Among telecom carriers, and in particular those in the so-called Tier 1 category, Unix is the server operating system of choice, with Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co the leading providers.

In our user base, Sun and HP have approximately the same share, with [IBM’s] AIX trailing behind, said an exec at a leading billing vendor who asked not to be named. Microsoft platforms, meanwhile, are notably absent.

It is interesting that Englewood, Colorado-based CSG should trumpet the fact that its core billing package, CSG Kenan/BP, as well as its IP mediation software, CSG Data Mediation, now run on IBM’s pSeries servers, on Big Blue’s flavor of Unix, AIX. A spokesperson for CSG said the company’s software has traditionally run on Solaris or HP-UX boxes, but that it has ported to AIX too as a result of a global marketing agreement with IBM.

On one level, availability on AIX is just a tick in the box for CSG, giving telcos more hardware and operating system choices for running CSG solutions in both outsourced and licensed formats as the ISV itself puts it in announcing the port. However, the move is also recognition of IBM’s increased ambitions for the telecommunications market. Colin Grocock, business development director for IBM’s eServer business in the UK, said telecoms was one of the industries targeted when IBM began developing closer links with ISVs three years ago.

While he acknowledged that Solaris had reigned supreme for some time among service providers, Grocock argued that there was now a perceptible shift towards a more ROI-oriented approach, a trend that he said tends to favor IBM, with its end-to-end proposition to customers. And while IBM touts the pSeries as the natural alternative to Unix servers from Sun or HP, it is also targeting the telecom sector with the Intel-based BladeCenter T box, on which it can run Linux to offer low-cost, rapidly deployed processing capacity.

Meanwhile, the alliance with CSG, which was formalized in a global marketing agreement in August 2002, is not exclusive. IBM already had strong ties with UK billing developer Geneva Technologies when it was acquired by another of the big three vendors, Convergys, said Grocock. He said it is now actively pursuing an alliance with the remaining player (and world’s largest billing vendor), Amdocs.

While Big Blue is getting closer to the Big Three, Microsoft has unveiled an alliance with their leading challenger, Portal, which will result in a product offering towards the end of this year. Microsoft and Portal will jointly market an offering called BillingAgility, a bundling of Portal’s Infranet software on WinServer 2003, using SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition as its database.

Vijay Iyer, vice-president of global alliances at Cupertino, California-based Portal, said BillingAgility will not only use Microsoft’s OS and database as its infrastructure, but will also integrate with its BizTalk middleware and the .NET web services model. All our applications will be visible as a web service, which will be important in terms of flexibility and cost savings, Iyer said. Meanwhile, the standards-based nature of the model should mean easier integration of other applications, such as Siebel and SAP, with the billing package.

Of course, BillingAgility will still face the challenge of convincing telcos of the robustness of Microsoft platforms as compared to Unix. WinServer 2003 is clearly the most robust so far, however, and this combined with the evident cost savings in comparison with traditional big iron may start to tip the balance.

Portal and Microsoft in any case appear to be taking a mission-creep approach, going first for what Iyer referred to as the more value-added services within a carrier, particularly if it’s in Tier 1, hoping that, once installed and working, BillingAgility will convince them to deploy it on more services.

Source: Computerwire