OREANDA-NEWS.  February 06, 2012. NEC Corporation (NEC) and SAP Japan Co., Ltd. (SAP Japan) today announced a global business partnership agreement to provide billing services through SaaS that operate on NEC's cloud computing systems.

Agreement objectives
Due to the growing popularity of smartphones and cloud based services, there is increasing demand for billing systems, which are a core revenue base for service operators. NEC and SAP Japan will provide these billing services as cloud-based SaaS that enable a reduction in initial investments, are easy to expand and will support a wide range of businesses, including both large-scale enterprises and new businesses in emerging segments.

Main content
NEC created cloud-based SaaS that utilize the "SAP(R) Convergent Charging" system to provide billing services. Target customers include telecom operators, cloud operators and service providers that offer digital content. Existing NEC services such as M2M (*1) services, "CONNEXIVE" and mobile cloud platforms for smartphones will use these new billing services as well. Target markets are both in and outside of Japan, including global companies and companies whose main infrastructure is based in Japan. NEC will also promote this business from its five regional (*2) competence centers throughout the world. SAP Japan will conduct joint marketing and promotions at regional levels (*3).

These new services are scheduled to begin in April, 2012. Service fees are planned to start from 500,000 yen per month (provided that daily transactions are under 200,000).

***
Notes
(*1)  Machine to Machine Service
(*2)  Five regional headquarters include Europe, Middle East and Africa, Greater China, Asia Pacific, North America and Central & South America
(*3)  EMEA, Asia Pacific, Japan and the Americas