Outcome of a back-office renovation

Telcordia Technologies publicly affirmed its intentions to reinvent itself at a media and analyst event in New York yesterday. The customer- and partner-studded affair marked the formal introduction of the company’s new Elementive product brand and marketing campaign. For Telcordia, it essentially was a company re-launch and the culmination of a strategic restructuring spearheaded by CEO Matt Desch, who joined the company in July 2002. (For an in-depth look at the company’s transformation, see Bellcore 3.0 in the September 22 issue of Telephony.)

With yesterday’s event—which followed a similar gathering for European media and analysts the company held in London last week as part of its stronger, new push into global markets—Telcordia provided early proof that its stated intentions to become more open and more welcoming of other software developers were not just lip service. The gathering featured several developer partners, as well as representatives from a few North American service provider customers.

Desch and other Telcordia executives shared the dais with management from IBM, Micromuse, Virgin Mobile USA and Telus, and the company also announced new partnerships with CoManage, ConceptWave, Dimension Data and Sheer Networks. Telcordia also acknowledged existing partnerships with other companies, including Atreus, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Granite Systems, IBM, JacobsRimell and Openet. “I’ve been really trying to make sure we aren’t insular about what else is out there,” Desch said.

Telcordia’s approach certainly seems to have gained the approval of the carriers represented at the event. Mike Parks, chief information officer for Virgin Mobile USA, gave glowing reviews of the speed and efficiency with which Telcordia’s platforms helped the company become the country’s first mobile virtual network operator. Owen Wiberg, vice president of business transformation for Canadian carrier Telus, was even more fervent about the company’s new openness and strategy: “I’ve experienced the new Telcordia,” Wiberg said, “and I like what I’ve seen.”

Telcordia also used the event to stress its new focus on markets like wireless and cable networks--areas where the vendor has not had much presence in the past--and its commitment to developing software that can support carriers’ efforts to launch next-generation services. The company’s challenge in reintroducing itself, however, is to make sure it doesn’t alienate its traditional RBOC customer base in the process. As Telephony’s September 22 profile of the company reports, one of the changes Desch made was to reduce annual licensing fees for systems already embedded in incumbent networks, ostensibly to both seal the loyalty of those customers and entice them to direct more spending to new platforms. 

As for the Elementive brand, Ragui Kamel, group president of New Generation Systems at Telcordia, compared the concept to the periodic table of the elements: The idea, he said, is to provide pre-integrated, standards-based solutions that can be fused in various combinations with one another—and with partners’ systems—to provide adaptable, cost-effective software platforms for service providers. To that end, the presentation area at the event was adorned with large blocks featuring an “e” logo that looks like an abbreviation on the periodic table, as well as blocks with phonetic spellings of the word Elementive. Kamel also pointed out that the word—which the company is using to refer to both its product portfolio and its overall new approach to the marketplace—is a marketing creation of Telcordia.

“Those of you who play Scrabble, don’t use it,” Kamel said. “We made it up.” 

E-mail me at jmeyers@primediabusiness.com.