How the investment strategy of a $106 billion VC fund changed my OSS thinking

What is a service provider’s greatest asset?

Now I’m biased when considering the title question, but I believe OSS are the puppet-master of every modern service provider. They’re the systems that pull all of the strings of the organisation. They generate the revenue by operationalising and assuring the networks as well as the services they carry. They coordinate the workforce. They form the real-time sensor networks that collect and provide data, but more importantly, insights to all parts of the business. That, and so much more.

But we’re pitching our OSS all wrong. Let’s consider first how we raise revenue from OSS, be that either internal (via internal sponsors) or external (vendor/integrator selling to customers)? Most revenue is either generated from products (fixed, leased, consumption revenue models) or services (human effort).

This article from just last month ruminated, “An organisation buys an OSS, not because it wants an Operational Support System, but because it wants Operational Support,” but I now believe I was wrong – charting the wrong course in relation to the most valuable element of our OSS.

After researching Masayoshi Son’s Vision Fund, I’m certain we’re selling a fundamentally short-term vision. Yes, OSS are valuable for the operational support they provide, but their greatest value is as vast data collection and processing engines.

“Those who rule data will rule the entire world. That’s what people of the future will say.”
Masayoshi Son.

For those unfamiliar with Masayoshi Son, he’s Japan’s richest man, CEO of SoftBank, in charge of a monster (US$106 billion) venture capital fund called Vision Fund and is seen as one of the world’s greatest technology visionaries.

As this article on Fortune explains Vision Fund’s foundational strategy, “…there’s a slide that outlines the market cap of companies during the Industrial Revolution, including the Pennsylvania Railroad, U.S. Steel, and Standard Oil. The next frontier, he [Son] believes, is the data revolution. As people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were able to drastically accelerate innovation by having a very large ownership over the inputs of the Industrial Revolution, it looks like Son is trying to do something similar. The difference being he’s betting on the notion that data is one of the most valuable digital resources of modern day.”

Matt Barnard is CEO of Plenty, one of the companies that Vision Fund has invested in. He had this to say about the pattern of investments by Vision Fund, “I’d say the thing we have in common with his other investments is that they are all part of some of the largest systems on the planet: energy, transportation, the internet and food.”

Telecommunications falls into that category too. SoftBank already owns significant stakes in telecommunications and broadband network providers.

But based on the other investments made by Vision Fund so far, there appears to be less focus on operational data and more focus on customer activity and decision-making data. In particular, unravelling the complexity of customer data in motion.

OSS “own” service provider data, but I wonder whether we’re spending too much time thinking about operational data (and how to feed it into AI engines to get operational insights) and not enough on stitching customer-related insight sets together. That’s where the big value is, but we’re rarely thinking about it or pitching it that way… even though it is perhaps the most valuable asset a service provider has.

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