The telecommunications industry is steadily moving towards the public cloud for mission-critical backend systems, particularly Operational Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS). These platforms underpin the business and revenue models of modern telcos. With pioneers such as Totogi and the rise of cloud-native architectures, the management plane of a telco network is increasingly interacting with cloud service provider offerings.
So, what is driving this rethink and how can telcos stay ahead?
Pressure to maximise revenue through increased agility
Legacy, monolithic OSS/BSS stacks are struggling to keep pace with growing service diversity across 3G, 4G, 5G, edge and IoT, rising customer expectations and competitive pressure from MVNOs and hyperscalers. Agility is now the key differentiator. Telcos need to launch, adapt and monetise services quickly, something traditional systems cannot deliver.
Disaggregation and open APIs
The old vertically integrated model is giving way to disaggregated architectures powered by open APIs. This shift matters because vendor lock-in is no longer sustainable in a cloud-first world. Composable OSS/BSS enables faster innovation and easier integration with third-party ecosystems, while standards such as TM Forum Open APIs are accelerating interoperability and reducing time to market.
Automation and intelligence
Managing sprawling, hybrid networks with manual processes is no longer viable. Operators are adopting advanced analytics and automation for predictive maintenance and anomaly detection, network automation to reduce operational overhead and smarter orchestration to optimise performance and resource allocation.
Cloud-native OSS/BSS
Cloud-native principles such as microservices, containerisation and orchestration are transforming telco operations. These approaches enable elastic scalability for unpredictable demand, lower total cost of ownership through pay-as-you-go models and faster feature deployment without disruptive upgrades.
Monetising the network with data
Telcos hold vast amounts of data but need modern analytics to unlock its value. This includes dynamic pricing and personalised offers, churn prediction and retention strategies, and real-time policy enforcement for fair usage and quality of service.
How CACI can support your move towards a connected industry
We help telcos modernise OSS/BSS without costly rip-and-replace programmes. Our expertise in cloud-native architectures, open API integration and network automation enables operators to modernise the network for agility, monetise assets through data-driven insights and reduce costs while improving resilience.
With a strong track record in telecoms and enterprise transformation, we can help you future-proof your network and unlock new revenue streams, get in touch today.