EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), Intec Telecom Systems (LSE: ITL.L) and SenSage, Inc. have pooled their resources to provide a comprehensive, cost effective solution to answer the mandates of the EU Data Retention Directive. The combined technologies tackle two issues. First, it provides telecommunication and Internet service providers with a lower cost means to manage communication records that support compliance with the Directive. Second, it enables law enforcement agencies to quickly access historical phone and Internet records to pinpoint and prosecute terrorist activity and other serious crime. The Directive states that all service providers must be compliant by August, 2007.

The EU Data Retention Directive was announced in March 2006. It requires telecommunications operators (Telcos) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to securely retain and be able to analyse traffic and location data related to; fixed telephony; mobile telephony; Internet access; Internet e-mail; and Internet telephony for up to two years. The Directive further requires that all service providers must produce answers to law enforcement inquiries without any undue delay. Millions of calls and connections occur each day equating to billions of records and terabytes of transaction data that must be securely stored and rapidly analysed.

EMC, Intec Telecom Systems and SenSage have developed a joint EU Data Retention solution that significantly reduces the cost of compliant data management for service providers. The combined technology completely supports the guidelines set out by the Directive and is able to cost-effectively manage and obtain results in minutes from over 100 billion Call Detail Records (CDR).

“The EU Data Retention Directive puts tremendous pressure and a clear timeline on Telcos and ISPS to meet security and investigation obligations,” said Fernando Elizalde, senior telecommunications analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “The newly developed technology offered by EMC, Intec Telecom Systems and SenSage supports the Directive mandates by providing a progressive, scalable platform, to cost-effectively manage the broad event data integration, storage and analysis requisites.”

“Telcos and ISPs will have to make significant changes to procedure, operations and current technologies if they are to meet the EU Data Retention and Privacy Directives,” said Terje Tondel, managing director of ETIS.org – the largest global IT association for telecommunication providers. “Our constituents have been advised to assess current resources and seek innovative solutions, such as that from EMC, Intec Telecom Systems and SenSage, which can minimise costs and expedite results that address these guidelines”.

The joint solution has been fully tested with sample CDR data from a leading telecommunications provider. The sample data, collected and processed through an Intec mediation platform, was cleansed, then subsequently randomised and replicated to generate the necessary volume. SenSage provides the scalable event data management platform that powers the collection, compression, management and high-speed analysis of the CDR data. Retention and online availability of the stored data is fully managed within an EMC Centeraâ„¢ storage cluster, which provides increased data integrity, protection, and availability capabilities. Intec Telecom Systems provided switch remediation expertise and design guidance. The Proof-of-Concept (POC) contains 100 billion records, representing 13 terabytes of raw compressed data. It is now maintained in an online, referenceable repository where complex analytics can quickly be performed to investigate criminal activity.

“The EU Data Retention directive increases the cost of doing business for Telco’s and ISP,” said Jim Pflaging, president and CEO of SenSage. “This joint solution offers the rapid response law enforcement needs in a highly secure system the public wants, at the lowest cost to the service provider.”

The joint PoC simulated retention of two years of CDR data of 10 million Telco subscribers. The system executed un-indexed queries at more than 27.9 million records per second and obtained answers in less than seven minutes within a three month search range. The combined solution achieved these results at a fraction of the overall cost when compared to that of conventional approaches, which rely on relational database management technologies and data archives. Detailed test results and estimates of cost can be found at http://www.sensage.com/eudrpoc.

Mark Thurmond, general manager of EMC Centera Division commented: “Being able to quickly and efficiently search massive amounts of data is pivotal to compliance with this EU directive. Without the storage capabilities to retain and manage that data, companies simply would not be able to achieve compliance, but working with SenSage means that organisations can choose a complete easy to use solution.”

The EU Data Retention technology is comprised of the SenSage scalable event data management platform, pre-defined reports that support directive guidelines and EMC Centera content addressable storage (CAS) to yield a high-performing, extensible and secure information lifecycle technology. SenSage is an EMC Centera Proven solution that transparently integrates with EMC Centera for fast, easy online data access with assured content authenticity and petabyte scalability. This product can be predictably expanded to meet varying Telco telephony, IP and messaging sources, data volumes and implementation requirements at the lowest cost.

The joint SenSage/EMC/Intec solution POC, housed in the EMC labs in Cork, Ireland, has been made possible by the efforts of a number of EMC Technology partners. The SenSage event data management platform leveraged leading edge technologies from Dell™ with their new range of Dual Core, Dual CPU PowerEdge™ 2950 servers containing the latest Intel® Xeon® 5160 “Woodcrest” processors and the latest 64-Bit version of RedHat® Enterprise Server 4. When coupled with the EMC Centera Content Addressed Storage via Cisco Catalyst 3750 high performance switch, the overall architecture provides the most price-performing solution stack to the issue of collecting, storing and analysing the vast amount of data required by the EU directive.

Peter Deane Managing Director of Intec’s EMEA operation added, “The solution provided by SenSage and EMC complements Intec’s experience in offering mediation and billing system technologies and services. We believe the three pronged combination of cost savings, manageability and scalability provides a compelling value proposition.”

“Telecom operators and ISPs will have to significantly enhance and broaden their data retention policies to adhere to the Directive – assuring adequate protection and guaranteeing that authorities can receive results to their queries in due time,” said Dr. Patrick Van Eecke, counsel and head of the Internet law group at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Caryk UK LLP, Brussels. “DLA Piper asserts that the functionality offered by storage products, such as EMC Centera, and high performance event analysis solutions, such as SenSage, are indispensable in reaching these goals.”

About SenSage
SenSage Inc., the leading provider of scalable event data management solutions, empowers companies to readily respond to business-critical threats, conduct thorough and precise investigations, and maintain compliant operations. The company offers unparalleled performance and a scalable means for organizations to centrally aggregate, efficiently analyze, dynamically monitor and cost-effectively store massive volumes of event data. Based in San Francisco, CA, SenSage currently protects Global 2000 customers in financial services, government, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and technology. The company markets its product directly and through partners including Cerner, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sendmail, Tokyo Electron and Lockheed Martin. For more information, visit www.sensage.com.

About EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information management and storage that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC is a registered trademark and Centera is a trademark of EMC Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

About Intec Telecom Systems
Intec (LSE: ITL.L) supplies billing software solutions to over 60% of the world’s top 100 telecoms carriers and is one of the world’s fastest growing BSS/OSS (business and operations support systems) vendors. Intec’s 400 customers include BellSouth Telecommunications Inc., Cable & Wireless, The Carphone Warehouse (UK), China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Vivo and Verizon. For more information, visit the Intec website at www.intecbilling.com.

All names and marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.