Open BSS

Welcome to Open Business Support Systems - the site that helps you through the open source jungle if you are looking for end to end open source BSS solutions.
Open Source is rapidly changing the software marketplace. It is an enabling concept, which offers adopters many benefits: resistence to vendor lock in, safety against vendor failure, ability to customize, an evolutionary development path, rapid identification and resolution of defects and many others.
 
Open Source also has it's shadow side -  Open Source is a fast moving area of technology, with many new projects appearing, many dying and some fantastic innovation going on. However, for the non-expert open source software user, the choice and options can be impossible to evaluate.
 
Traditionally, BSS has been one of the big ticket items in the IT infrastructure, with "vendor lock in" and conservative values being the key aspects.
 
Somewhere between these two areas (Open Source software and Business Support Systems) there is great potential for cost savings and to enable the rapid innovation that BSS always strives for. The problem is that the Open Source world is confusing, with too many projects and too little clarity.
 
Open BSS therefore is here to do the hardest part of the footwork for you. We keep on top of what projects are feasible options for inclusion in your Open Source end to end BSS solution.
 
The Open BSS team has a very clear aim:
 
Evaluate, promote, support and manage the leading end to end open source reference telecommunications platform
 
We firmly believe that the software market is in a period of re-alignment. Gone are the "applications" of the past. The present and the future is the integration of software components, each with a role to play in the overall software landscape. The "art" for the coming years will be to select, manage, govern and support the right elements from a palette of potential software candidates.
 
Open source is to be considered an enabler in the new software The main enabler of an Open Source BSS suite will be SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), which allows the introduction of one or more components to represent each module in the production chain, following the guidelines of the widely accepted eTOM structure.
 
The company behind Open BSS is a leading consultancy within the the telecommunications sector. Our credentials show a history of over 15 years of selection of software within the telecommunications marketplace, usually within Tier 1 operators. We also understand that technology without governance is almost worthless. Often, software is available. but does not harmonise well with other packages, does not fulfil the real needs of the business, and does not offer simple solutions. Our task is to provide pre-integrated software, maintaining a "best of breed" end to end solution.
 
Open BSS is an integration of existing open source projects, using integration components and with an aim of making the best end to end BSS solution available today from open source components:

• SugarCRM - the leading open source CRM solution
• JBilling - An entry class J2EE open source billing system
• A custom invoice formatting solution OSI-Presentation
• OpenRate - A world class open source telco/utility mediation and rating engine
• JBPM - A powerful orchestrator
• OpenERP or OpenBravo - an open source ERP solution
• Catalogue - an infrastructure component to align the commercial, billing and fulfillment offerings
• Master Data Management - an infrastructure component to centrally manage customer data

 
Why do I need Open BSS?
We deal with the problems of integration every single day - This is our bread an butter. We have a huge experience of billing architecture in general, and specifically within the open source sector. If anything, Open Source is more confusing than proprietary solutions, and you need a good partner to take you through the options.
 
What about licensing?
Open BSS is, as the name suggests, open source. The licensing conditions are currently at maximum GPL. We however have a longer term aim to select components with a licensing strategy that is as liberal as possible. For example, the code elements which come from the OpenRate side, as well as the custom integration components, have a fully customisable licensing policy which allow you to work with the software as you wish.