2. Ingredients for a Successful
Service Innovation Ecosystem
Chris Mairs, CTO, MetaSwitch

3. Some Examples
17 million iPhones sold 175 million active users
15,000 applications 660,000 developers
500 million downloads 52,000 applications
5 million downloads / day 140 new apps / day

4. Ingredient #1

5. Opportunities for Innovation

6. Opportunities for Innovation
Accelerometers
Massive pre-existing
network of friends
Multi-touch
GPS gestures

7. Ingredient #2

8. Low Barrier to Product Creation

9. Low Barrier to Product Creation

10. Simple apps can be successful

11. Simple apps can be successful

12. Ingredient #3

13. Clear Route to Market

14. Clear Route to Market

15. Key Ingredients
Opportunities for innovation
Low barrier to
product creation
Clear route to market

16. Where’s the Beef?

17. Few Good Telephony Apps

18. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
Opportunities
for innovation

19. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
Opportunities
• The innovation opportunity is
for innovation
not obvious
• How many variants of Find-
me/Follow-me are there?
• Why are there more
Salesforce mashups than
Salesforce users?
• SDK restrictions

20. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
Low barrier to
product creation

21. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
✓ Hide legacy/TDM grunge
✓ Provide familiar paradigms
(RESTful APIs, etc)
Low barrier to
product creation

22. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
✓ Hide legacy/TDM grunge
✓ Provide familiar paradigms
(RESTful APIs, etc)
The Simple Development ILLUSION
Regulatory issues
➡
Billing and inter-carrier comp
➡
Stateful error handling and corner conditions
➡
Design and testing is difficult
➡
Must interact with network infrastructure
➡
Security policy
➡

23. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
Clear route
to market
Mass-market approach is
not suitable for high-cost,
high-utility applications

24. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
Clear route
to market
Mass-market approach is
not suitable for high-cost,
high-utility applications

25. Why Are Telephony Apps Scarce?
One-off download fee is
Clear route
often not the best revenue
to market
model

27. How can a
service provider
make a
telephony ecosystem
work?

28. Embrace Innovative Devices
XML applications
on SIP business
phones

29. Embrace Innovative Devices
“If ever a home phone could be an
object of desire, this is it.”

30. Enable Seamless Integration
Network services (e.g. network address
book, shared call list, message store)
Parallel APIs for different device types
(RESTful XML, JavaScript libraries,
EBIF, ...) - one size doesn’t fit all
One-touch distribution mechanisms for
users to acquire widgets for multiple
device types

31. Lower Barrier to Product Creation
• Reuse existing Web 2.0 paradigms
• Pre-canned widgets
• Lots of tutorials
• Sample “GA quality” code

32. Create a Clear Route to Market
Network
Platform

33. MetaSwitch Strategy
Social
Community

34. MetaSwitch Strategy
Third-party
developers
‣ leadership
‣ right APIs
‣ sand box
200+ Social
‣ tutorials
Community
partners
‣ source code
‣ blogs, forums
‣ engineering
resources
400+ carrier
customers

35. •.
•

36. •.
•