Can the OSS mammoths survive extinction?

Startups win with data. Mammoths go extinct with products.”
Jay Sharma
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Interesting phraseology. I love the play on words with the term mammoths. There are some telcos that are mammoth in size but are threatened with extinction though changes in environment and new competitors appearing.

I tend to agree with the intent of the quote, but also have some reservations. For example, products are still a key part of the business model of digital phenoms like Google, Facebook, etc. It’s their compelling products that allow them to collect the all-important data. As consumers, we want the product, they get our data. We also want the products sold by the Mammoths but perhaps they don’t leverage the data entwined in our usage (or more importantly, the advertising revenues that gets attracted to all that usage) as well as the phenoms do.

Another interesting play on words exists here for the telcos – in the “winning with data.” Telcos are losing at data (their profitability per bit is rapidly declining to the point of commoditisation), so perhaps a mindset shift is required. Moving the business model that’s built on the transport of data to a model based on the understanding of, and learning from, data. It’s certainly not a lack of data that’s holding them back. Our OSS / BSS collect and curate plenty. The difference is that Google’s and Facebook’s customers are advertisers, whilst the Mammoths’ customers are subscribers.

As OSS providers, the question remains for us to solve – how can we provide the products that allow the Mammoths to win with data?

PS. The other part of this equation is the rise of data privacy regulations such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Is it just me, or do the Mammoths seem to attract more attention in relation to privacy of our data than the OTT service providers?

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