent’s outstanding shares to acquire USD 1M
its In-Bill platform, a revenue assurance, interconnect,
and settlement platform.

Source: Company

FINANCIALS
Optiva, which went public in 2007 as Redknee, has spent recent years stabilising its business and
finetuning its product portfolio.

The company reported revenues of USD61.8 million in 2022, a decline of 5.2% YoY.

Optiva’s new management team, some of whom have stepped into their roles this year, claim that
the worst of its financial woes are behind it. The company claims a pipeline of greater than USD$300
million, its biggest ever as of August 2023.

Optiva also notes how cloud is becoming a big driver for growth and anticipates 90% of deals to
have a cloud component. Optiva continues to retain the confidence of its leading investors, who
have been supportive of the company’s journey and have remained invested in the company.

Page 2 www.appledoreresearch.com © Appledore Research 2023

 Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

CUSTOMER TRACTION
Optiva has over 50 telco customers and counts multiple non-telco providers as clients.

Figure 1: Optiva Customer Traction

Source: Optiva

Table 3: Recent Customer Wins

Year Partner Product Description

2023 Nova Energy BSS Platform Nova Energy (MVNO) plans to use Optiva’s BSS
(New Zealand) Platform to offer bundled mobile plans to its existing
utility customers.

2023 Cellular One BSS Platform Cellular One, a leading provider of mobile technology
and wireless communications to tribal lands and
communities in the American Southwest, has selected
Optiva to support the modernization of its network
and mission-critical launch of VoLTE.

2023 Movil Exito BSS Platform Móvil Éxito, the first MVNO in Colombia to be launched
by a retailer and part of Grupo Éxito, selected Optiva
for cloud modernization of its Optiva BSS Platform to a
SaaS-based model.

2022 Digitel Convergent billing & A customer since 2014, Digital migrated 7.2M
(Venezuela) BSS Upgrade subscribers to an upgrade to Optiva’s BSS platform.

2022 Salam Mobile BSS Platform Salam chose Optiva’s BSS platform to support its
(Saudi Arabia) MVNO services.

Source: Optiva

© Appledore Research 2023 www.appledoreresearch.com Page 3

Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

PARTNERSHIPS
As a full-stack BSS provider, Optvia is cognizant of the need to work with multiple technology
partners, especially those with infrastructure and platform relationship with CSPs.

Optiva has also partnered with leading CSPs such as Jio and Rakuten, allowing them to include
Optiva components in their core platform.

Figure 2: Optiva Partnership Strategy

Source: Optiva

Like most other vendors in the space, Optiva has embraced a multi-cloud strategy and is working
together with Azure and Google Cloud. It has a close working partnership with Google Cloud, with
whom it has been partnering since 2018. Optiva was the first Google Cloud partner to enable direct
purchases of its offerings on its marketplace, allowing CSPs to leverage their committed contract
spend with Google.

Page 4 www.appledoreresearch.com © Appledore Research 2023

 Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Table 4: Key Company Partnerships

Year Partner Product Description

2022 Google Cloud Optiva BSS Multi-year strategic partnership providing access to
(GCP) Optiva’s products via Google Cloud using
Optiva Charging Engine
public/private/hybrid/edge facilities. Access is
provided via Google Marketplace.
This expanded its prior partnership that began in
2018.

2022 Microsoft Azure Optiva BSS Optiva is listed on the Azure Marketplace.

Source: Optiva

PRODUCT DETAIL
Optiva has embarked on a three-pronged strategy to expand and deepen its engagement with CSPs
(Figure 3: Overview of Optiva's Product Strategy):

• Improve CX with a fully digital experience.

• Reduce complexity and improve TTM.
• Enable innovation and new revenue streams.

Figure 3: Overview of Optiva's Product Strategy

Source: Optiva

© Appledore Research 2023 www.appledoreresearch.com Page 5

Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Optiva is one of the few mid-sized vendors who can provide a full-stack BSS. This is by virtue of its
broad portfolio, which was assembled through multiple M&As and also organically built to meet the
specific requirements of its large customer base. Optiva has also made considerable investments
into readying itself for the cloud and anticipates a significant portion of its future business to be
cloud related.

Figure 4: Optiva's Portfolio of Offerings

Source: Optiva
Optiva’s portfolio is comprised of three core products: Optiva BSS Platform, Optiva Charging Engine,
and Optiva Partner Monetization Platform (Figure 5). All components of these products are cloud-
native compliant and support both public and private cloud configurations. They can be deployed
on-prem or in the cloud as a SaaS offering, including managed services to further simplify
operations.

Figure 5: Optiva Product Platform

Source: Optiva

Page 6 www.appledoreresearch.com © Appledore Research 2023

 Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Optiva BSS Platform

Optiva’s BSS Platform offers a pre-integrated, end-to-end solution for customer and revenue
management. It targets MNO, MVNE, and MVNO operators looking for a single consolidated BSS
solution.

Figure 6: Optiva BSS Platform

-------- Optional
Source: Optiva
Optiva’s BSS platform is highly modularised, which allows CSPs to select their transformation path
and specific components. This approach also allows CSPs to get up and running with minimal system
integration. Optiva plans to evolve its architecture to align with TM Forum’s Open Digital
Architecture (ODA) and Open API’s declarative API initiative.

The BSS platform can be deployed on a SaaS model as well. The SaaS version uses a multi-tenant
architecture that supports multiple operators on a single instance. It comes bundled with various
plans and product offerings out of the box for prepaid and postpaid customers in the product
catalog.

Going forward, Optiva intends to expand its BSS platform to include multiplay capability supporting
fiber, cable, and 5G networks. It also supports integrations with AI/LLM platforms for enhanced CRM
and CX.

Also included is an option for wholesale billing, which provides CSPs with an integrated solution to
handle interconnect fees, wholesale billing, and roaming. This also supports MVNO, franchise
management, and content settlement. Optiva’s BSS Platform targets tier-3/4 MNOs and MVNEs
interested in offering multi-tenant services,and MVNOs looking for a standalone full-stack BSS
platform.

© Appledore Research 2023 www.appledoreresearch.com Page 7

Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Optiva Charging Engine

Optiva Charging Engine is an independent service configuration that gives CSPs a digital charging and
billing system that supports multiple services and different payment channels. By combining charging
and billing into a single integrated offering, the charging engine allows operators to simplify both
functions and reduce operational overhead.

Figure 7: Optiva Charging Engine

-------- Optional
Source: Optiva
Optiva Charging Engine targets tier-1/2 CSPs interested in migrating to digital services and taking
advantage of the benefits an integrated digital solution provides.

Optiva also supports an alternative convergent charging and policy configuration (pictured below)
targeting Tier-2/3 operators using either a separate billing engine or relying on other SaaS products
(e.g., Salesforce) for added functionality.

Page 8 www.appledoreresearch.com © Appledore Research 2023

 Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Figure 8: Optiva Convergent Charging and Policy Offering

-------- Optional
Source: Optiva

Optiva Charging Engine also integrates policy control and payment management, two elements
critical to enabling multi-partner, multi-service use cases.

• Policy control embeds guidelines for resource management, SLAs, and CX. It also enables
real-time applications like streaming, gaming, and digital voice services. Policy control is
essential for enabling 5G services, and Optiva combines charging and policy together.
• Payment management allows operators to offer different payment methods for each service
and integrates balance and payment information to support near real-time updates.

Optiva Partner Monetization

This PaaS solution provides a cloud-native platform supporting customer-focused functionality like
onboarding, bundling, fulfillment, and multi-partner settlement. It provides self-service portals
where partners can manage the product catalog, subscriptions, pricing, fulfillment, and settlements
using a single platform. Optiva Partner Monetization enables multiple partner relationship types,
supporting multi-layered partner relationships where cross-promoting and bundling can be
enabled.

© Appledore Research 2023 www.appledoreresearch.com Page 9

Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

Figure 9: Optiva Partner Monetization Platform

-------- Optional Added Functionality

Source: Optiva

The platform makes it easier for operators to monetize their offerings by simplifying settlements
when different product types, pricing models, partners, and currencies are involved.

APPLEDORE ANALYSIS
As a full-stack vendor, Optiva is well-positioned to influence and command the mid-tier BSS
segment, which has been vacated by multiple vendors through mergers and acquisitions and
geopolitical issues over the past decade. This will be an attractive segment over the medium term,
as not only several CSPs in this class are preparing to overhaul their BSS systems, they are in
general more open to considering other vendors beyond the incumbents. A number of CSPs favour
partnering with full-stack vendors, even if they are only deploying a specific function, as it provides
them the benefit of upgrading seamlessly in the future.

Developing a full-stack BSS solution from scratch is an expensive and time-consuming process that
few new entrants even want to attempt. This is why many smaller vendors are actively partnering
with complementary product vendors in order to provide a pre-integrated ‘full-stack like experience’
for CSPs. It is unclear to what extent CSPs will consider this approach as a viable alternative to
native full-stack BSS solutions.

Optiva’s acquisitions have helped it gain some well-regarded assets in its portfolio. The company
has since advanced and repositioned its solutions portfolio to better align with customer demands.
Optiva has embraced a product-centered approach that can help better manage and control the

Page 10 www.appledoreresearch.com © Appledore Research 2023

 Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

deployment experience for CSPs, rapidly reducing time to market for new offerings. The company
has also invested in making its solutions cloud-native compliant, standards compliant (such as TMF
Open APIs), and ready for new use cases enabled by 5G. The company has also invested in preparing
its solution for platform economy, enterprise, and CX.

Optiva’s financial health has been a concern, especially as the company’s revenue and customer
base has shrunk even as it restructured and repositioned its portfolio. Optiva’s management team,
led by its new CEO, remains very confident of its imminent turnaround and claims to be sitting on a
record sales pipeline valued at over USD$300 million (as of August 2023). That the company retains
the support of its major shareholders, who together own around 70% of Optiva, is a positive sign
and augurs well for Optiva.

SWOT Analysis
Below is a SWOT analysis of Optiva’s BSS portfolio.

Table 5: Company SWOT Analysis

Strengths
• Well-regarded modular full-stack BSS that offers CSPs multiple paths to upgrade or transform their
legacy systems.
• Broad existing customer base that includes non-telcos as well.
• Product-centered approach helps the company better control and manage the end-to-end delivery and
experience of its offerings.
Weaknesses
• Perception of weakened financial position will be a concern for some CSPs.
• Optiva remains unknown outside of key markets where it has a presence.
Opportunities
• Not many mid-sized vendors have a full-stack BSS, which can be an attractive proposition for mid and
large CSPs looking beyond tier-1 vendors.
• Standalone 5G adoption provides a near to medium-term opportunity for deploying a new real-time
charging engine as legacy systems will be insufficient.
Threats
• Larger vendors are increasing their focus on gaining mid and small-sized CSP customers.
• Smaller vendors are increasingly partnering with adjacent product vendor providers to offer a pre-
integrated solution that ‘feels’ like a single stack.

© Appledore Research 2023 www.appledoreresearch.com Page 11

Optiva - Mid-tier, Full-stack, Cloud-ready BSS

SUMMARY
CSPs broadly acknowledge the vital role that BSS plays in engaging with customers and monetising
its offerings. It is no surprise then that BSS is one of the biggest telecom software segments for telco
investments.

Yet this remains a highly fragmented segment, especially outside of the tier-1 vendors who mostly
work with large CSPs. There remains a huge opportunity for a mid-sized vendor with a full stack
cloud-ready BSS to make deep inroads into the segment.

Optiva has a well-rounded portfolio, has made considerable progress in fine-tuning and calibrating
its key offerings, and appears primed to deliver on its commitment to modernize billing and
charging, especially for new market entrants.

Page 12 www.appledoreresearch.com © Appledore Research 2023

Insight and analysis for telecom transformation.

@AppledoreVision

Appledore Research
www.appledoreresearch.com

info@appledorerg.com
+1 603 969 2125
44 Summer Street Dover, NH. 03820, USA

© Appledore Research LLC 2023.