[Infonetics Research Survey - Part 2] - Who are the Leading Policy Management Vendors?

  

Although analysts say now that the crowded policy management market (here) will shift the market leadership from standalone players to the larger system vendors (example - here), currently the dominant players are still the smaller, standalone specialists.

Infonetics Research released some more information from their recent survey "Policy Management Deployment Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey" (see the first part, based on a blog port to the Amdocs blog - here).

According to Shira Levine, directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy at Infonetics Research, "When asked in an open-ended question who they consider to be the top three policy management vendors, service providers named Tekelec/Camiant and Openet as the top two, followed by Bridgewater Systems and Ericsson in a tie for third".  (Bridgewater is now part of Amdocs).

Earlier this year Infonetics said that "Top suppliers in the overall policy management market and in the fast-growing wireless segment held extremely close market share in 2010, with Openet pulling into the lead, followed by Bridgewater and Tekelec " (here). A year ago the order was "Tekelec, Openet, and Bridgewater Systems" (here).

Also a year ago, the Yankee Group ranked the same trio, together with Volubill, Comptel, Telcordia (now part of Ericsson) and Comverse as the leading vendors (here).

Other survey findings:

• "Huawei and Ericsson receive high marks from operators for many buying criteria, including service and support, the #1 supplier selection criterion"
   
• Bandwidth on demand and advanced subscriber control capabilities are operators’ top application drivers for policy management investments, followed by VoIP; operators clearly are interested in using policy to enable more choices and a better experience for the customer

Ms. Levine also agrees that the smaller standalone players domination may be there in the longer term: ".. [recent trends] creates a challenge for the more established policy vendors who have longstanding relationships with operators’ network departments but less sway with IT and marketing teams, while creating new opportunities for IT players such as the billing vendors entering the policy space"

See "Telecom operators rate policy vendors in new Infonetics survey; Tekelec, Openet named top players" - here.