A new breed of major BSS/OSS providers has emerged during the past five years as growth has declined in mature telecoms markets (Western Europe and North America) and increased in emerging markets (such as Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Asia–Pacific region). These players are located in the same countries as their customers and provide a wide range of software services. Their products include integrated BSS/OSS systems, which are built from the ground up and are sold using either the traditional licence model or the software as a service (SaaS) approach. Three particularly notable regional players have emerged.
- AsiaInfo, which is based in China and has a market capitalisation that is second only to that of Amdocs in the telecoms software market. It is now expanding into the Asia–Pacific market as a whole.
- Clarity, which is based in Australia, serves many operators in the Asia–Pacific region and is expanding into other geographical markets.
- Comarch, which was founded in Poland, has expanded throughout Eastern Europe and is continuing to grow.
The phenomenon of regional OSS providers that grow in their domestic markets and then expand geographically is not new. What has changed is the origin and offering of such players.
During the 1990s, most regional vendors focused on a particular functional area – for example, billing, inventory, mediation or fault management. Their products were very deep in functionality and moderately easy to integrate, and CSPs selected them on the basis of detailed technical and operational capabilities. Most of these ISVs focused primarily on licence sales, leaving the bulk of the services to SIs, although some engaged more in configuration, customisation and integration efforts centred on their products.
By contrast, most of the new regional ISVs come from the IT side of the business, where they provided customised software development. They have gradually created more-productised suites of pre-integrated software modules that focus on automating an overall process. Any individual module might not necessarily be the ‘best of breed’, but the overall integrated suite solves a significant operational problem for emerging CSPs. Much of these vendors’ basic telecoms expertise is based on the eTOM, SID and NGOSS architecture from the TM Forum.
These regional players have established relationships with major operators in their regions and have developed substantial experience in operations in emerging markets, where much of the next round of telecoms business and technical innovation is coming from. They have been providing local competition to the major BSS/OSS providers for several years, and are now beginning to expand beyond their initial geographical boundaries.
In the next few years, these companies may well represent a new round of competitors for traditional software vendors in the global telecoms market. The competition may be the most intense in emerging mobile markets, where deep product functionality is often valued less than lower prices and a reputation for serving the fast-growing CSPs in such markets.
More information and analysis can be found in Mark H. Mortensen’s Comment piece The rise of the regional all-in-one BSS/OSS vendors.