Microsoft Echoes for wireline telcos

I can see the value that this Echoes platform creates for a mobile carrier. However this is surely not for a wireline operator. If Microsoft’s Echoes is for real and the company is targeting wireline telcos as well, this could turn out to be yet another attempt to pitch applications to a telco without due consideration towards the lack of OSS/BSS integration. Wireline telcos are not slow adopters of fancy apps because they just happen to be conservative to the core. They have a dozen hooks to worry about.

And they prefer to have one humungous underlying platform that can be extended to accommodate all Voice 2.0 services. Echoes does not seem to be that extended underlying platform. It seems to be an extended IM platform, not an extended telco app server, which is what wireline telcos utilize and open up to offer new services.
I am therefore inclined to think that Echoes will not appeal wireline telcos since it is not a comprehensive services framework for them. If however Microsoft has the likes of eBay and Amazon (apart from mobile carriers) in mind for Echoes, it might make sense. These guys are not going to deploy a Class 5 feature server to do Voice 2.0.

For wireline telcos, the closest thing to a comprehensive services framework that Microsoft brings in is its SDP product. Microsoft is doing well with this product but not as well as it had hoped. If Echoes is an answer to the lack of traction Microsoft has seen for the SDP product, it does not seem like the right thing to do. Carriers resist non-IMS approaches.