Microsoft had a lot of problems explaining to the telecommunications world just WHAT Connected Services Framework could do for them, and it has now closed down a four year effort to invade the server farms of multiple telcos, with web services which mostly connected its own applications together.
It does exactly what the name says, it was a framework to connect telco services together, either using the same underlying service delivery tools to deliver multiple services or to create new services from multiple other service elements.
But the language that Microsoft spoke was very much at the applications layer, while telco employees tended to think and speak at the network layer. So when key executives left the company, Microsoft decided to throw in the towel and has now killed the product off, one of the very few product cancellations we can remember in Microsoft’s recent history. Initially back in 2004 it has looked to be a potential frontrunner in what was an expanding market for service delivery platforms (SDPs).
As cellcos and telcos need to deliver an ever wider range of applications and services, over assorted IP-based networks to many fixed and mobile device types, they require complex server-based systems to handle this task. This has lured many providers of enterprise service delivery software into the telecoms space, including Oracle and BEA, and Microsoft hoped to make a splash with CSF.
CSF did attract 30 carriers, including its original supporters British Telecom and SingTel, plus AT&T and China Mobile, but there has been a series of exits of CSF executives recently, and Microsoft admitted this week that the product was now designated ‘end of life’ and it would focus on the services themselves, rather than the delivery mechanisms.
Richard Koh, director of business online services in Microsoft’s Communications Sector, said: “We’re shifting away from the infrastructure of service delivery and focusing more on services and partnerships. You can see evidence of that with services such as Exchange Online.” Microsoft hopes to offer apps like these, and hosted services such as unified messaging, to carriers ‘ an approach that would require less integration and customization resources than SDPs.
The software giant recently announced a deal with Australia’s Telstra to offer hosted applications via the carrier’s T Suite portal, and integrate Telstra VoIP with Microsoft Office.
The market has moved on since CSF was unveiled almost four years ago.
Critics said it fell between two stools ‘ a full blown, customized telco platform and a simple web-based offering. Many operators are now creating their own platforms, moving to new IMS-based strategies, or using open source software.