America the inscrutable

Borrowing from Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' 2004 stump speech, it is starting to look like we have two Americas--not one.

Forgetting for the moment that the term "America" does not describe the U.S. alone, the truth is, there has never been a single America. America has always been plural and in fact has become the poster child of pluralism.

But the two Americas we are concerned with today are the disparate points of view between two North American service providers regarding business transformation. One view was presented this week at the TM Forum's Management World Americas in Dallas by keynote speaker and CIO of Telus, Kevin Salvadori. The other view was provided this week in the pages of Telephony's Guide to Business Transformation supplement by Verizon CIO Shadman Zafar.

Both C-level execs have embarked on the same journey. Both have the same prize in mind: to survive and thrive in the new world order. Both are throwing traditional telecom operations support overboard in favor of an IT-based infrastructure. Both are trying to do what America has not had much success doing -- force cultures to change. Yet to hear these men discuss their strategies for success, you'd think you were in a UN session without headphones.

One takes an IT approach where the capabilities inherent in this erstwhile enterprise technology drive the transformation. The other takes a business approach where nothing proceeds without a go-ahead from the finance folks. One uses a greenfield service such as interactive television to be the model for change that the rest of the company can follow. The other transforms his entire wireline operations a million customers at a time.

Yet despite the semantic differences, both are doing the same thing. They both employ IT and business approaches. They both will eventually migrate their many millions of customers over to their new platforms. They will both highlight new services -- and hopefully make money providing them.

So what is the real difference? It is not between these two Americas. It is between these two Americas and almost everyone else. The important difference is that these two companies (and others such as BT and Telstra) have stopped merely talking about transformation; they have embarked on it.

Action is what counts, no matter how many Americas or Europes or Asias or Africas or Middle Easts we have. We already have too many words.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@telephonyonline.com.