Friday, May 21, 2010

Making Sense of the Next Big Revenue Opportunity

Great discussion on Tuesday afternoon during our webinar on Telecom Managed Services. A big thanks to Jason Marcheck of Current Analysis for lending his time and expertise to the discussion. If you missed the session, we’ve just posted the recording here for on-demand viewing.

Back in early April, our CEO blogged about the enormous $200 billion managed services opportunity and there seems no end to the flow of news on this subject. Mobilicity, a new Canadian wireless carrier that launched last week in Toronto, has embraced managed services perhaps more than any other carrier at the moment, and Ericsson just announced a new multi-year deal with Telefonica in Brazil.

A modern day gold rush? Yeah, that’s a pretty fair analogy. If you think about it, what carrier/operator doesn’t want to reduce OpEx and drive top-line business growth? And what OEM isn’t looking for more client ‘stickiness’ and new rev streams in the face of declining wireline business?

Now, one doesn’t win these deals by simply showing up to the table. Success breeds success, and in the process differentiates one company from the next, which is why we put such an emphasis on gaining the competitive edge during Tuesday’s session.

Old measures of differentiation like size and scale still matter, but today carriers and operators are looking for service partners who can deliver the broad range of skills required to provision and manage networks under a variety of scenarios. OEMs that can leverage multi‐vendor asset intelligence and visibility into spares pools and excess inventories can quickly put themselves in position to deliver measurable benefits for their clients.

Here’s a quick example – sustainability. Consumer expectations and internal business requirements are driving companies to be greener, which means there’s a significant opportunity waiting for those who can help clients achieve their ecology management goals. Difficulty tracking the operating condition, location and value of network assets carries with it a pretty sizable environmental downside (e.g. transportation-related CO₂ emissions and storage-related energy consumption). Better visibility into assets leads to more environmentally friendly planning and provisioning decisions, and that ultimately leads to a clear market differentiator.

 For more on managed services, be sure to check out our new white paper.

Posted by Billy Balfour • Category: Multi-Vendor Services • Permalink

Friday, April 02, 2010

The $200 Billion Opportunity

Ericsson’s CEO Hans Vestberg was in the U.S. last week and spoke with a number of news outlets. If you didn’t see any of the coverage, definitely required reading if you want to begin to understand where the next significant opportunity lies for equipment manufacturers.

What were the key points? For starters, the market for Telecom services, those which help carriers deploy and maintain their network infrastructure, is a $200 billion market. And second, that two-thirds of the global market is still controlled by the carriers themselves.

This is a story – and opportunity – about growth. Through recent M&A and the rise of new players the competition in the OEM space is white hot, which means that traditional revenue streams may not be as abundant as they once were.

By grabbing a slice of the services pie, OEMs are bringing an important value-added service to the table and creating some much needed ‘stickiness’ with their clients. In a competitive marketplace, the more ingrained you are in your client’s business the harder it becomes for the client to think about conducting business with someone else.

Are other OEMs on to this opportunity? You bet. In their 2009 annual report, for example, Huawei notes that they had been awarded more than 100 managed services contracts by year’s end.

So, the cat’s out of the bag when it comes to the opportunity surrounding multi-vendor service agreements. Biggest question I have for OEMs is ‘now that you’re responsible for servicing other company’s gear, how are you going to maximize the value – and use – of those assets to your client’s satisfaction?’
 

Posted by Todd Adelman • Category: Multi-Vendor Services • Permalink