A big write-down after a review of the value of assets and good will, with half of that coming from Ericsson’s Digital Services division, home of OSS/BSS. OSS Line looks at Ericsson’s recent OSS strategy.
The telco and financial media have been reporting on Ericsson’s write-down, which is largely due to ‘impairment’ – A review of the value of some asset that suggests they are not worth as much as previously reported.
Of that $1.8bn, just over half has been attributed to the Digital Services division, home of Ericsson’s OSS/BSS assets, Cloud, and NFV.
Any, or all, of those assets could have be assessed to have worse long-term prospects than expected. But OSS/BSS constitutes some of the older assets in that division. While Ericsson has talked about OSS/BSS strategic value in the past, it’s also true they’ve acknowledged their lackluster financial contribution too.
Ericsson has been focused on rekindling its network business, fighting back the advances of Huawei into Europe with a recent win with Deutsche Telekom which brought with it a significant OSS project.
And that may the template for Ericsson’s future play in OSS: Less focus on stand-alone OSS/BSS products, and more add-ons of management software to increase the revenue of their network roll-out projects.