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The role of a Chief Operating Officer (COO) is one that really seems to be defined by business’ needs. According to Steve Legge, COO at NetNumber, it can include a variety of responsibilities that may seem disparate, everything from product development to real estate management to everything in between. “Often seen as a counterpart to the CEO, with internal focus versus CEO’s external focus, driving execution of the CEO vision,” he adds. Steve is an experienced COO, technology and business leader who has held numerous senior executive management and technical positions in the broadcast, telecommunications and satellite industries in the US and Australia for more than 20 years. He has brought forth a unique perspective and deep understanding of both sides of the market—as an operator and as a technology vendor— to his role at NetNumber. The steadfast leader combines strategic, big picture, future-oriented view with ability to manage details necessary to grow or transform an organization.
"NetNumber TITAN is the underlying Innovation Platform that harmonizes legacy and next generation networks, from 2G to 5G and beyond, and provides access to critical network data that powers real-time decision making."
Steve has been driving NetNumber’s transition to an agile business, scaling operational capabilities and services and evolving the TITAN platform, products and data services to meet developing and growing market demands. He has been leading the development of the company’s next-generation platform, TITAN.IUMTM, which is the industry’s most robust cloud-native, InterGENerational platform that addresses both the legacy and 5G requirements of telcos. Integrating methodologies, principles and practices such as Agile Program Increment Planning Sessions and Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) in order to scale the NetNumber Engineering organization to enhance TITAN and the applications portfolio and to develop the new TITAN.IUMTM platform. “As our customers are witnessing this transformation and considering Agile and DevOps methodologies, they are asking for our guidance and lessons learned,” says Steve. “Today, NetNumber is viewed as a vendor partner and strategic asset in our global customer base, able to engage in this level of dialogue.”
Network technology is changing for 5G networks and so is the underlying architecture. As networks increase in complexity and scale, telcos need tools that provide instant access to and visibility of the performance of the core platform that is critical to business operations. Operators are challenged to move huge amounts of different kinds of data around the network. NetNumber ensures operators are able to use all the information from the network elements they provide and the information can be used by other systems and analytics platforms, which is a substantial differentiator. NetNumber’s Analytics and Element Management Systems (EMS) collect and analyze data from the TITAN platform and its applications to help customers get maximum performance and value. The system continuously observes resource utilization data, performance metrics, and traffic analysis, allowing customers to pre-empt quality issues and pro-actively identify traffic growth, decline, or anomaly spikes.
Fraud and security are another growing opportunity for NetNumber as threats continue to be a significant challenge for telcos. Signaling security is a critical concern for operators as today’s SS7 and Diameter networks can be manipulated for banking fraud, authentication theft, location tracking, eavesdropping, DOS attacks, etc. To secure international roaming and emerging IoT, operators must proactively protect their signaling networks and subscribers. NetNumber provides unprecedented protection with the most comprehensive Fraud and Security solutions, including the industry’s first multi-protocol signaling firewall application, delivered on the TITAN platform. It protects against all known threats and provides a fully configurable environment to address future attack vectors.
The NetNumber TITAN platform and applications portfolio are complimented with a broad range of Global Data Service (GDS) offerings. NetNumber GDS provides a single, cost effective source for authoritative global data covering telecom, enterprise and security markets. For the days to come, the company will continue to invest significantly so that their customers have the data they can trust to route calls and messages accurately and, in the format leveraging the NetNumber ID (NNID) standard. With the launch of TITAN.IUMTM to the industry in early June, NetNumber will continue to support both platforms, ensuring interoperability of applications and data. “We will continue to participate in 5G PoCs and support transition of our customers to 5G when ready, and will continue to expand our data services, analytics, security and private network capabilities,” says Steve. IE
Steve Legge
COO NetNumber
NetNumber, Inc. is the leading provider of centralized signaling and routing control (CSRC) solutions to wireless and wireline telecommunications operators around the globe. Founded in Lowell, MA in 1999, NetNumber is a privately held technology company. With sales offices across the globe, the company has an extensive list of customers representing the leading national and international service providers and carriers.