HELSINKI, July 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has signed a five-year services agreement to help Qvantel deploy a Cloud solution that blends private modern cloud infrastructure from IBM with Qvantel's systems of record. Transforming to a cloud IT model will improve Qvantel's flexibility in offering critical business-processes-as-a-service (BPaaS) to its customers.

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Qvantel provides end-to-end business process support solutions for billing and enterprise resource management, combining online store sales and product catalog solutions to teleoperators' back-end systems. Under the terms of the new agreement, IBM will build a private cloud solution for Qvantel as well as provide management, monitoring and architecture consulting services which together will ensure the reliable production and delivery of secured, flexible and scalable services for millions of monthly billing transactions. Qvantel's customers need the ability to quickly launch new campaigns and offer new value-add services to end-users. IBM's mix of traditional consulting services matched with a scalable Cloud infrastructure will give Qvantel the flexibility it needs to enable its customers to accomplish their business objectives.

The rapid growth of smart mobile device adoption has created a demand for ease of using various applications and services without ordering them from each vendor separately. Holistic customer experience and unified application service delivery are key in providing innovative customer engagement models. Combining its services with those from third parties in a way end users want to consume them is a vital value proposition to teleoperators who are expanding their role into a multiservice hub for end-users. Further, users are increasingly shifting from data and connection subscriptions to services subscriptions, and as more devices are increasingly connected to the internet - creating an Internet of Things - clients increasingly need the ability to send and receive data from various mobile devices. This creates a need for processing data traffic and charging for it in ways not traditionally used in end-user-billing business models.

"Our value proposition is to help our customers challenge competition with agility and speed in time-to-market with innovative services in a very competitive business environment," said Pekka Nurminen, Services Director, Qvantel Business Solutions Oy. "Mobile end-users demand ease of use and effortless customer experience with their selected service provider. They also expect operators to offer all needed services smoothly. The modern cloud solution provides us flexibility and reliability that we need to meet those end-user requirements together with our customers."

Qvantel chose to deploy a private Cloud solution from IBM to take advantage of reliable, scalable and secured services as well as allow rapid implementation of new services in the future. Customers' requirements for privacy also played an important role in choosing its production method. The IBM Cloud solution will allow Qvantel to further develop its production methods into hybrid cloud model in the future by taking needed additional services from the public cloud to meet dynamic market changes, if needed.

"With existing customers around Europe and plans to expand even further, Qvantel needs a technology services partner that can deliver a global, reliable service delivery platform built on modern technology," said Jukka Hopearuoho, Client Solution Executive, IBM Finland. "With the IBM cloud platform, IBM will help Qvantel launch new services in a matter of days or weeks instead of months, and will enable it to deliver consistent services around the world."

About IBM Cloud Computing
IBM has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world with 40,000 industry experts. Since its acquisition in 2013, SoftLayer has served 6,000 new cloud clients. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of 40 data centers worldwide. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions including SoftLayer to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more than 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM's public cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud.

About Qvantel
Qvantel is an international IT services company offering customized, cloud-based, critical business support systems (BSS) and consulting for ICT service providers, e-Invoicing consolidators, and media companies. With more than 20 years of experience with BSS systems, embedded and enterprise software development, Qvantel has produced robust and agile solution frameworks that can be easily customized to help companies achieve optimum efficiency and maximum customer focus. Headquartered in Finland, Qvantel today employs over 200 professionals in five EU-countries and India. For more about Qvantel, visit www.qvantel.com.

Media Contact
Nicholas Smith
IBM Communications
212-671-9653
nssmith@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE IBM

SOURCE: IBM