[VoiceOps] 2600Hz's Kazoo Platform

[Alex Balashov]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 07:56:29PM -0600, Colton Conor wrote:

> hey our API supports it, but you have to hire a developer to make it
> happen.

Definitely a tangent from the original thread topic, but:

How can [any small to medium] service provider afford NOT to hire a
developer?

There's little choice but to to innovate if you want to stay alive—to
develop clever and original applications, user experiences, and
improved, telecoms-assisted business processes that redound to the
customer's bottom line. That means more than putting a logo and colour
scheme on someone's me-too white label, or meandering within the narrow
band of things you can squeeze out of your equipment vendor's consulting
arm. This is where open-source wins big because of its myriad
integration paths, but proprietary platforms that offer good API
coverage are also usable. 

I'm not saying Class 5 switch platforms are mere SDKs or toolboxes. No,
the expensive ones provide a relatively solid foundational skeleton of
marketable features. But turning that into a viable business requires
making them talk to other things. It also requires backoffice/OSS-BSS
integration, automation, EDL, etc, etc.

IThere's not much you can sell without developers. You can slap your
logo on canned Broadsoft-type POTS / Key System replacement crapola, but
that's a sprint straight to the bottom. If you just employ traditional
ops/infrastructure/rack-stack gophers/switch techs/provisioners people
who can't write a line of code, and perhaps some
process/provisioning/ordering people besides, and your lunch will be
eaten by a small oligopoly of large companies with more or less
exclusively sales-driven cultures. They can bury you on price for a
me-too POTS/PBX/who cares offering. Unless you've figured out how to be
the next Time Warner or whoever, and bigger than they are, you have to
think different.

I'm not saying service providers need to become software
engineering-rich shops. The balance will probably always tilt toward
infrastructure/ops. Furthermore, the best developers want to work in
culturally engineering-driven organisations, all other things being
equal. Still, even if you luck out on a switch platform whose canned
features you can sell without integration, there's so much strategic
importance today in backend process automation, tooling and APIs. A
little bit of core competency in the development arena has a _huge_
impact on cost structure and gross margins.

So, I don't really understand when I run into service providers that
don't have any developers of any calibre on staff, even for the care and
feeding of the backoffice and/or business layer. Huh?

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC

Tel: +1-706-510-6800 (direct) / +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) 
Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/