OSS 2.0: Carriers Need to Walk the Walk
That was one of the key messages delivered by Heavy Reading analyst at large Caroline Chappell in her opening address to an audience of service provider executives here in London today.
"Lots of carriers are saying that their CEOs are visionaries" in terms of adapting to a Web services model that involves working more closely with third-party applications developers, "but when you drill down there's no investment and no strategy for the type of organizational change that's needed," Chappell said.
So telcos need to wake up and start, from the top down, forcing through change with strict change management and key performance indicator (KPI) metrics.
"Exploiting third-party services is the key to future telco success, and the telcos know this," Chappell said. But they need the right operational environment to take advantage of the potential, and that involves creating a back office that makes it simple for third-party partners to develop and test their applications and have access to the data and business intelligence housed within operators' systems. "Telcos have all the ingredients they need, but they're not all joined up – they need streamlined, efficient, flexible, joined-up, customer-centric processes and systems." (See OSS 2.0: Telcos Need to Expose Themselves.)
Getting to that end goal is going to be a nightmare, however. "The OSS/BSS revolution is going to be a very slow process," added Chappell, because of existing service provider silos and organizational paralysis.
That nightmare needs to be overcome, though. "The services revolution is already happening, and telcos need to partner to tap in to the innovation that's out there" because they can't do it all by themselves. "We need to see major changes in approach, architecture, organization, and procurement processes," while "success for OSS/BSS vendors depends on how far they can support these changes," added Chappell. (See Carriers: Be Brave, or Die.)
— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading
The pace of OSS innovation in carrier organizations is nothing short of glacial. The de facto standard for software parameter and change management is spreadsheets and remote terminal log ons. The primary security systems protecting unauthorized NE access are post-it notes with passwords (in the rare occasions where they have been changed from "admin, admin"). Blind outages are more common than anyone wants to admit, and in a world dominated by third party services they will grow exponentially worse. The average lead time between recognizing a critical new operational requirement and implementing a solution is now measured in years, not months. The market stores up rewards for the failure to innovate.