Canadian operator TELUS has deployed Alcatel-Lucent’s Digital Media Store (DMS) to support its ringtone, image and mobile game service offerings to more than 7.9m mobile and broadband internet customers across Canada.

Alcatel-Lucent’s DMS is an end-to-end managed and hosted service for multi-content stores that allows service providers to deliver high quality content services more quickly with lower market and operational risk.
“Mobile Internet drastically changed the way our customers access digital content,” says Chris Langdon, vice-president of consumer products and services at TELUS. “Alcatel-Lucent is offering the right solution for us to ensure that we can bring faster services our customers want, with a compelling and consistent consumer experience that makes discovering and using content fun and entertaining.”

The DMS focuses on optimizing today’s traditional mobile content business while providing a foundation for quickly launching a wide range of new, differentiated services including applications, e-books, e-magazines, and video. It includes content relationships with leading content producers and aggregators focused on mobile apps, games, music, electronic publishing, and more. The DMS service automates the content lifecycle from content registration and population to the store to content management and publishing to marketing and delivery, regardless of content type.

Core to the DMS service, is a merchandizing and analytics engine that supports focused marketing programs designed to increase revenues and customer loyalty, e.g. bundles, subscriptions, personal locker, gifting, sharing of games, videos, music, applications and more. The DMS service also comes with the ability to augment any portion of the service provider’s content team from content partner management and licensing to the storefront and promotions management.

“A lot of operators are working with siloed content management and distribution systems,” says Nora Maene, director of marketing at Alcatel-Lucent’s  Applications Group. “The DMS solution will save them money because they won’t have to maintain several systems. It will also enable carriers to enhance and optimise the user experience, create a core commonality in terms of the look and feel, and run promotional marketing and merchandising activities across the various service types. If the analytics show there is a certain segment of users interested in a certain genre or content type, they could offer a bundle of content round a certain theme, or if they knew someone had bought content from one artist, they could suggest content from someone in the same genre.”

DMS is part of the Publishing Suite within the Alcatel-Lucent Developer Platform, which provides comprehensive API (application programming interface) management and developer tools to help service providers build their own developer programs, and broaden their ecosystem of application developers.