re market (OSS/BSS market) was analyzed here as an example of a vertical software industry. This analysis included the viewpoints of the business processes reflecting the telecom business, technology viewpoint visible in OSS/BSS interfaces, and market viewpoint as presented in market statistics. The results have been condensed into a default scenario representing the main past events impacting the OSS/BSS markets and the expected future predicted by the model of a vertical software industry evolution. The OSS/BSS market is exceptional when compared to other markets, as a major attempt to standardize the business processes is underway. The efforts of TM Forum on standardizing the OSS/BSS processes with the eTOM model as well as efforts to standardize a common data model and a common set of interfaces for applications have been received well and adopted by many telecom operators and especially by IT integrators. Software related to network interfaces has traditionally been equipment and vendor specific. Later, network technology standardization has been very active and new standards have been created at a fast pace. However, the pace of introdu- cing new network technology providing high added value compared to previous generations has been even faster. And each new network technology with different performance characteristics has required new software. Thus the number of net- work interfaces to be integrated to OSS/BSS software has been overwhelming, thus prohibiting OSS/BSS software from reaching a steady market with a single dominating design. The telecom operators having invested heavily into previous generations of network infrastructure are forced to maintain the legacy systems till the end of their investment demortalization periods. But they are also forced to provide new services enabled by the new technology as well as to provide the same services to the existing customer base still connected with the old network technology. When- ever the independent software vendors have not been able to provide softwar