Majority of operators agree that all telco business IT systems will be cloud-based in the future as firms strive to lower capital and reduce ongoing operational expenditure, a survey shows.
The survey, commissioned by AsiaInfo, finds that some 73% of operators believe cloud systems are the future. There were significant regional variations, with African and North American operators holding the strongest convictions while Europeans are a little more cautious.
Results show that many operators have already begun deploying aspects of their BSS systems in the cloud, with Africa and North America again leading the way.
Europe and Asia also registered high “cloud-readiness” scores, but operators in the Middle East have most to do — only 30% of them will have active cloud projects by the end of the year.
In terms of running BSS transformation projects, operators clearly and overwhelmingly preferred a gradual approach to the big-bang switchover. A greenfield migration to a new service, retiring the legacy system in stages, also attracted double the support of the big bang approach.
Some 90% of operators believe new and more flexible BSS systems are critically important for delivering an optimal customer experience, with 86% saying they are essential for competitive differentiation.
These findings were pretty much universal across all the regions. Yet asked which innovative and flexible BSS approaches they would support by the end of this year – such as context aware marketing, sponsored data, time-limited data offers, or fixed price access to certain apps – operator responses were mixed.