By Tim Young

Product Lifecycle Management: The process of taking a product from earliest concept to eventual disposal. It's nothing new in the manufacturing world, as the development, introduction, maturation, and eventual obsolescence of a given product has been a matter of strategy for decades. However, within the world of CSPs, it's a technology that's still finding its feet.

The complications of PLM within the communications world start where the term itself starts: With the word "product". Before CSPs can effectively manage the lifecycle of products they must define what a product is and how those products can be quantified and cataloged. Once again, this is an easy task in the world of manufactured goods. It's somewhat more complicated for CSPs. Furthermore, as the scope of telecommunications offerings continues to broaden as the needs and expectations of users broadens, the need to maintain a central catalog becomes ever-more-pressing. To quote material from Telcordia on the importance of PLM: "Communications service providers juggle complex product portfolios that have been created in vertical technology silos with disjointed definitions and options."

The chief approach for PLM within CSPs has become the use of a central product catalog. This catalog is essentially a compendium for information on product definitions and specifications that can be centrally managed, but accessed by a wide variety of workgroups and team members.

The advantages of PLM in the telecom space are many. Reduced time-to-market is perhaps one of the most essential. A central product catalog can go a long way towards increasing the rapidity with which new services are rolled out. A foundation for new products can be easily located and utilized as a platform for expansion and development, so developers aren't forced to either hunt around for a

changed in a strategic fashion. It's visibility that leads to a more informed, more strategic approach to growth, rather than a series of responses to market stimuli with no real knowledge of what has come before and how mistakes of the past can be minimized and future successes maximized.

Convergys has shown a commitment to PLM with its acquisition of Ceon, which has been a player in the space for some time. "As service providers launch new convergent services to differentiate themselves from their competitors, their product management requirements become increasingly complex," said Bob Lento, president of Information Management for Convergys. "Ceon's product