service delivery platform

Microsoft focuses on software in network planning

Microsoft has released a new TV platform for advertising, Mediaroom, but the product won’t actually be available until June of 2009 according to sources. The release marks a major initiative by Microsoft to become the platform provider for a wide variety of service components in both emerging services like video and older services like voice. Microsoft is seeing the overall industry trend toward a software focus in network planning, a shift that arises from the commoditization of access and transport that the Internet has created. We believe that there will be a war between IT players like HP, IBM, and Microsoft and network players like Cisco for dominance in the network platform software space.

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.

P2P/BitTorrent fall on hard times

P2P may be falling on hard times in at least one sense; BitTorrent confirmed a 20% layoff but said the move had nothing to do with the Comcast throttling issue. In some ways it would have been better for the company had Comcast been the culprit, since the FCC has ruled that Comcast can’t strangle a particular type of traffic.

We believe that the real problem is that there is little BitTorrent can do to rehab the image of P2P, which our research and modeling shows is used for illegal file sharing in more than 90% of cases. It’s ironic the giant of P2P is now suffering, given that the telcos are at the same time looking at P2P signaling architectures as an alternative to centralized signaling systems like IMS. Recent rumors say that operators are researching the use of a P2P architecture for delivering “rich service signaling” without the need for a central signaling system and without the limitations of SIP/SDP/IMS.

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.