Sigma scoops up Tribold, Strengthens Offering

Tribold makes a lot of sense for Sigma because of the disruption in product management that’s been going on in cable. Cable has had a huge proliferation of products and it is accelerating with all of the digital media they are rolling out, as well as things like home monitoring. They are also moving into SME services and some enterprise offerings. They have not, however, changed their billing infrastructure all that much, in many cases. So, since Sigma is primarily focused on the aspects of cable operators that deal with service delivery, the Tribold deal gives them a bit more of a presence on the BSS side that is a natural extension of their capabilities.

It also gives Tribold the entree into the cable industry that they’ve been working to build. It gives Sigma a way to solve a bigger set of problems for cable operators (or really anyone in the multi-service, Pay TV, and digital content business). A major thing that Tribold does is take what is essentially service inventory and make it much easier to productize in various ways, and to manage change around that productization over the longer term. So, this is a revenue-facing, time-to-market-for-new-services play for Sigma that complements where cable operators, especially, are trying to go with their offerings – without crashing headlong into major BSS or billing transformations.

All of that said…one thing none of the big billers does particularly well is product management, which is why Tribold has gained traction in the first place. We’ve written about how product management is often an impediment to time-to-market for new services. That is exactly the pain point Sigma can now compete on aggressively with Tribold in the stable.