Valista joins digital services consortium

Irish software company Valista has joined a consortium of global software companies providing a one-stop shop for telecommunications, media and entertainment companies looking to sell digital assets through a variety of channels.

The Digital Services Hub is led by content management specialists Vignette and also includes Sun Microsystems, Volantis and SafeNet.

Valista, which has offices in Wicklow, the US, Europe and Asia, already sells to some of the world's major telecommunications companies, including Vodafone, 3, Orange and NTT DoCoMo.

Raomal Perera, Valista's chief executive, said he expected the Vignette initiative would win the group new business in the media and publishing space "sooner rather than later".

Director of marketing Evanna Kearins said the consortium was unique as it supported the sale of digital assets such as movie clips or music downloads through a variety of channels, including over broadband, set-top boxes and mobile devices.

The Valista Plus suite of software will be used to provide payment, settlement and merchandising capabilities, such as the ability to offer free trials, sign users up for subscriptions and cross-sell products. Ms Kearins said the multi-channel approach meant that settlement of sales would be more complex, with revenues potentially being shared between content owners, publishers, service providers and advertisers.

The member companies have done significant work pre-integrating their technologies so they can be quickly deployed by customers.

"The primary advantage of the Digital Services Hub is that the customer only has one point of contact for the whole digital value chain," said Ms Kearins.

"Valista's work with Vignette in the Digital Services Hub provides a solution that reduces that difficulty and the associated risks," said Larry Goldman, senior analyst with OSS Observer, a market research firm covering the telecom software market.

"This allows customers to get products to market and generate revenue faster, which gives a competitive advantage."

Ms Kearins said the consortium was close to signing deals with a number of customers and BSkyB was already using some elements of the Digital Services Hub, although this did not include Valista's software.