Insight describes the strategies of domestic and international wireline and wireless carriers, cable MSOs, and ISPs to illustrate the larger picture of how expenditures are allocated to OSSes and related professional services during the forecast period.
Operations support systems (OSS), the information technology infrastructure that gives carriers the ability to create, deploy, manage, and maintain network-based services, are beginning to evolve in anticipation of converged network operations. Carriers are looking for solutions that will inter-work wireless, IP, and traditional PSTN elements within their enterprise, and extend a comparable level of management and control to dissimilar OSSes as part of their overall strategy. This industry analysis report examines recent marketplace drivers?including the industry downturn and its impact on OSS investments?by analyzing billing, customer care, trouble/repair, planning and engineering, provisioning/inventory, network management, business management, and workforce management.
Insight describes the strategies of domestic and international wireline and wireless carriers, cable MSOs, and ISPs to illustrate the larger picture of how expenditures are allocated to OSSes and related professional services during the forecast period. Expenditures are segmented by OSS type and geographic region for both broadband and narrowband services.
Across the entire economy, information technology (IT) spending has yet to recover the double-digit percentage growth prior to the ?dot-com? and telecom crashes?and the slow pace of investment in new IT infrastructure is amplified by conditions in the telecommunications sector, where spending on operations support systems (OSSes) has taken a notable dip. IT spending across the general economy is predicted by several sources to be in the high- to mid-single-digit range in 2005. INSIGHT?s research suggests that IT spending in the telecom segment will be even smaller, as telecom revenues overall are predicted to grow at just 5.9 percent from 2005 through 2010. For the first time since our coverage of OSS system sales began in 1990, we are seeing sales of new OSS systems and professional services growing slower than telecommunications service revenues overall.
OSSes are the computing systems that give telecommunications service providers the ability to create, deploy, manage, maintain, and bill for telecommunications services. INSIGHT?s definition of OSSes includes the following components:
? Application software to provide the system functionality, such as customer care, billing, or network equipment surveillance and control;
? Computer hardware (e.g., computers and servers) to run the software, including all required low-level software, such as the operating system (OS) and middleware;
? Computer hardware and software maintenance contracts; and
? Professional services applicable to the installation and adaptation of the OSS to the client?s environment.
The slow down in spending marks a significant change from prior INSIGHT Operations Support Systems reports, which over the last fifteen years showed OSS spending growing....
Insight describes the strategies of domestic and international wireline and wireless carriers, cable MSOs, and ISPs to illustrate the larger picture of how expenditures are allocated to OSSes and related professional services during the forecast period.