OSS

Time to improve operations or cap services

There are more and more signs, in the mergers and acquisitions space in particular, that vendors are finally getting smart on the network and operations management problem. Operators need to raise top-line revenues, lower costs, or both.

Since supporting the top line has proved elusive or impossible to the network vendors, that means they will either have to improve operations or see their customers cut capex. The fact that AT&T and Time Warner Cable are already looking at tiered pricing and caps is a strong signal that the time for a decision is near.

Once providers take the PR hit by introducing pricing tiers/caps they will not go back even if revenues or operations costs can be improved later. We estimate there is likely only about nine more months to fix the monetization problem before operator solutions like reducing traffic through caps will take hold.

The question now is whether the equipment vendors will step up and play a role or cede it to OSS specialists; the Tektronix acquisition of a mobile data customer experience management firm suggests that many think equipment vendors will miss the OSS opportunity as they are missing the service-layer opportunity.

Enterprise Architectures Planners’ Briefing Available

We have released a new Planners’ Briefing on Enterprise Architectures. This briefing explains what this new concept is supposed to do and how it relates to things like collaboration and unified communication.

EA may become as important to enterprise networking as OSS/BSS standards are to the telcom space, so those who are involved in the enterprise market should give this new briefing a listen.

Remember, you will always get the current briefing when you register by sending an email on your company account, your name, and your title to tmtadvisor@cimicorp.com, but you cannot get back issues. Speak now and learn about EA, or miss out!

ECI takes Carrier Ethernet OSS high road

October 23 2008 regarding carrier Ethernet and management trends.
ECI is reportedly moving into Carrier Ethernet more strongly and taking the OSS high road that we predicted would be needed in our recent TCO study on Ethernet versus MPLS.

The company has special focus on synchronization, essential in wireless backhaul applications for anything other than 4G services because of the use of T-carrier trunking for voice, and also software tools to improve Ethernet management integration with OSS/BSS.

In a separate story, Light Reading reports that Soapstone founder Larry Dennison is starting a company that will focus on virtualization and support for service componentization and assembly, for both Carrier Ethernet and other technologies. We believe this space, which has been critical for years now, is finally getting some attention.

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.

NEC buys NetCracker for OSS and SDP presence

NEC is buying OSS firm NetCracker, a move we think sends the clearest signal so far on the importance of operations software in the telecom space. NetCracker is known for a strong service delivery platform (SDP) software position, a class of operations and service feature strategies that focus on hosting features and operations elements on specialized platforms.

We believe that telco equipment vendors will generally beef up their OSS positions, but in particular will be beefing up their SDP positions, as consumer services and partnerships with higher-layer players change the nature of service provider revenue targets and infrastructure priorities.

NEC sees this as an entrée into the telco space, and they’re right. The price of playing in major deals in the future is going to include the ability to supply integrated operations solutions. If they’re your own, you have differentiation. If they’re someone else’s, you’re heading down the road to plumbing.

Vendors lag in TM Forum issues like SDPs

The TM Forum (TMF) meeting in Nice this year seemed to show that the body is becoming more relevant to key issues like service delivery platforms (SDPs), content, and even advertising, but that the vendors involved in the process are lagging in their productization of these advances. The product announcements at the meeting were pedestrian and vendors are often defensive in their role in working activity, demonstrating a desire to direct the processes to the benefit of their companies in the near term. We believe that the programs will win out, since both the survival of the body and the support of the network operators and service providers that buy the systems and software will depend on relevance to current market needs.

Oracle launches telco OSS initiative

Oracle is launching a major telco OSS initiative based on conformance with the Telemanagement Forum (TMF) SID data model and architecture. The move is an evolution of Oracle’s growing interest in the carrier market, but it also represents a key step in its competition with IBM and perhaps for the industry as well. The Oracle OSS model includes the ability to import information from other information systems, but it also integrates many of what would ordinarily be seen as enterprise applications, such as ERP. This increased focus on business applications for OSS processes is reflective of the TMF view but also tends to favor software players like Oracle against middleware/hardware players like IBM. For the industry the move likely means much greater service provider focus on OSS processes, since the giants of the industry are now contending with each other in that space and elevating their issues to be visible to senior management. We believe this will put additional pressure on network equipment vendors to take some stand in the OSS and service management space,or risk being marginalized under the software umbrella of others like Oracle.