France Telecom taps vendor for service quality management.

Long-promised advanced services have finally caught up with service management technology. One result is France Telecom giving Telcordia a preferred vendor agreement for all of its 157 properties across Europe and elsewhere, including the deployment by Orange UK of Telcordia's Service Director product that led to the corporate-wide agreement.

Matt Herdlein, executive director of service management for Telcordia, said Orange UK was evaluating Telcordia's service quality management solutions when parent company France Telecom stepped in and said it wanted to make group decisions on new technology directions. The result was a framework agreement that included the Orange UK deployment as well as potential deployments for service quality analysis in Belgium and Poland by the end of the year or early next year.

FT also has the option of deploying Telcordia's service management suite as an application service provider (ASP) model for its smaller properties. This would be a first for Telcordia. “The ASP model allows France Telecom to get the value of service quality management without deploying the full system for smaller companies,” Herdlein said.

He added that the service management market itself has caught a second wind. “Three or four years ago, it was a solution looking for a problem, but the lake flipped as they say,” he said. “The cold water is on top, and the market is exploding for us. Within six months, we'll potentially be quoting another 21 clients.”

Martin Creaner, president of the TeleManagement Forum, agrees. “Service management is reaching a second bloom of youth,” he said. “[The way] services have been managed in the last five years has been less than promised. Now, with this concept of end-to-end services, it is getting a whole new breath of life.”

Herdlein said it isn't just the market demand that has changed; service management solutions have evolved as well. “It used to be about performance and fault management,” he said. “But now it includes service quality management, service level agreement management, device performance and customer experience.”