Log in
Your Local Ericsson site
  1. 2007 /
  2. July-September 07 /

Taking the soft(ware) road

The computer industry has been doing it for decades and now telecom is turning to it. With parts of hardware becoming standardized, the emphasis is now turning to developing and  licensing software.

August 6, 2007

Bert Nordberg, Ericsson's head of Sales and Marketing, says that the computer industry made a lot of mistakes when it moved toward selling more software.

Nordberg knows what he is talking about. He comes from the computer industry and experienced the changes that took place in the mid-1990s first hand. "Now that future networks within telecom will be built entirely on IP and we are moving from voice to applications, it feels as though I have returned to the computer world," he says.

The telecom industry and parts of today's telecom networks have already come a long way with this change. The value of products and services is increasingly in the software, which many times is based on standard hardware.

The change is an industry issue: both vendors and operators are moving in the same direction. Some have made good progress - others are moving more slowly. Yet subscribing to software upgrades is really nothing new for operators.

"To a large extent, what we are doing is breaking out additional features from the basic functionality and allowing customers to decide which add-on services they want in their networks and when they want them," Nordberg says. "This is becoming necessary as systems are becoming more complex and as we are moving into multimedia, which has short and quick life cycles."

The traditional telecom market, with mainly proprietary products, is being influenced by the multimedia market, which is largely built on open platforms and products. Convergence is causing traditional telecom players to reassess their business models and adapt new ones, as the software industry has been doing.

Software licensing keys make it possible to easily deliver increased functionality and capacity. They also eliminate the need for network audits since all relevant information is stored in the license register.