Technology Research Institute Reveals SuccessStrategies For Telecom OSS & Billing...

Business/Technology Editors

SUDBURY, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 24, 2000

Software and systems integration is a telco's greatest hurdle in the race to satisfy today's accelerating demand for sophisticated communications products and services. Now, a new 451 page research report

These are among the successful strategies drawn from interviews with 91 companies in the industry:

-- The way to the customer's heart is through the telecom bill. With their MCI One Plan, this carrier set the precedent for bundling multiple services onto one bill. In the telecom back office, flexible billing systems are necessary to enable this kind of creative bundling and the resulting customer retention.

-- Vendors catering to telecom service providers can no longer sell software alone. Telco's want to see templates, pre-built calling plans, telecom process experts and whatever else it takes to provide an end-to-end solution. This is the strategic cornerstone of consulting companies like TMNG and LTC International.

-- Reducing customer service delays is a top concern of carrier executives. They want to speed things up by moving away from manual provisioning processes toward full automation of the access/transport network. As a result, Provisioning/OSS is one of the hottest areas in telecom today.

-- Now service providers can reduce costs by deploying the emerging class of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) software as an alternative to full scale system integration. EAI software acts as interpreter between software applications, speeding integration time and reducing maintenance.

-- Fortune 500 companies like GM, Ford and Boeing are already vested in e-commerce. These corporate clients want the ability to manage their systems internally via web access. Carriers need to respond by migrating support functions onto the web.

The report, "Telecom Enterprise & OSS Integration", features 52 tables of Buyer Preferences, Market Forecasts, High to Low Buyer Priorities and Obstacles, and Market Segmentation Tables. Four Color Flow Diagrams detailing billing systems, interconnect gateways, order management & service activation, and the TMN pyramid of telecom functions. Market data includes 85 vendor profiles, 1999 market share for billing software, telecom systems integration, provisioning software, and EAI vendors.

For a 28-page synopsis and brochure, contact TRI's Donna Kenslea 978-443-4671 or visit: www.technology-research.com/oss.htm.