Security issues put carriers off BSS in the cloud

The majority of operators have not yet made the call on whether to migrate their BSS environment to the cloud. More than a third have decided against the movement and less than 20 per cent have actually put initiatives in place to accomplish such a shift. The findings of the Telecoms.com Industry Survey 2014 sought to establish which elements of the BSS environment are being addressed with the most urgency along with how and where operators are looking to the cloud to enhance their performance.

Questions in this section were put to operators exclusively and in addressing their BSS environments, operators clearly have a good deal more thinking to do. Almost half of respondents said they were not sure whether their organisation was planning a move to a cloud-based BSS solution inside the next 12 months, suggesting that for many operators decisions on this question have not been taken. More than one third reported that there are no such plans in place, while 17.9 per cent of respondents said that their businesses are planning a cloud BSS deployment this year.

It is important to understand why more than 80 per cent of represented operators are currently not committing to a cloud-based BSS solution and it is perhaps not surprising that security is chief among their concerns.

Respondents were asked to rank a range of concerns for severity on a scale of one to seven, where seven represented a “very serious concern”. Security issues was scored as six or seven by 39.7 per cent or respondents.

“Security was and still is a concern for operators when choosing a cloud based solution but it is possible to achieve the full range of cloud benefits, like cost savings and agility, without compromising on security,” says Yuval Mayron, general manager, Amdocs Product Group.

“The key for operators or MVNOS is choosing a well-established and recognised industry partner that they can rely on and grow with. This peace of mind can be achieved when operators and MVNOs select a complete solution, both on the platform and on the service side, to guarantee service availability, customer satisfaction and that all solution components are certified and meet the highest standards in the industry.”

The 2014 Telecoms.com Intelligence Global Industry Survey drew responses from more than 2,000 industry professionals, including more than 700 operator representatives. The full report from the survey will be made available in mid-February. You can register to receive the report here.