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• Ontology Systems: “This is a radically better way of organizing data,” said Greene. Ontology offers “product and service catalogs, that use existing systems and do not require expensive scrap and replacement.” Greene went on to say that “Ontology, once deployed, also can aid the generation of SOA or SaaS based advanced service portfolios. I believe that this approach (even if not from this early vendor) will extend deeper into OSS/BSS stacks and could become the next iteration of CRM systems.” Adding a bit of a note of caution, Greene said “this product requires a smarter modeler/user than existing approaches and this could delay their penetration.”

• “For break out vendors,” said Lancaster, “I really see that this is the time for companies like MetraTech, who have made huge sales to clients like Microsoft for their Online services, placing themselves squarely in the Revenue Chain management space rather than plain old Billing.”
• Whitestein Technologies: “This is the first company to fully dedicate itself to the development and deployment of autonomics-enabling agent technology,” said Greene. “They have made some progress in manufacturing and supply chain industries and are poised to break out in service providers. However, to succeed, they will need CSPs to wake up and see the future and accept the need and value of a generational leap in IT technology. I'm less certain this CSP wake up will happen.
• In addition, Stratecast has released a list of “10 to watch in 2009,” which outlines vendors that are sure to make waves in the year to come. An excerpt: “A year ago Stratecast published its first OSS/BSS Rat Pack list of companies towatch. On that list were companies we believed to be 'small, agile, hungry, well-managed companies that are emerging as real competitors to the established OSS/BSS elite.' These companies, among others, embrace the Stratecast rat pack mentality and share a number of characteristics with the original “rat pack” team of Hollywood actors from the mid-1950s.” The

advice I've been giving on panels, etc. for the last few months is that CSPs need to pick a business strategy and make it intentional,” said Ruzicka. “If they want to be wholesale/business providers, then they should be wholesale/business providers and do what it takes to be a successful wholesale/business provider. They shouldn't be a wholesale/business provider because being a retail provider didn't work.” Ruzicka points to Covad as an example of what happens when a CSP has to make the shift from CLEC to wholesale/business provider, noting the growing pains it has experienced along the way. In contrast, Ruzicka points to M5: “An intentional small business provider and it's doing great.”

That's not a new idea. “This is Management 101,” says Ruzicka, “but maybe in all the hype around delivering new services, it's gotten lost. So the advice is - Back to Basics. Pick a strategy and get to work. In an up economy, any yahoo (no pun intended) can succeed. In a down economy, businesses have to be well managed and well run just to survive.”

Ruzicka went on to point out that communications went through a painful downsizing just a few years ago. On one hand, this softens the blow of the current economic crisis. On the other hand, much of the low-hanging fruit was plucked after the bubble burst, so in order for costs to be cut, harder decisions may have to be made this go-round. We'll just have to wait and see.