rations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: SPI Publishers Services Printed on acid-free paper Physica-Verlag is a brand of Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg Springer-Verlag is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Acknowledgements The content of this book is mainly based on the research findings produced in an academia-industry collaboration project titled Software Market Analysis - Case Telecom Operator Products (SmarTop) in the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The project was funded by the Finnish National Agency for Technologies and Innovation (Tekes), and sponsors for the project were Nokia (later Nokia Siemens Networks), Tecnomen, Compel, Nethawk and a teleoperator from the Finnet Group, MPY. The project took place in the framework of the Tekes technology program Verso (Vertical Software Solutions). It was conducted in collaboration with research partners from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA) where Prof. Olli Martikainen was leading the research, and with the Technology Business Research Centre (TBRC) at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, running a related project. The authors would like to thank all representatives of the industrial and research partners we were collaborating with. We are also grateful to the companies (both telecom operators in Europe and Far East, and the OSS/BSS software