A survey of purchase decision-makers at 24 telecom service operators reveals Tekelec/Camiant and Openet as the top two policy management vendors, followed by Ericsson and Bridgewater Systems tied for third.
That's just one finding in Infonetics Research's Policy Management Deployment Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey, published this week. The survey is designed to provide insight into the investment drivers, strategies, and integration efforts of operators deploying policy management solutions, as well as their thoughts on leading policy vendors.
The people interviewed for the survey are from several of the world's largest mobile operators and some high-profile competitive players in emerging markets. The operators surveyed represent one-quarter of the world’s telecom capex and nearly one-third of worldwide telecom revenue, hailing mostly from EMEA (particularly Western Europe), North America, Asia Pacific, and Central and Latin America.
The survey gives Huawei and Ericsson high marks for many buying criteria, including service and support, the No. 1 supplier-selection criterion. It also found that bandwidth on demand and advanced subscriber control capabilities are operators’ top application drivers for policy management investments, followed by VoIP. Reliability and scalability top the list of criteria for choosing a policy management supplier, while price and early availability are at the other end of the spectrum.
“As policy management becomes less about pure bandwidth management and more about enabling new business models and value-added services, there is a clear shift in who holds the budget reins within telecom operators. Compared to last year’s survey, a higher percentage of respondents named the IT department as the budget holder for policy management investments, and fewer named network engineering and operations departments. This creates a challenge for the more established policy vendors who have longstanding relationships with operators’ network departments but less sway with IT and marketing teams, while creating new opportunities for IT players such as the billing vendors entering the policy space," said Shira Levine, Infonetics Research’s next-gen OSS and policy analyst.
