Ecosystem Transformation: Barriers

While the sun has set on communications service providers (CSPs) relying on one or two large vendors to support their services and applications, creating new ecosystems should be a top priority for CSPs, but there are barriers to overcome.

In order to take advantage of cloudification, virtualization and new software models for their hybrid and next-gen networks, CSPs need to have a laser focus on expanding their ecosystems. While the transformation process will take years to complete, the end result will include more scalable and agile networks that can deliver services dynamically to customers.

According to survey earlier this year by Heavy Reading , just 14% of the respondents had an ecosystem transformation strategy in place while 41% were just starting the process. Perhaps even more surprising, 16% responded that they had yet to take any action on the ecosystem transformation plans. (See Ecosystem Transformation: Readiness & Realities.)

While there are hurdles for service providers to clear on their ecosystem migrations, there are tools that will help them along the way. Heavy Reading's survey identified a number of key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure the effectiveness of ecosystem transformation. The top four KPIs were revenue growth (64%), network reliability (63%), network security (62%) and customer satisfaction (61%).

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation