Microsoft telco framework quietly dropped

Microsoft has quietly dropped its Connected Services Framework, an ambitious program that targeted telcos with a package of components that was, at some points in Microsoft’s positioning, a service and sometimes a product.

The move has been interpreted as a response to the complex telco environment, but we think the real reason is more complicated. First, vendors are finding telcos are not happy about closed platforms for services and thus are more likely to demand standards conformance. That opens the ecosystem, making it less profitable for the vendor. Finally, monetization of new services is still problematic, and as a result, the investment needed to create them has to be carefully justified.

All of this speaks against CSF. We note, however, that Microsoft has specific point products that we believe it intends to deploy to telcos. In fact, Microsoft has been successful with carriers worldwide in getting some of these into networks—as much as anyone has, in fact. It’s shedding the CSF packaging and positioning, in our view, but not the market.