Market Confusion Is Hampering Efforts to Promote Telecom Service Delivery Platforms, New Report Finds
November 02 2005 - 5:12PM
PR Newswire (US)
SDPs Are Gaining Some Momentum as a Way for Telecom Carriers to
Deliver New Services Quickly, But Mixed Messages Remain a
Challenge, Says Heavy Reading NEW YORK, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ --
Service delivery platforms (SDPs) continue to gain market traction
as a way for telecom network operators to deliver new services
quickly and inexpensively, but SDP suppliers need to do a much
better job of explaining what their products do and how they fit
into the overall carrier service delivery environment, according to
a major new report issued today by Heavy Reading
(http://www.heavyreading.com/ ), Light Reading Inc.'s market
research division. The Future of SDP delivers a complete technology
and market analysis of the SDP sector, including a comprehensive
taxonomy describing the components that make up an SDP and how
those elements are combined into the different types of products
that need to be integrated to populate an SDP framework. The
75-page report includes detailed product and strategic analyses for
24 different SDP vendors, including market leaders Alcatel (NYSE:
ALA; Paris: CGEP.PA), Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERICY), Hewlett-Packard
(NYSE:HPQ), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Siemens (NYSE:
SI; Frankfurt: SIE), and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW), as well as
key SDP technology startups. The Future of SDP highlights each
vendor's interpretation of what constitutes an SDP, where its
products sit in the Heavy Reading SDP taxonomy, its individual
market strategies, and its future development roadmap. The report
also identifies important industry trends that are likely to shape
the SDP landscape over the next few years. "SDP product vendors are
not doing a good job of explaining what they do and where they fit
to the market, a weakness that threatens to hamper SDP market
development," notes Caroline Chappell, analyst at large with Heavy
Reading and author of the report. "Operators may stay with their
stovepipe service delivery approach because it seems simpler than
trying to understand vendors' very different -- and often
contradictory -- architectural approaches. Or they will buy from
the names they've heard of, rather than exploring best-of-breed
products whose descriptions they don't understand." Other key
findings from The Future of SDP include the following: The lack of
a standard SDP reference model is having a negative impact on
market development. SDP, arguably an operator's greatest source of
competitive advantage, has yet to secure a standard definition.
Vendors say this is because this is such a competitive domain: No
operator wants its SDP to look like anyone else's. However, there
are downsides to a lack of standardization. Telecom equipment
vendors are struggling to establish credibility with network
operators in the SDP market. Most network equipment providers have
some way to go in demonstrating their business transformation and
management consultancy credentials, as well as in persuading
operators that they can work with multivendor next-generation
environments and that their SDPs will be truly independent of
vendor network equipment -- especially their own. The Future of
SDP, a 75-page report, costs $3,495 and is published in PDF format.
The price includes an enterprise license covering all of the
employees at the purchaser's company. For more information, or to
request a free executive summary, contact: Dave Williams Sales
Director, Heavy Reading 858-485-8870 Press/analyst contact: Dennis
Mendyk Managing Director, Heavy Reading 201-587-2154 About Heavy
Reading Heavy Reading is an independent market research
organization offering quantitative analysis of telecom technology
to service providers, vendors, and investors. Its mandate is to
provide the comprehensive competitive analysis needed today for the
deployment of profitable networks based on next- generation
hardware and software. DATASOURCE: Heavy Reading CONTACT: Dave
Williams, Sales Director, +1-858-485-8870, , or Press/analyst
contact: Dennis Mendyk, Managing Director, +1-201-587-2154, , both
of Heavy Reading Web site: http://www.heavyreading.com/
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