Which side are you on?

It sometimes seems unnatural as a CTO to be hawking the wares of what is otherwise a Marketing concern.  But whilst instinctively clutching to the "build it and they will come" theory, I cannot ignore the "give them what they want" notion.

You may be asking yourselves right about now "why do I care about this prattle"?

Because it is the intersection of these views that lie at the heart of the future of the CSP industry. 

(For those die hard EPM fans, I will revisit just what EPM comprises in future blogs; but for now I want to spend just a little more time on why we care about it in the first place!)

So let's break it down.

In the "build it and they will come" camp, traditional service providers have spent decades investing in the network.  Over time, they have discovered how to introduce all sorts of clever capabilities (i.e., services) on top of the network infrastructure.  Development of capabilities has largely been driven by inventive minds (and a few accidents) discovering new technologies and new ways of using it. 

Nothing wrong so far...

Along comes the boom of content.  More and more capabilities (i.e., application services) being developed outside the confines of the telco's own SDLC, but still exploiting the power of the network. 

Still looking good...

Then the "give them what they want" guys show up.  In response to competitive and cost pressures, someone has the responsibility of exploiting all the brilliant development work done to date in order to retain customers and drive up ARPU.

Wait for it...

So they have a look into their portfolio to see what options they have.

Um, portfolio?  What portfolio?...And POW!

The "give them what they want" guys discover they don't know what they have to give because there is no portfolio.  And therein lays the fundamental problem.  It is almost impossible to get a complete inventory of what is available because it does not exist.  Sure, you can query the billing system and get a view of the existing service plans and promotions; you can query the CRM system and get a view of the offers currently up for sale; you can query the network inventory and provisioning systems to get a view of what services are available in the network.

But there is nothing you can query and, more importantly, use to manage all the elements at your disposal (including that 3^rd party content) to assemble or reassemble and launch a product in your portfolio.

And this is where I come back to my CTO roots.  There are millions of pieces of data spread across the B/OSS that only when assembled together in a rational, componentized fashion do they become a portfolio.  Today, the lack of such a capability is not a business stopper.  But it is a business crippler.  And increasingly so as the number and nature and source of services continue to increase.  You cannot control or exploit what you cannot see. 

So which side are you on - "build it and they will come" or "give them what they want"? 

In the spirit of love, peace and harmony, I hope the answer is both!