By Ed Finegold
The BSS sector is odd, from an IT industry perspective, because it isn’t dominated by Microsoft, Oracle or other massive companies whose TV commercials you’re likely to see during The Masters. The big dog that dominates billing needs no introduction, and will receive none here. In this bizarro world, the biggest dogs play catch-up when it comes to COTS sales. There’s a different perspective to consider, however, because Microsoft – and other major technology suppliers – tends to play a more fundamental role in the food chain. In short, there is an increasing number of CSP IT shops and BSS product suppliers who use Microsoft technology to build and run their applications.
Online Influences
.NET and its associated technologies, like C#, Silverlight, Visual Studio, and Sharepoint, have been used increasingly in the CSP community during the past five years. This is significant because though Microsoft still isn’t the dominant IT technology supplier, it was almost completely absent from the space (other than Office) ten or fewer years ago. Conventional wisdom held for years that Microsoft just wasn’t carrier grade, but this attitude seems to have shifted. A market that was once all about five-nines reliability, swore by Unix (and later Linux), and adopted Java and J2EE technology en masse has changed.
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It just makes sense that its IT shops would adopt Microsoft technologies more than in the past. |
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sense that its IT shops would adopt Microsoft technologies more than in the past. If you want to get an application up and running quickly that sits on a straightforward, Sequel database and works wells with Internet Explorer, you’re probably going to write in C# and use a lot of .NET resources to deliver it. With more time to market pressure in the CSP community for new apps, and more budget pressure for simpler and less expensive IT solutions, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Microsoft technologies would be gaining ground inside CSP IT shops.
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n evaluating this shift, we can’t overlook the online world’s influence. Many online developers use Microsoft tools and development environments for creating applications and websites. These tools are relatively simple to acquire, learn, and use. There’s a large pool of talented developers who are fluent in these technologies. “As a company we have a concentrated focus on the developer community,” says Terry McGuigan, managing director – telco industry, for Microsoft.
For a CSP market that wants to catch up with what’s been happening online, it just makes
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ISVs on Microsoft
Microsoft’s poster children for BSS suppliers that have built impressive, carrier-grade applications on Microsoft technology are Metratech and Tribold. They’ve all spent enough time talking about their relationship that it doesn’t need to be repeated here. The bottom line is that these are two companies with forward-looking BSS solutions build on Microsoft technology.
Metratech offers a billing and payment solution that’s been adopted increasingly in the CSP
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