Retail, wholesale, or both? - Part 2

Last week, we explored 2 themes in the retail/wholesale strategy discussion, which were 1) distribution, and 2) enabling services.   We continue the exploration today focusing on enabling services.

On a brief side road, I wanted to share my thanks and enthusiasm for those members and guests who attended Management World 2010 in Nice this week.  Despite the ash cloud scare on Monday in the UK and Netherlands, we had the best event ever in Nice with over 3,000 attendees.  What made it such a great event for me was the sense that industry and TM Forum membership is significantly expanding its focus beyond voice and data services, and OSS/BSS, into the broader digital services world including cloud and enabling services.  More attendees and members are realizing the vital role that true transformation plays in multiple dimensions inside Service Providers and partners.  I especially valued the perspectives shared at the “Future Shock” Executive Roundtable and “Growth through Innovative Services” conference summit.  If you missed the event, you can now view the keynote videos on the tmforum.org website.

During the Future Shock roundtable in Nice, Ovum’s Eden Zoller presented a great perspective on the topic of my blog -- a SMART or lean operator strategy.  Eden labeled this approaching corporate strategy question and answer as a “fork in the road”.  My interpretation of this perspective was that SMART strategy had retail affinity and lean strategy had wholesale affinity.   In both strategies however, the product development and offering of enabler services was an advised part of the strategic roadmap—sort of a “no regrets” strategy for both retail and the “new wholesale” in my view.   Both strategies will need enablers—the SMART operator especially to partner with third-party innovation.  But, yet the new wholesale strategy will heavily include enablers as value-added services to volume connectivity solutions.

In other retail distribution and SMART strategy news, Google announced its TV strategy this week, and it includes a heavy orientation towards third-party developers in addition to the typical and expected device makers (Sony, Logitech, etc.).  I look forward to reading more about it, and its content metadata strategies.