Opportunities Abound – If You Know Where to Look

Things may be bad all over, but service providers still have to focus on what’s coming down the road.

We’ve established that things are bad everywhere and across all industries. That’s not news to anyone, and while we have created a number of unique new financial challenges, we still have to focus on the same management problems and challenges we were dealing with 12 months ago.

But while the world is in a financial freefall, and we haven’t quite hit bottom yet, I would venture to say things are a bit more predictable today than just a few months ago. Basically, everybody knows things are bad, and everybody has adjusted to the fact that things are bad.

Once you’ve recited that mantra a few times and believe it, you can move on and actually start planning for the future again, because even with a bleak economic picture, the world has not ground to a halt.

Quite the contrary, I’m seeing a number of things looming on the horizon that are moving ahead - recession or no.

New Technology, New Opportunities

One of the technology areas that is accelerating through this downturn is Long Term Evolution (LTE), the fourth generation mobile network. While the whole world is clinging tightly to its wallets, auctions are underway for 4G licenses, vendors are demonstrating their solutions, and contracts are being awarded.  Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are the early winners, but there is a long race to run to see who will succeed in the infrastructure market.

As this market moves forward, everyone is aware that the 4G management challenges are going to be quite significant – whether it is in the management of the emerging networks or the more subtle challenges of managing the emerging business models that 4G makes possible. TM Forum is investigating these challenges and expects to be at the forefront of 4G business management.

Another really hot topic coming down the pike is cloud computing, which depending on how you look at it has either been around for 30 years or is the next big thing. The way I view cloud computing is it’s all about utilizing a range of disparate services that are available in the cloud and putting them together in a clever way to create new services.

The challenge of syndicating services from the cloud has been a key focus of TM Forum’s collaborative activities for the past few years – albeit under a different name. Our work on developing the service delivery framework (SDF) neatly fits in with the idea of cloud computing. The work of IPsphere, which came under the auspices of TM Forum last year, is hugely relevant to the syndication of cloud-based services, as is the work we are doing in aligning our core frameworks to SOA.

In addition to these technologies, there’s a whole plethora of content-based services looming as well, so again we see evidence that the pace of change is not slowing down.

From a TM Forum point of view, we’re focusing on topics like cloud computing and LTE and how we can take our existing knowledge and programs and adapt them toward addressing the management of these and other new technologies. This is a major theme for us in the next year.

Keep Your Eye on the Prize

So, if you can shift your mindset out of how tough the recession is, you will be able to see that there is a wealth of new opportunities just around the corner. That’s the opportunity, but the stick is there also.  If you don’t start focusing on the opportunities now, they are going to come and bite you in 12 months.

You can’t just stand still, like a deer caught in headlights, and be paralyzed by the shock of the recession.  If anything, we’re moving into a ‘put up or shut up’ phase where winners and losers will be quickly determined.  We’re hurtling towards judgment day on things that have been in the pipeline for a while, and decisions need to be made. And for other opportunities that are just becoming visible, now’s the time to focus on them.  .

LTE is probably the best example of this dynamic. A technology like this can be a great threat to the market leaders, and can prove to be the saving grace of those that are struggling. If you go back in time to 1G analog mobile networks, Motorola was the completely dominant player. As the mobile world shifted to 2G digital networks, Motorola took its eye off the ball and failed to rapidly address the 2G opportunity. As we moved to 3G, it just got worse.

4G will be a totally different game and become the catalyst for market leaders to fall back and market laggards to take off.  Of course some of these market laggards will be the new generation of suppliers that cut their teeth on 2.5G and 3G such as Huawei and ZTE.

But one thing is crystal clear: companies have to choose right in every one of the upcoming forks in the road. There is no room for missteps. And while there will be an ongoing focus on cost containment and reduction, there’s still the urgent need to invest in new opportunities. As the old saying goes, ‘the successful man buys when everyone else is selling and sells when everyone else is buying’.