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Analyst Cover Letter

Dear Colleague:

Three years ago, four high roller gamblers – IBM, HP, EMC, and CA – stepped from their black limousines outside a Las Vegas casino and were escorted to a velvet-draped poker room.

Their mission: to see which player would take away the richest prize in the service assurance software business.

Yes, we’ve glamorized the story a bit, but the money spent by the IT giants to acquire assurance software brands raised many eyebrows at the time:

And we’ve only mentioned the biggest of the acquisitions.

Now none of the assurance companies acquired was a pure telecom play. They all had significant enterprise assurance businesses. Still, the telecom market was half of Concord’s and half of Micromuse’s annual revenue.

Yet three years later, one wonders what all the excitement was about.

The Gap between Enterprise and Telecom Assurance

In telecom, fault and traditional performance management are no longer the hot categories they once were. In fact, it’s hard to find much new about these solutions on the telecom pages of the IT giants' websites. For the most part, those solutions are being promoted today as enterprise, not telecom solutions.

Now we think this turn of events says a lot about the character of today’s telecom assurance market:

The gulf between enterprise and telecom assurance solutions is widening. The QoS demands of 3G+ and large-scale IP networks and services are truly advanced and require an extraordinary level of software innovation and telecom-specific expertise.

Not only are the technical requirements more rigorous, the telecom industry also needs to respond quicker to the latest communications developments.

For instance, eighteen months ago, the 3G data services market was a sleeper. Then along came the Apple iPod and KABOOM -- things started to get interesting real fast.

Now suddenly, there was a big need to monitor all sorts of software applications on a smart phone. The radio network needed to be optimized as well so that high speed music downloads didn't cripple voice service.

The Promise of Network Management

Network management, then, is telecom's ticket to tomorrow. Telecoms desperately need the latest network assurance and service assurance innovations if they hope to continue offering highly complex services and a high quality customer experience at the same time.

Trouble is, the telecom assurance software market is evolving so quickly that the critical assurance sectors – and the applications where software value amasses – are shifting dramatically.

But what assurance areas are the most critical today? And which vendors provide the best solutions to assure telecom's future?

Well, getting answers to such questions is the purpose of a new TRI research report, The Telecom Network/Service Assurance & Remote Test Software Market.

Overall, the 218-page report finds the assurance software market reached $2.4 billion in 2008 and predicts it will grow to $2.9 billion in 2013.

The Report analyzes this dynamic market and shows how you and your company can find profitable solutions, invest safely, and/or avoid excursions into market sectors that are either too competitive or too specialized to attract enough paying customers.

Whether you're a carrier executive aiming to improve your network/service assurance infrastructure or a vendor delivering assurance and related solutions, the Report will help you discover:

Please scan the full table of contents below. You'll see why this report delivers the tactical and strategic information you need to fully understand where telecom assurance and test are headed.

To access this market intelligence today, contact me at TRI's offices at +1-570-620-2320.

Sincerely,

Dan Baker
Research Director, TRI