Summary: We are initiating coverage of CSG (Ascendon product) in the Agile Billing market with an MGI 360 Rating of 53 and a NEUTRAL analyst outlook. CSG is an established brand as a hyperscale provider of OSS/BSS solutions to the cable and broadband industry. The Ascendon product represents their pivot to a multi-tenant SaaS approach to monetization tools for B2C-oriented digital services. Ascendon focuses on enterprise accounts with mid to high levels of complexity and volume across a broad range of pricing abstraction requirements. The product shows early promise as we note its strong architectural foundation and design that reflects years of experience in the communications billing space. Ascendon has a sophisticated product catalog capability, can support customer and product hierarchies, and abstract complex pricing methods including usage. CSG is aiming outside of its historical comfort zone into B2C-oriented consumer services in industries including software/SaaS, media and entertainment, business services, retail and financial services. It represents an attractive option for larger organizations that traditionally see themselves as Type B (Mainstream) or even Type C (Conservative) adopters of technology. Ascendon delivers significantly higher agility than the rest of the CSG portfolio, but the product still requires additional investment. Ascendon may also be of interest to traditional telecom services providers who are current CSG customers and are looking to create a modern monetization capability to support new business initiatives. So far, the product has limited industry visibility and CSG will be challenged building the new brand and establishing credibility as a cloud-based technology supplier in an already crowded enterprise billing field.
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Competitors: BillingPlatform, BluLogix, Gotransverse, Oracle, SAP, Zuora
