Situation
Our Client - a leading European Telco - requested that Open Web Technology help them define the strategy and operational approach to streamline innovation with 3rd party Internet services. Over the last decade, our Client had fallen short in developing innovative services and capturing the new revenues generated by data traffic explosion (Internet and mobile), despite the significant efforts they have deployed along the way. By trying to grow internal product managers and IT specialists into Internet service designers, they had underestimated that radically different approach and skills are required to succeed in the fast-changing Internet industry. Over the same period of time, Cloud service providers have proven to be the indisputable source of innovation for both professional and consumer Internet services (voice over IP and video chatting, music streaming, location-based services, highly flexible business software, etc.). The objective of this project was to identify and implement the main ingredients to unblock the path for successful partnerships with Cloud innovators.
Approach
By working closely with our Client's teams, we have identified and implemented three main measures:
- The development of a technology platform for flexible integration of third party services (an “Enabling Infrastructure” allowing to expose our Client's own assets to third-party services)
- A limited set of clear business models to integrate Cloud services into our Client's overall offer (a “light” Cloud service integration and a “full” integration, to be selected case-by-case)
- Some adjustments in our Client's organization and skills, to facilitate innovation with fast-moving Internet players (an accelerated innovation funnel, a clear and unique entry point in the organization vis-à-vis third parties; Simplified project teams and steering committees, focus of IT teams on building innovative eco-systems with external partners and integrating third party services)
- Experience with the Atlassian stack (Stash, Bamboo, Jira, Confluence..) is a plus.
Two Cloud services have been selected to experiment the newly defined quick innovation path. Both services have been successfully launched and their time to market has been reduced by more than 50%.
