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May 2012

A Message from the Editor

From the Editor

Dear Colleague,

As editor and publisher, I think it’s best to tell you a bit about the origins of my organization so you understand our goals.

Since 1994, my research organization, Technology Research Institute (TRI) has been publishing research studies in the telecom software market.

Soon after co-founding TRI with Stanley Klein, an editor/publisher in the Computer Graphics field, we received a key consulting assignment from Tandem Computers (now HP).  The mission: research the potential for commercial software in a new area called “telecom billing”.

Capitalizing on that positive black swan consulting gig, TRI published the first two syndicated research studies on the global telecom billing software market -- one study on “wireline billing” and another on “wireless billing”.

As years went on, we published several B/OSS market studies on subjects such as provisioning/OSS, data warehousing, customer analytics, service assurance, and customer care software.

In 2001 Dr.  Lorien Pratt and I teamed up to publish the first syndicated report on revenue assurance, cost management and mediation software.  And it’s that study that introduced me to this highly interesting practice area we now call business assurance.

For a five-year period, I joined Washington DC based Dittberner Associates and became their B/OSS research director before re-launching TRI in 2009 as an independent research boutique.

By 2009 the telecom B/OSS and related report business had become pretty crowded with competitors, forcing me to try something new.  And with encouragement from people like Commsrisk editor, Eric Priezkalns, we launch Black Swan Telecom Journal in 2012.

Today we post our stories to three journals, Black Swan, Telexchange Journal, and Top Operator.

Now while the chronology I just described sounds like a smoothly planned evolution, it was anything but that.  Like most small businesses, we’ve had our ups and downs.  We’ve published winning research reports, but also a few duds.

What’s sustained us over the years is our ability to reach out to industry experts and listen to what they had to say.  For our 2015 research study on Telecom Fraud Management, for example, there were 14 research sponsors and dozens of other contributors I spoke to in preparing the report.

With your help, I get to do what I enjoy most: tap into the minds of telecom’s brightest experts, strategists, and doers... then tell you what I learn.



Dan Baker
Editor and Research Director, TRI

Copyright 2012 Black Swan Telecom Journal

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