Roaming: An emerging segment with huge potential

SAN JOSE, US: Roamware Inc., the global leader in mobile roaming software and solutions, and Sun Microsystems, the global developer of technologies and systems, today announced that their joint partnership processes more than 80 per cent of India’s international roaming traffic - providing seamless roaming solutions to most of the country’s leading mobile service operators.

Globally, Roamware and Sun Microsystems have partnered in more than 140 countries to provide roaming solutions to mobile service providers. 

The essence of this partnership is to deploy Roamware solutions on the Sun platforms, where Sun is the hardware provider for Roamware product solutions such as Roaming Replicator which enables telecom operators to provide international prepaid roaming. Further, the Roamware-Sun partnership also manifests in the extensive performance testing of Roamware solutions in Sun labs, which helps in optimizing Roamware solutions for Sun’s hardware resulting in more efficient solutions for our customers.

Commenting on the partnership and the scope in India, Rajneesh Kapur, General Manager – SAARC, CIS and Africa, Roamware said “Coping with the speed of growth and the scale of the demands in India has been a challenge but, working in partnership, Roamware and Sun have delivered availability, reliability and coverage to satisfied clients across the sub-continent.

John Jiang, Executive Vice-President & Chief Technical Officer, Roamware, further reflecting on the partnership said “There is a significant efficiency gain through working with the same partner over many years. This has also facilitated us to provide more robust and efficient solutions and to comprehensively test and benchmark our solutions before they reach the customers.”

Unlike other partnerships which are highly common in the IT space, the Roamware-Sun partnership prides itself as one of the few which have an extremely deep penetration in the market. “The synergy delivered by this partnership is clearly demonstrated by the fact that we jointly process an estimated 80 per cent of the Indian roaming traffic.

Roaming, while a lucrative business segment within the telecom operators is still an unsaturated market, and thereby an emerging segment which offers huge potential. At the same time it is an offering that helps telecom service providers differentiate themselves in the competitive landscape of the Indian telecom industry and assumes the role of a mission critical service. Sun’s network computing infrastructure, combined with Roamware’s applications, has helped operators provide high levels of service and derive operational efficiency. Sun enjoys a high rate of success in the Indian telecom market, and this partnership further amplifies our leadership position in this segment”, said Swapan Dutta, Director -Alliance, Developer Relations and TeleWeb Sales, Sun Microsystems India.

With international roaming calls in India expected to be worth close to USD 500 million this year, the Roamware and Sun partnership is expected to handle calls to the value of around USD 400 million, where Roamware currently enjoys a 100 per cent penetration in established GSM operators.

Roamware’s ‘Roaming Replicator’ solution helps its clients leverage the strong roaming relationship and existing roaming infrastructure of other operator(s) to provide seamless coverage and accessibility to international roaming calls of their subscribers. To support these solutions, Sun offers Chip Multi threading based servers, which are high on performance and highly cost efficient at the same time, along with the deployment of Sun Storage 2540 to deliver reliability, flexibility and high-density.