The Yellow Brick Road: Contracting for OSS Success in IP Telephony

By Barbara Lancaster

During the hectic days immediately following deregulation the waste involved in the typical OSS implementation became worrisome. Cost overruns, late delivery and a consistent failure to deliver promised business benefits were the rule, rather than exception. The blame could be assigned equitably to systems integrators, application vendors and service providers.

SIs could be criticized for sending in teams of youngsters with no experience in telco operations. This even became know as "the school bus complaint." OSS application designers failed to engage real, knowledgeable users in the design process - known as the "ivory tower" syndrome. And service providers thought it was safe to leave all of the planning to their vendors, and tended to skip serious requirements definition before placing orders. Vendors were chosen more for popularity than for business fit. It therefore was not surprising when the Standish group reported that less than 9% of IT projects met their targeted objectives.

Things have been quieter in the last couple of years. There have been a few heroically large B/OSS projects that have over-run their budgets by several hundred percent and have yet to deliver their promised benefits. Shareholders, analysts and others in the industry - for unexplainable reasons - still take a relaxed attitude toward irrational spending. There have been enough projects that succeeded, however, to restore some confidence in OSS vendors. Most of these successful projects have been relatively small, focused, well-defined and actively managed by a customer team that is experienced and knows exactly what the company wants.

For the current upturn to become a sustained recovery, service providers must make decisions that deliver on their requirements; support their business objectives, and enable success. Unfortunately these points are not obvious to everyone. There remain a large number of smart people making dumb decisions about OSS - or more accurately, not making decisions at all. Too often vendor marketing departments do their deciding for them, ultimately substituting "hype" and "buzz" for planning and analysis in their selection methodology.

Considering IP Telephony Operations
With major shifts towards next generation networks now underway, it is very important for a service provider to take stock of exactly what it needs vendors to do and what processes, tools and systems are necessary to achieve its vision. IP Telephony - the fundamental delivery of the next generation of 'plain old telephone service' using end-to-end VoIP technology, presents service providers with some critical decisions that have impacts for the long term. (For clarity, VoIP refers to the communication technology, and IP Telephony (IPT) to the service built on that technology.) The world's technologists have done a great job of building a way to carry voice calls that is immensely more functional, yet far less expensive than traditional voice telephony - with one exception. It may soon cost more to bill for calls than to carry them. This will happen unless OSS vendors and integrators can decrease the price of their offerings in parallel to the way network technologists have slashed network costs.

When the cost of a billing system is the biggest barrier to entry, service providers will do well to remember that simpler services need simpler systems. Simple service offerings and pricing structures don't need complex mediation and rating systems. Watch out for the rise of cheap, cheerful and effective billing systems with a 'keep it simple, stupid' design philosophy that fit in nicely to a web-services XML/SOAP environment, and fit just as nicely into an IP Telephony business plan.

Technology Cost Matters
IP Telephony is a completely disruptive capability that obliterates the historical concept of distance-based costs. It makes it just as easy to have a Dallas number in Rome, Italy, as it does in downtown Dallas. Users can move their 'fixed' IP phones from home to office to country cottage to resort hotel in Spain - anywhere there is reasonable broadband access to the Internet. All of the call management features available for a premium on the traditional PSTN are also there. Above all, it's cheap. Many times more voice traffic can be carried across an all-IP network than on traditional voice networks. Softswitches and SIP servers can be a fraction of the cost of traditional technology switches, and adding and changing features is much simpler. User-control is designed into the technology.

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