Billing, Customer Care and Provisioning solutions for service providers

Comprehensive Billing, Authentication and Customer Care Solution

For Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms

Version 6 Standard, HotSpot, Professional and Enterprise Editions Now Available!

Emerald

For two decades IEA Software's Emerald Suite has been a leader in wired and wireless service provider billing, customer management and provisioning. With thousands of installations around the globe, Emerald and RadiusNT/X manage millions of subscribers worldwide.

The Emerald suite is comprised of integrated systems working together to support industry leading features including billing, CRM, appointment scheduling, external provisioning & data synchronization, inventory management, document storage, tower management, customer sign-up and self-management, prepaid cards, Email & SMS notification, RADIUS/AAA, auditing, reporting, syslog, netflow metering, rating, geographic information and service monitoring to organizations around the world. All aspects are centrally managed from a single highly available interface.

Emerald offers many useful features to help automate customer accounting and administration. These features include complete management and configuration of user accounts, auto-scheduled and manual billing options, automatic transaction processing, automated Email & SMS billing notification, customer care and incident tracking, historical and on-line usage monitoring, system event logging, and a wide variety of customizable reporting options. Emerald provides the flexibility to be individually customized and tailored to meet your distinct organizational needs.

In the highly competitive telecommunications market the key to success is organization and low overhead. Emerald reduces system redundancy and increases efficiency by consolidating user administration, technical support and billing into one application suite. The centralized system keeps the information in sync and up to date across all areas of your business. Additionally, Emerald's web-based interface has been designed to meet today's complex system needs, supporting both multi-platform environments and secure remote user access. Using this approach, Emerald promotes a positive company image by providing accurate and timely information in a uniform, professional format for your staff and customers alike.

Emerald provides extensive integration with many third-party products enabling your organization to centrally manage users across many differing systems from within a single interface. A significant feature of the Emerald Management Suite is direct full-feature integration with RadiusNT/X. This core system component enables any RADIUS compatible equipment seamless integration with Emerald subscriber database. RadiusNT/X in conjunction with Emerald session manager provides continuous enforcement of policy during initial authorization and throughout each users session.

You can easily grow your business at your own pace, buying additional MBRs (Master Billing Record) when the need arises. For order information, please check out our competitive Pricing. We offer a variety of Support resources to help ensure your continued success with our solutions.

Emerald version 6 includes more than 140 new or enhanced features since previous major release of Emerald 5. Click here for details.

Edition column headings below shown with each group of features are based on the following:

Edition	MBR License	RADIUS Included
Emerald Express Edition (Exp)	Unlimited	Includes single server RadiusNT/X v6 standard license
Emerald Standard Edition (Std)	500 Included	Includes single server RadiusNT/X v6 standard license
Emerald Hot-Spot Edition (HS)	500 Included	Includes single server RadiusNT/X v6 standard license /w EAP
Emerald Professional (Pro)	500 Included	Includes single server RadiusNT/X v6 professional license
Emerald Enterprise (Ent)	500 Included	Includes two server RadiusNT/X v6 enterprise licenses

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Account Management & Support Features
					Email notification system alerts operators and customers to important events such as pending account or credit card expiration, low time or data remaining, incidents needing attention or having been resolved, payment transaction status, new customer welcome messages and much more as configured
					Send SMS text message notifications in addition to Email notification
					Geocoding of Emerald address information to determine lat/long coordinates
					Automatically map and synchronize geographic layer information to address data fields based on address location
					Document management facility enables file upload and storage at MBR, Service, invoice and payment levels
					Web service API for account management automation and systems integration
					Operators can perform RADIUS authentication tests against services to verify accessibility
					Dynamic client field validation and security based field change lockout
					Session Disconnect and CoA support (RFC3576) for RADIUS sessions appearing in the Emerald online sessions report
					Session management server continuously monitors active sessions for changes in account status mitigating risk for prepaid services by enforcing status and authorization changes for active sessions. The management server may be used to enforce concurrency control, time and limits even where multiple sessions for the same account are open concurrently, service upgrade and downgrade, enforcement of bandwidth usage restrictions, enforcement of account status changes such as disconnecting sessions of accounts having been closed or inactivated and enforcement of authorization attribute changes such as a change of bandwidth allocation. Session manager also provides an active session probe to cross check session state with RADIUS accounting to improve accuracy of online session list and concurrency enforcement
					Call center automated account lookup provides identification of incoming calls by location, phone company and matching Emerald accounts if available. The included CallerID Search 'pop up' application supports modem call notification, modem Dialing, YAC and Asterisk call notification. Click here for more information
					"Hot Key" support for quick menu system navigation
					Automatic determination and entry of city/state based on postal code
					Automatic payment and account lookup using credit card swipe reader
					Automatic invoice and statement lookup using printed barcode scanner
					Automatic bank lookup by routing number
					Configurable custom data fields integrated into Service and MBR detail displays

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Misc / Platform Features
					CSS centric theme system allow branding, custom appearance, content and logos according to criteria such as operator, IP address, browser and device, group, site and time/day
					Automatic Language selection based on browser language setting. 10 automated language conversions are currently available including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Arabic. New languages can be added and existing translations updated using the included language editor.
					Infobar provides operator specific status alerts and operator group messaging
					Dashboards offer each operator unique customized insights into operation of overall system as well as operator specific incidents and appointments
					Field visibility settings globally, by group and per operator enable client interface to be tailored to the needs of each operator
					Unlimited session Air Marshal license

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Billing Features
					Market Engine offers a powerful language for expressing marketing strategies driven by simple facts "market tags"
					Promotional codes offer region time and quantity limited short term or long term service discounting as well temporary or permanent modification of service parameters such as bandwidth allocation
					Contract early termination fees with allowed service downgrade floor
					Automated multi-product discounting including classic double and triple play scenarios
					Itemized discounts presented on invoice and statement provides customers with savings feedback
					Promotional and seasonal pricing
					MBR service nesting allows hierarchy of services to be grouped together
					Automated recurring billing on period of months or period of days basis
					Sales person commission tracking and reporting
					Flexible tax structure supporting the following features: piggyback, regional, price inclusive, percentage or static pricing, taxable ceilings or floors
					Importable tax rate tables
					Renewal or Balance forward billing
					Account aging
					Discounts based on static amount or percentage
					Send Method charges
					Previewing of billing events
					Statement & Invoice generation
					"Real-time" balance displayed based on currently available network usage
					Payment tracking provides historical accuracy for some tax and payment reports by tracking the association of credits and payments to invoice line items over time
					Support for non-recurring prepaid services and billing
					Emailing of Statements and Invoices
					Usage billing (See Rating)
					Scheduled, automated billing process including statement creation and sending via email
					Failed transaction reporting and management
					Duplicate payment detection
					Point Of Sale functionality with estimate to invoice conversions
					Loyalty discounts to reward long term customers
					Time limited discounting from a single day to years
					NSF Charge adjustments when dishonoring payments
					Scheduled service upgrade/downgrade
					Credits and Adjustments
					Monthly, Anniversary and Calendar aligned billing cycles
					Escalating late payment fees
					Per service type pro-rate settings when opening and closing service

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Inventory Management
					Manage products, stocking locations and reorder of physical inventory such as modems, routers, computers and antennas as well as virtual inventory such as IPv4/IPv6 addresses, subnets and DIDs
					Sale of items from inventory via POS invoice
					Assignment of inventory to service and configuration of inventory product requirements by service type
					Category, Product and Item level custom attributes
					Bulk stock management to efficiently move items to other warehouses and change item status

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Appointment Scheduling
					Scheduling of service calls and onsite appointments with integrated resource wide calendar reflecting company view of availability
					Per operator schedule for managing operator assigned appointments
					Global and operator daily or time slot specific availability including business days, holidays, seasonal and scheduled time off
					Automatically sync appointments to your favorite calendaring systems
					Distance optimized role assignment strategies

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	CRM/Incident tracking features
					Support tickets (Incidents)
					Actions add details of progression and resolutions to incidents
					Configurable incident states, (Open, blocked, WIP, Closed..etc)
					Open incident reporting and searching (Full text)
					Customer history report
					Operator access to RADIUS call and authentication failure data
					Custom data fields by incident type
					Incident fields can be hidden or displayed as appropriate per incident type
					Incident priority settings
					Incident Due Date / Resolve By fields with email overdue warnings, overdue escalation and reporting
					Role based incident assignments provide for grouping of operators with similar job functions, automatic distribution of new incidents using a load balancing method and a tiering system for overflow assignment
					Incident and action time tracking feature for informational purposes or documentation of billable hours
					Support for escalations and escalation notification
					Incident status change email/SMS notifications

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Customer self-management and signup
					Integrated new customer signup server
					Leverages themes to provide unique look and feel for each venue
					Unique recurring and nonrecurring access plans per signup server
					Support for prepaid card pay method at signup
					Customize required and visible input fields providing a simplified sign-up process
					Change bill delivery method
					Enable or disable CC auto pay and set card on file
					Session usage graphing including interim accounting detail
					Check account status, billing history, change passwords and make payments online
					Add new services, upgrade, downgrade or cancel existing services
					View and print detailed invoices, statements and payment receipts
					Online purchase of time and data
					Add or update billing address on file while optionally preserving original address
					Manage E-mail and SMS notifications options by notify purpose
					View upcoming appointments, open support incidents and add notes to existing tickets

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Network traffic accounting (EmerNet)
					Real-time rating for static usage fees and conditional fees based on network, protocol, port and traffic
					Promiscuous mode passive ethernet data collection
					Cisco Netflow versions 1, 5, 7, 9 and IPFIX (RFC 5101)
					Integrated flow cache for improved performance
					Support for multiple CPUs / concurrent execution threads
					Collector addressing prevents double billing when multiple collectors or netflow exports are enabled throughout the network

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Tower Site Management
					Customer tower selector reporting towers with compatible distance, direction and service
					Line of sight path profile showing terrain, path loss modeling and fresnel zone of fixed wireless link between customer and tower

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Real-Time Usage Rating
					Rating based on time of day, day of week, day/week of month and holidays
					Per session rounding including per interval up, down, nearest, 6 second, 18/6, 30/6, 60/6 and 60 second rounding
					Rating data sources enable rating of data from external sources
					Bill concurrently for time and data usage
					RADIUS interim session rating enables variable balance and data consumption cost based on time of day and calendar
					Pre-rated billing record pass-thru
					Continuous and step pricing
					Bill multiple parties such as end-user and resellers for the same usage
					Determination of time remaining based on available balance or credit and other criteria as available such as source and destination address
					Criteria based pricing such as source and destination address or prefix, IP network, device port or other available data
					Per call detail on invoices and statements
					Voice CDR rating based on destination number or prefix, per call fees, bong charges, simplified import of rate tables, rate table grouping, discounting and configurable condition matching (port, call type..etc)
					Authorization parameters for RADIUS authentication allow enforcement of access restrictions based on bandwidth consumed and other criteria as defined
					Dynamic cost changes after configured time or data consumed
					Real-time rating for RADIUS accounting
					Rate cost ceilings and floors

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Reseller Billing
					Resellers can set custom pricing on a per service type basis
					Operators can set reseller pricing on a per service type basis
					Support for detailed (per account) or summarized (by service type) invoicing of resellers
					Support for fractional or whole month billing
					Separate tracking and reporting of monies for each reseller/organization
					Place limits on each resellers Active MBR count
					Proxy realm billing to charge external accounts for network access
					Real-time usage rating simultaneously at the end-user and reseller levels

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Prepaid Card Accounts
					"Direct Use" accounts allow the user to directly access services using the login and password provided on the pre-paid card without an initial signup process
					Integration with signup server allows collection of customer information, selection of plan, access login funded by pre-paid card
					Rechargeable - Existing accounts may be recharged by additional pre-paid cards
					Integrated account generator supports creation of secure custom sequence algorithms for login and password generation
					Stored profiles provide simplified configuration when creating additional pre-paid card batches
					Prepaid data easily exportable in CSV and XML forms
					Batch and account level pre-paid card management and statistics
					Card use isolated to accounts associated to the same organization as the pre-paid card
					Leverages customer account center to provide customer driven provisioning of accounts or additional access funded by prepaid cards
					Limited shelf life: Prepaid batches can be configured such that cards having not been used over a period of time automatically expire
					Enforce Access Limits: Expiration, session time and data limits, concurrent access limits and currency based rating required for advanced services such as prepaid telephone cards are possible with Emeralds integrated pre-paid card management system

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Credit Card and ACH/EFT processing
					Multiple payment processors supported by Organization, billing group and card type
					Auth+Capture, Credit and Void transactions
					Credit Card tokenization
					PaymentTech (real-time)
					Authorize.net (real-time)
					Payflow Pro (real-time)
					IntelliPay (real-time)
					Card services
					Royal Bank of Canada STD 152
					First Data PTC
					Concord (real-time)
					Transaction Central (real-time)
					USA ePay (real-time)
					NELiX TransaX (real-time)
					Protx (real-time)
					Sage Payment Solutions (real-time)
					ANZ eGate (real-time)
					First Data PayPoint (real-time)
					IP Pay (real-time)
					Mobius Payments (real-time)
					SecureNet (real-time)
					beanstream (real-time)
					Instabill (real-time)
					Moneris eSelect (real-time)
					Payeezy - First Data (real-time)
					Converge - Elavon (real-time)
					MAPP-PC
					Cyber Cash - IC Verify
					PC-Transact IT
					Visanet POS-Partner
					Telecheck
					CCard
					PC-Charge

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Reporting
					Quick report data file export options (TSV, CSV, XML, Excel, HTML)
					Commission reporting
					Error summary
					Overdue incidents
					Expired accounts
					Call summaries
					Check deposits
					Daily payments
					Expiring credit cards
					General ledger
					Revenue forecasting
					Deferred revenue
					Taxes invoiced and paid
					New user summaries
					Failed transactions
					Current aging
					Revenue summary
					Gauge reporting supports graphing and threshold triggers of metrics such as signal characteristics on per service basis via SNMP, ICMP and external data sources
					FCC form 477 reporting and data export

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Audit, Alerts and Logging
					Transactionally consistent change logging offers an accurate historical record of field level changes by operator over time
					Detailed data access logging
					Globally sourced problem summary
					RADIUS authentication failure
					RADIUS accounting
					Integrated syslog server with expression based message classification and syslog triggered alerting provides central logging for routers and NAS devices
					Automatic alerting on gauge metrics integrated into service alerts
					View calls and failed authentication attempts
					Scheduler task logging
					Email notification logging
					SMS notification logging

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Provisioning
					AAA RadiusNT/X included (Click here for RADIUS features included with Emerald)
					Generic contact information (LDAP)
					QMail (LDAP)
					NMS/Sun Messaging Server (LDAP)
					Communigate Pro (LDAP)
					MDaemon (LDAP)
					NIS+ and PAM/NSS UNIX accounts (LDAP)
					Surge Mail (LDAP)
					Imail (EmerAuth)
					Serv-U FTP (EmerAuth)
					DNEWS (EmerAuth)
					Merak Mail and IceWarp (RDBMS)
					Mail Site (RDBMS)
					VOP Mail (RDBMS)
					Smarter Mail (HTTPS Post)
					Zimbra Mail (HTTPS Post)
					Everyone.Net Email Service (HTTPS Post)
					Google Apps Email (HTTPS Post)
					Helm Control Panel (HTTPS Post)
					cPanel Control Panel (HTTPS Post)
					DirectAdmin Control Panel (HTTPS Post)
					eNom Domain Registration (HTTPS Post)
					Diino backup service (HTTPS Post)
					eFolder backup service (HTTPS Post)
					Mail systems
					FTP servers
					Web servers
					Generic change file export
					XML export
					HTTP(S) post

Exp	Std	HS	Pro	Ent	Security Features
					Certificate based two-factor authentication with fully integrated certificate management
					AES database field encryption for sensitive information such as passwords, credit cards and account numbers
					Operator limits on accepted payment types and amounts
					Password & Secure data visibility options for operators and administrators
					Emerald 'Active Sessions' showing which operators and customers are currently using Emerald
					Time of day, day of week and holiday access restrictions for operators
					Short term operator account lockouts for failed authentication attempts
					Group level IP access restrictions
					Reverse proxy server support with support for client address forwarding (X-Real-IP and X-Forwarded-For headers)
					PCI compliance configuration checker and CPNI account change notifications
					Access labels feature restrict availability of account options by operator group. For example 'VIP' service type requires supervisor privilege to assign to customers.
					Secure password based mutual authentication for API access (TLS-SRP)
					HTTPS with configurable TLS version, encryption strength, forward secrecy and HSTS
					Auto logout
					Limit operator access privileges on a per-billing group basis
					Configurable access restrictions
					End-User account center

RadiusNT/X version 6 features

(Note: RadiusNT/X standard edition does not support RadiusNT/X Proxy and Roaming or EAP Authentication)

Based on industry-standard RADIUS protocols supporting the following IETF RFCs: RFC2284, RFC2548, RFC2619, RFC2621, RFC2759, RFC2865, RFC2866, RFC2867, RFC2868, RFC2869, RFC2882, RFC3078, RFC3079, RFC3162, RFC3576, RFC3579, RFC3580, RFC4590, RFC4679, RFC5090, RFC6911, RFC6929, and RFC6930
Supports multiple authentication protocols: PAP, CHAP, MSCHAPv1 and MSCHAPv2, HTTP digest/SIP, Wireless 802.1x/EAP authentication: EAP-LEAP (Cisco aironet), EAP-PEAP (v0 and v1), EAP-TTLS, EAP-GTC, EAP-MD5 and EAP-MSCHAPv2.
Authenticate users from a wide range of sources, multiple sources can be used concurrently on a per-user or per-domain basis. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) support for Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and others as configured. Standard RADIUS Users text file, UNIX password file, Windows authentication (SAM,AD..etc) (RadiusNT only), UNIX authentication (local, NIS+..etc) (RadiusX Only). Additional sources available in Enterprise version.
IPv6 transport and attributes
Multiple database password formats supporting plain text, Emerald encrypted (AES), unix crypt, unix bigcrypt, MD5, SMD5, SHA1 and SSHA1.
Distributed session concurrency control on a per-user and per-group basis.
Extensive logging and debug options including packet and encrypted tunnel level logging and support for syslog hosts.
Takes advantage of an unlimited number of ODBC databases for fault tolerant authentication and accounting services.
Main memory indexing provides fast response times for large numbers of users and session profiles.
Cisco VOIP attribute parsing for accounting.
'Smart caching' optionally keeps external ODBC database accounts synchronized with fast internal database for higher performance and an additional layer of fault tolerance against external database failure.
Self-tuning ODBC accounting spooler dynamically provides high throughput or high concurrency based on current accounting load.
Attribute filtering support rules based modification of attributes as well as external ODBC access allowing complex decisions to be made based on attributes coming in, going out or proxied through RadiusNT/X. Attribute filtering enables new classes of operator specific applications without custom programming or scripting.
Rule based attribute proxy of authentication or accounting requests
Alternate failure profiles allow bad requests to be acknowledged with a custom set of attributes. This allows the configuring of limited network access for customers whose accounts may have lapsed or need to pay for additional network access.
Strip domain capabilities for flexible roaming support
IP address pool management
DNIS restriction and access
Server and port access controls with individual time of day and session limits
Intelligent database interface - Dynamic parameter checking allows authentication stored procedure full access to RADIUS attributes. All internal queries are documented and configurable through the administrative web interface. They provide complete control over the ODBC database interface and make integration with third-party systems easy.
Attribute based authentication reject list
Real-time view of all established user sessions
User-updatable RADIUS dictionary. Included dictionary contains specific VSAs for over sixty popular vendors. Need support for an unknown vendor? Simply send us the vendors RADIUS dictionary and our support staff will provide you with an automated update script to support the new vendor.
SNMP Statistics provides detailed information in real-time about the RADIUS server to an external monitoring station such as WhatsUp, MRTG, Openview, Solarwinds and other SNMP capable monitoring packages.
Extensive, Scalable proxy roaming /w proxy server load balancing, rate limiting, failover, proxy loop detection, accounting store & forward modes, complete proxy replay at all stages and retry dampening to proxy targets provides a higher level of efficiency and reliability in large roaming/aggregation networks.
Packet replay for local requests improves performance over congested networks and improves consistency of accounting data by better detecting duplicate requests
Virtual Class correlation provides best-effort Class attribute support for both local and proxy requests in cases where NAS devices are not capable of supporting the Class attribute
Eliminates the need to maintain separate subscriber lists for security and billing, and enables enhanced billing schemes such as network usage, prepaid and VOIP
All local RADIUS server configurations can be stored in an ODBC database allowing central management of any number of RadiusNT/X servers
Comphrensive datatype support includes standard RADIUS, Ascend binary filters, Tunnel (Tag) attributes, IPv6 and RedBack 64-bit integers.
Compatible with RADIUS-compliant NAS, VPNs and wireless APs from hundreds of vendors. Please contact us if you have questions about compatibility.
Includes our RADIUS test client. The test client provides valuable testing and NAS simulation facilities in addition to health monitoring and notification for up to hundreds of RFC compliant RADIUS servers.

RadiusNT/X version 6 Enterprise only features

Token card authentication for RSA's SecurID, Axents Defender and Secure Computings Safeword.
Flexible LDAP client for authentication provides interoperability with virtually any LDAP directory schema including NDS and AD by providing custom search parameters and a user configurable mapping of data between RADIUS attributes + values and LDAP objects + values.
A simple, powerful external authentication API provides compatibility with custom authentication datasources.
TACACS+ client for authentication.

System Requirements

Windows 2000-2019, XP-10 or x64 Linux
1GB available RAM or greater
2GB or greater disk space
1Ghz CPU or greater
HTML5 / CSS3 compliant web browser

Emerald runs with the relational databases listed below. You need to have a working knowledge of your database. Please use the following guidelines:

Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019
Oracle 10g or later (TBA)

Downloading Instructions

Please visit the evaluation center to obtain an Emerald evaluation license key. You must have a valid license key to use Emerald. For your convenience Emerald is available for download here:

IEA Software, Inc.

Emerald 6