LTC Mini-Survey on SOA and IMS MARCH 2007

IQPC NGOSS Integration Summit March 2007

Whenever a group of informed telecom people gets together these days, eventually one of two topics will creep into the conversation: IMS and SOA. At the IQPC NGOSS Integration Summit earlier this year LTC asked attendees to express their opinions ON SOA and on IMS.

This Inside Out article provides an overview of the results of this mini-survey.

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LTC Mini-Survey on SOA and IMS MARCH 2007
IQPC NGOSS Integration Summit March 2007

Introduction
Whenever a group of informed telecom people gets together these days, eventually one of two topics will creep into the conversation: IMS and SOA. Opinions on these two topics seem to vary widely, and are often forcibly expressed. So the team at LTC International Inc. thought that it would be interesting to gather some opinions on these hot topics in an informal survey of telecom industry experts. At the IQPC NGOSS Integration Summit earlier this year LTC asked attendees to express their opinions ON SOA and on IMS.

This Inside Out article provides an overview of the results of this mini-survey.

In case anyone reading this is not a “telecom industry expert”, some definitions of SOA and IMS are given at the end of the PDF version of this document which is available for download.

Results - SOA

The survey found an overwhelmingly positive attitude to SOA, with almost all respondents identifying at least one benefit likely to flow from SOA. When asked to choose the area of most likely benefit, 73% of respondents thought that SOA will drive down the total cost of OSS/BSS ownership; 47% believed that SOA will enable significant improvements in OSS/BSS performance; and 35% said that SOA will create significant new revenue opportunities for service providers. (Respondents were allowed to choose more than one item.)

These responses suggest that SOA will benefit service providers, and indeed 70% of respondents said that service providers will derive real business benefit from SOA. At the same time quite a few thought that business benefits would also reach OSS/BSS vendors (45%) and systems integrators (43%). [Minor correctiond to percentages in this paragraph have been mad since original publication.]

Although the attitude to SOA was found to be generally positive in all categories, there was an interesting difference in the responses from service providers and the responses from others. In summary, non-service providers (OSS/vendors. SIs and others) were more likely to be optimistic about the benefits to service providers than service providers themselves were. For example, 41% of non-SPs thought that SOA would create new revenue opportunities for service providers, but only 26% of SPs thought that would be the case. And while 76% of non-SPs believe that service providers will derive real business benefit from SOA, SPs themselves were less confident with only 61% of SPs suggesting that SPs would derive business benefit. Also 22% of service providers said that it was “too early to tell” where the real business benefits would emerge.

Bottom line: Based on this mini-survey, people generally feel there is something in SOA for them. The big expectation is that service providers will benefit, mainly by reducing the total cost of ownership of their OSS/BSS environment.

Results Summary - IMS

The respondents’ opinion of IMS was also generally positive, though the picture is less clear-cut than for SOA. Attitudes turned out to be a little more complex, with distinct variations between the SP group and the non-SP group.

Almost all respondents (97%) were able to identify at least one benefit from IMS. 63% suggest that IMS will create significant new revenue opportunities for service providers. However service providers were more bullish than others in this respect, with 83% of SPs expressing this view, but only 51% of non-SPs.
In other areas of benefit, there was more agreement between the two groups, and also more skepticism. Only 35% of respondents believed that IMS will reduce service provider costs; 18% that IMS will help service providers protect business models and markets; and a surprisingly low 10% said that IMS will help service providers reduce customer churn.

Despite the strong vote in favor of the view that IMS will increase revenues for SPs, there was a less confident attitude to the the ability of IMS to generate “real business benefit”. Only 53% said that large incumbent service providers would benefit, and an even smaller number (27%) suggested that smaller SPs and new entrants would benefit. Service providers were once again more optimistic than others. 70% of SPs thought that large SPs would benefit (against 43% non-SPs). 35% of SPs thought that small service providers would benefit (against 22% non-SPs).

No one suggested that OSS/BSS vendors or systems integrators might benefit from IMS. Some respondents, but only 27%, thought that network equipment vendors would benefit. This low vote is somewhat surprising, because if network equipment vendors don’t make money out of IMS, why should they build the components?

Bottom line: based on this mini-survey, the big expectation, especially from service providers themselves, is that IMS will help the large incumbent service providers create new revenue opportunities. There is no dominant feeling that SPs will derive significant business benefit in other ways, and indeed no strong feeling that others, specifically the vendor community, will benefit.

Survey details

This mini-survey was based on a sample of 60 delegates at the IQPC NGOSS Integration Summit held in Boston in March 2007. Of the 60 sampled, 23 (38%) were delegates from service providers, the remainder represented mainly BSS/OSS vendors (25) and systems integrators (10). There was just one representative from an equipment vendor and one “other”. The total sample size was greater than 20% of the delegates who attended the event. The results represent a snapshot of opinions expressed by the sample delegates at that time, and do not necessarily provide an indication of opinions in the wider telecom community today. To increase the sample size and breadth of representation, LTC plans to repeat the survey at other venues, including TMW 2007 in Nice, France. Look out for LTC people wandering around asking for your opinion. Once again, people who participate will be entered into a drawing to win a prize!

The survey will also be available on the web site - watch out for an announcement in a future Inside Out article.

A PDF version of this document is available for download. It contains additional details of the results, and some definitions of SOA and IMS.

Thanks very much to all who participated in the IQPS 2007 survey and congratulations to the three lucky winners of iPods.

© 2007 LTC International Inc.