Transverse tries open-source route for OSS

Open-source development and economics are now well-understood in the infrastructure portion of the market, but mission-critical platforms like ERP and CRM – and telco OSS/BSS – represent much more of a challenge. Such systems represent strategic purchases for IT shops, which typically want the support and development backing of a large established vendor standing behind the platform.

Transverse, though, believes it can combine the flexibility and low cost of open-source software development with an experienced management and support infrastructure to end-run any such concerns. The company makes money by focusing on the design, deployment and support services required to install its platform, Couch said.

Transverse’s bleep platform utilizes an SOA core and an integrated set of business management services that carriers can deploy to manage their networks as well as new and existing services. Services on bleep are grouped in business domain structures that can be combined to provide more than 2100 different individual services. Among the applications that can be created in this plug-and-play fashion are multi-service billing and customer care; order and service management; real-time service delivery; on-device portal; and enterprise resource planning solutions. All of those applications are supported by Transverse-provided consulting, documentation, training and post-deployment support and maintenance services.

Overall, the platform helps carriers move to a “new way of thinking about customers,” said Couch, “shifting from a network-centric to customer-centric view of how they run their business.”

Transverse is particularly focused on “middleman-focused” business models where service providers generate revenue from partners, not just end subscribers. “Carriers have reached an upper limit of the wallet share they can extract from their subscribers,” said Couch. “They need new paradigms and new systems where they can bring third parties in and charge them a premium to access their assets.”