SBC GIVES AMDOCS CONTRACT FOR PROJECT LIGHTSPEED OSS

Amdocs last week followed Alcatel and Microsoft as the latest big-name vendor to join SBC Communications' Project Lightspeed, signing on to build the operations support system infrastructure for the carrier's broadband upgrade initiative.

In choosing to use Amdocs, one of its long-standing vendors on other projects, SBC made a clear commitment to a comprehensive OSS product suite, rather than individual components. That might have surprised people who know SBC has shown a preference for best-of-breed in the past, according to John Stankey, executive vice president and chief technology officer for SBC. During an analyst day event held by Amdocs last week, Stankey said, “We usually do best-of-breed, but the level of integration and the shorter time to market afforded us through a suite is more important now.”

Yet, Stankey said the carrier also didn't rush to hand the project to Amdocs simply because of the existing relationship between the two companies. “Amdocs gets no favors inside SBC. In fact, it's a challenge for them. Because of the long-standing relationship, we may actually expect more of them,” Stankey said. “There wasn't a single component of this that wasn't put out for competitive bid or competitive analysis. There were lots of RFIs and RFPs.”

He said SBC originally looked to Amdocs to supply order management functionality to support IPTV and other services that will result from Project Lightspeed, but through ongoing evaluation, “they started picking up other parts of the project. They did it Pac Man-style,” he said.

As part of the new contract, the financial terms of which were not disclosed, Amdocs will provide billing and mediation, customer relationship management, self-service support, order management and other functions, along with its IP Convergence suite, to support IPTV, voice and other services.

“We'll expect Amdcos to work with our other vendors, including Microsoft and Alcatel, to help us reduce our implementation time and service management costs,” Stankey said. “We want to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy these new services.”

Eran Wagner, vice president of IPTV service at Amdocs, said the vendor had to prove to SBC that it could support the complex business process flows associated with IPTV, including content billing and settlement and revenue sharing.

“Customers contacting a Lightspeed service center are going to want to order and schedule a service and do everything else in one visit,” Wagner said. “That's the value of integrated customer management.”

Previously, Amdocs has worked with SBC to provide billing and other functions to support the carrier's long-distance, wholesale, Internet and other services. “The TV is going to be the new interface between SBC and its customers,” Wagner said. “They realize that voice revenues are eroding, and they need to support many new services, in addition to voice.”

SBC is planning to launch some Lightspeed-based services later this year under the new U-verse brand. It's anticipated that the network upgrade will reach about 18 million residences by 2007.