The telecommunications industry has been one of the early adopters of SOA infrastructure - given their much higher level of need for integration in general. The complexities are unique with the vibrant M&A activity and a very large number of seriously inter-dependent solutions, aggravated by the hardware solutions that form the solution space. Over the years and as SOA models have evolved, they are now faced with multiple layers of integration, including:
- Services: The primary integration backbone for business functions across the enterprise solution/apps space. (Progress Sonic ESB fits in here very well.)
- Data Integration: By itself for MDM and such, and also for services integration when sending data as inputs for or as returned data from services. (SI is a unique, and probably the only, product that helps here.)
- Management/Governance: Extends problems such as Business Transaction Assurance. (Progress Actional addresses these challenges.)
- Events: Complex BTA and BAM analytics. (Using business events intercepted by Actional, Prorgess Apama can perform more complex correlation and analysis.)
Consistent with the above, Telecom Management Forum (or TM Forum) has defined a plethora of standards that enable telecom Software ISVs, Telecom operators, and SIs to simplify the integration solution space. The Global SIs based out of Asia and the Telecom operators in this region are seeing a rapid uptake of these standards (specifically the SID model).
Reflecting this, NASSCOM (the Indian National software industry association) is organizing a half-day NASSCOM Symposium that will discuss and deliberate on the three facets of emerging telecom industry trends - Standards, Key Business Problems (Transformation and Migration) and case studies. Progress Software (India) is helping organize this event and Michael Aubin, VP focused on Telecom at Progress Software, is delivering a key session on the telecom standards and trends. For more details, visit www.nasscom.in.