What Happens When the Telco World & the IP World Collide? (Mu Dynamics blog)
by Dave Kresse on 23 May 2008 - 12:04:25 PM
I have been working with Telco’s for more than ten years and
have watched with great interest as the industry’s revenue-base has evolved to
IP based services. Part of this interest
comes from being your average consumer and knowing that the flexibility of IP
is going to enable my network operators to roll out new, cool services rapidly
and at a reasonable cost. If you are
like me, you are inundated with competing offers from competing operators. Outside of having to listen to all the commercials,
this type of competition is great for you and me. But, what about the operator’s bottom line?
A bigger part of the interest comes from the collision of
norms happening right now within these organizations. The collision is between those who grew up in
the Telco business and those who grew up in the world of IP. At the heart
of the conflict is the issue of reliability, availability, and security of end
user services. This is also precisely
where Mu Dynamics adds its value.
For people who have gone up through the ranks of Telco’s,
the idea of a service being up and available 24/7 is in their DNA. There are numerous processes in place and
literally thousands of people whose sole job within large network operators is
to ensure that a service will be reliable, available, and secure upon
deployment, upgrade or modification of any kind. What more and more Telco people are realizing
is that their world has changed dramatically.
The solid rock of RAS they've stood on for years has literally
crumbled into small IP pieces under their feet. IP
services offer great promise in terms of flexibility and I have no doubt they
are here to stay. However, next to the
bedrock of proprietary, isolated infrastructure, operator veterans now find
themselves on thin and fragile ice. IP
services are inherently fragile and complex, and the processes SP’s are using
today do not adequately address their challenges. They know they can not compromise on service
reliability and availability, so they need new solutions to address this
challenge. Working with Telco veterans
to solve this challenge and eliminate costly downtime and customer churn is Mu’s
business.
Netheads or the professionals who have gone up through the
ranks of IP have a different challenge.
IP veterans understand the complex and fragile nature of IP and have
learned to live with service quirkiness and application unpredictability as a
necessary tradeoff in order to take advantage of the flexibility. What more and more IP people are realizing is
that their world has changed. Increased
latency or even downtime used to be acceptable.
However, as highly latency sensitive services with high availability
demands have moved to IP, the rules have changed. End users will no longer tolerate issues of
reliability or availability. End users
don’t care about the challenges associated with IP – they just want their
service to work and they will leave their provider if they don’t get it. IP veterans realize that they need to develop
processes and find new solutions in order to ensure much higher reliability,
availability, and security of their IP services. Working with IP veterans to solve this
challenge is also Mu’s business.
The traditional Telco world and the IP world continue to
collide in companies around the globe.
Each world is waking up to the requirements and realities of the
other. The good news from all of the
conversations I have with network operators is that both groups are embracing the
challenges in front of them to bolster their own revenue growth and customer
profitability. At Mu, we thrive on
making them ALL successful.
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