ORLANDO, FL—What parts of operations and business support systems (OSS/BSS) should carriers move to the cloud? Should they use a private, public or hybrid cloud? These are tough questions that telecom operators are looking to answer while planning their future use of the cloud. Although cloud computing is a relatively new trend, several vendors are betting carriers will make the move.
During a video interview at TM Forum Management World Americas (check out all pieces and see our videos), Ericsson’s Peter Briscoe said some planning, activation and media management activities can be moved to the cloud. He also discussed some of the regulatory hurdles that will impact efforts to move BSS to the cloud.
“When we talk about OSS/BSS in the cloud, we see that it has become a tool for managing data center resources,” Mats Alendal, head of cloud strategy execution at Ericsson, told RCR Wireless News in an earlier interview.
However, carriers are still in the early stages of adoption, noted Jaco Fourie, senior expert of business support systems at Ericsson. “We do not see too many cases of carriers running OSS/BSS as a service. But we see more and more solutions as a service and ones that are cloud-based,” he said.
Fourie added that many carriers are looking at the options. “There are many discussions about which parts of OSS and BSS should be on the cloud and offered as a service, and they are considering moving some applications of BSS and OSS. The more standardized things are, the more easily it is to run them as a service and in the cloud, but at the same time, not many things are standardized,” Fourie explained