By Jesse Cryderman

While global economies continued to recover sluggishly in 2010, the BSS/OSS sector definitely did not move at a snail’s pace. Sure, some of the buzzwords were the same—convergence, silos, virtualization, greening, clouds, smart grids—but many left the realm of bleeding edge tech-speak to become marketable and monetized solutions. From catalyst demonstrations on trade show floors depicting “smart” user account management with unimaginable granularity to international marketing campaigns for pocket-sized mobile 4G hotspots, it’s clear growth in the B/OSS world in 2010 has once again impacted and enabled the way the world communicates and does business.

Streaming video—the big bang in bandwidth—is growing faster than anyone can keep up, and it shows no signs of slowing down. According to Goldman Sachs, data traffic will grow 6- fold by 2012, with streaming video accounting for the lion’s share. The issue extends to the mobile platforms: according to Cisco, mobile data is

forecast to grow at 108% annually, with video accounting for 66% of traffic. And soon the worlds will converge, as Effi Goldstein, of IP Gallery, explained. Referencing recent research by Gartner, he said “Mobile devices will overtake PCs as the primary data access points by 2013.”

This mushrooming demand overlaps several layers of BSS/OSS tech: The need for optimization solutions to deliver Netflix On-Demand, Hulu, and YouTube; protocol management for CSPs; dynamic billing options, for both customer and provider; third-party services that bridge OTT players and operators; improved testing and measurement to better monitor service levels; and mobile computing optimization, for both hardware and software.

As a result, there are multiple entry points for the savvy entrepreneur. Third-party offerings that bridge wildly popular social networking with carrier offerings is one idea. Other new solutions include optimizing streaming video from YouTube/Hulu/Netflix for mobile devices and better billing software to enable greater customization of individual plans.

Certainly part of the growth in cloud computing is directly related to the increasingly distributed workforce and number of employees telecommuting. With more and more business being done in virtual offices, it makes sense to use solutions that aren’t location-based. In terms of collaboration, IBM’s Lotus Live, Salesforce.com, Jive, Google Docs, and Microsoft Office Live all offer real solutions that are being used today.

Cloud-based data backup and security services are also fully live. These storage services are aggressively bundled with everything from new laptop computers (Carbonite), to cell phones (Cricket’s MyBackup), to website hosting packages add-ons. The advantages to online backup are simple—ask anyone who has dropped a cell phone in water, or lost a hard drive full of important data. The concern for many enterprises, though, is the level of security employed. In fact, although enterprise cloud spending is expected to increase substantially in the next five years, the main reason cited by IT purchasers for a slow move to the cloud is concerns over security.