Machine to Machine

I should say for a Telecom operator to be successful on M2M requires some serious efforts. A dedicated M2M team (technical, support, operations, agreements, sales in the ground and a strong management etc), different KPIs and goals for the M2M unit, much more flexibility and support from the top management.

Europe is not doing fine economically and people are spending less and less on Telecom services. For Telcos to keep growing, they should invest in new areas like M2M, Cloud and Media & Entertainment Services. However, the success will not come quick and margins are not as good as we got in typical Telecom services. I see that more and more Telcos in Europe are taking serious steps in M2M and leaving the Cloud to IT providers; making M2M a bet of Telcos and Cloud for IT playes.

Teleco industry needs a new push and new units might bring that extra jump for growth. M2M is an opportunity for Telcos and for sure requires a different approach and skills. My recommendation is, select your fight and go for it. But do not expect quick wins.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Big Data Analytics and Hadoop

What is the secret of success for Telecom operators in M2M? Selling few kb of data per device? Building deeper connections with enterprise customers? Learning how to sell a “solution”? I think all of these plus the ability to store & analyze data collected from the devices.

About 80% – 90% of the world’s data is unstructured, and most businesses don’t even attempt to use this data to their advantage. Imagine if you could afford to keep all the data generated by your business? Even more important, keep & analyze the most important data for you. For example, storing and analyzing terabytes of data over time might not add nearly as much value as analyzing 1 gigabyte of really important, impactful information in real time. Imagine if you had a way to analyze this data.

Read Full Post »

Open APIs for Enabling Cloud & M2M Services

Communications service providers (CSPs) are traditionally conservative, more focused on internal product innovation, targets mass-market services rather than niche-oriented. But  CSPs now have a strategic business challenge; they are not growing fast enough. Subscriber numbers are still growing at a high rate in the emerging markets, but this rate is much smaller in developed markets. Here in the Nordics, we see huge competition with brutal price wars and hopeless fight for growing market shares. Meanwhile, competition worldwide has increased tremendously and ARPU (avrg revenue per user) is not keeping pace with the additional network costs associated with modern time, high-bandwidth services like mobile TV, HD video and the likes.

Graph 1- Operators with a commercial web services offering, worldwide

Read Full Post »

Telecom Trends 2013

Trends and buzzwords are everywhere. On the other hand the core business of Telcos is shrinking. In such an environment, it is hard to find new revenue sources and keep the revenue figures green. In my world a telco should drive the core business with 100% focus on sales, cost consciousness and internal efficiency however look for alternative revenue sources for the future. In the presentation below, I try to tease you a bit on what might be those alternative revenue sources for Telcos. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me. I hope you enjoy it!

Read Full Post »

What Does Convergence Mean?

I was thinking about the meaning of convergence in Telecom context this morning. I have came up to see this nice graph developed by VisionMobile. So what do you think are the vision, focal point and the compete based on will look like by 2015?

My guess is vision: connected devices, focal point: software/apps and compete based on: quality of content.

Read Full Post »

Ericsson launches Telco Data Center Build and Cloud

I was reading my emails after a long summer vacation at my office on Tuesday and just realized a pfd attachment; Ericsson goes into data center business to be a stronger ICT player. I think this is a smart move since a lot of Telecom companies are nowadays looking into providing some IT services as well. Being a close partner to Telco players, Ericsson needed to evolve as well and they did it. Ericsson’s Data Center Build and Data Center optimization offering will meet increased demand for cloud-based services as enterprises seek to become increasingly mobile. With this offering, Ericsson enters the market for data centers and strengthens its position as an ICT player.

I liked this news and found it a very important and strategic move. I think the future is bright for evolving and developing companies such as Ericsson.

Read Full Post »

Cloud, M2M and Big Data for Telcos

One petabyte a day: That’s how much data BMW’s Connected Drive cars will generate by 2017 reckons BMW Group IT infrastructure chief Mario Müller.

I took out this note while listening BMW group’s Cloud presentation at Telecom Cloud Services Summit at Berlin this year. M2M data will need a lot of IT capacity and the data produced by machines will be a real source of revenue. I realized that a lot of Telcos are still confused when it comes to M2M and Cloud business models. Many invested heavily into the infrastructure and getting ready for a big fight against global giants such as Amazon. Well, sure they can differentiate based on their local market demans but I am a bit sceptical to IaaS, except storage, at all.

I realized that when Telcos talk about M2M it was all about providing connectivity and mainly about infrastructure when it comes to the Cloud. None of the CSPs really talked about Big Data yet. I believe enterprises need more than basic connectivity and infrastructure. I think they need a solution, which will help them create business intelligence and value for them. I think big data analytics and ICT business solutions are the future for CSPs.

Around sixty percent of CSPs fear they’ll be bit-pipe providers in the M2M and Cloud market. To avoid this, they must have the ambition to take some more risk and be more innovative. I do not agree at all – as one Telco professional stated on the panel- “telcos are expected to be evolutionary not revolutionary”. Telcos need to better understand the business value of their offers and be more a complete ICT providers, extracting intelligence from the pipe – instead of simply delivering connection from A to B.

Read Full Post »

So you want to be a Cloud provider?

What do you need to be a Cloud provider? You could be a Telco or an IT Reseller. Once you decided that you will provide Cloud services you need these capabilities.

1. A Cloud enabled data center

2. Platforms (app store, SSO, aggregation platform and so on…) to provide cloud

3. Monetize your services

4. Business development capabilities.

I think yet another important questions that you need to answer are;

1. What do we have internally today? (Because a lot of the things listed above can be outsourced as well)

2. Your ability to handle an ecosystem.

3. Your sales channels and capabilities

4. What will make you different? (Easy to do business with, price, quality, or what else…)

5. Applications and Infrastructure is commodity now, so you need to focus on business models and content instead.

Sit and think twice before you make any move towards Cloud. Make a good business case and take meaningful risks. Because the market is still emerging and Cloud is still “nice to have” not “must to have” at the moment.

Read Full Post »

Today’s Networks and Next Generation Networks

Yesterday at Kista sience tower, where is the sillicon valley of Sweden, we had a meeting with a vendor to discuss next generation switching, cloud, M2M and IMS. I think today’s network is quite lagacy and complex. IMS is coming but nothing big will happen in couple of years. Yet another interesting topic was  the interoperability of new network systems with the old, legacy ones up and running at the core today. Cloud and M2M are thightly related to each other and it is really up to a telco to position itself from connection only to solution provider in this journey. Do you have any experience on telco cloud services or IMS, what are your thinking around these topics?

Read Full Post »

Mobility and Cloud

Mobile operators celebrate! Mobile phone becomes the main device and laptop/netbook – just a larger screen and keyboard!

Future of ICT is all about mobile and mobility. Most of high-end smart-phones -such as Motorola Atrix- will soon be able to work with a docking station that provides them with a large screen and keyboard. This means your smart phone will not be only a phone anymore. That device will be your main device to access your data, applications, connections and content. This puts mobile operators in the center of ICT. Since we can provide devices, connection and the content & applications future is bright for us.

But wait a second, how do you use your mobilephone nowadays? Just for calling, SMS or surfing? What else?

Read Full Post »