Letter from the Editor

By: Tim Young

"A força sem a destreza é uma simples massa.”
(“Strength without agility is simply mass.")
  -  Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Maybe it’s a by-product of growing up in a blue-collar family. Maybe it’s too many Rocky movies. (Rocky III has always been my favorite. (I know the original is a classic, but as opponents go, Carl Weathers is no Mr. T.) Maybe it’s just too many helpings of the American mythos, captured most recently in Broadway smash Hamilton:

“How does a ragtag volunteer army in need of a shower
Somehow defeat a global superpower?
How do we emerge victorious from the quagmire?
Leave the battlefield waving Betsy Ross’ flag higher?”

(Spoiler altert: they had help from the French.)

No matter what the root cause is, I just can’t get enough of the good old-fashioned underdog story. Pluck overcomes might. David fells Goliath. Rudy gets hoisted on his teammates’ shoulders. Frodo and Samwise destroy the ring.

Trouble is, in the modern communications, media and entertainment landscape, it’s hard to identify the underdog. Is it the once-untouchable ILEC, beset on all sides by new competition? The optimistic upstart with the disruptive business model? The savvy consumer, hell-bent on finding an end-run around customer service blunders and historically limited service options? The content producer? The device manufacturer? The app developer?

The truth is, it doesn’t matter who I or anyone else may be rooting for. Victory belongs to the player who can combine strength with agility to master new opportunities and confront new challenges. Force alone will not prevail. Agility matters.

This issue of Pipeline is dedicated to the agile operator. We’ll check out how carriers are now embracing over-the-top threats these days, explore the latest in mobile ecosystems, discuss machine learning and meta-clouds, and talk about how open source solutions are making an impact. We’ll hear from Vodafone on building agile organizations and examine how the gap between virtual and physical infrastructure is being bridged. We’ll also talk about agile language partners and ways to reduce time-to-market. All that plus the latest in news and opinion in the integrated communications and entertainment technology space.

 Enjoy, 

Tim Young
Editor-in-Chief