Federated operations: structuring inter-company operating relationships to meet business needs

Alliances in telecommunications are proving to be difficult to establish and implement and frequently do not realize the expected value. The business issue at hand is how to structure the operating relationship to realize the competitive advantage sought while maintaining the autonomy and flexibility necessary to control one's future. This paper proposes three operating principles to enable "federated operations", a peer-to-peer operating framework, and discusses some of the issues for implementing the principles.