Our product is much more than we can show on the web site, and as a core system in the business of our customers there's a lot to say about product implementation and operation. People want to know how they can get a sandbox environment? How about migration strategies? Or the types of support included? In this page we try to answer commonly asked questions.
FAQ
General/business
What is the business model and what does the price include? Minimum commitment?
Amdocs Digital Brands Suite customers pay a small initial setup fee, followed by a fixed annual fee and per-subscriber subscription fee. The price covers all platform and operational costs: licenses, cloud resources, operations, support, upgrades etc. No minimum time commitment.
What professional services do you provide and how are they priced?
Professional services (integrations and migrations) can be performed by the customer, SI or by Amdocs services - and in that case they will be defined in a separate contract and scope. We also offer business consultancy in the areas of agile, business process re-engineering, project managment, planning, marketing and business intelligence.
Are the Maintenance services priced on top of the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite SaaS subscription?
The SaaS subscription price covers all maintenance costs as well as ongoing product upgrades.
Can I move from one package to another?
Yes
Which configurations are available for users?
The Amdocs Digital Brands Suite is highly configurable and built for business users to configure through the tenant portal (e.g. offers, products etc.) with "low code/no code" UI and extensive business and technical documentation, or through business operations support from Amdocs, while maintaining a single code base for the platform. We place high importance on the self-service capabilities of the Suite to support business users, operational users, developers etc. and continue to expose more and more functionality in the self-service interfaces. In addition, functionality can be enhanced/extended by the Suite customers via the TM Forum compliant APIs.
Do I need to pay for future upgrades?
The subscription price includes ongoing upgrades to the platform at no additional cost.
Is the solution cloud native? Deployed only on the cloud or also on premise/edge?
The solution is fully cloud native and deployed on AWS cloud, except for OCS which can be deployed on edge (e.g. Amazon Outpost) or on-prem. The platform heavily relies on native AWS services - specifically, serverless functions - to ensure flexibility, scalability, elasticity, performance, security and operational efficiency
How fast can I get the system up and running?
A customer tenant can be up and running instantly and ready for integrations. A typical customer-specific configuration and integration takes 2-4 weeks.
How easy is it to scale and/or expand to additional LoBs?
You can either scale with fully converged care and monetization on the same instance/tenant, or open a separate instance/tenant dedicated for the new LoB. From performance perspective the platform is fully robust and can support anything from few tens of thousands of subscribers to tens of millions
How is performance addressed in the Digital Brands Suite cloud environment?
Amdocs Digital Brands Suite is fully elastic - it grows (and shrinks) as business needs change. It is designed from the ground up to fully leverage cloud resources. For example: Product catalog login is written as set of Lambda functions which are automatically instantiated per need and utilizes DocDB as a service which supports the same kind of elasticity. On top of that we have continues performance regression testing. You can read more about our Convergent Charging performance over AWS in real-life scenarios here: https://www.amdocs.com/news-press/amdocs-showcases-amazing-charging-capacity-enabling-12-billion-complex
Are all 3rd party software used within the Digital Brands Suite completely masked form the customer and bundled within the SaaS pricing?
All 3rd parties used to support the core functionality are completely integrated into the product and included in the subscription price and operations. We also have pre-integrated add-on services/functionality provided by 3rd party SaaS providers and those add-ons are handled separately (add-on price and in some case direct contract between the customer and the 3rd party, depending on the use case).
Sandbox environment
What Is the process to get access to a Digital Brands Suite sandbox environment?
- Request for an Amdocs Digital Brands Suite sandbox as a trial environment can be submitted on digitalbrands.amdocs.com or directly from your respective Customer Success Manager.
- Existing customers who need additional sandboxes can either submit a support ticket or work with their Customer Success Manager. For more than two sandbox environments an order is required.
- Once the environment is provisioned, Support will provide the login details to the customer.
How long does the provisioning take?
Setting up a new Digital Brands Suite tenant environment ready for integrations is almost instantaneous. It takes about six hours to set up a new tenant with Amdocs Charging
How much does the sandbox cost?
Two sandboxes are provided by default at no additional cost. One is provided during Amdocs Digital Brands Suite implementation. The other one, which contains the copied data, is provided after Amdocs Digital Brands Suite implementation is complete. Additional sandbox environment can be requested at additional cost with a minimum 12 months duration.
Does the sandbox come with copied data or does the customer have to manually load their own data?
The second sandbox and any additional sandboxes are provided for existing customers who have live data. Unless the customer specifically requests an empty sandbox, it will automatically be generated populated with the data.
Are there different "flavors" of Amdocs Digital Brands Suite sandboxes?(IE: API Sandbox, Performance Test, Production Copy, Universal)?
The Amdocs Digital Brands Suite has only one product version and sandboxes use the same version.
Are the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite Sandbox capabilities identical to the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite production?
Yes. It is the same system.
Does the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite Sandbox performance equal to the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite production?
Yes. It is the same system.
Integration
Can I build additional functionality on top of the platform?
Yes, using our rich set of TM Forum Open APIs compliant and certified APIs, you can build additional functionality either through Amdocs SI services or build your own / with a certified 3rd party SI.
Can we link to or share information with on-premises systems?
The Amdocs Digital Brands Suite cloud platform provides open APIs which allow you to integrate with your eco-system whether it is on cloud or on premises.
Migration
What will be Amdocs Digital Brands Suite responsibilities after data is migrated from previous systems to the Digital Brands Suite on the cloud?
- Providing the most up-to-date software releases and patches
- Ensuring that customers are on the most currenta security updates
- Providing 24/7 monitoring and support
What migration strategy does Amdocs recommend for moving to Amdocs Digital Brands Suite cloud?
Amdocs Digital Brands Suite does not dictate any specific method of migration but allow flexibility to accommodate for the method that fits a specific customer. All access to Amdocs Digital Brands Suite is done via TM compliant APIs which can be utilized by any ETL system to load data. Custom attributes on each and every entity allow for tagging of data for "on the fly migration". For testing and staging purposes the system allows for unlimited sandboxes.
What protocols and/or tools are available to transfer data from Amdocs Digital Brands Suite to our BI management reporting tools/data warehouse?
There are two main methods to access data in Amdocs Digital Brands Suite: Fetch it via TMF Compliant REST APIs, or register to events and have the system push the data to its destination when changes happen. API based access supports paging, filtering, and streaming. Subscription to events is done via TMF compliant HUB API. Both methods support user and machine-to-machine authentication. In addition to the above the system allows for file based import using custom parsers of JSON, CSV, TSV, XML, and PSV.
What services does Amdocs Digital Brands Suite to offer to assist with the cloud migration and what would be for free or with a cost?
Tiago & Yossi - WIP
Operation & implementation
What operational visibility do customers have using the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite cloud platform ?
Monitoring, configuration.
How does the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite cloud platform manage release cycles in the cloud environment?
There are no release cycles. Software is being released continuously without downtime.
Are customers forced to receive a release in the cloud environment?
Yes, all cloud instances will run on the same version of the Digital Brands Suite. Each Digital Brands Suite release will be applied at the same time for all the instances.
How is the regression testing done for the patches?
Regression testing is performed for all releases and patches by using the automation testing suite.
What if we find an issue and cannot accept a patch that is recommended or required for another customer?
It is not an option to hold off a patch deployment.
What is the process around data fixes?
If there is any data fix required, the Support team will work with the Operations team to run the data fix.
How do you make sure any future patches deployed on the cloud does not have a conflict with the customization we have?
Customization is a first class feature in our system, and is based on well defined APIs and functionality. Our software is throughly tested before it is released, and is monitored closely on every release. We are also monitoring usual business functionality that our system supports, and are being alerted whenever this behavior changes dramatically in case it is caused by a faulty release. On top of this we are using various release paradigms (e.g. blue-green, canaries, etc.) to make sure that in case of a faulty release the impact radius is going to be minimal.
What is the SLA for recovery from an outage?
Overall, 99.9999% of availability is committed for the cloud platform.
How is the performance monitored in the cloud?
Can copy from external source. Need to add a disclaimer that our tool set is changing (today we are using a combination of ELK and Prometheus as well as CloudWatch)
Deployment option: Public Cloud chosen by customer (AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.)?
Yes, AWS only (Amdocs owned platform/account).
Can the Digital Brands Suite be Deployed on: Private cloud on prem?
No.
Can the Digital Brands Suite be Deployed on: Private Cloud off prem?
No.
Deployment option: Public Cloud as a single instance OR multi-tenant?
Both options are supported.
What is the required effort for new version upgrades ?
No effort. Amdocs delivers continuous platform upgrades as part of our CI/CD pipeline; deployments are done seamlessly to customers, with no downtime.
Can customers access and extract their data?
Yes. Data can be pulled via TMF compliant APIs or push via pub-sub mechanism (also TMF compliant).
Can customers remain on their Amdocs Digital Brands Suite version and avoid the new releases?
If yes, with which limitations?
No, we deliver and support one-code release to all in our AWS based cloud platform.
What are the operational efforts that the customer needs to do in order to operate the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite solution?
Operational activities from customer are managed via our Tenant Portal or API (such as offer configuration, extracts, data analytics...).
Are the implementation and integration services provided by Amdocs or by certified partners (e.g. SI)?
Both options are supported.
Security and data privacy
What are the security and privacy guidelines for The Amdocs Digital Brands Suite cloud environment?
Amdocs works according to industry security standards and best practices:
- Vulnerability database and scoring from NIST (NVD and CVSS) and other sources for assessing the severities OWASP, AWS Secure By Design, etc., for system protection
- Amdocs uses industry standard tools to scan DBaaS software for security issues and vulnerabilities - Checkmarx, Blackduck, Prisma Cloud (Twistlock)
- All DBaaS software is released with all vulnerabilities scored Critical/High/Important fixed per the Service Level Objectives defined later in this document
What information security standards does Amdocs Digital Brands Suite cloud platform follow?
Industry Standards and Practices:
- FOSS - Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools track FOSS software projects to detect known vulnerabilities and provide detailed security information about the vulnerabilities to help developers remediate them.
- Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), a standard open framework measurement system for industries that provides accurate and consistent vulnerability severity scores. CVSS produce a score ranging from 0 to 10 for each CVEs**
None [0.0] / Low [0.1-3.9] / Medium [4.0-6.9] / High [7.0-8.9] / Critical [9.0-10.0] - National Vulnerability Database (NVD) provides CVSS scores for almost all known CVEs. NVD relies on vendors’ data, 3rd party security researchers and vulnerability coordinators, but does not actively perform vulnerability testing. When a vendor announces a vulnerability but declines to provide certain details, the worst-case approach is selected.
- System testing – The penetration testing team is using industry security awareness documentation for developers (such as OWASP) that represent a broad consensus about the most critical security risks.
Where is my data located and does the solution comply with security and privacy regulation?
The data will be resides on AWS local DC. We are complying with local privacy regulation such as (GDPR , CPAA, etc.').
Data Retention & Ownership - What are the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite policies regarding our data and data portability?
All rights to your data are maintained by you. We provide you the ability to easily export your data and take it elsewhere, if desired.
- Your contact data will never be shared with or sold to a third party, except for the limited purposes described in our Privacy Policy.
- So long as your account is active, you have full access to your information, for viewing or transfer, at any time.
- Information can be downloaded in a variety of popular formats.
Support
What type of support is included with this service?
- Flexible support options – web, email, phone and chat.
- Support during standard business hours – Monday through Friday, 9AM–5PM.
- A skilled, well trained team of Tier 1 and 2 support professionals.
- The ability to submit an unlimited number of support tickets, at no additional cost.
Technical/functional
Does the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite designed as a single code base?
All customers of the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite (SaaS solution) are running the same code base (aside from customizations/integrations done on top of the SaaS core solution).
The Vendor's R&D maintain only the most recent SaaS release.
Is Amdocs Digital Brands Suite, a technology development platform (aPaaS)?
The Amdocs Digital Brands Suite (SaaS solution) is built on top of aPaaS solution, allowing customers to extend, customize and build new solutions using the aPaaS capabilities and tools (e.g. low code, no code, analytics, etc.).
In addition, all SaaS providers products are developed on the same aPaaS.
Does Amdocs Digital Brands Suite Enable Backward compatibility?
Yes. All data is exposed via backward compatible APIs. Most of the APIs will also support GraphQL access.
Does Amdocs Digital Brands Suite solution allows customization to cater for specific functional behavior that is required and not supported by the SaaS product core?
As part of the Amdocs Digital Brands Suite solution, customization are limited and can be discussed per specific project need in case of specific function which is not supported. It can be added to the product roadmapabsed of it value to the majority of our customers.
