| | May 20188CIOReviewelco's are leveraging Application Pro-gramming Interfaces (API) ecosystem for 3 primary reasons- APIs to increase Operational Efficiency & Productiv-ity; for Innovation & Collaboration and for Revenue Generation & New Business Models. In majority of the cases Telcos have started their API journey as an operational efficiency improvement initiative and then branched out to wider external ecosystem for innovation and collaboration led business growthKey elements of Telco API business ModelsTelcos being in the middle of many service chains and having wealth of knowledge about their customers, are well placed to become platform providers between pro-ducers and consumers of the services. Leveraging this unique positioning that they enjoy, telecom operators have crafted variants of two-sided platform business model to roll out the APIs ecosystem services for their chosen markets. Generally, Telecom operator's API platform busi-ness models have been aimed at addressing trade-offs on below key imperatives: - the core purpose of exposing assets through APIs; the customer segment to be ad-dressed i.e. internal staff, partners, external developers; the assets to be exposed through APIs; degree of open-ness of the platform and duration of developer rights; revenue model for APIsTelcos' core purpose of developing and exposing API ecosystem ranges between internal operational efficien-cy improvements to external revenue generation. E.g. Comcast leveraged APIs to bring about major internal operational efficiency gains by going in from about four weeks' lead time to just a few hours to onboard partners. On the other hand, Zen Kuwait is focused on leveraging API to accelerate innovation and development both in-ternally as well as through external partners. Zen Kuwait has exposed APIs pertaining to authentication, customer profile, bill payment etc.The next strategic imperative is to decide on the mar-ket segment (internal, external, partners etc.) that Telcos wish to cater to. This decision is governed by the con-trol vs benefit tradeoff. Open APIs present an advantage TBy Shekhar Tankhiwale, Global Head Telecom Consulting, Wipro LimitedTELCO API ECONOMY: BUSINESS MODELS & MONETIZATION STRATEGIESA Telecom industry professional with 20+ years of hands-on and global experience in Telecom Business & IT Consulting space. Focus areas are strategy, business transformation consulting, presales solutioning and consulting delivery management.Shekhar TankhiwaleIN MY OPINION
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