OSS, SDP converge as vendors, providers shift business strategies

There are signs that the OSS world and the SDP world are converging, with the driver being a combination of the strategies of major vendors and the shift of service providers toward IT dominance of infrastructure projects.

Major players in the OSS space like Amdocs and Telcordia are becoming players in the SDP space, and vendors like Oracle who have SDP plans are now looking at whether they also must field a full OSS platform.

All of this is happening because the network operators, as part of their IP transformation strategies, are demanding more agile services at lower operating costs. Achieving that combination is not a network mission at all, but rather an OSS/SDP mission, or more broadly a mission of software and systems — IT.

We have noted before the growing momentum for change in the TMF, the only standards body that is taking up both OSS and SDP missions, and we believe that body has read the tea leaves and is positioning itself for maximum relevance in what is likely to be the major 2009 market trend in the carrier space.