Deciding on how to manage subscriber data is not an easy or intuitive step. Is it the subscriber identifier (SID) and creating a single subscriber instance and definition? Is it the federated approach between the various lines of businesses, and enable peering between the various business such as mobility and fixed? The fundamental questions are, what business is the provider in and what relationship do they want with their clients, what relationship do they want with other suppliers.

There is perhaps no hotter topic in the industry today than cloud computing.  While multiple definitions of the term exist, it is easiest to think of clouds as exemplifying the same business model used by electric utilities, hotel chains, and rental car services, applied to IT and network services.  In this model, on-demand or pre-reserved resources are paid for on a usage-sensitive basis and accessed over a network.  Web mail and video- and photo-sharing sites are cloud services, and so are storage and physical or virtual servers available for “rental.”.