<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffcc" text="#330000">
<font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> <font
color="#0087c7" face="Times, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="5"><b>top
story</b></font>
<br>
<br>
<font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><a
href="http://ct.pbinews.com/rd/cts?d=94-2029-42-42-87379-381444-0-0-0-1-1-365">Microsoft
shuts
down CSF development</a></b></font>
</font>
<p><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><font
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> <font color="#666666">By
Rich Karpinski</font>
<br>
Microsoft has informed its telecom service provider
customers that it is removing its Connected Services Framework product
from the market and will
no longer be developing new functions for the CSF. The move is a
significant one for Microsoft,
indicating the failure of its major Telco 2.0 initiative to develop a
service delivery platform
that could be widely deployed, but it is also a significant indication
that the telecom industry
has not moved as quickly to embrace a common approach to service
delivery.
</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><font
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Microsoft made the
decision to "end-of-life" the CSF because current
deployments, in 30 service
providers globally, had proven to require a much higher degree of
customization than Microsoft
expected, prompting the software giant to focus more on the delivery of
Web services via Exchange
Online and Sharepoint Online and leave the telecom service delivery
platform business to systems
integrators.
</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><font
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">"If you look across the
deployments for service delivery platforms,
they
have tended to be highly
customized, very integration-intensive," said Terry McGuigan, director
of global partners for
Microsoft's Communications Sector. "The degree of customization
required
has caused us to
re-think whether we could use a standard platform."
</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><font
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><a
href="http://ct.pbinews.com/rd/cts?d=94-2029-42-42-87379-381445-0-0-0-1-1-365"><font
color="#ff8434"><b>Read more of this story.</b></font></a> </font> </font></p>
</body>
</html>