OSS Line

NetBoss Acquires Sidonis

News from Management World Americas last week: NetBoss has completed acquisition of Sidonis, the start-up doing clever stuff in service assurance.

Sidonis are a small team (I could count them on my fingers) based in Bath, UK, who have developed something that NetBoss, and many other SA players, lack. Most SA solutions focus on collecting, filtering and prioritising network alarms, which is nice but only half the information that network ops need. It says here:

"Sidonis technologies include the industries most advanced software applications for determining both the impact on services and the root cause of failures in large, complex networks spanning multiple technology domains."

In the past many SA vendors had to integrate with relatively expensive and heavy-weight inventory solutions to 'enrich' alarms with service information or perform topology-aware analysis like root-cause determination. With this acquisition, NetBoss is building out a more complete, stand-alone SA solution with less dependencies on third-parties and reduced cost of integration.

The official word about NetBoss acquiring Sidonis is here.

 

Hashtag for TMForum Management World Dublin 2011

...is officially #mwd11 (although I've seen a few #mw2011 tweets already).

So I'll be tweeting #mwd11 like it's hot, in the run up to Management World 2011 and during, if I get any spare time between staffing Aria's Expo booth, Forumville demo and attending the after show parties.

Yes, OSS has after show parties. And, yes, they rock can be very pleasant networking opportunities indeed.

Management World - The View From The Booth

One short flight became thirteen hours and five trains, but I made it to Nice. Late, but just in time to get my exhibition booth built. Other than running around in the Cote d’Azur sun trying to find a print shop, most of the first day was spent on the Expo floor. First impressions…

Bits of the Expo are busy.

The new layout, with all the exhibition in one room, feels more inclusive. It does encourage a lot of the traffic to flow through the central ‘corridor’ between the entrance and the sunny terrace. If you stand in the middle of the Expo floor things look pretty busy, but it’s really a density thing. So far, numbers feel like they are down a bit on last year. We’ll see; Traditionally Wednesday sees more Expo foot-fall.

above. Tony the Aria ‘booth bunny’, Management World 2010

Proper booth bunnies in abundance.

More professional hosts and hostesses this year. Do we really need blonds serving us Champagne to get us to the vendor’s stand. Um… Seems so. But I’d rather meet a proper telco/software guy like Tony any day.

Forumville changes again.

I commented on the re-arranged Forumville last year. With the move to get all of the Expo on one floor it was inevitable that Forumville would move again. It’s been compacted to one side of the foyer on the second floor. The result is a higher profile, and an attractive layout. Some complaints from the catalyst teams that its a bit too dense, considering all the demos going on, and they’re in direct sun light! You can’t please everyone…

Management World 2010 Q&A - Telcordia

More views on TMW from the people investing in being there. What’s bon? What’s mal? We go there every year – pourquoi?

Robert Curran, Operations Solutions Marketing, at Telcordia looks forward to a packed show...

Telcordia has been around a long time. In fact, the company celebrated its 25th birthday last year. What is Telcordia all about today?

Telcordia enables Communications Service Providers (CSPs), enterprises, suppliers and government entities to successfully deploy innovative and advanced services that help our clients realize operational efficiencies, drive revenue, and maintain a competitive edge in the new era of services-dominated communications. Telcordia has globally trusted expertise in software and services to meet the needs of customers and partners, including, consulting, next-generation OSS, network and application interconnection, service delivery and charging  solutions, industry research and new technology development.

Is TMW Nice still considered the major OSS show of the year for you?

Yes. It has the most international audience compared to other tradeshows, and has not been overshadowed by billing vendors or topics.

TMW is a great event to judge the mood and the themes in the industry, and also to understand the OSS community's own evolving structure. This year we hope to determine what the major OSS-related priorities are, how they are expressed, and how their value is referenced.

Do you expect show attendance to be up or down this year?

Up. This industry can't stand still for long.

And for all those attendees, ash and British Airways strikes permitting, what should they expect to see from Telcordia next week?

TMW 2010 will see Telcordia talking about the ways in which we're able to help providers in wireless, broadband, enterprise and wholesale services realize the potential of their market opportunities, and of their investments in network and systems. We will have a couple of very interesting and timely new solutions on show, for wireless and fixed-line networks.

And catalyst projects in the Forumville?

Yes, the COMPASS catalyst project with T-Com Croatia. It's about using a service catalog driven approach to fulfillment. Telcordia has provided the core catalog component used within the end-to-end fulfillment process.

Finally, what one feature of Nice should first-time visitors not miss?

The bathrooms at the Negresco (act like you're staying there).

Right! See you all there! ROFL.

If you want to hook up with Telcordia at the show contact Sharon Oddy or simply visit them at booth #40 on the Expo floor. More about Telcordia at Management World 2010 here.

Management World 2010 Q&A - Tribold

OSS Line continues its quest to find out what software vendors and service providers are expecting from TM Forum’s Management World 2010. What’s rad? What's bogus? And why do we make the trip to Nice every year?

Ernest Margitta, Marketing Director at Tribold, has been kind enough to provide his perspective on the show.

Since formation in 2003 Tribold has been evangelical about the need for telcos to adopt product management to support BSS and OSS processes. What are you currently offering to address this need?

Tribold is the world’s leading provider of Enterprise Product Management (EPM) software specifically developed for Communication Service Providers (CSPs). Tribold EPM™ is a single, integrated suite of Enterprise Product Management applications that empowers CSPs to put products at the heart of their business.

Tribold EPM™ is based on a Centralized Product & Service Catalog (CPC) and a Product & Service Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution.

Tribold has had a fairly high profile at Management World in the past with speaking slots and involvement in catalyst projects. What’s new for 2010?

We'll be making two key customer announcements in North America and in Asia Pacific.  Tribold will also be announcing a pre-integration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Tribo0ld is involved in two Forumville projects:

• Service Model - Cloud 9. Qwest, Cisco, Comptel, Progress Software, Tribold and Verecloud will demonstrate how Qwest are able to quickly deliver bundles of communication products and equipment which their Small to Medium-sized business customers require to operate their businesses.
• Dynamic Content Delivery (WAVES). A project in conjunction with Microsoft to define a multi-industry reference architecture enabling consumers to access and view content over any available network connection using any convenient device at the time of their choosing.

Any guesses on what will be the three most over-used buzz-words this year?

Cloud. Cloud. Cloud.

I suspect so! Despite the tendency for the show to jump on technology bandwagons, do you think TMW is still the principal show for our industry, and what do you expect to get from it this year?

Yes. Tribold's role as a thought leader in the industry focused specifically on EPM has been gained through deep involvement in the TMF working groups and catalysts.  We will continue this leadership at TMW Nice 2010 while engaging directly with our customers and prospects.

What feature of Nice should first-time visitors not miss?

Forumville.

Not exactly what I meant, but I do agree! Forumville is underrated. You get to see products in action, evaluate TMF standards, and talk to real people (not marketeers like me) who are usually the smartest folks in the company. Check it out.

But it’s not all work, work, work in Nice. Where are the parties at?

Tribold and Sigma are hosting a drinks reception on a rooftop terrace overlooking the Mediterranean sea on Wednesday.  Drop by the Tribold booth for an invitation.

Will do. Thanks again to Ernest Margitta for his insight. To learn more about Tribold go to Expo booth #7, or drop a mail to marketing@tribold.com.

Management World 2010 Q&A - Amdocs

In the first of a series of articles, OSS Line finds out what software vendors and service providers are expecting from TM Forum’s Management World 2010. What’s hot? What's not? And why do we make the trip to Nice every year?

First up, it’s Amdocs. Cassandra Millhouse, Director of Product Marketing, Amdocs OSS Division, gives us the skinny on what one of the industry’s biggest players expects to get from the show…

Amdocs’ presence at Management World has grown over the last five years as it moved from offering mainly BSS products and services to become a major player in both the OSS and BSS industry. What is Amdocs’ offering service providers today?

Amdocs combines business and operational support systems, service delivery platforms, proven services, and deep industry expertise to enable service providers and their customers to do more in the connected world. Amdocs’ offerings help service providers explore new business models, differentiate through personalized customer experiences, and streamline operations. A global company with revenue of $2.86 billion in 2009, Amdocs has approximately 18,000 employees and serves customers in more than 60 countries worldwide.

Is Management World still the major OSS show of the year for Amdocs?

Yes. It is one of the most important shows globally, but we also participate in TMW events regionally in the US and Asia, as well as other events like Broadband World Forum, Carrier Ethernet World, Mobile World Congress, Communicasia and Futurecom.

What will Amdocs be up to in Nice this year?

Amdocs’ executives and customers will lead and participate in panels outlining strategies, solutions and best practices for addressing the capacity crunch, building a differentiated customer experience, and achieving the operational efficiencies and business agility to keep ahead of the competition.

At booth #1 in the Exhibit Hall, Amdocs will showcase products from its Customer Experience Systems portfolio that help service providers cope with capacity demands, industrialize service introduction and service fulfillment through automation, and bridge the planning gap between marketing and operations.

Amdocs has been a big supporter of catalyst projects in the past. The Harmony project is going in to its sixth iteration in Nice, so what’s happening in the Forumville this time?

Amdocs will be joining onsite working groups and catalyst projects to develop standards that apply to real world management needs, including:

• Standardizing MCE – Harmony 6; A standardized solution for customer experience and service quality management, focusing on media and cloud services.
• Successful Inventory Transformation - framework for Complex OSS Migrations; Live demonstration based on real case scenarios encountered by Telstra.

Is there any speaker you really want to catch this year at Management World Nice?

We look forward to seeing Iain Morris from the Economist Intelligence Unit, who will be discussing insight arising from research commissioned by Amdocs to look at how service providers can decide which business model will provide best fit to their existing skills and resources.

The Nice show is always a very social occasion for the vendors. Heard of any good Management World parties?

Amdocs will be hosting its customers and partners at a Gala Dinner, featuring some v. special entertainment.

I hope it’s these guys, but I doubt it. Finally, what do you expect to get out of TMW next week?

We look forward to the opportunity to meet with our customers and industry experts to learn about the challenges facing the communications industry, as well as how these are being addressed through innovation across the market.

Thanks! If you want to contact Amdocs about the show drop a mail to Karen.Burnside@amdocs.com or go to their Management World page.

New (Management) World Order (2010)

After a successful re-working of the Forumville space last year, the TM Forum architects have gone all-out for a re-structuring of Management World Nice this year.

above. The Acropolis in Nice. Home of Management World. Bigger Than it Looks From Here… Click to View

For as long as I can remember there was a slightly uncomfortable split of Expo exhibitors. Most would be in the main show floor, but a small number of folks would be located down a tiny set of escalators next to the geeks (in the nicest sense of the word) running catalyst projects in the Forumville area.

It wasn’t all bad. Being close to the Forumville demos would ensure a reasonable number of passing feet. But I don’t think anyone ever actually wanted to be down there.

Good news though! It’s all been re-jigged and the whole Expo is unified in a single show floor, with Forumville located on the mezzanine outside.

As well as the feeling of belonging, another benefit is that there’s access to some outside terrace areas directly from the show floor. Much appreciated.

Looking Forward to Management World 2010 - Akil Beshir, Apps and Content

Not long to Management World 2010 or, as we’ll probably call it for some time yet, TMW Nice 2010.

It’s at this time I start thinking about how I’ll spend my time at the Acropolis. Which projects to see? Which speakers are worth missing a coffee-and-network with an old colleague?

As far as the keynote speakers go, it’s often a mixed bag. As a general rule the telco folk tend to offer less insight than a speaker from outside the industry.

But this year I noticed Akil Beshir, Chairman Telecom Egypt has a slot. Judging by his short piece in the TMF Perspectives magazine, he’ll be worth your attention.

In his Perspectives article he’s candid and provides an insight in to a region that many TMW attendees may not be familiar with.

Akil predicts a difficult year for the region in 2010, despite reasonable GDP growth rates. Mobile growth rate is slowing and fixed line deployment has become stagnant. The opportunity for growth, as he sees it, is broadband, both mobile and fixed, provided enough Arabic content can be produced.

Also, Akil does not expect to see profits from triple play in the next three years, due to the long time it takes to see a return on investment.

This could well be the theme in Nice this year: Content and apps. It was certainly given a massive profile at MWC earlier in the year.

And yet again we see a new bandwagon replacing the old one. Wasn’t triple (or quad) play predicted to be the future of revenue generation just a couple of years ago? Well, at least this time someone’s proved there’s money in it. But I question whether there is much of a long-term future for revenue derived from apps. The free internet sucks for telcos, but the 59 pence app isn’t all that much better…

None-the-less, I expect to hear lots of talk about content. Some of it will be buzz words and ‘us-too’. But I hope Akil, and some of his contemporaries, provide us with a reasoned view of how content, service and networks can combine to create a platform for long-term telco revenue.

TMW 2009 - “Mobile Advertising Has a Great Future and Always Will Have”

TMF have put up the keynote videos for this year’s TMW show on t’internet, so I recommend you watch (or re-watch) Rory Sutherland’s gig. Probably the most entertaining of the key-notes, but also the most interesting perspective: Customer behavior, revenue opportunities and squid pornography. It’s all there.

Check it out at the TM Forum key-note page.

For the best technical key-note, watch Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon) slot, where he covers customer/partner strategies and the associated platform APIs. It’s what telcos should be doing.

TMW Week - News From Amdocs (Catalogs, OSS Outsourcing and TeraPlay)

Continuing the round-up of news from Tele Management World Nice, 2009, with Amdocs…

Amdocs At The Show

Amdocs marketing took a different approach to TMW this year with a minimalist presence on the expo show floor. In fact, Amdocs had no stand in the expo, and no meeting rooms inside the Acropolis. Instead Amdocs returned with the big lorry they had last years, parked just around the corner by the fountains. This beast changed, Transformers style, in to a pretty neat mini-conference-centre.

above. The big Amdocs lorry

Presumably it offers a bit more value-for-money than a typical TMW package, while also allowing Amdocs to customize the space a little more. Inside, it’s pleasant enough. Downstairs had space to mingle or host presentations, a couple of comfy chairs and a little coffee bar. Upstairs, I believe, was meeting room space.

Inside the Acropolis, prominent posters advertised their solutions and directed punters to the action outside.

Combined Amdocs Product and Service Catalog

Amdocs has announced they have integrated their Enterprise Product Catalog (EPC) with the new Service Composition Manager (SCM).

EPC is a relatively new, generic, product catalog from Amdocs. SCM is the result of cross-breeding previous service composition products from Amdocs and Cramer, namely Cramer Service Catalog and Amdocs Service Manager.

While EPC is principally aimed at building bespoke product catalogs its generic nature has meant that it can be used to offer a unified front-end to allow commercial products to be specified along with the technical service and resource specification.

This is Very Interesting, and deserves more attention. I’ll be doing a separate analysis of product/service catalog news later…

OSS Outsourcing

Not news as such, but Amdocs have grabbed some extra column-inches with their timely publication of a survey on OSS outsourcing.

Is embracing an outsourcing model:

a. An opportunity for business growth through new revenue models?

b. A defensive play to avoid outsourcers undercutting  ‘expensive’ license + service revenue models?

c. A PR exercise that will come to nothing in the long term as most telcos will never get their house in order enough to support outsourcing of technical functions?

I haven’t made my mind up yet.

Tera-Play

Last week Amdocs blogged on the catchy subject of tera-play: Being ready for one trillion devices being connected to the world’s networks.

above. One trillion devices

I like it. Really focuses the mind. And as an OSS architect and technology geek, it gets me thinking about scalability, modeling, processes and such like.

But, back to Amdocs’ take on the topic. They’ve got a bunch of brief videos covering different issues to do with this, and each one is tera-something. Some sound scary, like tera-psycology. Or there’s tera-digm. ‘It’s a new paradigm for service providers doing business in an era of a trillion connected devices’. Teradigm. Teradigm?

TMW Week - News From Telcordia (Fellows, OniTelecom Win)

Tele Management World is the time to release some positive PR. Lots  of noise last week, on and off the TMW expo floor, so here’s the first news round-up, starting for no good reason with Telcordia:

Tom Forsyth is a Jolly Good TMF Fellow

As already reported, Tom Forsyth, Telcordia Director of Marketing, was made a Distinguished Fellow of TM Forum.

I’ll leave it to the Telcordia PR to give you the background, and just say: Congratulations Tom.

New Business at OniTelecom

An OSS win for Telcordia at OniTelecom, the Portuguese wire-line operator. The PR covers the usual solution benefits: Reduced expenses, accelerated time-to-market, e.t.c. Basically it’s an inventory-centric fulfillment solution based on the Granite platform.

Despite mentioning time-to-market it’s not clear whether the deal includes Dynamic Service Catalog. DSC is part of the Telcordia fulfillment suite, but the PR focuses on inventory being at the centre of the solution. You know what I think about that…

TMW Nice 2009, What's Hot and What's Not

HOT! Optimism

There's more of a buzz than last year. After the peak in M&A in 2007/2008 last year felt like a career fair with many attendees being more focused on re-evaluating their careers. This year, people are milling around the expo, enjoying the catalyst projects, and talking about technology and business. Maybe its because there's no jobs out there....

NOT! Booth-Bunnies

It's not exactly the Motor Show, but there has been an increase in show budget being spent on eye-candy for the predominantly male attendees. Maybe the most affordable staff to hand out product brochures happen to be young attractive girls? I will give them the benefit of the doubt. But models aimlessly stood around just looking pretty... a bit tacky.

HOT! World-Weary Pessimism

To paraphrase two commentators this week: "It seems like TMF is doing the same thing they were doing three years ago, and Google, Amazon e.t.c. have moved things on without them". "We're sitting here discussing the same things we tried and failed at already, and were going to fail at it again before we get it right". Say it like it is...

NOT! No New OSS Start-Ups Here

I know they're out there in the real world, and I know budgets are tight, but it would have been nice to see some of the industry start-ups manning their first tiny stand at the far back-corner of the expo. Next year maybe?

HOT! Start-Up Success

Ontology and Celona are coming along nicely. There's no Cramer-style late-90's growth, but there is steady progress and evidence that they are creating new markets for themselves.

NOT! Give-Aways

Not so much that there weren't any, but the bounty I received from Amdocs (memory key, umbrella, plastic thing, note pad, torch) has left me with no room in my bag for anything else. Any of you vendors want to post me some of your left over prezzies?

HOT! Free Drinks

Thanks to all the companies that supplied their own end-of-day refreshments. Great for those of us with cheap TMW passes that don't include 'cocktail reception' tickets. I particularly appreciated Convergys' chilled beers in their own little stay-cool vest.

TMW Nice 2009 - Forumville

They changed it! Forumville, the area for catalyst projects and demos down stairs from the Expo floor, has been redesigned. In previous years there were a whole lot of booths with racks of PCs and screens. Every hour or so two or three groups would get mic'ed-up and try to shout-over the neighboring presentation. TMW have fixed the shouting problem... but on Wednesday, you still couldn't hear what they were saying....

There's now two booths with comfy seats and a big projection screen. The marketing-face of the catalyst project gets to present three times during the show (as opposed to three times a day as was usually the case). It's more relaxed, there's no hectic technical demo, but there's also no mic, so you really struggle to hear the presenter unless you sit at the very front. Given the fact that there's only two booths and they're at opposite ends of Forumville, why not amplify them?

above. Forumville presentation booth. Now with more volume.

In the middle of Forumville there's a tidy array of stand-up demo pods where the technical shows are run on demand. Again, no mics, but its intimate enough not to matter so much. It also feels a bit more relaxed; I guess the tech guys prefer the ad-hoc demos to the stage-fright of three scheduled presentations per day.

above. Forumville demo pods.

Other than the volume, the re-design is a big improvement. One thumb-up from me.

Update: Problem solved! Sessions on Thursday afternoon now have mics for the speakers. Big improvement.

TMW Nice 2009 - Thoughts So Far

1. More people than I expected during a economic crash and pandemic alert. The key-notes were very well attended and the expo floor had a buzz about it yesterday. Not the waste-land some had feared.

2. That said, there's a lot of moderation being exercised. Less fancy toys being handed out at the stands, little investment in newer, bigger, brighter, stands (with a couple of exceptions).

3. The redesigned Forumville is generally A Good Thing, and the coffee shop looks much nicer, with comfy seats, mood lighting, and decent free WiFi coverage.

4. Last year's start-ups are showing encouraging progress. Ontology are back with a stand and some new PR. Celona, who had attendees but no floor-space last year, are back with meeting rooms, a KPN-sponsored catalyst project, and a hand-full of (yet to be announced) customers.

TMW 2009 - Day One, Part Two - Including TM Awards!

More updates on the key-note speakers at Tele Management World 2009...

To give the ceremony a larger audience, this year the TM Excellence Awards were presented during the key-note session on Wednesday morning. With no fan-fare, here are the winners!

Supplier or System Integrator

Netcracker

Service Provider

Chunghwa Telecom

Distinguished Fellows

Tom Forsyth (Telcordia) and Willy *Somone* (Vodafone)

UPDATE: Sorry, I still can't find the name of the second Fellow. The guys were rushed on and off stage, no speeches or anything. Nor have TMF updated their Fellows page.

Kevin Peters (ATT) then took to the stage to evangelize the need for everyone in the industry to step up their efforts to solve operational problems.

above. Kevin Peters

Problem arise from the complexity of many devices, many apps/services and different networks, as I expect you're quite familiar with. His solution: A call to action to address this in all areas from hardware vendor to CSP, to open up systems to allow effective flow of performance and quality data to enable end-to-end service management.

Network operations is legacy: Service operations is the future.

The second audience question followed: How effective are current transformation efforts in this industry? 56% said 'Not Very Effective'.

above. A Pessimistic response from the audience

Next up, Werner Vogels (Amazon), presenting his customer centric view of service and Amazon's impressive platformization (my word, not his) of their business infrastructure.

above. Werner Vogels

Werner believes that an organization should build 'fly-wheels' for core requirements or services that will be needed in the long term. This means that, in companies like his and in CSPs, transformation must focus on platforms and applications to enable and encourage customers and partners to do business with you and each other. For Amazon, the following business functions were heavily invested in:

• Merchant - Enabling other merchants to sell through Amazon.
• Affiliates - Using other content providers to drive traffic to Amazon, and rewarding them  with a cut of the revenue.
• Platform - Allowing Amazon's technology to be used by other retailers, such as Marks & Spencer.
• Fulfillment Centers - Allowing other retailers to use Amazon's distribution and returns capabilities.
• Intelligence - Building infrastructure to integrate human intelligence in to routine tasks (i.e. their Mechanical Turk platform).
• Infrastructure - Creating a reusable platform of processing and storage resources for internal and third-party computation requirements.

Investment in these areas by Amazon meant more than fulfilling requirements in the traditional way a retailer might. Instead they considered how creating an open platform would make internal change more effective while also encouraging third-parties to push their business through Amazon too. The cost to other businesses was kept low, the result being that Amazon was able to build on its own business and the third-parties to become the largest catalog of products while also offering excellent customer experience.

Amazon's approach means they are far more like a 'Telco 2.0' business than any CSP currently is. Their platform drives their brand and business but also allows them to generate revenue from upstream businesses. The technical barrier to entry in telco is very high, but for Amazon, 'All you need is aws.amazon.com and a credit card'.

With this in mind the audience where asked: What is the chance of the communications industry developing a successful platform strategy like Amazon's? Low - 32%. Medium - 48%. High - 20%.

I'd suggest there won't be much of a comms industry if they don't...

TMW 2009 - Day One, Part One

Ok, updates on Tele Management World as they happen. Comments and summary to come later....

Keith Willetts (TM Forum) and Simon Torrance (Telco 2.0) started the day with an overview of what they thought were the key issues faced by service provider in the current economy.

above. Keith Willetts and Simon Torrance with host Tony Campion

New growth should be the driven by extending traditional service to emerging markets, while creating new business models in mature markets. That's where Simon comes in with the Telco 2.0 initiative. Telco 2.0 promotes a migration to creating an 'upstream' market for CSPs: Partnering with B2B and content providers who pay the CSP for delivery of services 'downstream' to the end customer.

Telco 2.0 has a high profile here this week: The introduction today was not to TMW alone, but to two conferences: TMW and Telco 2.0. Getting in to bed together makes some sense: Telco 2.0 is the 'what', while TMW is the 'how', of CSP transformation.

To spice up the speaking sessions a bit, a minority of the lecture theatre chairs have voting devices. The first vote asked whether telcos should focus on cutting costs/churn or creating new business models. An overwhelming 97% voted for new business models. Concerns were raised by Keith and  Simon as to whether the management levels above and below the attendees here bought in to that. Junior management are focused on spending less on paper clips while the CxO level are showing a reluctance to 'give up on retail' and offer services to 'competitive' upstream content &  service providers.

Sanjiv Ahuja (Augere, ex-Orange) then gave us the CSP's perspective. His message was very much driven by the idea that voice services will soon have to be free, no longer the main source of telco margins.

above. Sanjiv Ahuja.

Sanjiv went on to highlight where he saw the biggest opportunities to be, including:

• WiMax in emerging markets, due to poor copper/fibre coverage and limited numbers of PCs for Internet access.
• Telco asset sharing, including a need for regulatory incentives to drive CSPs to look at making money from the underused network infrastructure out there.
• Providing mobile voice to the one-third of the world that still has none.
• The rural broadband initiatives.
• Creation and delivery of short-lived (days or hours) services.

Next up was Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy Group) to provide some light entertainment and a bit of insight with a marketing and advertising angle, and much appreciated it was too.

above. Rory Sutherland

'Signs of hope, perhaps' that mobile marketing has a future, because Rory has changed his opinion. While once he believed people would 'wait until they got home' to a more suitable device, like a PC, he now sees mobile revenue being driven by 'laziness'. Given immediate access to a service, so long as it saves some physical effort, people will be happy to use small fiddlly mobile platforms too complete a task or transaction.

He postulated that mobile services could also benefit service providers simply by their nature as another channel to market. He cited:

• Every time Argos (a UK retailer of general stuff) added a new channel (web, text, phone) 50% of those transactions where additional business.
• Younger people, traditionally thought not to be generous donators to charity, made significant contributions to good causes if they were able to donate by text message.
• Online gambling has significantly increased the number of people gambling.

Rory  also described a few other was to  repackage customer interaction to generate revenue and customer satisfaction:

• iPhone apps sell far better than pay-to-access web sites, although the end goods are effectively the same.
• Customer feedback by text message (see Fizzback)  provides instant information to address disatisfied customer and also elicits more positive feedback.

TMW 2009 - Day Zero

Tuesday, and the forecast rain never really came. It's a pleasant mid-20's in the shade, with a cool sea breeze if you're on the Promenade des Anglais.

What's less 'cool' are the costs here for us Anglais. Virtually one Euro to the Pound. Ouch! The tasty fresh fish platters are even more unaffordable now than when Amdocs first put me on per-diem expenses.

above. My place of work for the next three days: Nice's Acropolis center 

Things kick-off tomorrow (Wednesday) with key-note speeches in the morning and my first walk around the expo hall and catalyst projects in the afternoon. I'll get back to you with what's hot and what's not once I've found a free Internet connection. Au revoir, until then.

OSS Line at Tele Management World, Nice, 2009

I will be at Nice again this year to enjoy the sights,  the sounds and the smells of our industry’s principal trade show.

TMW is a mix of the fascinating and the dull, the informative and the vacuous.

It’s difficult to predict what will be of value and what won’t. Some keynotes offer a candid insight in to the industry, and a fresh perspective. Others feel like they were put together on a short-haul business class flight using existing collateral.

above. Sol Trujillo of Telstra. One of the more interesting keynotes of 2008.

Personally, being a bit of an OSS geek, I am a big fan of catalyst projects, at Forumville, down in the basement. Ok, some of the presentations are not well rehearsed, but you almost always get a better insight in to the vendors products, and hints at their roadmap,  than you will find on their marketing stand up stairs.

You want a candid, no-marketing-bs, answer to a question? Ask a flustered engineer after they’ve fluffed the technical demo in a 30 minute catalyst presentation.

No… I’m not really that cruel.

above. The Amdocs beautiful-people manning the stand in 2008.

Two things for you, my intelligent, regular reader:

1. I will be blogging the show as it happens. I’ll try and keep it interesting. No transcripts of the keynotes or anything like that. Only key news, product announcements, highlights, gossips, the latest polo-shirt fashions.

2. If you’re attending TMW this year and have anything you’d like to discuss with me, drop me a line at james.pullen@ossline.com . I will be available to meet over coffee and cakes. Feedback on OSS Line? Project opportunities? Want to discuss blogging your new product? A chat about emerging technologies? Anything!

And to all those marketeers pulling 18 hour days to get ready for next week, our thoughts are with you….