Few people could have predicted the rapid proliferation of the Internet that has occurred within the last decade. Once a haven for computer scientists, the Internet is now being used by tens of millions of people each day. The explosive growth of the World Wide Web (WWW) is fueling comparable growth in the Internet services market. International Data Corporation (IDC), the Framingham, Massachusetts–based research house, estimates that there were over 68 million Web users worldwide at the end of 1997. IDC, meanwhile, projects an annual growth rate of 32 percent, resulting in 319 million Web users by the end of 2002.

Given this large base of potential customers, it is not surprising that the Internet services market is experiencing rapid growth as businesses increasingly turn to service providers to design, implement, and host their presence on the Web. In a recent research report entitled The Internet is No Longer Optional, Forrester Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, declared that "Having grown from virtually nothing to $2.8 billion in just 3 years, the Internet services market will continue to post stellar growth rates across all segments. The U.S. business Internet services market—nearly $58 billion in 2003—will rival business long-distance phone spending in size."

As competition among service providers heats up, these providers are exploring new ways to increase margins, differentiate their services, and secure their place in an industry that is beginning to undergo a consolidation and shakeout. Peter Kastner, chief research officer, Aberdeen Group, states, "The Internet is truly a dog-eat-dog competitive world. We just can't use the technology that we used to in the past. Because of that, all of our traditional infrastructure things like billing, that used to work fine on a 30- or 45-day cycle, don't work any more. We need to allow customers to turn on a dime, try new services right away."

One of the most effective strategies being adopted by the leading providers is to take full advantage of recent advances in customer management and billing (CM&B) systems—advances that move CM&B out of the back office to take their place as real time front-office strategic systems. Within the larger Internet revolution, these new CM&B systems are causing a revolution of their own.

The service provider's infrastructure is critical. It can facilitate rapid adaptation and innovation or it can be a major stumbling block. The CM&B system is a fundamental component of this infrastructure because it performs the following functions:

• controls the key asset (the subscriber database)
• supports the primary value proposition (providing the service)
• manages the key interaction (collecting the money)

This tutorial will examine the differences between batch and real time CM&B systems, review challenges that providers are facing, and discuss the benefits of a real time CM&B system.