Avoid the Mashup Dead Zone with Integrated B/OSS

Thirty years ago, monopoly service providers ruled the roost by mandate. Fifteen years ago, monopolies held sway by virtue of network ownership and ownership of the end user. Five to 10 years ago, it became clear that mobile operators, through an alternate network and an alternate service offering (wireless broadband services), would be competitive. Today, though these aforementioned measuring sticks still are relevant, we are headed into a period where the three parts of the winning equation — network ownership, customer ownership and high-demand services — all have the potential to deal winning hands.

This article will detail the newest area of opportunity for service providers: the creation of high-demand software-based services and how they are bundled into intuitive multiservice communications packages. Not only do these service applications use various forms of communication, they also are, in part, defined by the flexibility with which they allow voice and data to cross many platforms, including: Web portals, mobile portals, e-mail, SMS and unified messaging — all while overcoming previous limitations.

At the apotheosis of software-based service applications, perfect integration of OSS and BSS systems with all flavors of access and control is required.

Judging by the current trend of investment into potentially killer software-based communications applications Voodoovox, Simulscribe (now Phone Tag), Juice Wireless, and Spinvox, etc., it seems the venture capital community believes this point to be true. With the bundling of these applications into multiservice packages, service providers will look to create the “Microsoft Office” equivalent in the communications field (Microsoft Corp. has its own entrant with its Communicator bundle).

Software-based communications innovations typically are referred to as either Unified Communications, Voice 2.0, VoIP 2.0, mash-ups or, more generically, vertically integrated communications software. As usual, when a new classification of services emerges, there are winners and losers. While the industry has seen few (if any) true software communications multiservice bundles, there are some already classic examples of software communications services that have resonated in the market on a large scale: Skype, Yahoo Instant Messenger, and very recently, MySpace and Facebook.

By the same token, there is also a large dead zone of ideas and business models that did not resonate, or where execution and capital have lagged. All of these ideas are measured in relation to their target markets, and the really great ideas add a viral or social networking component which allows them to rapidly acquire customers and exposure outside the bounds of owning a physical network asset.

However, network-based multiservice is fragile. Here is how Wikipedia defines “triple play” — the most widely deployed form of multiservice offering:

In telecommunications, the triple-play service is a marketing term for the provisioning of two broadband services — high-speed Internet access and television — and one narrowband service (telephone) over a single broadband connection. Triple play focuses on a combined business model rather than solving technical issues or a common standard.