Billing and connectivity management: Build vs. Buy

I'm continually amazed at how often I see businesses unwittingly embark upon the daunting task of developing custom operational support software only to find the short-term prospect of saving a few bucks, really didn't turn out to be much of a savings at all.

"If you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur"  - Author unknown

Money isn't always the driving force behind custom development.  Sometimes it's a lack of market knowledge, shortage of resources to evaluate and procure an affordable commercial solution, or idle development resources that are eager to make the promise - it's easy, I can do it!

Where most internally developed solutions fail, is scalability, flexibility, and total cost of ownership.  These three items are routinely core to the mantra of commercially developed software because their price point is measured against an ROI - a requirement very few internally developed solutions are measured by. If they were, fewer companies would go down this path.

Cloud computing, Virtualization, and maturing development standards have played a big role in driving down the cost of notoriously expensive software systems that are now available to a broader scale of companies (small, medium, and large).  You no longer have to be a carrier class operation with 10K employees and 250K+ subscribers to realize you can have your own BSS/OSS.

This technology trend combined with another decade of operational maturity in the subscription services market, has created increased awareness around the need for billing and operational solutions along with an appetite for managed, Cloud, SAS, or outsourced solutions that specialize in billing for connected services.

Narrowing profit margins on cost plus subscription services have also given rise to the need for low cost, rapid deploy solutions focused on high growth subscriber services that create a highly agile, robust, low touch, and automated operations floor.  The product maturity required to attain this level of operational velocity is commonly only found in commercially developed software and is often very cost prohibitive to build internally.  Of course you can build a $200,000 Ford Truck, but why not buy one for $40,000.

BSS/OSS is not exciting, but when it fails to measure up, it can become the focal point of your business, or worse - your customers!  Exciting isn't the word you'll use then.

As a pure technologist, I look at this quandary in a black and white manner. Given enough time and money, anything can be built. The question is, will it be up for the job?  You have to consider is the solution I'm going to build for 50k, 75K, or 150K really comparable to the CAPEX investment made by a software vendor who put millions into their technology.  If not, what are those delta's and how are they important to you.  My advice is - the devil's in the details, and those 3 dirty words I shared in the beginning of this post, is where the rubber meets the road (scalability, flexibility, and cost)