I've been working for telecoms for ages and it's been like this since forever. Bunch of independent hardware devices from dozens of vendors + software services

I've been working for telecoms for ages and it's been like this since forever. Bunch of independent hardware devices from dozens of vendors + software services from independent vendors and you gotta integrate them into one. HLR knows about your users, billing knows about other part of those users, then you have devices, everything independent and glued together via SOAP. In my previous job company had multiple SMSCs (short message service center) and you had to target the proper one, depending on the geography of the customer and you'd go to proper HLR to find the customer and their geo location (you should read country here, not precise location). And then people running around screaming SOA, MICROSERVICES, JSON and I like "You don't say? o_O?" EDIT: spelling