Wednesday, September 27, 2006

IT Vendors vs. NEPs - Round 2.0

IMS Insider raises a flag that many should have seen coming by now. Recommended read. Another variable worth considering in the equation is Open Source Service Delivery Platforms. Shouldn't a Red Hat/JBoss SDP be added to the list of IT vendor offerings?

If IT vendors can get telco platforms right, and we know from recent history that Open Source can get enterprise platforms right, one would think that Open Source will make a major appearence with a telco platform...

The top IT vendors are certainly strong enough to battle head to head with NEPs and eventually win... if NEPs accept such fight. But what if ... instead of fighting head on with IT, NEPs partner up with Open Source vendors to get up to speed with a common Open Source Open Standards platform and find ways to add value in places where they are traditionally strong - telco applications. In this hyptothetical scenario, NEPs will quickly secure viable infrastructure at a minimal cost and will have all the time and money saved to apply to strengthening their portfolio of Telco 2.0 applications. They already have a wide business moat with building custom applications and partnering with open source vendors will help them grow it further.

6 comments:

Ivelin said...

thanks. fixed. there is not supposed to be a link in this title.

Doktor Towerstein said...

"If IT vendors can get telco platforms right, and we know from recent history that Open Source can get enterprise platforms right,"

Well, that's true. IF IT vendors can get telco platforms right. There's a wealth in telco SW that has been neglected for years in IT, because it was just another approach, not the "quick-and-dirty" approach so common nowadays, but a more academic one, one that can actually prove situations.

Yeah, we know the internet is full of BW. We know that the average server is full of MIPS and FLOPS. But they'll eventually run out, because services are quite hungry in terms of raw processing power.

Telco has been living for years with strict requirements on delays, downtime, and BW usage, to name but a few. Throwing all that "legacy SW" to the dustbin without taking the useful ideas, just because they *seem* too abstract for the average IT coder, without taking a moment to ponder them, is completely foolish.

I wouldn't like anyone to take this as a rant :) but rather as a strong advice to take all that literature on telco SW that is gathering dust in e.g. the IEEE electronic library and try to apply it to existing (hopefully open source) IT products.

Ivelin said...

Javier,

Interesting comment.
Which are the top 5 titles that you would suggest for developers interested in Open Source telco projects?

Ivelin

Doktor Towerstein said...

Why not take Hoare's CSP for a start? :) I'll try to come up with some other papers that could be of use.

Doktor Towerstein said...

BTW, isn't JAIN SLEE description of services/SBBs quite similar to the SCP workings in ITU standards?

Ivelin said...

JSLEE is result of work over 5 years between a dozen top tier companies in telco and IT. I am sure it borrows some of the good ideas from the ITU standards.