What did we learn? Well, the iPhone still concerns operators more than the specific services than they plan to launch, or that's the impression we formed. Yes, it's been a fantastic achievement, but surely it's time to start focusing on innovation from the operator community (or from outside!) and executing?! Get over it, as they say. We know from the Moriana IMS research that average sales cycles are still greater than 12 months - no wonder the internet world continues to forge ahead.

The SDP market seems to be highly evolved, with solid forecasts behind it. But, we mustn't forget that the term covers a wide range of solutions (indeed, the industry has still to reach agreement on a precise definition). Hmm. Well, why is it that almost every RFX our customers see require insertion of an application server and other supporting architecture, such as media servers and gateways? Mature SDPs implies that the infrastructure is already present and that applications, which most of our customers sell, can simply be plugged into an existing J2EE or JAIN SLEE environment. The fact that this never seems to be the case suggests a) that we have a long way to go to reach maturity; and b) that those application servers already deployed can't support multiple applications at scale. Any thoughts? Perhaps we are wrong, but it's still worth thinking about.

Once again, Informa did a great job in attracting operators and vendors from around the world and it was nice to catch up with old friends and colleagues from the industry. There was a very interesting presentation on the GSMA ONE API initiative - it seems this is now to incorporate RESTful web services interfaces for key telco enablers. Could this mean that ONE has a real role to play, rather than being just another telco API? It's early days, but this is something we plan to research further.

More on the SDP Global Summit in our next newsletter, when we have fully digested the lessons to be shared with our readership.