BSS has come a long way in the past two years. For some, the move away from closed, proprietary solutions with long implementation timelines and very expensive up front licence fees, is a bitter pill to swallow. But for the service providers it’s a welcome change and gives them an open and agile IT foundation on which to develop their business. The vendors who don’t change their stripes (as painful as the process is) from the good old telco BSS days will be in trouble.

Open, flexible APIs are at the heart of this evolution and very much changing the BSS game. The advent of digital transformation has seen several large and very expensive BSS projects from network equipment vendors stumble. As a result, in order to ‘get digital’ quickly, many service providers are launching digital first sub brands or indeed running a ‘plan B’ alongside their on-going large and expensive BSS transformation project.

Open APIs enable a faster and more cost effective alternative to the multi-year BSS transformation projects, by proving the pre-integration framework for best of breed BSS suppliers to work together to provide digital platforms. An example of this is the Openet Digital Business Platform. This is an end to end Digital BSS platform that comprises of pre-integrated best of breed systems from independent vendors. They are integrated using Open APIs and the platform comes with pre-configured use cases. This open ecosystem approach to Digital BSS ensures that Openet can dramatically cut BSS costs and implementation timescales.

This open approach enables the service providers to only take the elements that they need. Openet has a range of partners covering BSS through to core network. Partners include companies like Etiya (AI driven CRM), IoT Billing and MDS (billing), as well as Quortus, Casa Systems and Metaswitch (core network). We have implemented different variants of the Digital Business Platform – dependent on what the operators want. For example, we supplied a digital first sub brand of a major North American operator with a platform comprising solutions from Openet, Etiya and Qourtus. In APAC, we supplied an MVNe platform for digital service providers comprising solutions from Openet and IOT Billing.

This open, best of breed, platform approach provides choice and enables innovation. By drawing on open technologies, promoted through the use of open APIs, service providers will be able to leverage the collaboration of more nimble, more cost-effective best of breed ISV’s. This will reduce OSS/BSS cost and implementation timescales.

Ultimately, it is this openness that will promote innovation in the telecoms industry and that will see OSS/BSS become the enablers operators need to succeed in this ever-evolving digital world.

Openet’s innovative and open approach to Digital BSS has resulted in Openet being shortlisted for TMF’s Excellence Award for Open APIs and also Light Reading’s 2018 Leading Lights Awards for Digital Enablement. Click here for more details.