Oracle Enhances OSS with Virtual Capabilities

Oracle Communications announced it has "released a new version of its operational support system (OSS) suite to help CSPs rapidly and agilely design services spanning physical and virtual networks. The suite is also designed to help streamline the operational delivery of customer orders—including high-growth B2B and wholesale orders—enabling CSPs to capitalize on the opportunities of a network function virtualization (NFV)-driven communications world
   
.. Specifically, with this OSS suite CSPs can: Efficiently deliver and manage contemporary network-based B2B services .. Seamlessly support the design and delivery of services on physical, virtual, and hybrid networks .. Accelerate solution design in collaboration with existing provisioning systems ..  and Efficiently manage exceptions in order processing:

The new version of the Oracle Communications OSS suite includes updates to several products, including Oracle Communications Design Studio, Oracle Communications Order and Service Management, Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management, Oracle Communications ASAP, Oracle Communications IP Service Activator, Oracle Communications Network Integrity, and Oracle Communications Network Intelligence. 

It is integrated and optimized to work with the Oracle Cloud Platform, Oracle Database 12c, andOracle Fusion Middleware 12c, improving performance, manageability, and security and enabling future OSS suite deployments in the cloud as well as on premises"

See "Oracle Communications Continues to Simplify Design and Delivery of Network Services to Support NFV and Business Agility" - here.

Samsung Partners with IBM and Guavus for QoE-Based OSS

Samsung announced recently "key partnerships with IBM and Guavus to provide comprehensive Operational Support Systems (OSS) offerings to mobile network operators. Samsung’s newly launched portfolio of operational support systems, CognitiV OSS [see "Samsung Electronics Targets High Quality Data Services with CognitiV Analytics" - here]  will help mobile service providers to manage and optimize their networks in a proactive and intelligent way. 

Based on information collected from network elements and user traffic, CognitiV OSS analyzes users’ service quality of experience (QoE) in real-time, which provides automated network optimization and root-cause analysis of service quality degradation.

• Through the strategic alliance, Samsung and IBM will collaborate on overall OSS technology and develop new business opportunities. Samsung’s leadership in the LTE market and IBM’s long experience with OSS will create important synergies for the development of an advanced OSS platform.

• Samsung is also working closely with Guavus on developing analytics technologies to bolster its innovative OSS offering. As networks grow increasingly dense and sophisticated, the importance of big data analytics is becoming more and more apparent. Samsung will work with Guavus’ analytics expertise to develop real-time analysis capabilities that are optimized for radio networks.

See "Samsung Electronics Partners with IBM and Guavus for Next Generation OSS Offerings" - here.

[Analysys Mason]: Telco S/W Market to Reach $34.2B in 2018

A new report by Analysys Mason finds that (see also "[Anaylsys Mason]: Ericsson and Amdocs Led the Telecom Software Market in 2013" - here]:

• The worldwide telecoms software market is forecast to grow from USD25.1 billion in 2013 to USD34.2 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 6.4%.
   
• LTE network upgrades worldwide are driving spending in OSS/BSS. Investments in North America (NA) and Western Europe will decline initially as deployments are completed, but software revenue will be sustained over the forecast period by increased spending in emerging markets.
   
• The service delivery platform (SDP) market is the fastest-growing telecoms software segment, at a CAGR of 10.1%, driven by take-up and usage of mobile data services.
   
• Network function virtualisation (NFV) will begin to impact the industry during the mid-to-late forecast period, driving the need for new OSS/BSS solutions that can support both the virtualised and traditional network environments.
  

See "Telecoms software: worldwide forecast 2014–2018" - here.

Survey: Operators Satisfaction from OSS/BSS Vendors

Jason Marcheck [pictured], Research Director, Current Analysis, published a summary of a "OSS/BSS purchase drivers and vendor satisfaction from large operators around the globe representing approximately half of the global telecom CapEx spend".

The main conclusion is - "The companies that topped the list in questions related to vendor satisfaction seem to be better known as large SI players than as OSS/BSS specialists"

Jason describes his thoughts on the grades and concludes - "I hear a lot of OSS/BSS vendors beam with pride that that they are “product companies,” with the clear implication being that operators value the product more than the SI that comes in and pulls it all together. That is a good story. However, our results say that delivery matters most" 

See "OSS/BSS Vendor Satisfaction – Are “Product Companies” Missing the Boat on Delivery?" - here.

[Analysys Mason] CSPs Spent 6.3% of Revenues on IT (39% of Capex)

A new report by Dean Ramsay, Larry Goldman [pictured] and Justin van der Lande, Analysys Mason finds that "USD127 billion was spent worldwide on telecoms IT in 2012. This spending represented an average of 6.4% of overall telecoms revenue of more than USD2 trillion .. IT spending accounted for only 10% of opex and 39% of capex worldwide in 2012".

"Spending on OSS/BSS accounted for 50% of IT spending worldwide – USD63 billion in 2012, up by 3% year-on-year. Just over one third of IT spending in 2012 (USD48 billion) was spent by the CTO or network/product group, on SDPs and apps, and on network management systems (NMSs)".

See "IT spending by communications service providers worldwide 2012" - here.

[Informa]: OSS/BSS Market CAGR - 4.7% for 2013-17

 
Alex Leslie reports to BillingViews that a recent market forecast by Informa Telecoms and Media (here, subscription required) finds that  "The BSS market will grow faster than the OSS market between now and 2017 .. By 2017, the BSS market will be worth $42.8 billion (from $30.6 billion in 2013), with OSS at $31.8 billion (from $28.4 billion in 2013) .. Informa do not see huge growth in cloud based BSS, nor indeed OSS .. Clearly real-time is now a priority for operators who need to ‘think like internet providers.’"

Informa also finds that:

• "The most important driver behind OSS/BSS revenue growth over the forecast period be LTE. 
• Major trends shaping the BSS sector are transformation, outsourcing and the drive towards centralized BSS. 
• OSS growth will be relatively strong in network management, data collection and presentation, particularly in terms of outsourced-management and software-management tools".

See "The OSS/BSS market to grow by $12 billion in next four years" - here.

Gartner OSS Leaders: NetCracker, Oracle, Amdocs, IBM and Ericsson

NetCracker announced that "Gartner Inc., the world-leading information technology research and advisory firm, has positioned NetCracker as a “Leader” in its October 2013 Magic Quadrant for Operations Support Systems .. 

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Operations Support Systems “rates vendors that sell end-to-end solutions for service assurance and fulfillment, including network resource management, service inventory and catalog, and order management; also, provisioning and activation for communications service providers".

The Gartner report states that "Overall, we expect the worldwide OSS market to grow from $29.2 billion in 2012 to $37.6 billion in 2015. Inventory is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5% through 2017. Network and service assurance (including customer experience initiatives) is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.2%, and provisioning and activation at 5.2% worldwide (for forecast reference see the Gartner Recommended Reading section).

   

See "Gartner Names NetCracker a Leader in Magic Quadrant for Operations Support Systems" - here.

Gartner: SDN/NFV should Lead CSPs to DPI, Analytics and New OSS Investments

Paula Bernier [pictured], Executive Editor, TMC, reports to NFVZONE that "Gartner says the dynamic nature of networking SDN and NFV enable will require service providers to up their game in terms of security. They can do that, according to Gartner, by investing in deep packet inspection and SDN analytic tools that monitor traffic, diagnose threats and mitigate security challenges. At the same time, the research firm suggests, network operators must be sure to manage and monitor security controller access to see who is logging in when and for what purpose.

As for billing and operational support systems, Gartner recommends that service providers invest in new ones that support SDN orchestration and provisioning, policy-based control with security functions, and real-time control and billing.
  
With SDN's control and NFV's flexibility, CSPs can develop business models that are based on tiered services, elastic services like security-as-a-service using DPI functions on-demand or more applications on demand
See "Gartner: SDN, NFV Create New Security, OSS Requirements" - here.

[Heavy Reading]: "SDN and NFV are disruptive from a management perspective"

 
A new report by Caroline Chappell [pictured], Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading concludes that "SDN and NFV are disruptive from a management perspective because they require change at every level: in employee skillsets, process reengineering and automation, and new OSS capabilities .. The market is at an extremely early stage, and NFV is likely to involve at least a ten-year migration. Over this period network management architectures will evolve, and there will be an impact on the entire OSS vendor ecosystem".

Key findings:

• Network equipment vendors, rather than the best-known IT OSS vendors, are leading the development of next-generation architectures attempting to harmonize OSS with SDN and NFV.
   
• Three new network management approaches (see chart below) are emerging that will create different levels of disruption for service provider organizations:

• Vendors with very different backgrounds and perspectives are entering the race to provide a next-generation OSS capability for SDN and NFV, creating considerable confusion in the market

See "Managing the Virtualized Network: How SDN & NFV Will Change OSS" - here.

Ericsson, NSN and Huawei Form the OSS interoperability initiative

A new partnership, OSSii – Operations Support Systems interoperability initiative, was "founded in May 2013 to promote OSS interoperability between different OSS vendor’s equipment. Operations Support Systems integrate to a variety of telecom network technologies from several equipment vendors as well as the telecom operator business systems, making the integration of OSS a complex and costly. The objectives of OSSii include enabling easier interoperability between OSS systems, reducing overall OSS integration costs and enabling shorter time-to-market".

"OSSii – Operations Support Systems interoperability initiative has Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks as initiating parties.OSSii is built on a set of principles - openness, fairness, reasonableness and non-discriminatory treatment - all expressed in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Intiating Parties" [see below and here].

See also press release by the members: Huawei and NSN.

[ABI] CEM Market $1.3B; Needs Policy and DPI; HP, IBM, Amdocs Lead

A recent research by Aditya Kaul (pictured), practice director, ABI Research concludes that "..  it’s only recently that CEM has been applied in mobile .. sizes the CEM opportunity in 2013 at $1.3 billion across the network and IT domains, although roughly 80% of the market is dominated by the IT domain in areas like BSS/OSS, CRM, and SDP"

“The Mobile CEM landscape today is dominated by IT vendors such as HP, Amdocs, and IBM which are leveraging strengths in IT combined with a heavy focus on customer analytics and data mining. However, for CEM to succeed, the network piece including network monitoring, optimization, DPI and policy, has to go hand-in-hand with the IT piece, which is where traditional network vendors come in .. Ultimately, CEM only becomes relevant if done end-to-end, with a single point of ownership within the carrier; something like a NASA mission control with a CEM commander at its helm, having multiple views across Network and IT domains.”

See "Customer Experience Management for Mobile Is a Billion Dollar Market Opportunity in 2013, Spanning Both Network and IT Domains" - here.

Amdocs Integrates PCC and OTT Monetization into BSS/OSS Suite

Amdocs announced the release of "Amdocs CES 9, the company's latest product suite which revolutionizes the customer experience .. Spanning business support systems (BSS), operational support systems (OSS) and network control domains, Amdocs CES 9 is the only integrated suite that enables service providers to unleash the power of experience by rapidly launching and monetizing innovative offers, personalizing every interaction with real-time insight, and empowering customers to take control of their experiences across any channel, network, service or device – while delivering operational efficiencies"

Among the new features integrated into Amdocs' main product suite are  "Amdocs Omni Convergent Charging integrates Amdocs' real-time charging, policy control, enterprise product catalog, and service platform to allow service providers to define, deliver and dynamically monetize any convergent service and allow their customers to choose any package at any time and pay for it à-la-carte and Amdocs OTT (over-the-top) Monetization enriches partner price plans with quality of service capabilities and predictive analytics for business optimization. Enables service providers to partner with content and app providers and increase revenue from these providers by up to 25 percent*, and allows end users to benefit from higher quality of service and personalized experiences when consuming OTT content such as streaming video"

See "New Amdocs CES 9 Suite Redefines the Service Provider's Operating Environment to Revolutionize the Customer Experience" - here.

[Ericsson] OSS/BSS in 2013: OTT Partnership, Tiered Services, Analytics and Bill Shock

 
Beau Atwater, Director of marketing strategy for Ericsson (previously from Telcordia, pictured), outlines the main reasons for CSPs to spend money on OSS/BSS systems upgrades in 2013 ("part evolution, part revolution"). As we have seen these vendor wishes many times before, I can only join Beau's statement "The more things change, the more they stay the same" - in selling side pitches and predictions.

• In 2013, consumers will continue to flock to over-the-top (OTT) voice, video and data services. What’s changing is that instead of sleepless nights pondering a future as a dumb pipe, CSPs will start turning OTT from a problem into an opportunity .. In 2013, many CSPs will partner with OTT players. For example, a mobile operator could provide a certain amount of bandwidth and prioritization to a video OTT provider that agrees to share revenue because the QoS would help differentiate its service. The video OTT provider’s brand also could help the mobile operator attract customers. Both companies also could market to each other’s customer base. CSPs will have to optimize their OSS/BSS infrastructure to execute this
   
• "OSS/BSS overhauls also will enable the trend toward tiered pricing, which will take off in 2013
   
• CSPs will spend more and more time analyzing customer behavior so they can capitalize on it
   
• Finally, 2013 also will be the year that CSPs began to turn another problem into an opportunity: bill shock. CSPs suffer financially when surprised customers become former customers or share their anguish with their social networks. CSPs also bear the cost of fielding all those billing inquiries. See "24 Operator Groups (4B Subscribers) to Adopt Bill Shock Prevention Measures This Year" - here, "Bill Shock Prevention is Coming to the US Mobile Service" - here and "EU Helps Preventing Mobile Bill Shock" - here. 

See "The OSS/BSS-enabled revolution begins in 2013" - here.

Gartner: Major OSS Investment Areas Include Policy Management

Martina Kurth (pictured), published Gartner's Magic Quadrant that "..evaluates the capabilities of end-to-end vendors in the global market for OSS service assurance and fulfillment, a market characterized by simultaneous consolidation and vibrant innovation by startups".

IBM, NetCracker Technology, Oracle, Amdocs and Ericsson are classified by Gartner as "Leaders" (see chart below). HP, who was there last year (here) is now a "Challenger".

"Because of these shifting requirements, we see CSPs worldwide investing in more flexible OSS architectures, which improve the efficiency of service creation, management and timely delivery, and enable them to proactively optimize customers' perceived quality of experience. Simultaneously, CSPs need to keep an eye on opex and capital expenditure (capex). Major OSS investment areas include order-to-fulfillment processes across logical inventory and adjacent product and service catalog domains, order management, configuration management, discovery and reconciliation, and policy management".

See "Magic Quadrant for Operations Support Systems" - here.

Gartner: "Major OSS investment areas include policy management"

 

A recent report by Martina Kurth (pictured), Research Director, Gartner (curtsey of Oracle) "evaluates the capabilities of end-to-end vendors in the global market for OSS service assurance and fulfillment, a market characterized by simultaneous consolidation and vibrant innovation by startups".

"Overall, we expect the worldwide OSS market to grow from $25.3 billion in 2010 to $32.9 billion in 2015".

"Major OSS investment areas include order to fulfillment processes across logical inventory and adjacent product and service catalog domains, and policy management. On the other hand, we see a major revitalization around service quality management and the corresponding network performance and capacity planning, which often revolve around enterprisewide CEM initiatives, by adding an additional analytics and data correlation layer"

See "Magic Quadrant for Operations Support Systems" - here.

Tekelec: "the problem is BSS/OSS is the effort and money it takes to bring those systems together"

    

Amy Kucharik interviewed Lane Liley (picture), Director of Product Management, Tekelec, to TELECOM ENGINE about " customer experience management, among other strategies, might provide a way for operators to stay profitable while keeping their customers happy"

See "Customer experience management and the demand for mobile data services: Tekelec one-on-one" - here.

Some quotes:

• The difference-maker for operators is if they can demonstrate improvement in both the network and customer service experiences

• Customer experience management covers a large gamut of metrics and interactions between subscribers and their service providers. At the recent TM Forum Management World conference, Susan McNeice (picture) at Yankee group defined the customer experience into four groups:  pricing and offering simplicity, network/services performance, customer care and billing
   
• Tiered services, going beyond buckets of data, are an elegant and simple way to define the quality of service and help ensure that everyone has the network access they're paying for. Andy MacLeod at Vodafone presented .. a direct link between network management and tiered plans. Once Vodafone began actively managing users based on their tiers, customer satisfaction rose across all groups. We believe this is because subscribers knew what to expect and still had quality network performance.[See: Vodafone Uses DPI and Policy Management to Improve QoE (and the vendors are..) - here]

Ericsson to Buy Telcordia for $1.15B

 
It took almost 6 months since the rumors were spread (see "Telcordia for Sale" - here) to today's announcement by Ericsson - "that it has reached an agreement with Providence Equity Partners, LLC and Warburg Pincus to acquire 100 percent of the shares of Telcordia, a global leader in the development of mobile, broadband and enterprise communications software and services, for USD 1.15 billion. Closing anticipated to Q4 2011 with full effect Q1 2012."

See "Ericsson to acquire Telcordia" - here. Telcordia was sold to its current owners by SAIC more than 6 years ago (Nov '04) for $1.35B (here).

The PCRF angle - both vendors have a PCRF product - Telcordia's Real-Time Policy and Ericsson's Service-Aware Policy Controller (SAPC). Maybe the quote below hints which is going to stay:

"One of the main challenges for operators is how to handle the growth in mobile and fixed broadband traffic, as well as the new types of connected devices, services and applications and the high expectations on user experience, while at the same time increasing the efficiency in business and operations. OSS and BSS are critical areas to handle this challenge and to simplify the processes that support the business. They drive the customer experience and serve as the engine to monetizing traffic, offerings and products that operators sell. All in all, these systems are crucial to create the experience users expect in a cost efficient manner .. The deal creates the leader in Service Fulfilment, Service Assurance and Network Optimization and gives Ericsson a leading position in real-time charging and significant capabilities to support operators end to end. The combination will address the needs of Communications Service Providers to deliver mobile broadband and operational transformation to their subscribers".