 a process offers a structured approach to deal with multiple stakeholders and evolve a united vision to go toward the future. The roadmap serves to both maintain the course toward achieving certain business objectives for the present while also working in a direction for the collective future where the business and ecosystem can continue to flourish successfully and remain relevant. This chapter starts by detailing the needs for a technology roadmap. We also look at what the levels of detail of such a roadmap could be and what timelines such roadmaps could target. From there, we evolve toward network roadmaps, and what they imply to the operator in terms of configuration options and models that could be used to support them. We would like to set up the fundamentals of need for the roadmaps in this chapter SO we can elaborate more in later chapters on how roadmaps can allow networks to evolve. Later, we'd like to offer a process to create and evolve a roadmap. We hope to drive home some important points though; to be able to appreciate the power of roadmaps one must first understand the need for a roadmap. Thereafter, one must understand enough detail, not only to be able to create a roadmap, but also to appreciate that the process of creating the roadmap is almost as important as the resultant roadmap itself. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS What Is a Technology Roadmap? A technology roadmap is the result of a strategic technology planning process that cooperatively identifies (1) a particular Industry's common product and process performance targets, (2) the technology alternatives and milestones for meeting these targets, and (3) a common technology path for research and development activities. Introduction to Technology Road mapping: The Semiconductor Industry Association's Technology Road mapping Process SAND97-0666, April 1997 Any industry that gets established and flourishes does SO based on some fundamental principles: There should be a strong consumer-driven need for the products that are produced by the indus