The Word from TeleManagement World (cont'd)

Sprint’s Walker Echoes Transformation Message
Keynote speaker Kathy Walker, Sprint’s executive vice president for network services, offered an optimistic picture of the ongoing transformation Sprint hopes will help it to “simplify, integrate and do business in a different way.” Reflecting the TMF’s Willetts’ earlier comments, Walker suggested Sprint is trying to drive better economies through consolidation and common approaches, and that it has recognized that “cost cutting alone does not work” or “motivate people with careers.” Sprint is apparently concerned with Wall Street’s focus on the “judicious use of capital,” Walker said, and committed to delivering its version of “convergence.”

Sprint is rolling out convergent services, Walker explained, with devices like the Treo 600 that is a phone, PDA, camera, video player and more. On a grander scope, Sprint has 27 million customers, most of whom carry multiple services with the company. Convergence, she said, also extends to Sprint's suppliers who are being asked to deliver more multi-purpose capabilities.

Walker suggested Sprint had always been seen as a leader - first with an all-digital, national fiber optic network; first with a 3G CDMA network –but admitted that Sprint's transformation is necessary after “without care and feeding [its] brand impact diminished.” She also gave her company credit for not being caught up in any post-bubble securities prosecution.

Absent from her brief history of the company was any mention of Sprint's many flirtations with potential buyers or the billions it lost as a result of its failure to deliver ION. Walker spent a great deal of time suggesting that real organizational change, with a renewed sense of accountability and focus on metrics, was pervading Sprint. Insiders speaking on background suggested that while Sprint's aggressive moves in wholesale and multi-service offerings are well intended and have lead to success, some of the technical mandates – like eliminating layer 2 networks to move directly to MPLS over DWDM – may be asking more of new technologies than they can actually deliver at carrier scale.

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Cramer Announces Major Win with BT, Partnership with SAP
Perhaps the biggest vendor announcement at the TMW event came from Cramer Systems, who announced that it secured a long term, multi-million dollar license deal with BT. Cramer will supply its entire product suite as part of BT’s 21st Century Network, the initiative by which BT intends to migrate its entire U.K. network to broadband and VoIP by 2009. This is the largest deal in Cramer’s history. Cramer also announced a new partnership with SAP to integrate their products and jointly develop network lifecycle management solutions. This is yet another acknowledgement of Cramer’s progress.

How Do Cramer and MetaSolv Fit?
Cramer’s BT announcement follows closely MetaSolv’s recent announcements of similar, large OSS wins with BT. Without specification in various press releases, questions arose regarding the role of each vendor – traditionally tough competitors - within BT’s architecture. Remarkably, representatives from both Cramer and MetaSolv stated independently that the two companies are playing a separate, but ultimately complementary role. While MetaSolv’s applications are largely responsible for automating functions within the specific technology domains BT supports, Cramer’s applications will play an inter-domain management role, helping to insure that service delivery is automated, managed, and synchronized across technology domains, particularly in increasing multi-technology scenarios.

This is an extremely positive sign for the OSS sector, and as such there is responsibility associated with it. This is a needed example where two highly competitive OSS providers have each earned significant roles for one of the largest OSS buyers. The long term success of each company is likely to depend on the success of the other, and because the results will be highly visible they are likely to impact the entire OSS sector's reputation.

In further MetaSolv news, the company announced at TMW that it has extended its relationship with Verizon Dominicana, formerly Codetel, the Dominican Republic 's PTT. MetaSolv already provided applications for much of Dominicana's wireline service delivery operations. This announcement marked MetaSolv's extension into the company's mobile operations, specifically with MetaSolv's mobile activation solution.

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