Moving the needle in standards adoption: MEF Technology Advisory Board

Thomas Edison once challenged his staff by saying, “There’s a way to do it better, find it”.  But where do you start? And why do organizations often struggle finding a better way? 

Depending upon the organization and geography, every year enterprise companies are spending a significant portion of their operating budget to simply “keeping the lights.” I have seen allocations anywhere from 44% up to 70%. That’s a big chunk of change.

For the telecommunications industry, it’s no longer an option to have an operating model solely focused on keeping the lights on. Today’s fast-changing world is fueling demand for digital everything, putting enormous pressure on communications service providers (CSPs) everywhere to claim their competitive stake by delivering better digital experiences across the entire customer and employee journey alike. Add to that a growing cast of global competitors, it’s no wonder stakeholders are demanding higher margins in nearly every operator’s earnings call.   

One area worth pivoting towards to help reduce high operating costs while continuing to focus on differentiation, is standardization. We have seen incredible progress from industry standards bodies over the past few years, and I am especially excited about the work coming from MEF and my new role serving on their newly formed Technology Advisory Board.

New technologies have enormous potential to make the industry better, for businesses, employees, and customers, and ServiceNow has a key part to play in that evolution.

MEF is no stranger to the telecommunications industry. For the past twenty years MEF has been working with CSPs to bring consistency in how service models get defined, and how the exchange for retail and wholesale providers needs to happen between each other using lifecycle service orchestration (LSO) automation APIs. They have also defined test kits and certification tools to make interoperability seamless across operators. 

For the technical audience reading this, we all know service definitions are critical for creating seamless experiences for customers as digital services traverse across the networks of retail and wholesale providers. There are also plenty of technical specifications and integration flows to debate but the facts remain, this level of integration only works when it’s wholly embraced by the ecosystem community. After all, standardization is only successful if adopted.

Standardization is one of the core pillars of ServiceNow’s Telecommunications product strategy, and we are proud to support the work MEF is doing to improve interoperability across operators. Our effort to deliver a fully implemented service model aligned to MEF and LSO automation APIs will only help our customers move towards a more profitable operating model, allowing them to focus on new growth models and innovative service offerings.

At ServiceNow, we are committed to making the world of Telecommunications, work better. But we also know we cannot get there alone. Organizations like MEF, the Technology Advisory Board, and the board of directors play a critical role in shaping the future of the telecom industry, and I'm looking forward to beginning my term and doing my part to drive the field forward.

ServiceNow is ready, so let’s go!