Back office vendors gear up to support "a trillion devices"
Published: 11 May, 2009
The move towards embedding wireless connections in almost every devices, from smart grid sensors to netbooks, will put a huge strain not only on the access networks but the back end software. This was a key theme of last week's Management World in Nice, France, where the Telemanagement Forum had its annual conference. A highlight was the announcement by Amdocs, a big hitter in operator support systems, of services geared to the not-too-distant day when a trillion devices are connected.
This is a phenomenon known as 'teraplay', and many analysts believe it will be a reality by 2015, by which time ubiquitous, always-on broadband connectivity - from multiple devices per person - could also be driving a 'zettabyte' (trillion gigabytes) of data over wireless and wired IP networks.
Amdocs is focusing its new consulting services on six key areas of concern for carriers and how to address them over huge numbers of devices. These are profitable management of personalized and context-aware user experiences; gathering and using sophisticated customer intelligence to maximize revenues; support for flexible pricing and bundling; support for
non-traditional business models and partnerships; containment of the cost of customer support; and profitable management of network costs as the demand for capacity explodes.
"There is an urgency, intensity and complexity about doing business in a teraplay environment that service providers have to be thinking about - and considering - right now as they make decisions regarding the evolution of their BSS, OSS and service delivery platform environments," said Mike Couture, head of global marketing at Amdocs.
Meanwhile, enterprise software giant SAP got into the telecoms back office game by acquiring Highdeal, a rating and charging specialist, while Nokia Siemens broadened its offering by incorporating EMC's Smarts IP-aware software into its OSS platform, NetAct.
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