Market research firm, IHS in its survey of 21 convergent, mobile and cable operators, found that nearly half of Operators identified supporting partnerships with over-the-top (OTT) providers and better monetization of subscriber data as very important drivers behind their service delivery platform (SDP) deployments. IHS said that the majority of respondents have deployed their SDPs on-premises with commercially-available hardware, though virtualized deployments on shared hardware and via an internal cloud are most likely to be under evaluation. The leading market research firm added that consequently, support for deployment on commercially-available hardware came in relatively high on the list of key criteria for SDP suppliers, although product reliability and support capabilities topped the list.
Oracle is the SDP supplier cited as a leader by a majority of survey participants, with Ericsson and Huawei following closely behind.
Shira Levine, Research Director, Service Enablement & Subscriber Intelligence, IHS
Operators continue to deploy long-standing use cases such as messaging and single sign-on via their SDPs, but they are increasingly looking to expand the capabilities the SDP to support new use cases including partnerships with OTT providers and better monetization of subscriber data. However, integration challenges continue to be an impediment to SDP investments, including the cost and complexity associated with integrating the SDP into existing network infrastructure and IT systems.
