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management platform is still climbing that ladder. Are we sensing a need for Oracle to prove itself as it tries to muscle its way in beside the bigger heavyweights? “We want to give [the biggest CSPs] the confidence that we’re tier one ready,” Pawlus says. That might not make a benchmark fascinating, but it puts it into context. CSPs need to make tough decisions about what stays and what doesn’t.
Zooming Out
In this still-worsening economy, it’s clear that CSPs are wary of things to come. Pawlus says they are preparing for an environment where revenue growth for things like ring tones and mobile data isn’t quite so strong. The specter of decreased revenue “fuels the fire to cut expense,” he says, which is turn puts ongoing network and operations transformation programs under the microscope. Big questions revolve around what gets scaled down, and how much throttling back is too much. The consultants call it “risk avoidance” where Boards of Directors want to understanding the “what ifs.”
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Winning in this environment means being the last BSS supplier standing. |
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that pulling back on scope and simplifying some projects helps pull the budget back. Cutting back on major development and integration projects in favor of fewer moving parts can cut down the time and risk involved in a major program. It’s a move that many CIOs have embraced with success. The opinion could also be taken as a shot across Amdocs’ and others’ bows - companies that generate significant revenue from systems integration services (Don’t worry. We’ll give them all a chance to fire back).
Pawlus isn’t looking to start a fight, but the subtext of the statement reveals a philosophical debate that’s happening in our industry. Bespoke solutions with many moving parts have defined the OSS and BSS sectors for more than a decade. Ask CIOs and many will tell you they love hardware, as opposed to IT, because you plug in a box and the light is either green or red. If it’s red, you swap it
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If you stop a three year program in the middle of year two, what happens? Maybe you’ve built a new silo, adding more cost and complexity to operations without ever turning the corner to achieve simplification, cost and risk reduction, and customer-centricity. Maybe you’ve invested significant capital expense dollars in new network infrastructure, but it’s never turned into new services that generate the revenue that bolstered the business case for the CAPEX spend in the first place. With these risks in mind, Pawlus says CSPs are coming to a point of view that asks, “How do we consolidate duplicate applications and simplify internal infrastructures?”
The answer brings us into contentious territory. Pawlus is of the opinion that, “they’re looking to cut massive consulting projects and cut down on SI spend…” This can be taken several ways. Logic suggests
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out. IT is almost always lit in shades of yellow. The telecom IT market has been shifting to more pre-integrated, well defined solutions for several years. Best of breed approaches have largely given way to “one throat to choke” supplier management philosophies. In today’s economy, where risk avoidance and ROI are the priorities, science projects won’t fly. The market looks like its turning to solutions that are more productized and less customized. That said, it’s turning like a battleship rather than an aircraft carrier, but not at all like a ski boat.
Analyze and Personalize
One of the promising growth areas for the BSS market for several years has been the analytics space, driven by a shift to more customer-centric business practices and a desire to offer personalized services and
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