Opinion: Time to separate software from network management

The biggest hope for the poker market to become more active is if somebody fixes the network model. I’m not talking about ecology ““ that has been discussed to death ““ but about the separation between software provision and network management. A poker network should be two things in one: part one is software provision and part two the network management aspect.

These two aspects should be distinct from one another, otherwise it creates a number of conflicts of interest which can harm networks. The fact that Microgaming established its board, along with iPoker creating iPoker 2, are signs that the separation between software provider and network management is beginning to emerge, a move I very much welcome.

The problem is that you have, for example, a software provider or network company that, more often than not, does both, managing the network as well as providing software. Whereas in the past these companies may have denied the network management element and said ‘we’re just a software company’ – that obviously didn’t work then and doesn’t work today.

This has changed recently with Microgaming’s Network Management Board among a number of other initiatives. What the future clearly holds is actively managed networks. This marks an improvement from a software provider that has a network and doesn’t really manage it at all, and almost allows licensees to sort things out among themselves. This strategy will never work when the licensees are all essentially competing against one another.

If I wanted to establish a poker network (and I have no plans to do so) then I would invite all the software providers to pitch to me in order to determine the best software solution for me, but I would always demand that the network management aspect has nothing to do with the actual software, so the software provider can’t have a say in how the network is managed. If you have that separation you have much better opportunities and a much better starting point to counteract the weaknesses of the classical network model.

The idea of third parties coming in to manage a network is already happening, although there are different approaches here. There’s the democratic approach where you take the Microgaming NMB or other similar boards, but you can also take it one step further and say ‘I’m an investor, I want to build my own poker network but don’t want to build my own poker software, so I’m going to get the software from somewhere and then I’m going to get the licensees.’

In the US people are already contemplating doing just that, and ultimately it may be more efficient to do it this way because a lot of those traffic and network weaknesses are related to conflicts of interest and can therefore be sidelined.

In the current dot.com market I can’t see a new network emerging, at least not something credible, however I do see existing networks developing to the point where they see network management as different from software provision. I see this trend continuing which is potentially a positive development as it would help networks better perform and, if they perform better, then network licensees will invest more in poker and poker will grow.

Of course, you have a number of test cases. We’re still waiting to see some of the early numbers from iPoker 2 and we will also see how Microgaming develops compared to its competitors with its new structures in place. This should provide us with the guidelines we need in order to develop new ways of operating a poker network.