Is OSS Worth its Weight? (cont'd)

Sometimes this disconnect is due to the service provider’s unwillingness to provide all of the information a vendor needs to propose a reasonable solution. “The service provider is often skittish to provide all the operating parameters for fear of empowering the vendor during subsequent negotiations,” says Steve Noonan, chief marketing officer for Telcordia’s Granite Systems SBU. The best a vendor can do in this case is demonstrate its capabilities to the service provider in a low risk way.

Proofs-of-Concept Keep Everyone Honest
As managers turn back to the vendor market for solutions, they are being smarter about which partners they’ll invest in. Carriers are using Proofs-of-Concept (POCs) to conduct live-fire due diligence without taking on the risk of full blown projects. “The scarcity of capital has added diligence where none existed. That’s what the industry is using to separate wheat from chaff, proof from story and reality from marketing,” says Hurrell.

POCs are an appropriate way for vendors to prove their claims to carriers and begin building a long-term relationship. “ OSS vendors need to do a POC to get some exposure with the carrier, and they learn about each other in the process,” says Dan Baker, senior analyst with Dittberner Associates. A POC is a way for the carrier to know if the OSS provider is the right technical, cultural and financial fit. If POCs are a successful in demonstrating value, then it is important for vendors to share information about their methods and measurements.

The TeleManagement Forum May Be the Place
The TeleManagement Forum may be the right place to bring the value proposition together. Chairman and Co-founder Keith Willetts admits that the Forum has not done a good enough job for long enough in defining and communicating OSS’ business value – as opposed to its technical value - to senior telco executives. Willetts says one should expect to see “a rising tide of that kind of message” coming from the Forum during the next few months, but adds that the hands-on technical aspects of OSS won’t be overlooked. “Service providers need to get not only the value equation, but the ‘how to’ equation,” says Willetts.

Some major telcos, such as AT&T and British Telecom, have lent significant and increasing support to the TeleManagement Forum and its working groups and have benefited as a result. Some of the large U.S.-based incumbents, however, continue not to participate in the Forum's activities at an executive level. “There's not enough enthusiasm from some of the other large service providers in supporting and participating in the standards efforts and the TMF,” says AT&T's Nadji. Willetts agrees that many of the folks that work with the TMF “are architects and designers who don't often get into the board room,” and he says the Forum plans to attract involvement from more “people who report to the CxOs” in addition to its current participants.

Beginning to Define the Measurements
Ultimately, it’s going to take hard, empirical data to demonstrate that OSSs are effective and can have a startling impact on a carrier’s bottom line. The only way to collect that empirical data is to define measurements that are practical, demonstrative and show results in time and dollars. Feness argues that for vendors and service providers to have relationships that work, they need to agree upon units of measure. These can clearly demonstrate that the promised efficiencies are being realized. He explains that some of the keys to defining value measurements are:

• Understanding and defining how the solution influences revenue directly or indirectly
• Identifying how the solution will influence or implement expense controls
• Recording baseline measurements of key business intervals and updating them periodically to demonstrate increasing value

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