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assured the data is accurate? Will Service Providers let potential embarrassments be discovered by competitors and then exploited? This Advisory meeting was clearly meant to advise the advisory board and not to take input from the advisory board. All that had been solicited earlier. Questions were severely limited and orchestrated by the Chairman who picked who he wished to hear from. There were no spontaneous outbreaks from this audience – the groups which should be the most strident and controversial, especially behind closed doors.
The Keynotes
Jim Warner hosted the keynotes yet again (his retirement was short lived), following each podium presentation with an armchair interview of each keynote speaker. The questions were obviously rehearsed, providing the feel of an interactive session while avoiding audience questions. Keith Cambron, CEO of AT&T Labs, Mark Lukasiewitcz, VP NBC Digital Media at NBC News (whose news channel web pages get 1 Billion hits a month), Philip Dance CIO for Technology, BT Group, and Keith Willetts, TMF Chairman and industry consultant spoke as keynotes Tuesday morning.
NBC’s Lukasiewitcz gave an entertaining talk that said “the story is the important thing, not the channel,” which reminds us of “it’s the customer stupid”. He was invited as part of the TMF Board’s targeting of media producers in the membership drive. It was obvious Lukasiewitcz did not know much about the TMF yet equally obvious the TMF must listen to his message (or get to the technical infrastructure staff at NBC), if their memberships drive is to be successful.
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"the story is the important thing, not the channel,” which reminds us of “it’s the customer stupid" |
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Cambron indicated AT&T and had made great strides in network management but were still lacking in new service management technology. He concludes that “I do not see the progress in software development that we see in networks.I have an ”
Note that two speakers took pains to comment on the lack of progress in software development. This is surely still the biggest challenge facing the industry and one that the TMF must continue to attempt to solve. I worry that the old main TMF product of interoperable agreements and the newer product, reference software, is taking 2nd place to marketing the TMF itself.
Re-engineering OSS & BSS in the Real World
The most heralded re-engineering project today is the BT 21C project. We were given a very entertaining insider’s view into the BT 21C project with a “How I did it” keynote by Philip Dance. Phil explained his decision making process and why BT made the choices they did in structuring the 21C project: however, his “Put together for our customers and not for ourselves”, sounded weak when the early 21C phases all deal with core network consolidation. He attributed a large degree of their success to their management systems and rapid network deployment of BT’s “automated test systems”. This is a key insight and not coincidentally was among the first areas MCI applied automation designs in the late 1990’s. However, as an analyst, I must point out that it is way too early for BT to be claiming that 21C is a success. BT’s 21C architecture is based on a web services
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Keith Cambron, CEO of AT&T Labs gave a very measured and sober assessment of the technical problems facing Service Providers and AT&T’s approach to solving them (I distinguish pre-merger company as AT&T and post merger as AT&T). Paraphrasing him, “Traditional/Existing management systems are not sufficient to manage the converged networks which are being deployed,” and “Older systems simply cannot scale.” Noteworthy was an observation that great strides had been made in network management but security management and service management still needed significant effort. “I do not see the progress in software development”, he said. It was spoken as a challenge but I must take it also as a critique. We have known what to do for nearly a decade but are still haggling about how.
While I did not see the brilliant flashes of insight and revolutionary progress evident in the old AT&T’s web services SOA architecture (turns out they were in a later technical track presentation), nevertheless Cambron showed he did understand the central issues and claimed to be systematically solving them. They are still embarked on a program of NOC consolidation for efficiency. [An approach pioneered by Mike Lawrey of Telstra.] That NOC consolidation leads to improved efficiency and customer satisfaction is an assumption I question and which should be put to the test in the Benchmarking program.
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implementation of NGOSS principles accompanied by some OSS/J interfaces.
Dance said 14 platforms were involved in delivering 160 ensemble services based on the eTOM mappings. While we winced when he used the “lego building block analogy”, we applauded his reference to reusable component services being the foundation of all OSS/BSS design in 21C. (Again, this was followed up by detailed technical presentations in the later conference tracks.)
BT’s surprise TMF announcement was that they will be providing consulting services to help other service providers transform their networks. This is a logical outcome of the “follow me” trend we have written about previously that is sweeping the strategic planning community.
There is no doubt BT has undertaken a massive commitment and preliminary results are being delivered.
However, the 21C project is transforming the “easy part”. The underlying network and network management processes first and mostly just to deliver heritage household and business services. IPTV is the first of their new services and this, so far, has been delivered only to one community, off the track in Cardiff, Wales.
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