Service Creation: It takes a community

Many well-intended initiatives launched last summer at Supercomm fell victim to the new telecom economy. With the addition of British Telecommunications and Yipes Enterprise Services to its membership this week, the Service Creation Community declared it is not one of them.

“I had expected to hit the ground running after Supercomm and that we would get things done quickly,” said Craig Forbes, vice president of strategic initiatives at net.com and interim chairman of the SCC. “It has taken a little longer, but this announcement highlights that we have turned a corner.”

The SCC also named Association Management Solutions (AMS) as the organization’s management company. AMS will help the SCC establish its bylaws, manage anti-trust regulations and manage intellectual property.

“They will make sure we have the organization set up so it can function legally, successfully and long term,” Forbes said.

The SCC was launched last June by founding members Accenture, AC Telecommunications, HP, Microsoft, net.com, Oracle, Paradyne and Siemens ICN. It currently has aboutembers. The SCC’s aim is to promote collaboration and interoperability among suppliers in order to generate the creation of meaningful services more quickly and to create a demand for the members’ products.

Getting formal service provider input will be critical to the SCC’s success. BellSouth provided input at the time of the SCC’s launch and the organization has received input from SBC as well, however neither company has yet joined officially.

“The work we are doing in the SCC is very synergistic with what is going on in the U.S. RBOC’s,” Forbes said.

That is in part what attracted BT to the organization, said David Hook, head of broadband service for BT’s retail group. “It is an opportunity to share our vision and knowledge as well as to learn and understand the market drivers and customer requirements emerging out of the U.S. and discuss how they fit within the European and UK markets,” he said.

BT and other service providers will help the SCC through its next goal, which is to develop pilot programs and associated business cases along with their return-on-investment analysis. The SCC expects to have an approved pilot program within the next couple of months.

“We are making sure when we talk to service providers about pilots that we not only talk about features and whiz-bang capabilities, but that we talk about it in the context of real business value,” Forbes said.

BT’s Hook said it is too early to pick a particular project to pilot, but that he expects a mixture of successful programs centered around content and its delivery. “We are embracing the opportunities that the growth in content availability is bringing to the marketplace,” he said.

Hook’s particular area of focus is in enablers of broadband services such as digital rights management, payment systems and authentication. While Hook is currently working for the retail branch of BT, the wholesale part of the business has been deeply involved with the SCC.

The role of service providers in the SCC is key to the success of the organization say both Hook and Forbes. “Without input from the service providers who are closest to the customer requirements, it would be an interesting lobby group, but it would lack direction and focus,” Hook said.

The SCC hopes to announce new service provider members at its next meeting in February.