It might surprise you to hear that many people arrived to day two of the ETIS Community Gathering 2013 in a rather tired or otherwise hung over state. While nobody would position Riga as the Las Vegas of the Baltics (would they?) the city provided plenty of opportunities for operators to share information and insights well after the dinner ended. At least, that’s what I heard: late night conference calls and jetlag conspired to put me back in my room right after dinner. Honestly.
Against this backdrop, our presentation on Friday morning needed to be suitably relevant, technical and, most important, engaging. Titled, “The Innovation Imperative: Why Innovation Matters More Than Ever and What It Means for Operations and Billing Infrastructures,” you can download a copy here.
One part of the core message was similar to our presentation from the day before: operations and billing infrastructures are becoming more complex, particularly as they form a critical role in operator innovation and service initiatives. The second core message, however, focused on a need for flexibility in OSS/BSS infrastructures. This message begins with a reminder of the diversity of new service models operators are looking at: homegrown applications, zero-rating schemes, WiFi partnerships, OTT partnerships, content bundles, 4G-specific offers, cloud services, ad-funded services, mobile payments, etc. It then leads into a discussion of the various service monetization models in play: customer acquisition, customer retention, direct, freemium, revenue sharing, etc. The implications are clear: supporting this service and monetization diversity – the partnership demands, the service creation demands, the revenue management demands – will require new OSS/BSS flexibility along with architectures that can support new (unprecedented) transaction scale.
No early-morning presentation is complete without a video. More than being the Youtube hit of the moment, however, there is something to learn from, “What Does the Fox Say?”
When the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis put the song and video together, they had no plans for it to become a hit. They had no idea it would score more than 130 million views. They intended for it to be a flop – that what the joke they were intending. Against all of their expectations, they ended up with a major international hit.
Operators might not be able to lend any insights on what sort of noise a fox makes, but they face a similar situation to Ylvis; they too, have no idea of what may be successful tomorrow. For the most part, they understand that a search for the next “killer app” is going to fail. The need for OSS/BSS scale and flexibility goes hand in hand with this reality.
Summary Bullets:
- ETIS’ Community Gathering 2013 highlights that the fundamental changes telcos are dealing with in their businesses are the same ones impacting their IT and BSS/OSS strategies
- The importance of OSS/BSS to evolving telco services and businesses has grown its profile within the service provider
- At the same time, this importance raises the stakes around OSS/BSS procurement and vendor selection decisions