In fact, I’d argue that Telco 2.0 is essentially a manifestation of what the SDP
has been promising for years, and perhaps the push that service providers need
to ramp up their investments in SDPs. When the concept of the SDP was
introduced, one of the challenges suppliers faced was helping service providers
understand how to use them. IDC found that operators spent nearly a billion
dollars last year on off-the-shelf SDP hardware, software and services, from
suppliers such as HP, IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle and smaller niche
vendors such as Appium, Leapstone, Drutt and Unipier. Yet, they still are trying
to figure out how to make the most of their investments. They understood the
need to implement a new breed of services; the question was: What would these
services be and where would they come from?