1. SDP -A Emerging market competition note Alok Hom Independent Paper 20 May 2008

2. Agenda Introductory note to SDP and key findings Competitive SDP framework components Market strategies and Key differentiators Services led successful SDP architecture frameworks New revenue Opportunities

3. Introductory note to SDP and key findings SDP as a architectural framework has gone a long way from pure service enablement to governance, better management, qualities and Web 2.0. Traditional Telco’s of emerging marketing has been faced with international aspirations with their concerns against high subscriber growth and low ARPU counts. Along with service offerings typically not going beyond the traditional voice, message and ring tones, the challenge to introduce the ‘right fit’ Service Delivery Platform that addresses the current market places needs arrives more like of a confusion to their minds. The suppliers, System Integrators and other 3 rd party content providers and startups find it a definite challenge to put forward the winning ‘best fit’ framework for the end customers. So what do the Telco’s really need? And which is the best solution fit to their needs? As per few recent findings, the Telco’s seem to look for policy control to economically manage new, disparate network services, wide range of policy-based variables, including presence management, time of day, device type, subscriber permission, subscriber preference, subscriber age, location, role, billing arrangement, and many others requirements to be orchestrated in a single box. These Telco’s also feel the need to store the expanding range of parameters that can be applied to individual subscribers and check against these to see which features apply as soon as a user requests a service.

4. The evolution for the SDP architectural framework

5. The established Telco’s of emerging markets expect successful models to support for Partner Management, Content Management, Content Marketing, Retail Capabilities, Service Discovery, Personalization, Device Identification, Network Abstraction and Policy Management. The suppliers had to thus primarily align their offerings to address the core Telco focus on service oriented provisioning and assurance needs. Among the successful suppliers who are involved in the offering of a emerging service delivery framework are Ericsson, HP, Huawei, IBM, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel and Sun Microsystems. Others being Accenture, Oracle, Microsoft, Telcordia, Telenity, Ubiquity Aepona, Appium, BayPackets, BEA Systems, Bridgewater Systems, First Hop, jNetX, Leapstone, LogicaCMG, Redknee and Tazz Networks.

6. Competitive SDP framework components The successful suppliers have defined more or less the common business components that sync to leading Telco’s interests. Competitive focus has been laid to rapidly support create-provision-control-reuse of needful end-user services, system scalability focus to diverse service and network demands, proprietary interfacing & stovepipe(s) flexibility, Stability to compound-orchestrate-package and price services, better user-profile monitoring & control, extending middleware challenge to new business apps, network agnostic & multi-terminal support, legacy flexible and convergence charging, etc.

8. The evolving operator market dependencies

9. Services led successful SDP architecture frameworks The proven SDP frameworks with services-led focus seem to have succeeded with changing market requirements. Leading brands like IBM, HP and Ericsson, Cisco have always addressed current technology visions to their past success styles. Below is an example of how a software services giant like IBM could blend applicability to Telco’s service silos. Their largest competition is from Cisco.[ Ericsson in emerging nations]

10. Microsoft’s CSF is a market oriented utilities-centric model to emphasize their past success on client-server technologies, catalog or file system culture, SDK based dependencies, security based applications, strong IP legacy and Microsoft OS leadership, certified products leadership, operator presence by PC/OS branding, etc. Their largest competitor is Oracle and Cisco. [ IBM is emerging countries]

11. The Oracle Service Delivery Platform (SDP) is a standards-based software environment for the design, development, deployment, and management of services that lie at the heart of IT and network convergence. Services include messaging, rich multimedia and next generation services such as Virtual PBX, IPTV and fixed-mobile convergence voice calling. The Oracle SDP gives operators and ecosystem partners the ability to accelerate service innovation, consolidate application silos for reduced costs, and leverage widely adopted IT practices. The DNA for Oracle’s offering is based on server, database and business apps/process centricity. Their compete with IBM.

12. Though there are fitment, execution challenges and service orchestration loads, emerging Telco’s may want to support suppliers with infrastructure, commitment to change management, collaboratively work towards platform services success and look for future professional services. Key positioning parameters for a typical SDP is a huge time, CAPEX & OPEX saver for Telco’s. True business drivers cut across the quicker serviceability, time, costs and 3 rd party apps support.

14. Thank you.