Network inventory software is gaining telecom industry respect as a proven ROI generator, according to a recent report from telecom analyst firm Dittberner.

In a new research study titled "Telecom Provisioning, Network Inventory, and Service Management Solutions," Dittberner provides a sweeping 225-page analysis of the market. It also examines vendor offerings into detailed product, financial, and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats assessments of leading provisioning and inventory software suppliers.

Dittberner cites network inventory's key value in providing a framework and migration tools to help telecoms consolidate their inventory and mechanize their provisioning processes.

On the heels of several carrier success stories with inventory, Dittberner forecasts the market for network inventory and related network discovery software will grow handsomely by a 9.4 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate, from $333 million in 2005 to $521 million in 2010.

Earlier this year Dittberner released a report finding that the incremental IPTV equipment market will only reach $336 million in 2013, up from $30 million in 2005. The number of IPTV subscribers, will reach 53 million globally in 2013 from about 2 million as of end of last year.

"Other studies on IPTV's effect on network equipment market growth ignore the fact that most IPTV subscribers over the next seven years will be high-speed Internet access subscribers already," said James Heath, Director, Broadband research at Dittberner, and the author of the report "IPTV Impact on Public Networks."

Heath added that "IPTV's subscriber base will not become significant for a decade and the incremental investment per subscriber will be low. Combined together, these provide a small boost to forecasted DSL, FTTH, and router sales."

Network inventory systems are proving particularly useful in broadband networks where they track services that overlay multiple technologies, OSI layers, and multi-vendor networks.

Some recent successes detailed in the Dittberner study include the following:

WilTel Communications' network scattered across dozens of regional centers was causing data accuracy problems such as stranded network elements and over-provisioned services that were costly to isolate.An inventory consolidation using an Open Telecommunications tool enabled WilTel to reconcile its network and enforce business rules to prevent further problems.

Elisa, a leading operator in Finland, needed to consolidate about 50 network inventory and provisioning systems it had built in-house or acquired through mergers with other operators.With Comptel's help, Elisa created a new inventory system that assured better data quality, common processes across the company, and reduced costs from maintaining fewer inventory systems.

XO Communications faced a pressing need to unite its two separate networks, the Allegiance and XO networks.The chief drawback was that services for each of these networks had to be ordered separately.After inventory was consolidated on a single MetaSolv system, XO set upon the task of building integrations to mechanize provisioning.