How will IoT management platforms integrate with OSS/BSS?

There are clearly similarities and differences between OSS/BSS and IoT Management platforms. For example, you could consider each IoT device like any other network device in terms of the provision, manage and maintain process. The only problem is scale – you may have 100s/1000s of network devices, but could have 10,000s – 100,000s of IoT sensors.

Whereas network devices can be managed individually, the scale of IoT means they must be managed as a cohort based on policies. The same will be true for BSS and billing policies. Traditional telco service offerings are voice, data and similar bundles. In IoT, sensors come in so many different flavours that the service offerings can be far more unique.

OSS / NMS often license based on devices/objects under management. The traditional cost-regime applied by OSS / NMS suppliers doesn’t work if scaled for IoT sensors, so a license may have to apply for each IoT gateway device rather than each device itself.

If we predict out a few years, what do you think the preferred IoT platform might look like and interact with service provider networks (ie Communications Service Providers [CSPs] and Digital Service Providers [DSPs])?

Here are a few possibilities:

1. Service providers provide simple connectivity – the xSP (CSPs/DSPs) will provide backhaul of data from IoT device to centralised IoT management (eg via 5G, LoRaWAN, WiFi, WAN, Internet or similar). The xSP will only get data transfer revenues (at diminishing $/bit) and the organisation that is managing IoT devices will manage its own software
2. Service providers provide platforms – the xSP will provide a backhaul, but also the platform for third parties to build application and/or marketplace stacks on top of. The xSP will buy or create the IoT management tools. They also get a bigger portion of the value share (and revenues)
3. Edge device suppliers also provide a cloud management platform – Edge devices (eg drone fleets) also provide a multi-tenant management software, with our without service provider network backhaul
4. Edge device suppliers also provide a customer-specific management platform – Edge devices (eg drone fleets) also provide a single-tenant management software, with our without service provider network backhaul
5. Edge device suppliers as MVNO – Edge device suppliers (eg suppliers of autonomous vehicles) to act as MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), taking service from multiple different network operators to ensure they maximises the coverage of the network (C-RAN) that provides backhaul to their devices as well as management platforms.

I’m sure you can think of other variants too. That means that IoT management platforms will potentially come in a number of distinct flavours for OSS / BSS to integrate with.