There’s Consolidation, and There’s Consolidation (cont'd)

This architectural vision does come at a cost. It means substantial investment in R&D and rigorous software development practices. It means turning down the opportunistic acquisition of cheap technology as a means of expanding footprint. It means finding and paying for world class people who can think big and make it happen. It means building a vision and making a long term commitment to customers and shareholders about the direction of the business. But the big upside is of course the far higher likelihood of a long term relationship with carriers that delivers very substantial business-wide value.

As far as we can see, and please tell us if we are wrong, Cramer is the only OSS company actually executing in this way - in stark contrast to the "bag of bits" approach so prevalent in the industry. This approach is beginning to come to the end of its natural life. After all, how many OSS vendors are profitable today?

Cramer believes in developing true enterprise-class software for carriers. This is partly because of Cramer's pedigree in high quality, large scale software development. The norm among commercial OSS vendors, with no disrespect, is operations and engineering people who saw a better way to do their job if only they had a better tool.

Cramer is the polar opposite of the "bag of bits" approach to OSS . We work and develop our product to a unified, strategic "blueprint" of the minimum number of systems that a telecom service provider actually needs to be able to function efficiently. Simpler is, after all, better.

There will probably always be a demand for highly specialized OSS-related tools to do specialist jobs. Meanwhile, watch while the upper end of the market takes off, and a handful of vendors - those truly executing to a consolidated architectural vision - take off with it. That's where Cramer will be, of course…

Closing note: While others have decided to sensationalize the recent resignation of Cramer CEO Jerry Crook, Pipeline has chosen to let the issue rest. Though Mr.Crook resigned after being named in a U.S. federal indictment, the indictment relates solely to Mr.Crook's time as an executive with Peregrine Systems. Cramer Systems was in no way involved in the allegations stated in the indictment. For this reason, and because the news item broke well before our publication date, Pipeline has decided to refrain from additional comment as it would be at best redundant.

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