This analyst opinion discusses Omdia’s recently published Catalog Management – At the Heart of Telco IT and the Core of Customer Engagement and its exploration of customer trends, solution functionality, non-functional aspects, and adjacent systems to help CSPs grow beyond offering connectivity.
Omdia view
Summary
Catalog management is an area of growth within business support systems (BSS) driven by the increasing complexity of product offerings and the need for telcos to adapt to changing market demands rapidly. It plays a central role in the communication service provider’s (CSP’s) IT stack, interfacing with other customer engagement systems, monetization systems (e.g., billing), and operational support systems (OSS; e.g., service activation). As telecom operators strive to become digital service providers, they must grow their product offerings beyond connectivity.
In June and July 2024, Omdia interviewed nine key providers of catalog solutions to identify essential features for CSPs. All the product catalog vendors apply AI solutions (including generative AI) to simplify product development for non-technical business users, where no-code/low-code tools are key to the democratization of product creation and modernizing their BSS stack.
CSPs should ensure their catalog solutions are not a weak link in the chain and implement a unified, single-source-of-truth catalog for product, service, and resource (PSR) data on their journey to becoming digital service providers.
Catalog survey
In June and July 2024, Omdia performed primary and secondary research on the CSP product catalog ecosystem. Nine vendors ‒ Amdocs, Cerillion, Ericsson, Hansen Technologies, Huawei, Netcracker, Oracle, Salesforce, and ServiceNow ‒ participated in this research.
This research focused on the evolution of the product catalog, particularly to see what advances will help CSPs expand their markets. Our survey questions covered the following topics:
- Who are the catalog suppliers (with solution profiles)?
- What unique features are delivered?
- What is the demand outlook for the catalog systems?
- How do these systems handle complex pricing, promotions, and bundles?
- How do they integrate with BSS/OSSs?
- How is AI used with the catalog?
- What CSP success stories are due to new product catalogs?
Catalog ecosystem
CSPs have come a long way from spreadsheets to modern product catalogs, with network equipment providers supplying about 50% of the telecoms, and the remaining supported by BSS/OSS and IT vendors. Figure 1 shows the customer base distribution among vendors.
Figure 1: Number of telecom catalog customers by vendor
Source: Omdia
For more insights into product catalog and business support systems, read the full report and database: Catalog Management ‒ At the Heart of Telco IT and the Core of Customer Engagement (see Further reading).
Appendix
Further reading
Catalog Management – At the Heart of Telco IT and the Core of Customer Engagement (August 2024)
Telecoms IT Market Forecast Report: 2023–28 (August 2023)
Author
Joe Hoffman, Principal Analyst, Service Provider