Thursday, November 18, 2010
A Glimpse into the Future?
As managed services deals become more commonplace and the factors that once separated vendors in competitive situations fade away, you can’t help but wonder how these agreements will evolve over time. We may just have gotten a glimpse of what the future holds this week. Speaking first to Reuters, and then today at a financial conference in Spain (click here for Bloomberg’s coverage), Ericsson’s Head of Managed Services, Valter D’Avino, suggested that one day the company could actually own the network – and sell capacity to carriers and operators.
It’s a pretty radical idea. Talk about creating client ‘stickiness.’ Judging by D’Avino’s comments, it’s clear that such an idea is seen as a progression of the core managed services value proposition. For carriers, network traffic isn’t going to ease anytime soon nor is the pressure to reduce costs and further streamline operations. So, if a carrier’s already outsourcing core network operations and service maintenance to a vendor like Ericsson why not take the logical next step? That’s the idea at least.
Whether or not this ever comes to fruition will ultimately depend on the carriers and operators. These are companies with a fair amount of their identity tied up in the networks consumers use and I have to think getting them to take that step won’t be easy or happen quickly. Right now, it seems like most are having a heck of a time playing the ‘my network is better than your network’ game. But then again, this industry can change lightning-fast.
