I find with every passing year, I like the industry more.

That may “fly in the face” of what should be the norm to a sometimes overworked and frequently stressed communications professional, but I stand by those words. As of late, I have been almost giddy with excitement (ok so I obviously don’t have enough going on in my life…) at the advancement of standards I see with the MSO and cable vendors. It seems in years past they would worry about new services at the abandonment of operational efficiency or the reverse, cutting and streamlining operational costs and processes at the expense of offering new “stuff” to consumers. In the things I have been observing at conferences, meetings, and one-on-ones with MSOs, I am seeing a real concern for the care that new services to launch as well as some cool visionary “stuff” coming out of the front office. I think that really hit home with me as I attended sessions and had meetings at the Management World Show in Nice last week.

It ended up, in a strange twist of unfortunate fate, that the time frame for the MW show was in direct conflict with the Cable Show that took place in New Orleans. I thought it would spell doom for any MSO and associated vendor attendance I could possible dream about for the show in Nice; it ended up being not at all the case. Although there are some key associates that will be missed due to the conflict, I was pleased to see the willingness on the part of many of the MSOs to send resources to both events. I would think that it would fall down the lines of technical versus strategic, but that would not seem to be the case.. I saw attendees from both sides of the organization, which supports my notion that it looks a little like the two neighbors have finally shaken  hands over the fence.

I met with 10 distinct MSOs interested in pursuing standards and best practices in the area of business process, data modeling, service delivery, operational architecture, and the drawing of business models and mapping to further define and expand services.  I heard eight different case studies with leading MSOs spoke by executive members about how standards and process mapping using tools like TM Forum standards change their operations and network departments and allowed for cost savings and acceleration of new services.

In the light of gloom and doom for several global financial markets, uncertainty in consumer confidence, and huge investment and skeptical analysts about potentially “risky” R & D, and massive investment in network upgrades, it is nice to see things like billing, revenue assurance, usage efficiency, fallout management, and provisioning metrics making it into the executive offices and getting the “front office” attention it deserves.

I love this industry more all the time…..