2013/12/05 Operators using policy management to innovate services and pricing will shift vendor landscape

Boston, MASSACHUSETTS, December 3, 2013—Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2013 Policy Management Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey, which provides insights into the investment drivers, strategies, and integration efforts of operators deploying policy management solutions, as well as their thoughts on leading policy vendors.

"Bandwidth management continues to be a primary driver behind policy management spending, but this year’s survey confirms once again that policy is expanding beyond its traditional realm, assuming a key role in operators’ strategies around innovative services and pricing,” notes Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at Infonetics Research.

Levine adds: “This shift is driving new requirements for policy solution capabilities, with flexibility and scalability becoming increasingly important and causing some major shifts in the vendor landscape as operators swap out systems that aren’t meeting their needs.”

• When asked to identify the top business drivers behind their policy management investments, survey respondents put bandwidth management functions at the top of the list; service creation and revenue generation also received high ratings
• Usage-based services, advanced subscriber control, and bandwidth on demand led the list of use cases again, while voice over IP and M2M gained momentum compared to Infonetics’ 2012 policy survey
• Flexibility constraints are the #1 reason operators are replacing their existing policy management systems
• Marketing teams continue to hold key roles in the policy management decision-making process at many operators
• For the 2nd year in a row, respondents named Openet as a top policy management vendor, followed by Oracle/Tekelec, and Huawei