The changing market

The market is growing. Services are maturing. Customers are demanding more from their service providers. Companies that once could survive on offering a small handful of services now find an exodus of customers towards providers offering more services. However, keeping ahead of the curve often involves integrating with ISVs whose future is uncertain. Providers need to deliver a convergence of technologies without having to hitch themselves to technologies that might not take them the distance.

Standing out from the crowd

Competition is fierce for IP services and providers can only compete on a few points: price, quality of services, quantity of services, and uniqueness of services. The last of these is notoriously the most difficult one to incorporate while cutting costs. Offering a service that gets attention involves either:

• developing a new service
• customizing an existing service
• integrating existing services in a new way

Most providers have done at least one of these at some time to better service their customers. What results is a custom job that often doesn't play very well with others. Adding flexibility such as standards compliance costs time and money that providers simply don't have if they want to maintain their margins. A short term boost in the service causes a long-term inflexibilty in the service offering.

Bringing services together

How can a provider increase its margins while investing in new, high-demand services and still differentiate itself from the competition? The answer lies in trimming the costs of developing, providing and supporting services. New services need to be brought to market quickly and professionally. Delivering services needs to require as little intervention as possible and must encourage users to upgrade to higher-margin services. Finally, services must be easy to support and drive as little support as possible.

OHC gives providers the tools to maximize their profits by developing, providing and supporting services in a unified framework. Services from multiple sources can be integrated into the framework and behave as one seamless application. This includes services which were developed in-house or customized and set the provider apart from the competition as well as services provided by a 3rd party provider.

OHC is designed to adapt to developments in technology, allowing service providers to cut integration and support costs for new services. Using Sitepak's service driver API, new services can be easily written in the language preferred by the integrator and can be connected to the whole system in a seamless way. Service provisioning, as well as ongoing requests against the service are performed in a standardized way and can be performed through web service calls. By using the SOA model, OHC can orchestrate service interactions or can can be integrated into larger business processes. Single sign-on to a service portal provides support reps and end-users with a consistent way to configure, maintain, and support any integrated service with minimal effort.