Benchmark Study Proves MetraTech and Microsoft Can Scale to Meet Requirements of the Most Demanding Service provider Billing Environments

by Terry McGuigan

Today, Microsoft billing partner MetraTech, announced the results of a performance benchmark of MetraTech’s MetraNet billing software running on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. We could not be more pleased with the results, and what they signify for Microsoft and the service provider industry as a whole.

The performance results set a new record for MetraTech and Microsoft, simulating 60 million active subscribers consuming high-volume service offerings, and demonstrated exceptional end-to-end transaction throughput, as follows:

· Rating / Pricing - 84,781 usage records/second, witheach record inserted into an indexed database

· Billing - 669 bills/second, with an average of 300 events per bill

· Balance Updates – 1.2 billion/hour, including event de-duplication, with each event updating an existing balance in an indexed database

This benchmark highlights the robustness of Microsoft and MetraTech technology at transaction levels that rival the highest levels found in telecommunications today. It also highlights the strength of the combined technologies to address end-to-end revenue management in the types of usage models emerging in communications and other industries.

For Microsoft, this is a proof point that shows how service provider billing requirements can be fully enabled by Microsoft technologies under intense demand. It also further boosts the credibility of our platform for mission critical applications in the service provider industry.

I continue to be encouraged by the work we’re doing with partners such as MetraTech and see this benchmark as an important part of our commitment to providing both service provider companies and consumers with the best innovative experiences possible.