In a company address this fall, Lucent Technologies Inc. president and CEO Pat Russo announced software and services would be central to the company's strategy going forward. A key part of that is OSS.
Plans to facilitate this vision have long been in the works, as Lucent in the summer of 2001 announced plans to consolidate various software efforts across the company into a single business. The software business also has created its own sales force, which Deepak Kanwar, network operations software executive director, says operates almost as a separate business "with a Chinese Wall" dividing it from the rest of the Lucent organization.
The focus of that group is on operations support systems addressing service activation, multidomain fault management, network management and more. Customer service management also is a key new focus for the company. Lucent, which long ago sold off its Kenan billing business, does not see business support systems like billing tying into this OSS strategy, says Kanwar.
Lucent today sells about 30 OSS products under its iProvision and iAssure lines, which each Inc.lude eight to 10 products, and its iEngineer element management system line. All products in the first two lines are multivendor. The company may expand its product line through acquisition.
"Big companies like Cisco, Lucent and Nortel recognize that managing their equipment is important for them to be successful," says Larry Goldman, RHK Inc.'s OSS Global program director.
In addition to its play in the service provider space, Lucent's OSS products have been very successful in the enterprise space, says the company. That opens the door for service providers with knowledge of those tools to come in and offer managed services to those enterprises. "Verizon long ago said their out-of-region strategy was to follow the enterprise," says Ted Finlan, director of global marketing network operations software.
