Global and Indian Telecom OSS/BSS Market

The Operations Support Systems (OSS) are computer systems used predominantly by telecommunication service providers.  The term is normally used to describe specialized softwares which help the telecom network deal with various components within the system such as network operations, service management and provisioning services. The Business Support Systems (BSS) usually refers to software dealing with customer support processes such as Customer Care, Billing Services and Fraud Management.

The global OSS/BSS market is a competitive landscape with about 400 players. The consolidated revenue for the OSS/BSS market stood at USD 15-15.5 Billion in 2008, recording a CAGR of 6-7% for the past five years. In spite of the economic downturn, the market is projected to maintain the same growth rate and touch USD 21-22 Billion in revenues by 2013. The Indian OSS/BSS market generated USD 490-500 Million in 2008 and is expected to grow at 15-17% till 2013 to reach USD 1,050-1,100 Million approximately.

The OSS/BSS products have come a long way since they were introduced in the 1970s to replace manual administrative processes. Since then, the industry has undergone a lot of ‘focus shifts’ from manually operated switch management systems to creating automated interfaces. After witnessing a spurt in demand for systems with VAS compatibility the focus is now towards open, interoperable OSS/BSS solutions. This is due to carriers and service providers coming under greater pressure to increase revenues and decrease operating costs in order to survive leading to a greater demand for OSS integration.

Drivers

• Growth: A single OSS/BSS can only manage a pre-decided number of end-users. Companies are forced to install a new system or upgrade the existing one as the number of subscribers increases.
• User requirement: As the ARPU (Average revenue per user) falls, telecom companies are hard pressed for cost-effective solutions turning them towards OSS/BSS vendors for streamlining the processes and making system usage cheaper.
• Services: A consistently growing number of value-added services like mobile-TV and video-SMS means that the systems need continuous modification or up gradation to handle such content.
• Competition: Seeing the growth prospects, more and more companies which specialize in related domains are jumping in to the fray, leading to more innovations.
• Increasing complexity: New technologies such as 3G and Wimax have resulted in increased complexity in operations and billing such as authentication and handoff, network management, dissimilar network roaming that align goals for network operation and user experience.

Inhibitors

• Legacy Systems: Until recently, companies had been deploying systems as and when they required and the vendors (and products0 varied across circles in many cases. Since there was no standard framework or language, system integration becomes a huge task.
• Customer base: Telecom industry provides great potential but only limited to few players as this is a consolidated industry with a high entry barrier. But this is changing in the Indian context

• Recession: In a time when telecom companies are struggling to make ends meet, IT budgets have been slashed which has impacted new system installations and up grades for OSS/BSS.

RANGE OF SERVICES

The domain is marked with rapid technology up gradation. The range of products varies from pure OSS/BSS systems to customized skill-set extension like content settlement. Although almost all the companies specialize in customized niches, the main focus still remains the traditional OSS/BSS services. We have further compiled a list of various functionalities prevalent in the market (please refer appendix).  They have been divided in to 9 major market segments, namely: Billing, Customer Care, Order Entry & Provisioning, Network Operations & Management, Service Assurance, Antifraud & Security, Marketing & Sales Support and Other functionalities. All the services listed as Other Functionalities are taken as VAS. For more details please see the appendix towards the end of this article. On further analysis, we found that "Performance Management" will register the maximum absolute growth in terms of revenues among the traditional OSS functions followed by Provisioning and Service Activation and Inventory Management.

Revenue Assurance, Billing & Customer Care and Mediation will record almost equal growth in terms of revenues in traditional BSS functions. Revenues of Billing & Customer Care will be almost flat while Revenue Assurance will emerge as the fastest growing BSS function.

COMPANY PROFILING

The field is diversified in terms of profitability as only the big players have been able to make sustainable profits in the last 5 years which leaves a lot of scope for M&A. The top 10 players in the field control about 45% of the market and the top 100 account for a 95% share. In spite of clear divisions, there is still no dominant leader as most companies cater to niche markets and offer specialized services. Following is a description of a few companies and their major products.

Companies and offerings (Illustrative and not exhaustive):

Intec	billing, customer management, mediation, interconnect billing
Wipro	Provisioning and activation, Inventory management, fault management, Performance management, Billing and mediation, order management
Oracle	Billing and revenue management, Service fulfillment suite, CRM, Network management, Order management, service delivery platform, business reporting
Elitecore Technologies ltd.	Billing and revenue management
Amdocs	Customer Management, Service and resource management, revenue management, information management
CSG	Inventory management, customer management, order management
Xalted	Order Management, Inventory Management, Trouble Ticketing, Billing Systems, Revenue Assurance, Fraud Management
ORG Informatics	Retail billing solutions, fraud management, revenue assurance, Interconnect billing solution, CRM, VAS solution
Convergys	Customer service management, field service management, mediation, billing systems, system integration, revenue assurance,
UshaComm	Billing and charging, subscriber management, partner management, mediation, Billing service, revenue assurance, customer analytics
Comverse	Billing solutions, CRM
Subex	Revenue Assurance, Fraud Management, Credit Risk Management, Interconnect Billing, Interparty Management, Route Optimization, Cost Management, Rocware, Service Provisioning & Activation, Order Management, Network Optimization, Data Integrity Management
Redknee	Billing, Content settlement, CRM, Interconnect billing
Comptel	Order Management, Inventory management, Provisioning and activation, interconnect billing

Future

Presently the operational framework and programming language differs with each vendor ranging from C language to XML. However, telecom companies are now initiating a move towards common platforms to enhance interoperatability and ease of integration. In this regard, there have been two major initiatives, complimenting each other: the New Generation OSS (NGOSS) by Telemanagement Forum (TMF) and the OSS through Java (OSS/J) initiative. These two initiatives promise to alleviate the cumbersome process of systems integration.

While the NGOSS is a development framework which is generic and technology neutral, the OSS/J, which is Java specific, provides practical implementation for new OSS applications and interfaces. Together, NGOSS and OSS/J lay the foundation for OSS/BSS products and components market by defining industry architecture and interfaces. The model is being widely deployed in the industry.

The standards based approach will enable the operator to respond to the challenges arising from the changing business and technology environments. When moving into the proposed direction, it will be easier to add or remove any OSS/BSS applications, which in turn creates greater flexibility and has an impact on many areas, such as:

• Changing to new technologies or vendors
• Developing and deploying new services
• Improving business process performance – lead-times, quality, costs etc.
• Being based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their life cycle.

Opportunities

• Market size and growth: The global market is worth USD 15363.6 million and is expected to grow at 6-7% for the next 5 years
• Geography: Emerging economies’ markets with a high wireless usage are expected to grow at 15-17%. Players from developing countries will globalize and MNCs will focus more on developing markets
• M&A: The market is prone to M&A with the smaller companies struggling to maintain profitability
• Parallel markets: Some companies have already extended their customer base to related domains like ATMs, Railway networks and Airports. Move to target banking and other domains will be evident
  
  

Challenges

• Infrastructure: difficult to find skilled manpower and infrastructure in developing economies
• Alternative Products: Customers now have the option to install systems like ERP, PLM for replaceable services
• NGOSS: Vendors are now required to quickly move towards NGOSS, a standardized system from legacy systems which are diversified
• Shorter Product Life-cycles: Telecom companies now compete to gain time-advantage on VAS launches and hence demand lower time frames for systems modification from OSS/BSS vendors

Appendix:

1. BILLING	2. CUSTOMER CARE	3. ORDER ENTRY AND PROVISIONING
Functionalities	Functionalities	1. Customer Risk Assessment
1. CDR Data Gathering	1. Trouble Reporting and Tracking	2. Customer Credit Qualification
2. MDR Data Gathering	2. Automated Loop Test	3. Loop Pre-Qualification and Qualification
3. IPDR Data Gathering	3. Trouble Management and Escalation	4. Customer Self-Provisioning, Web
4. Transaction DR Data Gathering	4. Customer Self-Care, Phone-Based	5. Service Order Entry and Processing
5. DR Editing (Parse / Validate)	5. Customer Self-Care, Web-Based	6. Service Personalization
6. DR Format Mediation	6. Converged Customer Care Center	7. Wholesale Order Management
7. Real-Time DR Processing	7. Billing Dispute Management	8. Order Decomposition
8. Product Catalog	8. Customer Online-Identity Management	9. Workflow Management
9. Rating / Discounting	9. Directory Assistance	10. Service Order Status Tracking
10. Multicurrency Support		11. Service Creation, Traditional
11. Multiple Tax Levels	5. SERVICE ASSURANCE	12. Service Creation, Converged
12. Bill Pricing	1. Service Activation and Reporting	13. Facilities Assignment
13. Bill Computation	2. SLA Management (By Operator)	14. Service or Number Assignment
14. Bill Pattern Design and Database	3. SLA Enforcement	15. Service Activation
15. Bill Presentment to Printer	4. QoS / SLA Data Access by Customer	16. Number Administration
16. Bill Presentment to Web	5. End-to-End Service Monitoring	17. Number Pooling Compliance
17. Consolidated and Converged Billing
18. Revenue Assurance		19. Graphic Outside Plant Records
19. Account Adjustment	6. MEDIATION	20. Network Equipment Inventory Management
20. Accounts Receivable	1. Collecting, Editing, Validating, Formatting, Time Stamping	21. Customer Equipment Inventory Management
21. Payment Processing and Lockbox	2. Filtering, Correlating, Aggregating	22. Scratchcard Inventory Management
22. Collections and Treatment	3. Storing (Archiving)	23. Network Connectivity Management (Packet)
23. Customer Self-Care, Phone-Based		4. Call Records
24. Customer Self-Care, Web-Based	5. Network Element Outputs	25. Network Configuration Management
25. Output Mediation	6. Bill Formats	26. Customer Premises Equipment Configuration Data Access
26. Prepaid Subscriber Management		27. Customer Premises Equipment Configuration Management
27. Prepaid Account Recharge	7. ANTIFRAUD AND SECURITY
	1. Intra-carrier Suspect Identity Database
4. NETWORK OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT	2. Intra-carrier Suspect Account Events Database	8. MARKETING AND SALES SUPPORT
1. Fault Detection and Notification	3. Inter-carrier Fraud and Bad Debt Database	1. Prospect Identification
2. Fault Isolation	4. Application Information Verification	2. Jeopardy Customer Identification
3. Network Trouble Ticketing and Tracking	5. Application Identity Fraud Scoring Analytics	3. Online Product Catalog
4. Fault Correction (Automatic)	6. Online-Identity Verification (For E-Com)	4. Online Pricing Support
5. Root Cause Analysis	7. Online-Fraud Scoring Analytics	5. Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Support
6. Network Surveillance	8. Non-Real-Time Usage Analysis	6. SLA Negotiation Support
7. Network Autodiscovery	9. Real-Time Usage Analysis	7. Sales Call Routing and Scheduling
8. Topology Mapping of Network Elements	10. Predictive Usage Analysis	8. Sales Account Management
9. Network Inventory Management	11. PIN and Password Processing	9. Channel Management Support
10. Network Asset Accounting Management	12. User Authentication
11. Network Event Handling	13. Service Authorization	9. OTHER FUNCTIONALITIES
12. Network Performance Data Collection	14. Encryption — Non-IP	A. Interface to Data Warehouse
13. Network Performance Analysis and Tuning	15. Encryption — IP	B. Data Mining
14. Network Configuration Management	16. CALEA Support	C. Web-Based Interface
15. Policy-Based Management		D. Graphical User Interface
16. QoS Monitoring		E. Computer-Telephony Integration (Screen Popup)
17. Network Security — Authentication and Authorization		F. Information Access Level Control
18. Network Security — Accounting		G. Multilingual (Languages)
19. Network Service Modeling		H. Availability as an Outsourced Service
20. Network Engineering and Design		I. Flexible Reporting Formats (Standard, Customizable, Textual, Graphic)

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