CSG's acquisition spree continued Monday with word that the OSS/BSS specialist has acquired DGIT Systems, a company that aims to broaden CSG's platform and enable its partners to stich in support for a range of additional third-party applications and capabilities that are coming into focus in the 5G era.

Melbourne, Australia-based DGIT specializes in automated configure, price and quote (CPQ) systems that support complex products and services that require elements such as live, dynamic pricing and discounts, as well as catalog-driven order management systems that could involve complex handoffs to or integrations with third-party systems.

CSG believes that capability will fit in as traditional business-to-business (B2B) models continue to evolve toward more complex business-to-business-to-X (B2B2x) models that involve the integrations of those aforementioned, additional third parties, according to Ken Kennedy, CSG's COO and president of revenue management and digital monetization.

While general connectivity from a cable operator or a telco to an enterprise or small or midsized business might fall under a traditional B2B scenario, the "X" in these new B2B2X scenarios represents the additional service being layered in on the backend from a third party, or multiple third parties. That's coming into play as communications service providers (CSPs) get into new markets, such as enterprise IoT, that tend to bring new capabilities (and complexities) to the table.

"CSPs understand they aren't experts in healthcare or experts in manufacturing or agriculture," Kennedy said, noting that some of those markets require support for variable, configurable and ever-evolving pricing structures that extend well beyond baseline connectivity. "But they want to provide industry-specific solutions, so they're going to partner with [additional] companies on the backend … CSPs are looking for more holistic solutions that can manage not only a complexity with their customer, but also the complexity with multiple downstream partners."

The same could apply to large, enterprise customers that might have hundreds of locations, but need to configure pricing and discounts at regional, or even more granular, levels. Kennedy notes that this sort of capability will also reach into the world of 5G as operators pursue tailored offerings that take advantage of network slicing capabilities that can, for example, deliver faster speeds, lower latencies and other QoS-sensitive, premium-level applications that go well beyond traditional best-effort offerings.

CSG sees role expanding in digital transformation deals

Kennedy said CSG had engaged with DGIT on multiple projects before making the move to acquire it. In addition to gaining DGIT customers such as Vodafone New Zealand and Vocus (a fiber service provider in Australia), he said the acquisition of the DGIT will also help to expand CSG's role in some digital transformation deals that might have handed off the kind of capabilities DGIT brings to bear to a systems integrator.

CSG did not disclose what it paid for DGIT, a company founded in 2005 that currently has about 70 service provider customers in 18 countries. But Kennedy confirmed that just over 100 employees, including DGIT CEO Greg Tilton, are joining CSG.

The DGIT deal follows a recent wave of M&A for CSG. Recent acquisitions include Tango Telecom (4G and 5G policy control and monetization) and Kitewheel (customer journey orchestration and analytics).

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading