DigiToll

2002 Consensus Software Awards

Product description

The performance of business software and associated bandwidth is critical, as it impacts directly on the operational success of any business. Demands of new applications, external resources, data flow and scale of operations across network gateways are increasing at an exponential rate.

Awareness of competitors, organisations, people and trends impacting an organisation's network is critical to staying competitive.

DigiToll^® is an exciting and innovative network centric Internet IP telecommunications management suite. It is comprised of Network IP Billing, Business Intelligence and e-security surveillance software modules that are used to account, substantiate and manage corporate network telecommunications.

DigiToll^® provides:

• an IP Accounting mechanism to identify and recover network usage costs and to verify carrier charges.

In some respects DigiToll^® can be likened to telephone information management systems (TIMS). Unlike the case of telephone bills, which permit an exact breakdown of telephone cost and allocation to users or group of users, data network use in organisations has been difficult to account for.

IT dependant organisations need DigiToll^®'s timely network usage accounting information to save, control and substantiate IT Network expenditure. Implementation of an IP-based billing system on an organisations network will have a significant and beneficial effect on the IT department budget.

DigiToll^® helps organisations to discover the total cost of their operations (TCO) based on network orientated computing resources utilised and to perform chargeback of IT.

• Data-Forensics for Business Intelligence and E-Security surveillance 

Complete analysis of network usage data can be produced to gain substantial strategic knowledge about their business in real-time (without impacting on an end-users privacy).

DigiToll^® enables organisations to drill deep into their network data to discover bandwidth use and abuse, to uncover hidden security threats and organisational demographics.

DigiToll^® enhances business management capabilities by presenting new business intelligence (in a user-friendly manner) that identifies, measures and segments the myriad of operational and performance metrics that could potentially affect an organisation.

DigiToll^® data-forensics allow efficient and accurate tracking, tracing, monitoring, reporting and management of traffic travelling from their internal network to the Internet and internally between computers.

Using intelligent agent technology, information is continually collected, filtered and tagged in real-time from network gateways such as routers, switches or proxy servers.

This translates to rapid drill-down discovery of the reasons for bandwidth usage costs, poor service levels and network intrusions. Helping to manage dynamic growth and complexity whilst reducing the cost of network administration and control.

Innovation

Network-orientated business has increased network and server costs to the point where a large percentage of IT budgets are now spent on infrastructure hardware, bandwidth and its maintenance. With DigiToll^® segmentation for actual cost centre network resource usage and planning can take place.

DigiToll^® produces complete, rich, and meaningful in-depth timely results compared to current reporting methods. Insourced or outsourced resources frequently use currently available software solutions that produce “limited information value” utilisation reports in an attempt to cope with these problems at large costs to the organisation and potentially impact on user privacy. Accuracy and timeliness of reporting are key features of DigiToll^®.

Furthermore, DigiToll^® collection, tagging and reporting occurs in real-time or ‘DigiToll^®’ised from historical logs. This translates to a significant advance on existing technologies.

The Internet and Internet-based-technologies access have become essential business tools of technologically advanced organisations. Demands of new applications, external resources, data flow and scale of operations across network gateways are increasing at an exponential rate. This often results in loss of connectivity to resources and slow network access speeds. DigiToll^® provides essential information to ascertain service level requirements.

DigiToll^® provides a mechanism for IT managers and CFOs to accurately verify and itemise or effectively distribute and recover IT costs that are a result of the consumption or capacity planning of network resources and services by departments or users in a timely manner. Currently costs are ascertained on an adhoc basis. MIS departments are often considered as cost centres as they fail to pass on these costs.

Based on the compliance issues for privacy in Australia, the introduction of monitoring applications is often considered negatively by users. We believe that the introduction of DigiToll^®'s methods to protect users from inadvertent misuse of their information and rights will facilitate the uptake and user acceptance of DigiToll^® and give it a global competitive advantage.

Organisations globally are increasingly aware that the availability and performance of electronic business applications and associated bandwidth is critical, since they impact directly on the operational success of their business and business critical applications. More efficient networking improves the quality of the workspace and improves productivity.

Performance

DigiToll^® completed comprehensive Alpha testing in September 2000.

Beta testing began in November 2000. IdeaData® set up a commercial bureau service to provide the new network information mined by DigiToll^® collectors to customers. This enabled us to perform speed tests and prove to commercial viability of DigiToll^®’s information value and licence model. Major corporate customer accounts were provided a high-value return on investment for works performed by IdeaData® producing highly successful Executive Management Reports (EMR) and onsite realtime analysis.

First actual commercial sales of DigiToll^® began early 2001. Value Added Reseller agreements to market and support its DigiToll^® product locally and globally were initiated in July 2001.

Kevin Levine, Deputy CEO of Trade Wind Communications (TWC) said, “We see this as an exciting addition to our product suite. In the current business climate, a product that offers a value proposition at all levels within an organisation, and one that also delivers cost and resource efficiencies is sure to achieve high levels of market penetration.”

IdeaData® was the only company to graduate from both the ATP Incubator program and the Executive FastTrac Technology program, with awards and certificates presented at the University Vice-Chancellors' Awards for "New Business Creation" and Business Incubator Company Graduation in March 2000. IdeaData® was a finalist in the AIIA iAwards 2001 under the iNVESTMENT Privacy category and was recently been shortlisted as a finalist in the Secrets of IT Innovations IT Business Forum Awards in the Business, E-Commerce and E-Security categories.

AIIA iAward Finalist 2001

IdeaData® recently won the opportunity in the national Secrets of IT Innovations IT Business Forum Awards to present to the World Congress for IT 2002 IT Business Forum in two categories Business Software and E-Security after passing industry referee interviews and a video presentation elevator pitch for the final stage of judging. IdeaData® was the only company in NSW to win in two categories and one of only two companies to win in two categories out of the whole of Australia.

Potential

International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts the world Internet economy will reach $1 trillion (USD) or $1.9 trillion (AUD) by 2001. (based on IDC worldwide industry statistics – November 1999)

Based on these trends the extrapolated Internet spend in Australia in 1999 was $49.4 billion, which is expected to grow at 43% each year. (based on Forrester / Gartner  industry statistics – November 1999)

IDC reports that, the worldwide Market for Corporate Internet Access Control, is expected to grow from a $5 Million dollar market in 1999 to over $250 Million by 2003. (Bulletin #W19713 - Posted July 1999)

By 2003, IDC forecast U.S. telecom billing revenues will reach $9.68 billion, up from $7.70 billion in 1998.  (Telecom Billing: An Overview of the Competitive Landscape, published in April 1999.)

According to a report by Insight the total market for true IP billing will jump from $110 million in 1998 to more than several billion dollars in revenue by 2004. (IP Billing: Moving Beyond Telecom's Time/Distance Billing Model 1999-2004)

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics businesses employing 100 or more persons, 87% had Internet access. (ABS)

The expected potential growth of the market is closely aligned to the rapid growth in Organisations connecting to and reliant on the Internet. The growth in Internet dependent equipment and systems (eg. Voice over IP telephony Systems, Video Conferencing, wireless gateways and e-mail) will see Organisations increasing their use in data transfers. Internet Service Provider pricing models will progressively move from a fixed monthly rate to a megabyte usage rate. (IdeaData).

VAR channels and alliance partners have committed resources and new channels are being developed. IP based networks are already designed on a global standards. DigiToll^® meets these standards. Global markets have been identified and tested.

DigiToll^® has a fast developing customer base, local and international VAR channels. The global need for DigiToll^® will increase as use of the Internet and IP based networks and applications continue to grow.

Other information the judges should know

DigiToll^® uniquely advances global knowledge for e-commerce because it enables businesses to completely understand their virtual business environment, thus making e-commerce a functional reality for enterprises. This understanding has been missing to date and has been a factor in stalling the penetration of e-commerce and the demise of earlier B2B efforts.

Internet and Internet-based technologies and inter-networked environment are now essential business tools of technologically advanced organisations. The advent of the inter-networked economy means that organisations need to manage, control and understand the exponential growth of their whole enterprise.

DigiToll^® enables every level of business community to become involved in the process of understanding their networks and utilising them to their maximum potential. For the first time data formerly targeted at and available to technical specialists has been filtered to communicate commercially valuable decision support advice in a format easily accessible to non-technical management. This addresses the change in the global economy towards a knowledge economy.

DigiToll^® allows businesses of all sizes to manage, assess and effectively resource their network use, with all systems of the business integrated in a comprehensive model. The results demonstrate the superior performance of this method compared to traditional ones.

DigiToll^® has raised the capability of businesses to engage in effective e-commerce enabling connectivity and speed issues to be addressed, data forensics for security to identify long term data breaches and tagging of specifically monitored data for real-time knowledge for e-commerce, security and business intelligence.

Businesses who have non-technical and technical managers who understand the digital economy have a competitive advantage in the market. These businesses can open new discussions with their service or content providers with the new knowledge that they gain from DigiToll^®. The organisations self monitored usage profile can enable clearer service or pricing plans to be negotiated with providers and countries wherein they operate.

DigiToll^® collectors currently collect long term data where no network product has gone before. Some router manufacturers have methods that provide basic accounting information. DigiToll^® has built collectors for a variety of legacy routers and switches that until DigiToll^® had no way of being filtered into useful long term network accounting data. A wireless mobile economy will further commoditise network communications. Wireless environments use standard IP based routing and switch environments that can be ‘mined’ by DigiToll^®. New research is being performed to develop DigiToll^® BOTS to manage e-mail and VoIP communications and ASP business.

The uptake and distribution of technology into corporations, governments and individuals is today considered to be an “Industrial Revolution” with dramatic economic changes as a result, DigiToll^® assists organisations to manage that change thereby helping them to help themselves and the networked information economy.

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