Operators surveyed by Infonetics Research have named Huawei, Ericsson, HP, IBM and Oracle among the top service-delivery platform (SDP) vendors.
SDP company ranking is just one component of the new Infonetics report, "SDP Deployment Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Study." The survey explores operators' SDP deployment strategies, including the business and application drivers behind their investments, their priorities in selecting an SDP supplier, and their perceptions of the major vendors playing in the market.
"API exposure was the name of the game in this year's survey, with operators naming it as a top application and business driver behind their SDP investments," said Shira Levine, directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy at Infonetics Research. "Operators clearly understand the value of building innovative content ecosystems, and believe that exposing network assets – such as location, call control, messaging and presence information – is key to attracting third-party content developers that can help them achieve that."
In the survey, operators ranked Oracle highest for SDP technology, and placed IBM and Accenture highest for their business modeling capabilities, likely reflecting their cross-industry experience with process management.
Other highlights of the report show messaging services and converged payment and billing are highly-rated applications driving SDP deployments; faster "time to market" topped the list of business drivers behind respondents' SDP investments, tied with generating revenue via an API exposure strategy; and support for machine-to-machine (M2M) services is gaining traction as a driver for investing in SDPs.
