Cloud BSS could hold key to centralisation

Although there is widespread industry support for standardised and centralised BSS strategies for mobile operators,  fears around operational disruption and cultural and political issues are so pronounced they are perhaps keeping operators from moving to implement such strategies. But a cloud implementation of a single BSS solution could represent a possible solution.

In a survey of 2,000 industry professionals carried out at the end of 2012, Telecoms.com Intelligence found more than two thirds of respondents in favour of BSS standardisation for international operators. More than 35 per cent of respondents, meanwhile, voiced their support for BSS centralisation, despite it being widely regarded as more difficult to achieve.

Centralisation was seen as easy or achievable by 35.6 per cent of respondents, while standardisation was viewed the same way by 44.9 per cent of respondents. Less than three per cent of respondents judged either to be impossible.

Reduced Opex was perceived to be the greatest upside of a centralised strategy, with a rating average of 3.79 out of five. Expressed another way, 65.7 per cent of respondents felt it was highly beneficial. Close behind, with 63.1 per cent of respondents voting the same way was the ability that centralisation of the BSS gives operators to offer consistent services to international enterprise customers.

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Just how difficult operators would find it to centralise or standardise their BSS would depend on a number of factors. Respondents to the survey identified internal politics and conflcting business cultures as the stiffest challenge. In fact more than one fifth of respondents—21.6 per cent—rated this as having the highest level of severity. Operational risk, which placed second overall, had nowhere near as high a rating at the top end of the scale, with only 12.5 per cent of respondents giving it the highest level of severity.

The emergence of the cloud as an internal tool for operators may hold the key to enabling what is clearly a desirable BSS evolution in the face of what are equally serious challenges and objections. When asked if standardisation of the BSS function would be easier to achieve if the operator hosted a central, private cloud BSS installation which was accessed by the national opcos, 16.3 per cent of respondents answered that it would be “much easier” and a hurther 48.3 per cent “somewhat easier”.