SDPs are becoming increasingly important as fixed and mobile carriers look for a way to offer customers a range of multimedia services and applications, together with pricing tools and analysis consumer behavior.
Ericsson already claims to be a leader in the SDP market, which it predicts will grow in value from $1.15bn in 2007 to $2.9bn by 2011. With its system integration capacities, Ericsson builds SDP packages that are unique to each customer. By contrast, Drutt offers pre-integrated platforms, and Ericsson said it would enable the company to offer integration-ready platforms, reducing system integration complexity.
While this may be an attractive offering for new carriers in developing markets, there are indications that Drutt is facing difficulties in an increasingly competitive market. While Drutt’s Mobile Service Delivery Platform is used by more than 60 telecom operators in 35 countries, and it claims Vodafone among its users, it was not used for an upgraded Vodafone internet offering unveiled last week.
With engineers in short supply, the proximity of Drutt’s headquarters to those of Ericsson in Stockholm suggests that the company’s skills base was as import as its product range.
Drutt was founded in 2000 when the portal development team from a joint venture between Oracle and Telia Mobile was spun off into a separate company. Oracle sold its shares to a venture capital company in 2004.
