DISNEY CIO OFFERS BRIEF RELIEF FOR BACK-TO-REALITY IEC SHOW

Shell-shocked survivors of the telecom industry were briefly roused from their doldrums at last week's IEC conference in Orlando by a Disney executive who filled their minds with a familiar and dangerous refrain: fantasy is real and reality is fantastic.

Disney CIO Roger Barry talked to attendees at the combined IN/IP World Forum and OSS Summit about the wonders his company had created using gigabit Ethernet, dense wave division multiplexing, pervasive computing, the wireless intelligent network and 802.11. He talked about the importance of the back office and customer relationship management, although he called it “creating customer magic.” And for a moment, everyone believed again.

Barry told the crowd of 300 to 500 that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” That's when reality set in.

The prevailing sentiment at both conferences was that the technology needed to take telecom where it needs to go, which is to long-term profitability, was neither sufficiently advanced nor magic. “The real world is about taking the cost out of the network,” said David Flessas, Sprint's vice president of network operations.

There was no dearth of ideas about what it would take to do that. Through presentations focused on “lean thinking” and “doing more with less,” industry experts grappled with the concepts of proactive customer-oriented support systems, tiered service quality management, the value of service bundling and managing hybrid networks. There were also sobering discussions about the next generation network ultimately becoming just an overlay to the TDM network and of ending the quest for new services, which some said don't exist.

As Flessas asked, “There isn't a lot going on in the next generation network, so do we really need a next generation OSS?”

Except for Netifice Chief Information Officer Eric Nelson, who said, “Focusing on the economic return of OSS completely misses the point,” most speakers felt OSS could be the primary driver for cost containment — just not, perhaps, the OSSs available today.

For those with the right solutions, the future looks bright. “The mid-'90s, save-the-world OSS projects died of excessive cost and excessive ambition,” said Larry Goldman, senior analyst at RHK. “However, through 2005 the market will be driven by a more rational model to operate profitably. It should be a great opportunity for OSS.”

With no new services on the horizon, Spirent Communications has re-energized its focus on helping carriers sell the quality of existing services. “Tiered guaranteed service levels are the new business model for growth and profit,” said James Schleckser, president of Spirent's service assurance division.

Schleckser said most attendees would retire long before today's network elements are out of the network, a sentiment echoed throughout the conference as people returned to thinking about the importance of supporting the legacy network.

Coining a new phrase for the legacy network, Patrick Kiernan, director of service assurance strategy for Spirent said, “If you build an OSS that can't manage your heritage network, all you have are interoperability problems.”

The same sentiment pervaded on the IN/IP side of the conference, where managing the core network took precedence. “Applications are not predictable so the core has to be,” said John Montross, Sprint's vice president of network services. The core was not only predictable, but by virtue of its near five-nines reliability, was ready for convergence, he added.

GoBeam Executive Vice President Jeff Stern agreed, saying his company assumes the reliability of the network core as it sells managed services for the likes of Verizon Communications.

However, newfangled services are another matter. “IP services are a tough sell in today's market,” said Rick Gentner, vice president of enhanced services for iBasis, which has tried three times to sell unified communications, and even made two acquisitions to do so. “We finally figured out there was no market.”