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Earlier this year, Telcordia Technologies Inc. (www.telcordia.com) named Harold C. Smith president and COO. Smith will lead the company in its quest to move from simply offering OSSs to providing solutions that integrate with a service providers' processes and operations at all levels.
Smith most recently served as a senior executive directing the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA, www.nsa.gov) IT organization. In this position, he was responsible for planning, operations and support of NSA's worldwide communications. He also has been president and COO of SSDS Enterprise Network Solutions. And before joining SSDS in 1996, he headed the Advanced Tele-communications Systems business unit of GTE Corp. (now part of Verizon Communications Inc., www.verizon.com). He earlier held leadership positions in systems engineering at Northrop Defense Systems and in systems development at Adams Russell Micro-Tel.
Executive editor Paula Bernier recently spoke with Smith about what lies ahead for the former research and development (R&D) arm of the Bells.
X: What are the key offerings at Telcordia today?
Smith: What we're focused on is OSS solutions. Importantly, we're trying to transition from OSS product offerings to fully integrated solutions. Our view is that in the past we've done a really excellent job of delivering offerings to our customers, but delivering offerings that are fully operationalized is what we're going for.
A customer recently used an interesting quote about our flow-through provisioning, saying if it doesn't flow, it doesn't go.
X: Are there other new goals or initiatives you hope to spearhead at the company?
Smith: I intend to focus on our core business and secondly on operational excellence. That is providing full solutions to our customers. Going forward, you'll see tightening of focus.
X: How do you expect to leverage your past experience now that you're with Telcordia?
Smith: I've done a lot of systems development work, and have learned again and again the importance of a solution that is fully operationalized.
X: Who do you consider Telcordia's biggest competitor(s), and how does the company differentiate itself from them?
Smith: We're in a pretty unique position in the marketplace. Many times, it's a decision on the customer's part of whether to do the work inside or to contract out for it. We feel the breadth and depth Telcordia brings in OSS is pretty unique in the marketplace.
X: How has Telcordia changed since its Bellcore days?
Smith: Telcordia has gone from being captive to the RBOCs to being spun off and having to compete for business. Secondly, having to broaden the marketplace we serve because of consolidation in the RBOC marketplace. One of the exciting things about Telcordia is how successfully they have done that.
X: What is Telcordia's biggest customer set? Is it still the RBOCs?
Smith: It is. RBOCs are roughly half our sales and revenue. Going forward we'll focus on RBOCs and RBOC-like companies abroad.
X: How much of Telcordia's business is coming from overseas customers now vs. five years ago?
Smith: One-third to 20 percent of our business. Overseas, the regulatory environment's changes are clearly an opportunity for us. We helped the domestic companies go from regulated to deregulated. We see the international companies struggling with preparedness to compete. We're talking about OSS, business process work, the effectiveness and efficiency with which they run their operations.
X: Who's now setting requirements for standards, which was Bellcore's most important role as the R&D arm of the Bells?
Smith: We continue to do a little bit of that work consulting for the RBOCs. What we also see is that some of those standards do not get set when technologies are being developed. DSL is one example. DSL had to move to market quickly and had to get to market without some of that work that was done with ATM. The customer demand for DSL upon introduction exceeded a number of providers' ability to keep up with it. They've figured it out, and some have invested in provisioning systems.
X: What will be the key concerns for telcos going forward, and how will Telcordia help them face those issues?
Smith: Over the past decade, provisioning and activation [have become key concerns, and] Telcordia has been a key provider to improve quality of service, timeliness of provisioning and activation. I'm thinking about a customer that wants to order a DSL line and how many people on the operating company side are engaged to make that happen. Wouldn't it be neat if a customer could go on a website and flow-through provisioning [would allow that to happen with a minimum of human intervention.]
