Hello board. I have been building platforms in the telco / cloud space for a very long time. Thought I'd share some stories from the old days and how they compare to today. Just to date myself, I started out as a software developer with Ericsson in the mid-90s. At that time the NEXT BIG THING was COTS hardware with applications written in Java/C++ using open interfaces such as CORBA. Yes, museum pieces today, I know. However, it was a step up from the previous platforms, which were entirely proprietary. Worse, the development environment was drag-and-drop, meaning engineers needed to have a very specific, non-portable set of skills to build applications. I remember joining /// out of Uni, with dreams of using Java and C++ to build new applications, only to be told by my new manager that the skills wouldn’t be needed and instead get used to moving boxes around and then configuring them! Luckily, I managed to bypass this by working with the integration team. This team was using FTP to transfer files, so I got to write an ftp client in C++ - happy days! Except for the segmentation faults. Anyway, only Ericsson staff had the skills to build applications on these platforms. Which was a problem. I remember speaking to some engineers at our Telco customer who complained about these platforms - no one at the Telco could build applications. If they wanted anything done, they’d need to get in Ericsson - $$$$ !! So open platforms – on COTS hardware – was the answer. The sell was it would enable telcos to build their own applications. It seemed to make a big difference; we sold quite a few platforms. The only problem was – even with a standard development environment - it was still too difficult to build real world applications. The learning curve was too high, the specific telco knowledge required was too specific, and, all in all, it was just easier to have Ericsson write the applications. So, I guess the moral of the story; if you buy a platform, make sure you’ve got the talent to use it! Otherwise, you’ll be locked in …