An interesting potpourri of tech events might be telling us something about the business future of tech in general and the networking space in particular.
Didn’t Ericsson just decide to buy Telcordia? Now we have Amdocs, the other giant in the OSS/BSS space buying policy-management player Bridgewater. On the surface, just like with Telcordia, this seems one of those enormous yawns. After all, Bridgewater makes policy stuff for mobile/IMS applications, and we all know what Amdocs does. But what makes this not only interesting but potentially earth-shaking is that OSS/BSS activities are SERVICE MANAGEMENT, and Bridgewater makes components for SERVICE LOGIC.
I’ve been saying for some time that in the new network, we need to combine these functions in some way, and I noted with the Ericsson/Telcordia deal that Ericsson just might have its eye on the converged service management space. Operators are telling me that they need a single conception of the service layer that integrates logic and operations functions seamlessly. They wanted the network vendors to provide it through a service-layer architecture. The OSS/BSS guys may now have their eye on the prize. Amdocs may also have its eye on becoming the next guy to be picked up by a big network vendor, too.
