Market Polarization due to Difference in Interface Implementation Efforts

Abstract

Another factor potentially affecting the evolution of the OSS/BSS software market is the high complexity of software interfaces. The software provided to a customer – a CSP – needs to be integrated with a number of heterogeneous subsystems deployed by the customer. If the number of integration interfaces is high, a vast amount of special knowledge is needed in the vendor organization. High integration efforts also take up the time of the compentent employees of the vendor organization, thereby reducing the number of customers which it is capable of serving. As a result, only few large vendors can compete in such market, and, due to a lack of competition, the evolution towards a horizontalized market with standardized interfaces and established standard architectures may be delayed or may never take place.

In this section, we shall consider whether the high complexity of the OSS/BSS software interfaces may serve as a potential hindering factor for OSS/BSS market horizontalization. OSS/BSS software provided by a software vendor often needs to be integrated with a large number of heterogeneous subsystems. If the interface implementation efforts are high, we assume that the number of companies capable of providing necessary integration decreases, and hence the OSS/BSS market horizontalization may be delayed.