Communication Service Providers Head For The Cloud

Progress Software Corporation, the software provider, predicts that Telcos will increasingly be able to predict technology problems that might affect customers, solving them before the customers even know they exist.

“The telecom field is highly competitive, and service providers have to differentiate their offerings to remain competitive. Solving problems before they happen goes a long way toward managing the customer experience,” said Kaushal Mashruwala, Vice President, Progress Software India.

The firm also predicts that mobile service providers will have to build stronger relationships with customers, mainly by providing unique offerings to grab and hold their attention.

Progress Software’s Telecommunications predictions for 2011:

1. For BSS/OSS, managing the manager is key - Traditional business and operational support systems (B/OSS) will require systems to manage them. Investment into such infrastructure assets is so much that they cannot be easily replaced and need an adapted layer to respond to real-time business demands and reenergize the existing B/OSS infrastructure’s value.

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2. You will predict problems before they come to light - Telco service providers will be able to predict when there is a potential issue that will affect customers- and correct it before it happens. The pre-emptive correction of will become a key factor in differentiating service providers and improving the customer’s level of service.

3. Loyalty program - Telcos facing escalating competitive forces will have to build stronger relationships with their customers. They will need to provide customers with unique, interactive experiences to build stronger loyalty by tapping into customer call patterns and locations, correlating with customer preferences and providing value added services to customize each customer’s experience in a unique way.

4. Partly cloudy - As communication service providers head for the cloud, they will struggle with data interoperability between cloud and non-cloud environments. Operators will need advanced data transformation and adaptive technologies to take full advantage of cloud-based applications.

5. Mind the gap - Operators will be increasingly trapped in the gap between customer expectations for flexibility and speed, and the limitations in existing B/OSS infrastructure. This will drive demand for new business user toolsets to overlay B/OSS, enabling service providers to respond and deploy new solutions faster.
6. Bundle of joy
- Service providers will break through the traditional approach to their product offerings to provide customers with a bundled, one-stop experience. To align with the customers’ experiences, a responsive tool is needed to provide a single point of response to customer issues across all silos and domains.

7. As the world turns - As global service providers increasingly cooperate to share infrastructure, new levels B2B standards will be necessary. Standards including interface specifications will be rapidly built out and adopted by service providers in 2011, by region or mutually beneficial partnerships.

8. On the move - Mobile access to payments, banking, insurance and entertainment will increasingly dominate traditional mobile phone offerings and increase the need for mobile broadband. Bundled offerings will involve partnering with other business ecosystems and will require enablement for rapidly changing customer offerings, solution components, and customer profiles across a complex partner ecosystem.

9. Soup to nuts - The inevitable increase in outsourcing of core business and IT operations will force service providers to re-examine every aspect of B/OSS software management. From vendor proposals to software deployment to retiring multiple systems, operators will need clear visibility into the processes taking place at third party offshore sites to better measure the effectiveness of their outsourcing partners’ roles in their customers’ overall experience.

10. Services offering services - To further differentiate themselves competitively, communication service providers will enhance their managed service offerings for business customers. Operators will offer business customers services including IT data center operations and other enhanced managed services, as well as the traditional telecom service offerings. Communication service providers will use their in-house experience in managing network and IT operations to further their service offerings and relationships with their business customers.

Kaushal concluded, “The volatile growth of the telecom market globally is creating a fiercely competitive business landscape. Providers will have to embrace new technologies such as the cloud and BSS/OSS-enabling toolkits in order to grow market share while keeping costs down.”