ECOMM 2010, San Francisco recap: CEBP vs. Platforms discussion continues

Despite the volcanic eruption that shut down much of Europe last week, the US version of the biannual ECOMM event was certainly a success.

Although I have been following ECOMM since 2008 and VoiceSage has sponsored the 2009 EU event this was the first time I had the chance to attend.

ECOMM is three full days of presentations done in 12 to 15 minute bites. A couple of keynote speakers may be allowed 20 minutes but even they are subject to the time clock "gong". The goal of the event is to be a force in reshaping the world's telecommunications industry. The first two days of this event were primarily focused on Telco subjects that are current but may still be considered cutting edge by the main stream media.

The third day was dedicated to Augmented Reality which by everyone's definition is on the bleeding edge of technical innovations. My takeaway from Day 3 was a simple one. There are seriously talented people spending a lot of time and money in AR. Over the next few years we will see amazing results.

On Day 2, I had the opportunity to present the VoiceSage Communications Enabled Business Process (CEBP) story in a way that everyone in the room could appreciate. Our amazingly fast response in helping American Airlines deal with their passenger communications needs during the volcanic disruptions across Ireland and the UK showed the power of CEBP applications and Cloud Communications in general. The previous keynote speakers, including Martin Geddes, had all used the language of CEBP or touched on the topic briefly. I had the opportunity to drill into CEBP and differentiate VoiceSage as a leader in the space with our focus on moving clients' business metrics.

Telcos are looking for new ways to replace traditional revenue streams that are going away. CEBP applications clearly open up billion dollar business process optimization market opportunities. One variation on this theme is for Telcos to rely upon or buy API platforms that will open up their infrastructure to the innovation of the world's developers. In my opinion, the few winners and losers have already been decided in the Telco API space.

However, regardless of their size or scale, firms that view themselves as developer platforms miss the game changing opportunity to directly understand and impact clients' business processes in the valuable way that is available to VoiceSage or other CEBP applications. Replacing billions in old telco landline revenue with millions in developer api revenues is the tradeoff that many Telcos are grudgingly reviewing now. Replacing billions in landline revenue with billions in enterprise class CEBP revenue is a tradeoff that is also available to Telcos but will appeal to a wider variety of enterprise focused vendors too.

Thanks to ECOMM, this CEBP message is being heard widely and clearly.

Patrick Murphy
VoiceSage USA
April 26th, 2010