With abject apologies to the Bard for the title of this post, we have been having terrific discussions regarding British Telecom’s 21cn API as it relates to the business class mashup revolution. These discussions always include thoughts on the evolution of Telcos, agile Enterprise focused business processes, as well as the pace of innovation coming from the Web focused developers.
Our company sits at the intersection of the Enterprise, Telco, and Web worlds. Every day, we get to talk and work with people and companies who are interested in mashups, service delivery platforms, and communication enhanced business processes.
British Telecom is certainly viewed as the first model for future Telcos as a service delivery platform. Orange and Vodaphone are right there too.
There are big money, venture backed companies like Blue Note Networks, Lignup, and others that have been focusing solely on the platform model of CEBP delivery. Literally hundreds of companies are focused on hosted mashup technologies and a smaller subset are focused on communication mashups.
What is fascinating about our conversations with these companies,whether very large or very small, is they are being driven by the language, methods, and culture of the web world.
For the most part the obstacles to their growth have very little to do with solving difficult technology challenges. Overcoming internal cultural issues especially in the Telcos is a real challenge. What happens if our garden is no longer walled? Will people actually add value?
For the Enterprise, the challenge is really about business process creativity and agility. What happens if our people, vendors, and customers have access to our business processes? Can they make us faster, better, smarter?
For the innovative hosted and platform solution providers, the challenge is really about finding or creating channels to customers. Can I find and execute on a sustainable business model before the money runs out?
It is fascinating that all these conversations and efforts are showing us the future direction of business to business communications, collaboration, and commerce will be filled with mashup solutions.
My Punjabi friend has a toast, “May you live in interesting times.” We certainly do.