y of today. On the other hand, the outsourcing (see Fig. 1 in chapter, "Model for Evolution of a Vertical Software Industry") of telecom operators or CSP's does not necessarily mean a disruptive impact on the OSS/BSS industry - it can be considered as only adding on the demand and revenue of the industry. MS16: The telecom service providers invest on marketing, delivery and billing of media- based services. This statement was considered as highly likely. Already today and in the past the CSP's interest on media services has been a reality, as for example some CSP's and media houses have merged or allied together. However, considering the OSS/BSS market this evolution of some CSP's businesses does not seem to have a significant impact. 4 Low Likelihood - Low Impact This set of miniscenarios can, in a way, be considered as the least interesting out of the 16 future statements evaluated. However, also they might contain some inter- esting and even critical information for the future business planning of OSS/BSS vendors and users. MS1: The telecom service providers will increase their use of open source software, but through outsourcing the related operations to their IT service providers. The use of open source is not considered as likely. One reason for this might be the uncertainties related to open source software. The CSPs often require functional reliability and guaranteed maintenance for their software systems, which open source software systems are not able to provide yet. Another reason might be that it is not seen to happen in the next 5 years, but perhaps later. MS2: The telecom service providers will have less bargaining power and control over the OSS/BSS software vendors due to the high switching costs. This miniscenario is evoked from the notion of CSPs aiming to concentrate their procurement on a limited number of software vendors. As CSPs limit their procure- ment and acquire large and costly systems from them, it could be hard to change the provider to a different one in the future. However, this min