iders. The middle category will be a partner also in software industry. The software for support processes is of little interest, however, for any of the operators. Both the small and the larger operators seem to welcome licensed software packages for enterprise resource management, accounting etc. Telecom- munications-specific ERP systems did not seem to be a hot topic in the interviews. In Asia there is some more emphasis on the preference for comprehensive solutions. This may mean that the companies there are entering the business at a more mature stage. In Europe, the enterprises are going through a longer development path from silo systems through system integration to service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions and enterprise systems. The middle category of operators seems globally aiming to be a trendsetter in the development of value added services. In Europe, there were decisions against the regular vendor selection criteria. Operators are willing to take risks in vendor selection to find innovative solutions for creating new business. The large operators with broad geographical range of operations and very high numbers of customers have more weight in the decisions in which technologies will become prevalent. As the example of China indicates, there can be nation-wide decisions on technologies that do not remain without impact internationally. A strong driver for software designs is currently services orientation, with which the business and the system developers are finding common ground. This was therefore taken up as a topical area in the interviews. The deployment of unifying platforms for services development is under consideration in all interviewed orga- nizations, if not in progress already. A service delivery platform or framework (SDP/SDF) seems, however, to be a concept still emerging. There are commercial reference architectures and marketing concepts of SDPs, but a unified reference model does not exist. The own efforts of the companies focus mainly on service delivery frameworks (cf. app