The old adage of delivering more for less has never been more apparent - with all telcos facing the challenge of cost-effectively adding new services while delivering more value to enterprises and consumers.
Enterprise customers continue to demand more from service providers. More security, more services, more support, more network planning and more relationship management are just a few items from the ever-growing list of wants.
To deliver these capabilities quickly to the market carriers must look externally for skills, tools and expertise. Partnering, and in some cases maybe even outsourcing, is being undertaken to gain capabilities while allowing the operator to maintain lower costs and free up resources for service delivery.
A recent CIO roundtable discussion with Hong Kong operators highlighted the growing trend for telcos to engage services from third parties to create a more flexible infrastructure to enable new service delivery to customers.
The irony is that while telcos seek to deliver more managed services to the corporate market, they themselves must turn to managed services and outsourcing to tool up for this challenge.
Although telcos have always outsourced, increasingly operators are being challenged to identify more non-core areas that can be managed by third parties. While not strictly outsourcing, telcos are now partnering with security providers, application providers, service consultants and content providers to deliver the services it is now promising its customers.