I have not spent much time looking in to what TM Forum is up to for a long time. When I now, after such a long time take some time a read discussions and TM Forum reports etc, I am amazed that nothing has really changed. By that I am not referring to areas addressed or topics discussed, but the approach that are taken.
The discussions are tactical and mainly address feasibility issues. Whether IOx, CX, BSS, OSS, AI, Robotic etc. etc. etc. All documentation, report, seminars, are about feasibility.
Like Simon and Garfunkel said in one of their songs: ".....architects may come and architects may go, never change a point of view"
Positioning has nothing to do with technical feasibility but customer desirability.
One thing is for sure, Telco should not be discussed as a "One size fits all" type of business. Take stock of all those companies that is dependent on communication in order to survive, such as a small little thing called Amazon. Amazon has many different models in which they do Buisness, and so do most of the unicorn companies.
Although a very different business to a telco. if fact a very different business to the way Amazon started out as. Look at how they have constantly challenged them selves and changed many time over in 2 decades. Compare that to how telcos have changed in 4 decades.
One key difference is: They spend more time on desirability than feasibility.
TM Forum issues:
Take a look at Customer Expereince Management; -Represented by hundreds, if not thousand years of Expereince coming from one part of IT or another. All about technical feasibility. How many have actually worked out:
What Jobs the particular customer needs to get done,
What jobs will be automated going forward
What outside forces impact the particular telcos competitive environment
I stress particullar telco, as this is not a "One size fits all" business anymore. And the same goes for their customers.
How many of you have build, with your telco customer, hypothesis and tested them with your customer and then assessed:
1. Desirability - Specific customer commitment (very different to opinion -> surveys)
2. Feasibility based on what the customer needs, not they way a system got implanted at last customer
3. Viability - Can this be profitable.
Hence offering OPINIONS on positioning telco is not worth anything, waste of time. It needs to be custom made to a specific telco's business, based on this telco's value proposition to their targeted customer segments, solutions need to address specific business capabilities lined up to support their specific customer segment and made sure it will be profitable.
That needs framework, approaches and methodologies specific to:
- Business capabilities
- Business architecture and Processes
- Technology feasibility
- Operation and re-usable processes
- Data structures and Open APIs
My penny worth :-)
Cato
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Cato Rasmussen
Independent
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Original Message:
Sent: Jun 21, 2017 15:04
From: Melanie DiGeorge
Subject: Positioning Telcos
Interesting question @Gaurav Anand, and one I think many are asking. There's some great data in this article about the expectations and implementors have of telcos involvement in IoT ecosystems. In fact, just 13% expect them to create ecosystems for IoT. 55% look to telcos for connectivity only. Might be worth a read if you wanted some insight into what telcos have up their sleeve in terms of IoT.
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Melanie DiGeorge
Community Manager
TM Forum
Original Message:
Sent: 06-07-2017 09:19
From: Jim Warner
Subject: Positioning Telcos
Gaurav,
This is the key question - and the same one that applies to any scenario, application, etc. where communications is required. Whether it's IoT, or some form of digital/streaming media, mobile finance, healthcare, et al - they all require communication and at some point, the discussion around the role of telcos pops up.
There's a good argument to be made that CSPs should be the dominant player in all of these seeing as how their pipes, circuits, spectrum is naturally part of the value chain. They have a built-in advantage. Problem is, they are slow, un-creative and risk-averse. Heck, it took them 15 years to conclude that IP was a better approach than Circuit-switched networks.
Their ponderous, cautious approach leaves the barn door wide open for OTTs and other agile, opportunistic players to swoop in and grab hold of new markets before the CSPs know what hit them. And then they complain that they are somehow being deprived of revenue that's rightfully theirs. That's like saying they deserve a cut of any transaction happening over a toll-free number.
So...yes, they are uniquely positioned but that rapidly becomes irrelevant if they don't exploit that position.
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Jim Warner
Westport Group
Original Message:
Sent: 06-06-2017 16:50
From: Gaurav Anand
Subject: Positioning Telcos
It is not clear to me how telcos are uniquely positioned in IoT/IoE market. Based on the past history where OTT provides have taken biggest share of the pie ( for example Spotify, Whatsapp etc), I would like to understand what steps are being done to uniquely position telcos.
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Gaurav Anand
Openet
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