TM Forum Online Community

The Devil is in the Detail!

Martin Creaner — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:40:00 GMT

Everytime we hear a story about mergers and acquisitions in the Telecom industry we get excited by the strategic opportunties. There will be economies of scale we hear, there will be new marketing critical mass created we hear, and of course there will be huge benefits to the consumer base from more integrated services, etc., etc., . This weeks story of the potential merger between Vodafone and T-Mobile in the UK is a classic example. The headline stories are the potential $5bn price tag and the fact that this would catapult Vodafone back to being the UK market leader with around 40% of the market share. But as we head into the second week of stories I suspect a much more complicated picture emerges.

Economies of scale and marketing critical mass are all very nice buzz words, but anyone who has ever been involved in a merger of two telecoms giants will know that the real challenge is the successful integration of the two beasts. This is a mating of two very different animals that have evolved quite seperately for many years. If you look inside any major service provider you will see that they have many hundreds of systems (often several thousand) running their business. Everything from the operations centric systems such as network, inventory and performance management systems, to a myriad of service management, customer care and billing systems. Also merging the networks themselves can have major challenges, particularly if there are complex network sharing deals at play.

The only way to successfully navigate your way through this labyrinth is to focus on the basics of what you want to achieve in the new merged entity - converged back-office systems with the duplicate systems phased out; converged processes and data so you can gain staffing economies of scale across everything from operations management to call centers and billing; converged service creation & delivery solutions, so you can continue to grow a unified portfolio of new services.

The TM Forum has been focused on helping our members solve this type of problem for the past decade. The TM Forum Applications Framework gives service providers an industry standard framework against which to catalogue and rationalise their profusion of systems & applications. The TM Forum Business Framework (eTOM) and Information Framework (SID) are the industry standard ways of structuring an operators processes and data. In an M&A scenario these provide a stable framework against which the merging companies can make mature decisions about how to merge processes and data models. Beyond these core framework, the TM Forum offers a wealth of solutions around effective management of service delivery platforms, revenue management & assurance, as well as benchmarking , which should be the starting point for all integration activities (measure the current state, make changes and then measure to see if you made things better!).

So my advice to any companies looking to merge is to invest alot of time looking at the details and challenges behind the processes, systems and data before taking the leap. The TM Forum can help!

LTE: Lets not repeat the sins of past generations

Martin Creaner — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:38:00 GMT

There are no new mistakes - just old ones that we make again and again. This truism applies to all aspects of life and business, and never more so than to the launch of a new mobile generation. It seems that everytime we begin the process of launching a new generation of mobile (1G to 2G; or 2G to 3G) we delete the painful memories of how we got it wrong the last time, and blindly repeat the usual mistakes. Lets try and break this cycle with LTE!

First of all lets talk about the easy bit of launching 4th generation mobile - the network. This is the bit that has absorbed billions of dollars of investment, has been standardised to the N^th degree, has been developed, designed and tested for large scale deployment. This is the bit that the whole industry focues on, and which causes the major media splashes when it is eventually switched on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that rolling out the next generation of network is not an achievement, but it is one part of a three part puzzle, that is pretty useless on it's own.

The next part of the puzzle are the handsets. Inevitably these will be late and limited in terms of volumes and variety. Apart from manfully accomodating voice and messaging, their first iterations will fail to exploit the potentials offered by the move to LTE. It will probably be as late as two years post the launch of LTE that advanced, attractive handsets will appear in volumes that can drive market success for LTE. There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation with the handsets (the manufacturers won't invest in them until there is a proven market), so it is understandably difficult to get around this issue.

The final piece of the puzzle is the software & systems that deliver the next generation of services and manages the complexity of 4th generation mobile. Without this LTE will bump along the ground as an expensive 3G replacement. Without the design and development of new services that take advantage of the capabilities of LTE, and their integration into the delivery and billing capabilities of the service provider, there will be no bonanza from LTE. Without investing in working out how to manage challenges such as the huge backhaul requirements of LTE, growth will be stiffled. These are the hot spot that the TM Forum is focusing on through a wide variety of collaborative activities around new service creation and the core network, service and information management challenges LTE presents.

So lets not commit the sins of our fathers and lets start investing time and money in working out what we are going to use the massive capabilities of LTE for, and how we are going to manage and monetize it. Without this investment we are in danger of creating a very expensive white elephant!

Cloud Computing: Taking an Holistic View

Martin Creaner — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:15:00 GMT

The speed at which Cloud computing has planted its feet firmly in the center stage of the IT and Communications world is quite interesting. It's not a technology play - in fact I would be hard pushed to identify a single piece of new technology that is fundamental to cloud. And unlike Twitter or Facebook it's not a social-psychology phenomenom in any real sense - there is no "man-in-the-street' movement that is driving the uptake or need for cloud computing. It is one of those rare beasts - a practical, common-sense driven initiative.

Putting it simply, cloud computing makes much more efficient use of resources. In the early stages these resources are essentially processing power and storage, but increasingly the focus of cloud will converge on efficient use of software resources from a bewildering array of sources. The concept of a user being able to gain access to and pay for these resources on a per-use basis makes great economic sense for everyone from the lone mobile game developer in his garage, to the uber-large scale financial institution. It also happens to be industry changing. Unless someone spots a fatal flaw with the concept, over the next ten years we will move from a predominantly distributed computing and storage world, to a centralised computing and storage world. Conspiracy theorists and thriller writers may make hay from this global IT shift, but I don't see fear stopping this happen. Major investment in new levels of security are inevitable, and I do predict that cloud's road to success will hit the odd pothole around the area of security, but I don't see this stopping the party.

What makes cloud so interesting is that every one of the global vertical industries (Telecoms, Financials, Retail, etc) has to have two conversations about the cloud - firstly how do we become a cloud user to enable more efficient operations; secondly, how do we leverage our existing platform assets to become a cloud provider. Telco's in particular are questioning how do they shift their own business models to allow them to emerge as one of the winners in the new cloud world. They are looking at everything from opening up their own data centers to host other third parties, to (more realistically I believe) opening up their own 'crown jewel' applications such as billing and service management applications.

So if you are not yet discussing cloud in your business, now is the time to start.

Grown-up discussions about Net Neutrality

Martin Creaner — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:51:00 GMT

The topic of Net Neutrality has waxed and waned over the past three or four years as more fashionable and sexier topics have dominated the media. But it has not gone away - nor can we expect it to. In truth Net Neutrality is a central issue for the future of communications. In its simplest form it is an argument about whether the people who provide and operate the networks should be able to charge differently depending on which type of service is consuming their network capacity. The Operators argue that unless they can do this they will not be able to justify more and more investment in bandwidth to meet the insatiable requirements of web based video. Net Neutralists argue that flat fee access for fixed bandwidth is what has enabled the net to grow, and to introduce significantly new business models will stiffle the innovation.

And this is not (as is often thought) a US-only issue. I noticed with interest this week that BT has waded into the discussion. The Financial Times has reported that BT is planning to stop the 'free ride' that video streaming sites are getting at their expense. This doesn't seem to be about stopping innovation but is rather the first step in a 'grown up' discussion that BT is trying to foster between themselves and the content providers on how to create a win-win. One such discussion seems to be already underway between BT and the BBC (the main culprit it seems in hogging the bandwidth) on how to cooperate in IPTV delivery via project Canvas. I suspect that many other such 'grown up' discussions are going to have to start taking place before the net neutrality issue can be resolved.

The Flat-Rate Paradox and the Search for New Business Models

Keith Willetts — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:28:00 GMT

Just when you thought it was safe to stream all the video you want and download all the huge files your heart desires, pay-as-you-go charging models are back stalking the land and pressurizing “all-you-can-eat” flat-rate plans.

In April, Time Warner started billing some customers based on how much bandwidth they used. As you can imagine, customers were unhappy when it was announced that the company would expand the trial run of this new billing system. The company relented, but not before saying it really has no choice and needs to come up with a new way of doing business because the current model simply isn’t viable.

Crocodile tears time? Well not really, but we do need to take a look at the paradox that has gotten cable, DSL and mobile broadband providers into this conundrum.

By offering a flat rate for all-you-can-eat data, providers are significantly lowering the barrier to entry for many customers who otherwise might not have signed up. This is especially true for today’s smartphones such as the iPhone. When people hear horror stories of bills for downloading applications and movies, they are very put off using the service. So flat-rate billing has been one of the keys to growth, especially for Apple’s App Store.

So service providers go the flat-rate route and build up their customer base. But here’s the paradox: more customers on your network downloading ever more data creates the need to invest in more backhaul or cell infrastructure at great cost to the operators. So for every new app on the App Store or every movie clip, the service providers get nothing but cost – the ‘over-the-top’ (OTT) provider gets the benefit. So service providers are entering a “screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” world where it’s becoming very hard to recoup these capital investments in network upgrades. This is the same paradox (with a good deal of regulatory messing too) that has slowed the move from copper to fiber on the world’s access networks.

It’s All about the Apps

So we have a position where all of the new value is being created by OTT players like Apple with none of it going to the underlying providers, be they cable, DSL or broadband. That’s at the heart of the net neutrality debate. But it’s clearly not sustainable if two parties are involved in providing a service but one gets all of the revenues and the other gets all of the costs.

It’s the same thing with mobile advertising. If the advertiser is getting money from a client to deliver mobile ads, what does the phone company get out of it? If all they get are more costs from more data going over their network, don’t expect them to get excited.

Let’s start with the customer who simply won’t put up with huge and unexpected data bills. A recent example that came up at Management World in Nice was a guy travelling abroad and using a neat mobile app to check in online with his airline - when the bill came in it cost the traveler $75 for the roaming charges to check in. Here’s a more personal example: in the first week of having my shiny new UK-based iPhone, I managed to run up over $100 in charges by downloading a few e-mails while on a trip to the U.S.

So good luck Time Warner, but in reality, I’m not sure that you can put the flat-rate genie back in the bottle. We also see mobile broadband providers rolling out bronze, silver, gold or platinum packages with differing data volumes and quality of service included with each, but that’s exactly what the customer, application, web and handset developers don’t want to see.

The Two-Sided Business Model

So what’s the answer? If flat-rate versus pay-as-you-go is an unresolved paradox, how can service providers share in the revenue they are enabling with content developers, application developers and the like?

At last month’s T8 World Summit, which ran alongside Management World in Nice, over 30 CxOs spent time discussing this business challenge. Service providers today are now in danger of falling quickly into the black hole of being only a bit carrier, but there’s still time to salvage their fate. What we were discussing was opening up new services, not aimed at end users this time but at other application and service providers who want to get access to customers and have a range of enabling services available to them. These range from simple transport and other basic services like cloud computing, authentication, security, billing, customer care, etc., all available on a virtual basis.

So instead of just a one-sided business model where you get revenue only from end user customers, the idea is to move to a two-sided business model where application or content vendors and other companies from verticals like government or healthcare supply revenue for the use of those enabling services.

Think of it this way: FedEx will get a parcel from point A to point B. If you also want them to handle the customs process, they’ll do that too for an additional fee. It’s up to you what you want them to do and what you’d like to do as the customer.

The best current example of this is Amazon, whose cloud computing model I’ve talked about before. Not only do they have a massive computing infrastructure for the delivery of goods to customers like you or me, they’ve also extended their internal trading platform to allow third parties to sell their own wares. And they offer a slew of value-added services on top of the basic platform, such as handling payment, delivery and more, allowing the business to decide what to pay Amazon for. They now make a great deal on their income from enabling these third-party traders to do business.

For a small merchant, dealing with Amazon is an easy decision because they are getting access to a global market and very sophisticated services using a single large infrastructure. But that analogy breaks down a bit with telecom and cable companies because they are very fragmented - you’d potentially be dealing with over 1,000 providers to cover the world.

This tells me there are three possible scenarios to all of this: First, it’ll never happen because it’s just too difficult. Second, it will happen because everyone will agree on a set of standards, so a two-sided business model could be ubiquitous. Or third, we’ll see the emergence of intermediaries who sit between the guys who provide the enabling services and the guys who want to use it.

Clearly you don’t have to be a phone company to provide this type of service, but it’s exactly the phone – and cable guys – that need to take a look at how Amazon or Google are leveraging their massive service infrastructures.

A senior telecom executive once said to me, “we had the equivalent of Google in our labs years before they got big”. Five years from now, it would be really easy to see the same missed opportunity for telecom and cable companies and instead of becoming key enablers of the digital economy, they were looking the wrong way and saw applications and ‘OTT’ service companies as the enemy rather than their best potential customers.

Amazon grasped that nettle when they opened up their platform to companies that competed with them at the retail level. But in doing so they not only tapped into wholly new revenues from merchants, they grew their own retail business too because the end customer saw the range of goods available on Amazon growing to nearly always have whatever they wanted – so they made Amazon their first choice for online shopping.

Phone companies and cable companies are really good at a lot of underpinning service issues. They were, after all, the very first ‘online’ service providers. But getting your head around being an enabler, means working closely with people you may regard as the competition at the retail level. Making a fundamental change to your business model is not easy if your company is run by accountants or committees and not charismatic leaders.

It’s not really a surprise that Amazon, Google and Apple all have strong and visionary leaders – anyone care to mention a similar name in telecom?

Data Migration in the Petabyte Age

Tony Sceales — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Volumes of data continue to grow rapidly - we now frequently talk in terms of Petabytes – AT&T transfers 16Pb of data through its network daily, while Google processes 20Pb of data per day. When such companies upgrade their systems, reorganize or acquire new companies, they face a new scale of problem from previous generations of enterprises. And it isn’t simply a volume problem, because the data they use to manage their operations is frequently inter-related and shared across both processes and applications. They may not even directly own such data – it may belong to a partner or supplier company, or to their customers.

Best practice in data migration used to be all about speed – how fast can I load the target system database to minimize disruption to business users? Simplistically we used to ask the business what application downtime they could tolerate, then analyze the data to be migrated and divide the time available by the volume. That gave us a target load rate per object, and we then set about designing a technical strategy to achieve that rate. That often meant taking some short cuts on integrity by dropping database indexes and data validation routines, and sorting incoming data to fit physical storage algorithms. A number of market products developed to achieve massively parallel processing to maximize the speeds such approaches could achieve.

Datamigrationpro has published an excellent article by Dylan Jones on the Load Rate Bottleneck http://datamigrationpro.squarespace.com/data-migration-articles/2008/4/16/how-to-avoid-a-data-migration-traffic-jam-the-load-rate-bott.html in which he explains the challenge posed by proprietary software applications requiring data to be loaded via a standard gateway or API (Application Programming Interface). Whilst this guarantees the integrity of the data being loaded, it does so at the expense of speed. That’s because of two major factors, namely the validation of the incoming data against existing data already in the system to avoid duplication and ensure required predecessors exist, and also the overhead of working at the application layer rather than directly into the database management software. Together these can slow load rates up by several orders of magnitude relative to direct database storage.

Modern enterprises are no longer prepared to take risks on the integrity of their data – personal penalties to Directors for failing to safeguard private and commercial data ensure this. Neither do they have the luxury of downtime to load data – they run 24x7 operations and there is barely time to change a fuse in the datacenter, let alone perform a complex upgrade or migration. It must follow that new approaches are needed to support real-time migration and allow this to happen in parallel with normal operations.

In designing such approaches we need to be cognizant that the migration process needs to include a strategy for accessing the data to be migrated – commonly from multiple source applications, correlating and cleansing this and maintaining explicit and centralized control and visibility throughout. What looks like a perfect strategy for loading data often conflicts directly with the optimal design for obtaining the source data. Add to that the reluctance most enterprises feel about touching the source applications to allow access to the data – not surprisingly given the great age and fragility of many systems, and a single-event migration starts to look like a weak solution for many projects.

In considering volume we also need to distinguish between standing data and transactional data – the former generally qualifies how the latter will be processed, will be much lower in volume and has a much longer lifespan. It is particularly important therefore to take a very critical view of what the organization actually needs to take forward into the next generation architecture. Far too often requirements state that all current and historical data must be migrated, resulting in months of additional work to massage ancient data or customizing an otherwise pristine target application to cope with very little real business value. Statutory requirements to maintain financial records over several years can often be met with sensible off-line or summary solutions.

How fast will 4G grow?

Martin Creaner — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:13:00 GMT

As anyone who regularly reads my blog will know I am a fan of the potential of LTE. In terms of speed of growth, my gut feel tells me that it will move on a much faster curve than 3G - but in reality it couldn't be much slower! A recent report by Pyramid research tells us that LTE will grow at around 400% between 2010 and 2014 - much faster than 3G. To date, 27 mobile operators worldwide have publicly committed to deploying LTE, with 12 of them expected to roll out commercial services in 2010 and the remainder during 2011 and 2012. This continues to be very aggressive.

How the TM Forum addresses the management and monetization challenges of LTE is rapidly moving up our agenda. We are just kicking off a group to address this topic and it is aiming to address topics such as

whether there are border cell issues in a multi-vendor network environment;
whether the fact that 4G/LTE pushes a lot intelligence and automonuy to the nodes, will present any special challenges to network management, especially during migration or when 2G/3G/LTE are all present in a single operators environment?
whether there are things that can be done now to make interaction with the legacy OSS/BSS infrastructure easier?

I suspect that the wide range of TM Forum network operators, network equipment vendors and software vendor will begin to line up to prioritize and address these issues.

Cool Stuff that drives Wireless Data

John Borden — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:04:00 GMT

I took a several-year-long nap in between the time I was doing Granite Systems and the time that I woke up and started working with Nakina. Somewhere in that interval cell sites stopped being fed by one or two T1/E1 lines, and started being fed by big fat optical pipes at OC-3 rates and up. This is good news for companies like Fibertower , since making adequate backhaul capacity available is going to be an ever greater challenge for wireless operators. I just saw a review of one of the gadgets that’s...(read more)

Emerging Markets: The View from Latin America

Monica Zlotogorski — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:41:00 GMT

As the economy globalizes and emerging markets increase their participation in the global economy (and their relevance in the communications, information and digital media industries), so does TM Forum’s member structureHistorically, TM Forum membership has drawn more heavily from North America and Western Europe, however membership from other markets, such as Asia and Latin America has been increasing. TM Forum has been taking important steps in order to better serve this growing presence in emerging markets and continues to be very committed to these regions in 2009 and beyond.

The Latin American market is of particular importance for TM Forum. Service provider membership in this region covers countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Here are just a few examples of TM Forum’s reach into this important part of the world. In October 2008, the Forum held a one-day summit at Futurecom in Brazil, which was tremendously popular.TM Forum produces an online newsletter in Spanish (Inside Latin America) and has the capability to deliver training courses in Spanish and Portuguese.

The most recent addition to TM Forum’s activity in Latin America is a series of upcoming one-day, country-specific and free of charge – Regional Spotlights – an opportunity for TM Forum members and non-members to come together to discuss business issues affecting digital media and communication services in their region, share successful solutions and strategies and network with their peers.

The Regional Spotlight events will come to São Paulo, Brazil on May 25 and, for the first time in TM Forum’s history, Buenos Aires, Argentina on June 22.

The Brazilian and Argentinean Markets At-a-Glance

The news is full of stories about the financial crisis and recession. But each market has shown a slightly different scenario. Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, may have reached the bottom and has started to rebound, despite the fact that the government has cut its growth forecast for this year from 2 percent to 1.2 percent. Although Brazil's economy could see a contraction in its GDP this year, its growth is expected to return at around 3 percent in 2010.

Brazil had 41.3 million fixed lines (penetration rate of 21.7 per 100 inhabitants), 150.6 million mobile phones (penetration rate of 78.1 per 100 inhabitants) and 10 million broadband connections and 53.9 million Internet users in 2008. Brazil is between the top 5 main cellular markets in the word, behind China, the U.S., India and Russia, and bigger than Japan. Brazil represents 33.5 percent of Latin America’s mobile market, 41.4 percent of Internet users and 40.6 percent of broadband subscribers.

Argentina, Latin America's third largest economy, has slowed sharply after 6 consecutive years of at least 7 percent annual growth. But according to recently released statistics, Argentina's economy grew at 2.6 percent in February compared with the same month last year, which is above the 2 percent median forecast. Argentina had 46.509 million mobile phones in 2008 (penetration rate stands at 117 percent, out of which 89.6 percent are prepaid) and 9.015 million fixed lines (penetration rate is 22.7 percent).

Benchmarking Comes off the Bench

Martin Creaner — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:19:00 GMT

When you hear the term “benchmarking” you might think about a row of servers or other computer hardware being pitted against each other to see which processor is fastest. But instead of just determining who’s the best and greatest, benchmarking goes way beyond that to give you the means for improving business effectiveness through critical analysis of data.

If you look specifically at the communications industry, today more than ever service providers can’t take anything for granted. Even if you’ve got the biggest market share, we all know how things can change in a heartbeat, and before you know it you can find yourself at the bottom of the heap.

Business benchmarking is just one tool in the arsenal for providers interested in maintaining profitability, hanging onto customers and pushing forward with new services and initiatives, but it takes on a whole new angle in today’s economic climate.

TM Forum launched our Business Benchmarking program about five years ago, and honestly we thought it would be an immediate success in the industry. But what we hadn’t realized is even with a great idea like benchmarking for service providers, it’s one of those things where “success breeds success” and it gradually builds on itself year after year.

So in our first year of running the program, we had convinced 10 or so service providers to put their data in, but it was an uphill battle. We had to explain to each new provider the concept of benchmarking, what we are trying to achieve, and why they needed to part of it.

But as anyone who’s been in this business for a while knows, in communications everyone loves to follow the leader, and no one likes being too far out on a limb. So it took a while to ramp up on our service provider participation. But ramp up it has. By our third year of doing benchmarking studies, we had about 40 providers participating, and in the past 12 months we’ve gone from 40 to well over 100.

Studying the Industry
Each year we run a number of different benchmarking studies, with varying levels of participation. I’d say 15 to 20 providers for a single study is a great number, but some studies are seeing 30 or 40 participants.

Our topics run the gamut, so there’s going to be something of interest to just about anyone. We have studies on broadband that delve into general business performance and more specialized areas like order-to-cash. We also do mobile studies that cover areas like mobile broadband and mobile business performance. We also look at high-speed business services, which study provisioning of IP services and IP network performance. Also on the list are areas under revenue management, such as billing performance and revenue assurance.

Now, I know as well as anyone that there are companies out there that do commercial benchmarking for service providers, but often the cost to participate in one of those endeavors can run into the millions of dollars. Our cost? Absolutely nothing to TM Forum’s service provider members. I’d say the breadth of our program rivals and probably exceeds the commercial efforts, and that’s what makes it such a valuable member benefit to providers.

It’s clear we’ve finally achieved critical mass, and that a high level of participation only adds more credibility to the benchmarking results. Speaking of which, our reports are tailored for each provider, showing where they fall among all providers in the survey. In our secure database, we can also drill down and show providers how they rank compared to other operators of their size and within the same geography. We can basically slice and dice the data any which way you can think of to give meaningful results to all participants - all the while protecting the service provider’s identity.

It should go without saying that anonymity is assured with all studies since that’s the only way providers will be willing to part with their sensitive details. And while vendors and system integrators can purchase subscriptions to our benchmarking data, they can only see general distributions and details. They never see any information that would lead to attribution.

Benchmarking and Standards: Synergy in Action
Besides giving providers a clear understanding of how they stack up against their peers and competitors, our benchmarking program goes even further and has actually evolved to a point where it goes beyond pure data collection and analysis. Our program is now an entry and exit point for a lot of the technical work that goes on within TM Forum.

What we’ve traditionally done is define key measurement points and talk about best practices when it came to a particular standards area. But because our benchmarking program is becoming so popular, it’s actually changing where we place our priorities. For example, one of our technical programs may help define essential metrics for the benchmarking program, so it can run a real live study as defined by our Collaboration Program. Then the results of that study can feed into driving our collaborative work and areas where best practices need to be defined.

We can then rerun the benchmark against the same metrics and see how we’re improving and how service providers are improving against those key metrics. By bringing two key areas together – benchmarking and standards – TM Forum is in a unique position to provide this important leadership to the communications industry.

By broadening the reach of benchmarking, everyone succeeds in the end. And during slower markets, anything we can do to improve business processes and efficiencies for service providers will go a long way toward future achievements.