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being distracted by the perceived
glamour of content. A massive, high
quality, high availability network
would become a huge barrier to competitive
entry, thereby creating a long term
sustainable revenue model similar
to that enjoyed by other utilities.
Others saw direct participation in
content distribution, management
and billing as the only means of
remaining profitable. This debate
will play itself out over the next
few years, so make your predictions
now!
Business-driven transformation
Once the sessions got underway,
the sense of change became even more
tangible. Service Providers and vendors
were beginning to talk seriously
about the need to get it right this
time. “Right” means
tools that can be implemented on
time, on budget, and on scope – with
that scope set firmly in alignment
with business goals, objectives and
new processes. “Right” means
sustainable improvements in the cost
and performance of the service provider.
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Service
providers finally are talking about
walking away from major chunks of
their legacy OSS/BSS environments. |
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of eTOM, NGOSS, and the SID are now
being put into practice by a large
number of service providers, and vendors.
The results are beginning to come in,
and show that projects based on the
standards were easier to control, enable
better management of expectations (of
all parties), and are more likely to
achieve the stated objectives.
Standards also mean dramatically
less interest in customized or one-off
solutions. Service providers now
seem to understand that “unique” equals “expensive,
cumbersome and inflexible”.
By driving toward standard definitions
of business requirements, and standard
functionality to meet those requirements,
service providers can move rapidly
towards the NGOSS vision of Business
Aware Components – small, inexpensive
and focused capabilities that relate
seamlessly to
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Finally, no more talk about magic bullets
that could transform their operations
all by themselves. Finally a recognition
that new Order Management systems don’t
shorten installation intervals by themselves;
that new billing systems won’t
get the invoice out more accurately all
by themselves. Reaping the benefits of
new tools is being discussed as achievable
only through rigorous definition of success,
specified in clear business performance
terms, and then translating that performance
improvement into changes in People, Process,
and System.
It is also important to note that business
transformation is to be firmly grounded
in customer, customer, customer focus.
Embracing Standards
Another change was the attitude towards
Standards. Here again was that shift
from the theoretical to the practical.
Standards are now seen as a pragmatic
means of achieving the dramatic cost
reductions associated with real “plug
and play”. The TMForum standards
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each other and the
solution framework.
This drive toward
flexible and low cost solutions was
voiced by several of the largest
carriers, who made it clear that
they would no longer be entering
into huge customization contracts.
They were keenly aware that in the
past, many vendors of COTS products
were actually selling “brochure
ware”, and that the software
was being built for the first time
under the service provider’s
contract. The mood now is to buy
only products that actually work
right out of the box, with only minor
configuration changes. This shift
to buying only Commercial Off the
Shelf systems is one worth watching
carefully as it could have some serious
repercussions for those vendors and
SIs who rely heavily on long running
customization projects.
Leveraging COTS
not Legacy
Here we observed
another significant change: service
providers finally are talking about
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