On May 22, 2007 Cisco and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) announced a cooperative effort to deliver a vendor-neutral OSS platform designed to “smooth out†the difficulties OSS and BSS vendors have had in directly interfacing with network elements and vendor-specific element management systems. This promise is welcome news for the CSPs that have been plagued with the need to monetize their huge capital investments made over the last 10 years.