TynTec calls for industry benchmarked SMS service level agreements

Mobile messaging operator TynTec believes — as I do — that the growth of the medium of SMS is being limited by perception. Their release today goes into more detail — I’ve published it in full as I think this issue deserves wider awareness.

I’ve been in many meetings with serious business people making serious commercial decisions who, time and time again have dumped SMS as their medium of choice — or flat out rejected it — because the operators or service providers were unable to offer ‘service levelled’ facilities.

The next problem was defining ‘high quality’. I’d explain that our supplier used X or Y and therefore the SMS feed we could offer was ‘high quality’. Then the Commercial Director — our potential client — would arse the negotiations up by telling us that ‘his mate’ that ‘he met at a dinner party the other week could get him high quality texts for 2.01p each.’

In the end I often just had to smile, calmly and walk out the meeting. It came down to price every time because we couldn’t easily measure quality. So I most certainly agree with TynTec’s suggestions below.

Link: webitpr | Tyntec Calls For SMS Service Level Agreements

Mobile messaging operator TynTec (www.tyntec.com) today calls for the mobile industry to adopt service level agreements (SLA’s) for enterprise SMS to aid the adoption of the technology in businesses.

SMS’ growth as a business tool has been stifled by its perceived unreliability and the incapability of traditional SMS providers to offer traceability, security or delivery guarantees. TynTec is calling on all providers of enterprise SMS to bring about greater accountability in their services in order to encourage enterprises to adopt the technology as a communications tool.

At the moment, SMS is generally being offered to enterprises without specified service level agreements defining the reliability, security and traceability of messaging. The widespread adoption of SLA’s by the enterprise mobile messaging community would enable buyers to quickly benchmark services and make educated decisions about suppliers.

Michael Kowalzik, CEO of TynTec, said: “The lack of defined service level agreements has been one of the major stumbling blocks in the adoption of SMS in the enterprise. Before adopting a technology for mission critical applications, businesses need to know that they can offer the appropriate degree of reliability and measurability. If you can’t offer an SLA you’re asking a company to essentially sign up to an unknown quantity – something that’s acting as a brake on the enterprise SMS market as a whole.

”Its clear that some providers can’t provide an enterprise quality service and, if SLA’s were the expected norm in SMS providers, then companies would quickly be able to tell the wheat from the chaff and home in on an appropriate solution.”

TynTec is a mobile messaging operator, offering enterprise quality SMS services to companies such as O2, British Airways and Skype. The company has multiple points of deep level (SS7) connectivity into the global mobile network, enabling it to act as an operator-level messaging provider. Using these capabilities, the company can offer a unique level of reliability and measurability in SMS services.