The global market for business and operational support systems (BSS/OSS) is starting to climb out of recession as telecoms service providers begin to invest in back-office systems to support convergent next-generation services, according to a new report, ‘World Telecoms BSS and OSS Markets: trends and analysis’, by Analysys. In 2005 there were 569 system sales announced globally, compared to 514 in 2004; the market is forecast to grow again in 2006.

"Many years of tactical rather than strategic investment in BSS/OSS have resulted in complex back-end infrastructure that, in many cases, is expensive to run and maintain, inefficient and unable to support convergent, next-generation services," says the report's author, Teresa Cottam. "However, service providers now recognise that they have to invest strategically, as failure to address BSS/OSS challenges will cripple their ability to exploit badly needed new revenue streams."

Key findings from the new report include:

* Most BSS/OSS sectors announced more contracts in 2005 than in 2004. Growing sectors include wholesale billing, service activation, inventory management, service provisioning and service assurance.
* The most dynamic BSS/OSS sectors in 2005 were revenue assurance and fraud management, and CRM and order management, which both announced more than double the number of contracts that were announced in 2004.
* A small number of vendors dominate the global BSS/OSS market, with the top 12 vendors accounting for 41% of all system sales announced in 2005.

This new report looks at the market drivers and key trends in BSS/OSS purchasing in 2005 and examines the outlook for 2006-7. It considers how new technologies and standards, such as Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Internet Protocol television (IPTV), service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and service delivery platforms (SDPs), will affect the market. It examines which regions and sectors were most active in 2005, and why, and which vendors were successful in each sector. It identifies the 12 most successful vendors overall, the key vendors to watch in 2006-7 and some of the new up-and-coming players.
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