TIBCO Software and Ericsson have formed a global partnership whereby TIBCO middleware will be included in the comprehensive portfolio of OSS/BSS software and consulting and systems integration services offered by Ericsson.
The TIBCO software will complement Ericsson’s own OSS/BSS portfolio of services in the area of charging, billing, order management, product catalog, customer relationship management and customer experience management.
This is another example of an Ericsson consulting and system integration engagement in which partnering with OSS/BSS software suppliers has been integral to achieving the results desired by the customer.
Raj Verma, EVP of Worldwide Sales, TIBCO, says: “TIBCO is a leader in infrastructure and business intelligence software and Ericsson is the leader in telecom services. Together we can present a portfolio of software and services that meets the changing needs of communications service providers.”
Paolo Colella, Vice President and Head of Consulting and Systems Integration at Ericsson, says: “We believe there is value in developing global partnerships to help deliver a more comprehensive set of commercial offerings to our customers. TIBCO is a trusted name in software solutions for this industry and we have the global scale, skills and consulting and systems integration expertise. Together we can transform operators’ OSS/BSS solutions and enable communication service providers to become more cost-efficient and agile.”
Why This Matters
Back in the ’00s, TIBCO focused a great deal on the telco, OSS and BSS markets, gaining significant traction as the middleware vendor to partner with in this industry. Subsequently, the likes of Sun/Oracle, IBM, and open source dominated the core Java and integration middleware markets. OSS/BSS software moved on to these competitive platforms, but TIBCO continued by addressing new niches and trends over the last 10 years, particularly business intelligence (BI).
The press release doesn’t specify which middleware will be included with Ericsson’s OSS/BSS solutions, but partnering with TIBCO, Ericsson will gain access to popular BI platforms like JasperReports and Spotfire. This bolsters Ericsson’s BI credibility and competes more directly with the likes of Oracle who have their own in-house BI software to compliment their OSS/BSS products.
However, this comes at a time when TIBCO’s future is uncertain, as they go through a $4.3bn acquisition by Vista Equity Partners.