Connecting the COTS

During the course of several interviews this week with vendors, carriers and operators (the latter two often the same), it has become apparent that the go-it-alone spirit is alive and well in the land of the back office. Despite all the talk about development outsourcing, all the R&D dollars spent by vendors to develop commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products and about the ease of integration that comes with the latest systems, the big dogs still subscribe to the adage that if they want something done right, they will have to do it themselves.

Yes, the inherent rugged individualism of the RBOC still exists, and not without good reason. Nobody knows better what an RBOC wants than an RBOC--not the ex-RBOC employee turned developer, not the former director of engineering turned entrepreneur, not even the product development guru at the RBOC-spin-off-turned-conglomerate. The RBOCS' needs are always changing, along with the people who make the decisions. And there is something to be said for controlling one's own destiny. Large telcos feel they are in control when they don't have to go to their vendors to ask for new features.

But sometimes that can-do attitude begins to sounds like the husband who says he is the master of his house and then sneaks out to the garage for a beer. To be fair, it sometimes sounds like the wife who claims she made her chicken cacciatore from scratch, but the Stouffer's bag in the trash (next to her husband's beer can) tells a different story.

These days, building one's own OSS platform is not what it used to be. It's no longer from scratch. It's more of a recipe experiment. They still buy commercial software, which means all that money spent on developing COTS solutions has not been wasted--but they piece it together in their own fashion and they add their own spices.

There's no shame in that. They may not have eliminated the software vendor, but they're doing a decent job of eliminating the system integrator.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com