NetCracker cracks big Euro OSS deal

DALLAS--NetCracker Technology announced what could be, when all is said and done, one of the largest OSS deals in the space with a European service provider widely rumored to be France Telecom.

Though NetCracker wouldn’t confirm France Telecom as the customer, several other sources did.

The service provider will implement the NetCracker service and resource management solution across more than 100 of its companies in more than 200 countries. Not many companies fit that description.

NetCracker will become the inventory and services management platform for all of the operator's holding companies globally. Already underway, the multimillion-dollar project commenced with NetCracker establishing a competency center at the holding company and beginning implementations at several subsidiaries.

“The customer’s competitive advantage will be to offer single services across all their companies,” said Andrew Feinberg, president and CEO of NetCracker. “And we will be the enterprise-wide service catalog for those services.”

NetCracker will ultimately provide the platform for all of the operator's convergent services, under a consolidation program that will unite its various companies under one platform and deliver convergent services to all customers by 2008.

Comparing the project in scale to BT’s 21st Century Network project, Feinberg said, “It’s bigger, because it is actually being done.”

While the main holding company did the due-diligence on behalf of its subsidiaries, NetCracker was validated by its various divisions and operating companies for support of their unique requirements.

The 12-year old company, based in Waltham, Mass., provides pre-integrated product modules that include Service Inventory, Resource Inventory, Service Provisioning and Activation, Discovery and Reconciliation, Design and Planning, Customer Impact Analysis, Outside Plant, Order Management, Asset Management and Telecom Cost Management.

NetCracker also won new business at CTC Communications, where Feinberg said his company will be replacing systems from both MetaSolv and Telcordia (Granite).

CTC Communications is consolidating OSSs from its acquisition of Connecticut Broadband and merger with Lightship Telecom.