Amdocs: Telco opportunity in supporting a 'trillion' devices

More open mobile apps and devices may seem to point to a dire future in which telecom operators lose control over the customer experience - bleeding revenues in the process. But a future of a "trillion" devices - some consumer-oriented but exponentially more communicating over machine-to-machine links - actually offers service providers a much larger opportunity to serve as bullet-proof network provider and single-point-of-contact helping customers manage this new hyper-connected world. That's the story that Bill Guinn, CTO of Amdocs' product business group has been delivering as part of his travels visiting telecom service providers around the world. Amdocs sells back-office systems to help operators manage their networks, subscribers and partners and has been pitching this larger vision to shift telco thinking on how to succeed in this new environment. Late last month, Amdocs acquired service delivery platform (SDP) vendor JNetx, in large part to improve its service delivery capabilities.