CloudAsia 2012 is the second year of the conference co-organized by Singapore's IDA (Infocomm Development Authority), the summary of 2011 is here and here.  In a later article I'll review the main conference.  CloudAsia 2012 is a great event to meet the decision makers across the cloud computing eco-system from enterprises, telecom operators, regulators, government agencies, service providers, system integrators and vendors.  The event is much more realistic and practical implementation focused than many other events.  In APAC vendors do not win deals through hype, rather through clear, easy to understand propositions.  IDA's involvement highlights the strategic importance Asian governments and regulators place on Cloud Computing.  The event runs from 14 to 17 May 2012, I previewed the 2012 conference here.

I ran a pre-conference workshop on "Advanced Cloud Computing 101" where I provided an independent review of cloud computing basics, and this year went into the details of the practical issues in deciding what workloads to migrate into the cloud and the real-world issues of migrating workloads into the cloud.  An enterprise application exists and is well integrated into the enterprise's infrastructure, to rebuild it in the cloud hits roadblocks such as:

• Rebuilding the application stack within the cloud;
• Setting up the network;
• Adding end-to-end security; and
  
• Managing the application in a separate environment.

Some of the key points I made through the workshop include:

• Cloud is simply IT infrastructure outsourcing.
• Focus on the business case, its a business decision not a technology decision.
• Most enterprises are focused on Hybrid cloud, 80:20 Private:Public, with a longer term migration towards public cloud where the real cost savings reside.
• We're repeating the mistakes of the past, e.g. SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).  We're being asked to believe don't think, focus on technology discussions and strategic visions not tactical business and use cases.
• Security is not the issue, its the loss of control.
• Appliances like Cloudswitch (recently bought by Verizon) managing migration issues.
• Amazon Web Services is reliable, use multiple AZ (Availability Zones).  And similarly use multiple clouds.  Don't put all your eggs into one basket.
  
• As with all IT projects "results = people * process * technology."  So if people do not change and/or process does not change then the result is zero, regardless of the technology change.
  
• Migration plan to the cloud needs to be bidirectional, that is apps may be developed in the public cloud then come back into a private cloud for production.
  
• TOGAF (The Open Group) have some great tools to evaluate what workloads make sense to migrate to the cloud given an enterprise's specific situation.
• Initial workloads to consider are: collaboration, desktop, CRM, and analytics for migration to the cloud.
• And above all do not believe the hype.
  

The workshop slide pack is 700 slides and focuses on understanding the real-world issues in migrating workloads / applications into the cloud and below is a sample to give you a feel for the depth and breath covered.


The workshop is independent, it explains the reality behind the hype, the effort required in migrating workloads to the cloud, and provides the tools on how to decide based on your specific situation.

Workshop was divided into 4 sections:
Part 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing

• Confusion and Cloud-Washing
• Cloud Consolidation
• History
• Vision
• Definitions - focus on NIST
• Cloud computing reference architecture
• Actors, Brokers, Consumers, Auditors,
• Cloud Types: Public, Private, Community and Hybrid
• Orchestration and Management
• Business support, security and privacy
• Cloud Benefits and Issues
• Cloud Misconceptions
• The Open Group Survey 2011

Part 2: Getting into the Details

• Mapping suppliers and technologies in Cloud Computing
• Understanding the economics behind the benefits
• Quantifying the benefits
• Cloud market taxonomy and market size
• CSPs and Cloud Computing - AT&T, BT, DT, NTT, Orange, SingTel, Verizon
• Mapping the workloads
• SOA and the Cloud
• Cloud Computing in Asia

Part 3: Understanding the Components

• Summary: Web 2.0, SaaS, Utility Computing, Virtualization, SLAs, Autonomic computing, Grid technology, Web Services, Service Oriented Architectures, Free and Open Source Software
• Deep Dive: Virtualization
• History
• Issues and Trends
• Supplier review: Citrix, IBM, Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Symantec, Oracle, VMWare
• Deep Dive: Data Centers
• History and the drive for efficiency and availability
• Changes and pressures on DC - drive for DC management
• Capex and opex DC costs
• DC economics drives cloud computing
• Deep Dive: Force.com, Google, Microsoft and Amazon
• Force.com
• Google App Engine
• Microsoft Azure
• Amazon Web Services
• Netflix deep dive
• AWS walk-through

Part 4: Implementation

• Survey - what workloads others are moving into the cloud?
• Summary
• Key points in cloud migration
• Industry : Workload : Cloudability Space
• Project Plan - example from IBM
• Decision Tree for implementing Cloud Computing
• The Open Group decision tree
• Security
• Reviewing SAS70, PCI DSS, ISO27001, NIST, HIPAA, FISMA, CoBIT, Data Protection Directive, practical aspects
• Architectural Review
• Concluding Remarks

Asked recently if there was an update of the old SDP landscape weblog entry, I was shocked at how out of date it had become.  The categories needed updating, lots of companies had come and gone.  The 2012 SDP landscape can be downloaded here, and is also shown at the end of this entry, though its best to download than read in the Slideshare widget.

The types of SDP are broken down into:

• IPTV: platforms that deliver video content and services to STBs (Set Top Boxes) or connected devices, e.g. tablets.
• Mobile content / app store: platforms that deliver applications and content, e.g. videos, games, music, ring tones, wall papers, etc. to customers' mobile phones.
• Messaging: SDP focused upon messaging services, e.g. USSD services or premium messaging services.
• Converged voice / SIP app server / SCIM: SDP focused on voice applications.
• Business: SDP focused on business services and integrating into business processes.
• Cloud services broker: Aggregators of cloud services, this does overlap the Business category so likely these two categories will soon merge.
• Real-time charging: SDP component that enables real-time charging for services.
• 3rd Party / APIs: SDP that enable 3rd parties, the operator and its partners to re-use services and network capabilities.
• Service creation /management: SDP component focused on the operational processes for creating and managing services
• Converged / Unified SDP: An SDP created specifically to unify all the previous categories into a consistent framework.  Features include being standards based, unified policy management, and extensive pre-integration.

I've tried to capture most of the IPTV and real-time charging providers in the landscape, as they are also consolidating into a converged / unified services domain framework, as discussed in the Services Domain report.  The Cloud Service Provider (CSB) category and the business SDP could be extend into many more enterprise focused technology providers, I've tried to keep it focused on those selling in / through telcos.  If I've missed any please let me know.

As promised in the IMS World Forum summary article, here is a quick review of WebRTC (Web Real Time Communications).  WebRTC is a HTML5 standard being drafted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the project began in early 2011.  The framework was open sourced in June 2011 by Google under a royalty free BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) style license.  Google bought the company Global IP Solutions which owned the intellectual property.  The WebRTC framework includes iLBC (Internet Low Bitrate Codec), iSAC (Internet Speech and Audio Coder), G.711, and G.722 codecs for audio and VP8 for video.  These codecs include capabilities such as packet loss concealment and echo cancellation so they can robustly cope with a lack of guaranteed quality of service.  WebRTC enables applications such as voice calls, video chat, file sharing, messaging, white-boarding, gaming, human computer interaction, etc. without any client or plug-in download to run from a browser using simple HTML and JavaScript APIs.  Real time communications becomes pervasive on the internet.

The main goal of WebRTC is not interoperability with legacy systems, that's up to the legacy systems to implement. It's to open communications to new use cases and to web developers.  Imposing the complexity of SIP to web developers would have made it very hard to get traction. With the WebRTC spec, a great 1:1 video chat experience can be built with under 100 lines of JavaScript code, see apprtc.appspot.com.

On a couple of practical issues, WebRTC includes and abstracts key NAT (Network Address Translator) and firewall traversal technology such as STUN (Simple Traversal of User datagram protocol through Network address translators), ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment), TURN (Traversal Using Relay NAT), RTP-over-TCP (Real-time Transport Protocol over Transmission Control Protocol) and support for proxies.  Enabling sessions to work like Skype.  It also abstracts signaling by offering a signaling state machine that maps directly to PeerConnection.  WebRTC is built on the PeerConnection API, it represents what browser vendors will implement and expose to web application developers. Web developers can choose the protocol depending on their usage scenario (for example, but not limited to: SIP, XMPP/Jingle, etc...).  Essentially any browser becomes a SIP end point, a telephone, an 'open' Skype client, an end point for any real-time communication and control.

On the current status of browser implementations:

• Google Chrome: integrated WebRTC into its developer channel in January 2012, allowing any website to take advantage of the WebRTC API.  The Google Talk plugin is a complex piece of software and the WebRTC platform is not yet deployed.  So Google is taking it one step at a time and not making promises about the migration of when Google Talk plugin will be migrated to the WebRTC framework.
• Mozilla Firefox: Mozilla integrated WebRTC into its Firefox alpha in early 2012 which gave the browser the ability to perform audio mixing on a media stream.  In April 2012 Mozilla released a demo of WebRTC video calling that ran inside the Firefox browser
• Internet Explorer: Microsoft has also started work on implementation of the API
• Likely by the end of this year we'll see Chrome and Firefox running WebRTC, that's about 50% of the market, and the half of the market (mainly IE) will take a little longer, likely end of 2013.

Of course with any new technology there will be issues such as:

• We'll still likely have NAT and firewall issues, though about as often as we face them with Skype today;
• Will it be standardized enough, will some of the proponents find ways to keep their islands and fragment the market;
• Will we need SBCs (Session Border Controllers) to handle the connections?
• STUN and ICE can take time to set-up so call set-up times could be longer than people are used to; and
• People change habits slowly, the communication experience has been fixed for many decades, so things will not change overnight.

That's the capabilities, but the implications of having an open communications client on most browsers on the planet is much more interesting:

• Voice becomes just like all your other communications: organized into your preferred social or office tools.
• It will be important for the IMS/RCS world to inter-operate with the WebRTC world, currently these browsers will be a closed book to IMS.  For RCSe to become pervasive, it cannot remain trapped in phones that have implemented the IMS/RCSe client.
• For all the OTT (Over The Top) applications, they can now use their "directory service" i.e. your list of contacts also using their service to enable Viber / Skype / Whatsapp everywhere.  On your PC, smartphone, tablet, TV; and they can offer chargeable services without Apple taking 30%.
• As long as you're data connected, communications is in the cloud, people need only break out to PSTN when the other person is not data connected, or the call quality is too low due to their internet connection.  PSTN becomes the communications path of last resort.
• The company's website now becomes its call center front end.  A weblog becomes your personal communications assistant.
• Communication service aggregators save customers running multiple clients on their phone, that would run in the cloud and be controlled from the browser.
• Click to call doesn't require an operator's voice network, just access to the internet.
• Communications becomes like using any application on a smartphone, users can add features, capabilities, people throughout a call, e.g. N-way calling finally becomes simple and obvious with a simple point and swipe. 
• Directory services become critical sources of value in connecting all the different IDs: telephone numbers, SIP IDs (IDentifier), web session IDs, other OTT IDs, etc.
• VAS (Value Added Services) leaves telco.  Any web developer can create value and solve problems for customers, it the customer who will decide, and those developers who fail fastest win the innovation race.
• Advertising finally enters the communications space, opening up business model innovation.
• New CRM (Customer Relationship Management) methods: click from email, from webpage, from app, from TV.  The ability to communicate becomes embedded in most transactions.
• QoS (Quality of Service) remains an issue, but for the people using Vonage and Skype over the years will attest, QoS is rarely an issue.
• Your phone number is no longer relevant anymore. It's a gateway to the past.  Customers will only know the PSTN is involved because of the poor audio quality.
• Gaming becomes interesting as all the devices become controllers using gesture controls as well as the more traditional methods for network-based games.
• And the list goes on.....
  

And a thank you to Serge Lachapelle (Google's WebRTC product manager) for reviewing this article.

In the slides below I capture highlights from 3 presentations of note given in the conference.

Larry Baziw (Rogers): Rogers One Number
Larry gave the highlight presentation of the conference that reviewed RON (Rogers One Number), a consumer UC (Unified Communications) service between the mobile and the PC, using the mobile number as the unifying identity.  It was the first service they launched on IMS, and has exceeded take-up targets.  Its available for free to postpaid customers.  It targets youth, trans-youth, and families with youth, but as with any service its reach goes beyond the initial target segments.  It enables features such as call pull, where a conversation can be transferred mid-call from the mobile to the PC.  Larry gave a frank review of the feature migration issues, such as MMTel (MultiMedia Telephony) only supporting 3-way calling (original fixed bias of the standard) while GSM supports 6-way calling which is popular in the Canadian youth segment.  One of the many examples of how IMS history limits it on such obvious requirements.  An important point is Rogers led the project management activities across 10 vendors (including Ericsson, Broadsoft, Counterpath, etc.).  Larry also discussed the user experience issues about using CDR (Call Detail Record) history in populating the NAB (Network Address Book).  The reason this was such a good presentation is it focused on the commercial, organizational, and implementation challenges.

Kobus Smit (Deutsche Telekom): Review of RCS
RCSe has gained broad support from most handset suppliers, note iOS and Android clients are available.  Though I find it disappointing that after all this time HD voice is not available at launch.  Voice call quality keeps getting worse as operators milk their assets rather than investing to keep relevant.  I still not convinced on the need for a consumer brand (Joyn), it's simply a network capability like making a call and sending a SMS - it just works.  The key issue of IMS cost and complexity is highlighted in the presentation, which is a critical point for many operators.  I am seeing some lightweight IMS implementations (think fat application server) as a way around this problem.  

Wooyong Choi (SK Telecom): Korea's RCS Launch
Wooyong provided a frank review of the impact OTT (Over The Top) voice and messaging services are having on their business, describing the top 4 services: KAKAO (1.3B messages per day), MyPeople, LINE and TicToc (built by 6 people in 6 months).  He reviewed the need for operators to work faster, together, and foster open innovation.  And he highlights given the limitations of RCS it's not clear it's enough. 

A key theme I'm seeing popping up ever more frequently is we've got to change how we innovate, as discussed in the Services Domain Report.

The Policy Control and Real-Time Charging Conference ran from the 24th-26th April 2012 at the Krasnapolsky Hotel, Amsterdam.  The conference included operator presentations / case studies from Swisscom, Reliance, Turkcell, Vodafone, KPN, and Orange.  I ran a post-conference workshop on the 26th April entitled "Policy Control and Charging Workshop: An Independent and Quantified Review," the outline in the workshop is shown in this article.

In the slides below I share some of the highlights from the conference.  I start with a few slides from the post-conference workshop, which captures the mood of the conference in the need to focus on the business aspects, rather than just the technology, but significant market uncertainties remain.  Much thought is still required on the application of policy.  I share from the workshop some end-customer survey results on their view of bill shock and quality of service: Value and Simplicity are key.

Alex Harmand, Head of Service Platforms, at Telefónica Spain gave a great presentation on "Optimising and Enhancing the Data Experience for End-Users with Policy Control: Creating Value and Maximising Yield."  In the presentation he reviews their experiences in video optimization.  The presentation reviews the importance of keeping the customer informed on their data usage.

Teresa Reyes, Director of Engineering and Design, Vodafone Spain gave a well-quantified presentation on "Which Devices and OS Are Responsible for Generating The Most Traffic and Why?"  Poorly implemented smartphones and applications can have a significant impact on the signalling load in a network.  She highlighting the 2000% increase in smartphone data sessions over the past 2 years.  Signalling traffic is a critical issues that needs careful management, hence where policy has an important role in managing the network.

Thomas Pinegger, Head of IT Architecture, Swisscom gave excellent practical advice on PCC (Policy Control and Charging) implementation in his presentation on "Moving From Volume-Based Packages Towards Application-Based Charging and Zero-Rated Traffic: Effective Strategies for Minimising Complexity for Customers." in how easy it is to create vast volumes of diameter messages.  Steps to avoid this include limiting price plan complexity, avoiding counters in the PCRF (Policy and Charging Rules Function), and use your own Sy interface.

Hans van Oortmassen, Architect, KPN in his presentation on "The Road to Converged Real Time Charging."  Succinctly captured the real-word situation of most operators.  The road to converged real time charging requires much attention to decoupling the Network and BSS (Business Support System) with respect to: Standard Interfaces, Data Management, Trigger Distribution, and CDR (Call Detail Record) Distribution

A personal gripe is it would be nice to see a move away from engineer inspired labels such as "gold, silver and bronze" and a focus on marketing defined end-customer segmentation such as "surfer, streamer and pro."

From the conference and workshop some of my take-aways include:

• A significant gap remains on commercialization, PCC is still technology-led;
• Sy is not considered adequate;
• Lots of interest in revenue and yield management, and its application in other industries;
• Clarity on policy's different roles across revenue and network management;
• Confusion amongst operators with the many different vendor messages;and
• The balance of power appears to be with the OCS (Online Charging System) not PCRF, though they are both critical elements that need to be well integrated.

At the IMS (IP Multiedia Subsystem) World Forum I gave a pre-conference workshop that summarized some of the results gathered in the IMS Status Report.  The conference backed up the findings in the Report, and highlighted the many technology and business challenges we face as IMS rolls out.  An interesting discussion point raised on both VoLTE (Voice over Long Term Evolution) roll-out and Rogers's One Number (RON) deployment is will roaming voice revenues disappear over the coming decade as voice becomes just an app?  We'll discuss this later in the article, this is going to be a critical issue for many operators' profitability.  After years of circumspection, IMS is well on its way to ubiquity, even given the technology and business challenges, as shown below, a result from the operator survey contained in the IMS Report.


The conference had 200+ attendees, 66% were operators.  Telefonica and Vodafone Spain were just a few subway stops up the road in Madrid.  If only operators in other countries could be equally as conveniently located, well perhaps in time around the Paddington area in London as Vodafone, Everything Everywhere and Telefonica consolidate into the city from places like deepest, darkest Newbury.

Some of the issues discussed through the conference included:

• Cloud: granted a degree of cloud-washing is taking place; that is using the cloud label when it doesn't technically apply. There is a recognition that even though IMS is shown as a set of boxes and wires, it's mostly software and can take advantage of cloud economics given the processor intensity of most IMS implementations.  Another aspect is on how IMS can work with cloud-communication services, we'll discuss this in more detail later in this weblog article.
  
• Impact of Web RTC (Real Time Communications) on IMS.  That is, over the coming 18 months all browsers become SIP end-points, this is both an opportunity and threat for IMS.  But it appears it's not on the 'IMS radar.'  I'll do a weblog article on its importance later, as an industry we need to be more responsive to emerging threats and opportunities.
• Lack of web integration remains an issue limiting IMS to real-time communication sessions, missing the richer communication experience enabled by most OTT (Over The Top) communication services.
• Lack of experience in RCS/VoLTE/IMS (Rich Communications Suite / Voice over Long Term Evolution) roaming.  This is a critical component of an operators advantage compared to OTT, but it remains largely untested with a lack of urgency in getting it resolved.
  
• Belief that QoS (Quality of Service) matters to customers.  It does, but not all the time, and that's the problem, especially as the pipes get fatter.
• Opinion was it will take >2 years before RCSe becomes mass market or at least pervasive on handsets.
• VoLTE, the beginning of the end of roaming voice revenues?
• 2G switch off.  I was only 2G connected throughout the event, using WiFi due to the unreasonable mobile broadband roaming rates.  If I have 3G and WiFi on my smartphone doesn't last the day with normal use.  So 2G switch off will frustrate lots of customers, not just laggards.  Markets like Japan are unique and should not be used as a proof-point for other markets, didn't i-mode teach us anything?  The voice of the consumer and its political impact is far stronger in other markets.
  
• Weird situation that if RCSe is not about new revenue then let's take a softly-softly approach to trials.  There's a lack of urgency, it's a fashionable topic, but the intensity of commitment to making it work just doesn't feel like its there.  A question often asked was, "Is it too late?"  My reaction is, its only too late once you're buried underground!
  
• OTT appears to be the top concern, operators are finally realizing Vonage, Viber, Skype, Whatsapp, Pingme, Google, Facebook, and the thousands of other similar services are reducing their relevance as CSPs (Communication Service Providers) to customers.
  

Reviewing just a few of the presentations.  I'll provide more highlights in a later article.

Noriaki Hagiya (NTT): Deploying IMS network and migration strategies
Their decision on IMS was strategic, this is a common theme for many operator deployments, and discussed in the IMS Report.  The initial application of IMS was managing the ATM to IP migration for 3G, it was then reused for their VoLTE deployment.  Their drive to LTE was simply the 3* spectrum improvement (note they did not have HSPA+) which appeared from their slides to the open door the door to 4G, with its much greater spectrum efficiency compared to LTE.  They described their SEN (Service Enabler Network) using a SCIM (Service Capability Interaction Manager) and a composition engine to create operator services.  They do not appear to be focused on the use of APIs for innovation across internal, partner and third parties for IMS at present.

Christophe Coutelle (Huawei): Maximizing the value of IMS
Christophe gave an excellent presentation setting out 3 drivers for IMS: 1) do voice well, 2) multimedia and multi-screen, and 3) expose and enable.  On driver (1) he explained the 2 main approaches in the market of softswitch and AGCF (Access Gateway Control Function)  for small deployments, e.g. Telecom Malaysia; and P-CSCF and SIP-MSAN (Proxy Call Session Control Function and Session Initiation Protocol Multi-Service Access Network) for larger deployments, e.g. T-com.  He highlighted the aggressive move to VoLTE through 2012 and 2013 by a number of operators.  Recommended to start RCSe on 3G as early as possible to start learning and solving the roaming and user interface / experience issues as soon as possible.  Mentioned the iBasis LTE roaming service to help get up the learning curve fast.  On multimedia he discussed the challenges in video, especially on interoperability.  He finished on the the importance of 'expose and enable', with CaaS (Communication as a service) being a $700M market in 2012, growing to $3B in 2015.  And gave the example of China mobile which has 120 services enabled by 3rd parties such as insurance apps and video door bell redirect to mobile.

Larry Baziw (Rogers): Rogers One Number
Larry gave the highlight presentation of the conference that reviewed RON (Rogers One Number), a consumer UC (Unified Communications) service between the mobile and the PC, using the mobile number as the unifying identity.  It was the first service they launched on IMS, and has exceeded take-up targets.  Its available for free to postpaid customers.  It targets youth, trans-youth, and families with youth, but as with any service its reach goes beyond the initial target segments.  It enables features such as call pull, where a conversation can be transferred mid-call from the mobile to the PC.  Larry gave a frank review of the feature migration issues, such as MMTel (MultiMedia Telephony) only supporting 3-way calling (original fixed bias of the standard) while GSM supports 6-way calling which is popular in the Canadian youth segment.  One of the many examples of how IMS history limits it on such obvious requirements.  An important point is Rogers led the project management activities across 10 vendors (including Ericsson, Broadsoft, Counterpath, etc.).  Larry also discussed the user experience issues about using CDR (Call Detail Record) history in populating the NAB (Network Address Book).  the reason this was such a good presentation is it focused on the commercial, organizational, and implementation challenges.

Dr Chen Dan (ZTE): IMS based PSTN/ISDN Emulation
Provided case studies from China Telecom and Telefonica Peru on use of IMS to replace legacy PSTN with savings from: power consumption 34%; O&M 53%; maintenance 66%; and space 37%.  She reviewed a number of IMS deployment options, e.g. hosted IMS at a group level across a number of OBs (Operating Businesses); IMS in a box for small deployments; as well as a full cloud implementation with software/hardware decoupling running in a private, hybrid, or public cloud.  She explained several tools they've created to manage the IT barriers in IMS deployment including a data migration tool, and a service provisioning node, which is similar to the mediation layer Verizon created in their IMS deployment and described in the IMS Report

Jimmy Erhbar (COLT)
Jimmy provided a frank review of where many operators are, that is IMS-ready and watching and waiting.

Cloud panel discussion Micaela Giuhat (Genband), Eduardo Alonso (Acme Packet) and Michael Blauer (Broadsoft)
Some of the points raised in the discussion included:

• Lack of open API implementations to enable IMS implementations to work with cloud-based services, really the broader category of web-based services was more appropriate as they're all API enabled.
  
• Lack of definition on what cloud means in the context of IMS and IMS applications
• Dr Chen from ZTE highlight a good practical summary of the IMS deployment options and Jimmy Erhbar from COLT highlighted cloud implementations will start with applications.
• There was a discussion around cloud-based UC services such as Cisco's HUCS (Hosted Unified Communications Service) and the lack of interoperability with IMS capabilities for QoS.
• Who is responsible when things go wrong in a service between the cloud provider and the network operator?
• Are vendor's IMS solutions ready for a clear separation between the software and hardware with an efficient implementation in a virtualized environment?
• A hosted 'group IMS' with each OB sharing the capabilities was seen as a valid model, provided its from a single vendor.  Most operators consider a single vendor IMS approach the only practical deployment option, which calls into question most of the effort spent on the IMS standard.

Michele Zarri (Deutsche Telekom): VoLTE Roaming
Michele explained the TRF (Transit Roaming Function) to keep the existing roaming model in place for VoLTE.  There was strong push-back from the audience on whether the model can be maintained. The earlier RON deployment was used as an example where customers will increasingly use OTT to avoid roaming fees.  Some comments made highlighted a fundamental challenge in that operators' employees never pay for their telecommunications service, if they did they'd quickly start using OTT and understand the threat. VoLTE will need to adapt to this situation else OTT will continue to gain a greater foothold.  Operators must remember they are a unique niche in the market, their employer covers their bill no questioned asked.  Virtually all other customers have to pay their bills, or justify any expense they claim.

Pieter Veenstra (KPN): Standardization national IP interconnect
Pieter again gave an excellent presentation I'll discuss in more detail in a later weblog on IMS simplifications.  He recommended using SIP not ENUM for national interconnect; the creation of a routing engine to simplify interconnect; and interesting self-learning approach to HD Voice.

Yachen Wang (China Mobile): Overview of CM-IMS (China Mobile's IMS)
This case study is discussed in the IMS Report.  Yachen Wang gave a good review of their current situation.  600M mobile subs, 20M PSTN subs across enterprise and home.  They have a 3 step IMS strategy:

• Step 1: Unifed Comms for enterprise (2009-2011) - converged IP Centrex
• Step 2: VoIP / PSTN replacement (2011-2013)
• Step 3: VoLTE and FMC (need full regional / national coverage of LTE - like Verizon) 2013+

They currently have 10M IMS subscribers.  Each province has its own IMS.  All main IMS vendors are involved.  They are currently focused on solving problems created through BYOA (Bring Your Own Access) such as QoS, security, firewall blocking.  They are also investigating how to support IMS services over WiFi, as China Mobile has a national WiFi strategy.  Here the Wireless Broadband Alliance will play an important role.

In Summary: We've got to realize that its not about incremental revenue, its about maintaining revenues.  In my case, between AT&T, Verizon and Vonage; they're taking $4k a year from me, and most people on the planet are an operators' customer.  Its a good business, we've got to focus on managing the transition in the business to focusing upon relevancy, and the changes technology will have on the revenue mix, such as roaming voice revenues disappearing over this decade.  For next year at the conference I hope we have many more presentations like Larry Baziw's (Rogers) which focused on the commercial, organizational, and implementation challenges much more than the technology, as technology is increasingly the easier part of the problem.

The 6th SDP Asia Summit 27-30 March was reviewed previously here and here.  Tom Clayton gave an excellent presentation on BubbleMotion's transition from being VAS (Value Added Service) provider to being an App provider at the conference, his case study is the focus of this article.

Use of applications on smartphones is growing rapidly in Asia.  China is now the 2nd largest App Market in the World, with an app session growth between Jan-Oct 2011 of 900%.  Over the same period India's growth was 400% and Thailand was 350%.  While VAS are failing in many Asian countries.  The Philippine's telecom regulator first clamped down on direct SMS marketing, setting text templates around campaigns which made any direct marketing ineffective.  India then came down even harder on VAS subscriber acquisition, effectively ending any customer acquisition through double-confirmation rules.  Then Indonesia took it the further, wiping out the entire VAS ecosystem overnight with triple-confirmation required on all new sub acquisitions and weekly "opt-in" required on all renewal subscribers.  Regulators are killing an operator's ability to compete with Over The Top apps in developing markets.

Looking at the pros and cons of building VAS versus building apps:

• VAS pros: Free infrastructure opex, free marketing spend, and ubiquitous billing.
• VAS cons: Operators own all decisions, limited marketing control, minimal rev shares, delayed payments, high level of customization, and upfront capex.
• App pros: Complete autonomy & control, higher rev share, easier to scale globally, and unified service globally.
• App cons: Costly infrastructure opex, D2C (Direct to Consumer) marketing costs, D2C support costs, and limited billing options.

Some of the challenges in moving from a VAS to an App provider include:

• Understanding direct to consumer focus: being accustomed to selling to and working with operators, with very little experience on dealing directly with consumers.
• Coding skill-set: good at hardcore network programming, but lack of strong visual UI/UX (User Interface / Experience) expertise and app languages, and the need to iterate very fast - weekly (if not daily).
• Minimal knowledge of marketing to consumers: accustomed to operators controlling the promotions, now need to purchase mobile ads via networks and aggregators, and need to figure out how to grow virally via social media.
• Business Model challenge: VAS services are typically driven off subscription pricing models.  Some are also usage based, but there are few models other than usage and subscription.
• Leading App pricing models are very different:
• Free - focused purely on user growth;
• Paid upfront - paid apps to download;
• Freemium - free to download, but looking to upgrade users in-app;
• Ad-based - funded completely off ads within the app;
• Virtual goods - selling goods within the app; and
  
• Subscription - although, limited 'auto-renewing' subscription capability compared to the VAS space.
• Smartphone Apps are are going to be a negative investment for a while.  Need to hire the expertise lacking internally before the model and business is proven.
• May lose focus and critical revenue from the VAS business.  Diverting resources and focus to App business will inherently lead to drop off on the VAS business.

Given the challenges of the transition, BubbleMotion created the Bubbly app.  Bubbly is the first voice-based communication platform that brings together all mobile users across feature phones, iPhones and Android.  iPhone users can download the free app and connect with the existing 16+ million users and hundreds of celebrities.  Voice + Text makes Bubbly the first social voice network to broadcast and share anytime from anywhere.  With the app, users can now share updates directly to Twitter and Facebook and easily to connect with other friends using the Bubbly app.

To manage the transition BubbleMotion set up a dedicated Apps team with experienced developers, product experts and UI/UX designers.  Creating a slick experience is essential, see figure below.

• Focused only on iOS & Android initially: Even in Android - only focused on 4 form factors initially.
• Vetted different business models: Started with recurring subscription and moved to one-time payment.
• Set up faster Dev cycles: Implemented weekly "sprints" and bi-weekly release cycles.
• Launched in core markets first: India, Indonesia, Philippines and Japan.
• Started mobile advertising direct.

BubbleMotion built on their strengths:

• 16M+ Users: Wanted to bring the value of 16M users from the launch.
• Reach across 1.2B feature phones: Didn't want it to be a smartphone only app.
• 1,000+ Celebs voice blogging: Lots of big name celebs are actively blogging - wanted them on the app Day 1.
• Billing connectivity to mobile operators: Billing in Android is in its nascent stages, so had to leverage their existing billing capabilities.
• Large volume of SMS capacities: reuse their assets within the operator, especially the SMS capabilities to feature phones.

The Results:

• Much higher user engagement: Majority of users following other users in addition to celebs.  P2P blogging is 67% of traffic (compared to 29% on the VAS side).  74% of blog posts have audio (even though text and tweets are available).  High number of comments per post.  3.2 sessions per user per day (4X the VAS service).
• App Store Ranking spiked to Top 20.  Within 3 days of launch passed Google+ in their core markets

The transition from VAS provider to app player is not simple.  BubbleMotion shows it can be done.  But this should also be seen as a death-knell for emerging market operator's future VAS revenues thanks to their local regulators essentially killing the local market.

Cloud Asia 2012 is the second year of the conference, my summary of Cloud Asia 2011 is here and here.  Cloud Asia 2012 is a great event to meet the decision makers across the cloud computing eco-system from enterprises, telecom operators, regulators, government agencies, service providers, system integrators and vendors from Asia Pacific and the Middle East. 

The event really has its "feet on the ground", its focused on practical implementation issues, rather than having its "head in the clouds."  Put simply in APAC vendors do not win deals through hype and BS, rather through clear, customer-centric, easy to understand propositions.  The event is co-organized with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) which highlights the strategic importance Asian governments place on Cloud Computing.  The event runs from 14 to 17 May 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Singapore.

For me the highlight of the event are the many presentations from end users on their requirements and experiences in adopting cloud computing.  Some of the presenters include:

• Steve Lee, CIO, Changi Airport Group
• Mrs Rosina Howe, Chief Innovation Officer & Group Director, Innovation and InfoComm Technology Land Transport Authority     
• Taufik Kurniawan, Head of IT Infrastructure Information System Directorate, Royal Court of Bahrain
• Alan Dawson, Director, Infrastructure and Service Operations, MOHHoldings    
  
• Michael Ong, General Manager, SoftLayer Technologies APAC     
• Bernard Golden CEO, HyperStratus & Author, "Virtualization for Dummies"Dummies Press, 2008

I'll be chairing some of the main conference and running a pre-conference workshop on "Advanced Cloud Computing 101" where I'll be providing an independent review of cloud computing basics, but this year diving into the details of the practical issues in deciding what workloads to migrate into the cloud and the real-world issues of such migration.  An enterprise application exists and is well integrated into the existing enterprise infrastructure, to rebuild it in the cloud takes effort and can hit many roadblocks such as: rebuilding the application stack within the cloud; setting up the network; adding end-to-end security; and managing the application in a separate environment.

The workshop is independent, it will explain the reality behind the hype, the effort required in migrating workloads, and provide the tools on how to decide based on your specific situation.  The workshop is be divided into 4 sections, as shown below.  I hope to see you there for a fun, frank and insightful conference.

Part 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing

• Confusion and Cloud-Washing
• Cloud Consolidation
• History
• Vision
• Definitions - focus on NIST
• Cloud computing reference architecture
• Actors, Brokers, Consumers, Auditors,
• Cloud Types: Public, Private, Community and Hybrid
• Orchestration and Management
• Business support, security and privacy
• Cloud Benefits and Issues
• Cloud Misconceptions
• The Open Group Cloud Survey 2011

Part 2: Getting into the Details

• Mapping suppliers and technologies in Cloud Computing
• Understanding the economics behind the benefits
• Quantifying the benefits
• Cloud market taxonomy and market size
• CSPs and Cloud Computing - AT&T, BT, DT, NTT, Orange, SingTel, and Verizon
• Mapping the workloads
• SOA and the Cloud
• Cloud Computing in Asia

Part 3: Understanding the Components

• Summary: Web 2.0, SaaS, Utility Computing, Virtualization, SLAs, Autonomic computing, Grid technology, Web Services, Service Oriented Architectures, Free and Open Source Software
• Deep Dive: Virtualization
• History, Issues and Trends
• Supplier review: Citrix, IBM, Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Symantec, Oracle, VMWare
• Deep Dive: Data Centers
• History and the drive for efficiency and availability
• Changes and pressures on DC - drive for DC management
• Capex and opex DC costs
• DC economics drives cloud computing
• Deep Dive: Force.com, Google, Microsoft and Amazon
• Force.com
• Google App Engine
• Microsoft Azure
• Amazon Web Services
• Netflix deep dive
• AWS walk-through

Part 4: Implementation

• Survey - what workloads others are moving into the cloud?
• Key points in cloud migration
• Industry : Workload : Cloudability Space
• Project Plan
  
• Decision Tree for implementing Cloud Computing
• Security: reviewing SAS70, PCI DSS, ISO27001, NIST, HIPAA, FISMA, CoBIT, Data Protection Directive, practical aspects
• Architectural Review
• Concluding Remarks

I try not to prejudge, to write-off, as we all suck at predicting the future.  But I sometimes just need to rant, here are a few.

Connected Car. Why when everyone in the car already has a smartphone / tablet that's up to the minute and customized to their needs.  Not 3-6 year old technology and shared.  There are applications like remote diagnostics and remote viewing of the car's cameras, but that's niche to luxury cars for the rest of this decade.

LTE's tag line should be: "Experience what you've been experiencing with WiFi at home and in the office for the past 10 years, and with HSPA+ for the passed 2 years."

Connected Home.  Only for the cribs of the super-rich and geeks.  For the rest of us it will be a slow incremental path of silos, e.g. connected TV, WiFi-cams (standalone) to monitor home / pets / children / elderly parents (they're sometimes worse than the children), and possibly the central heating / AC controller.

Smart Cities.  Yet more stuff to get vandalized in the city.   I see the value of shared services like bus tracking and the signs with the number of spaces left in a parking garage, but that's been around for more than a decade.

Calling it mobile when they mean wireless or portable.  Most, between 80-90% depending on how its calculated, of the Tablets and eReaders sold are WiFi-only or are never activated.  So most tablets are portable or wireless devices (remember those words before mobile became trendy) NOT mobile devices as they never connect through a mobile network.

Instagram!  $1b for a little picture filtering app that wasn't even making money, seriously something's broken.  The argument that Facebook is limited to old-world internet of browsers - you know, the thing you're likely reading this weblog entry on your portable not mobile device (because you're using WiFi - unless you're an operator and then you've never paid for telecoms and are hence a market niche).  Rather 'they claim' Facebook was not winning in the "bright and shiny" mobile internet, that is using apps that make the internet possible on your smartphone as you only use the smartphone's browser when you're desperate.  Which I do not get as most people I know use their Facebook app most of the time, so Facebook are clearly on the "mobile internet" and winning.  Facebook was made to make an emotional decision so some fat-cats could get even fatter.  It reminded me (on a far smaller scale) of GroupMe that was lauded as revolutionary but had a fundamental challenge in its business model and exited before the business model issues were revealed.  When is reality going to hit?  Reality is the thing the rest of us live every day were we cannot spend more than we earn without getting into financial difficulties; where we have to deliver, not claim we delivered, else we get fired; where giving away stuff for free costs us money not makes us money.

The Mobile Internet is a con.  Which brings me to a key point I've made before on this weblog.  There's no such thing as the mobile internet, it's the internet and we access it through multiple devices: desk-tops (old school!), lap tops (big and not so big) generally via WiFi, tablets (Apple (big) and Android (big and small)) generally by WiFi, smartphones (Apple and Android) generally by WiFi and mobile (in that order by MB used), and even feature phones (WAP and SMS).  Apps make using web services possible as its dumbed-down for the limited real-estate of the smartphones, and even on tablets when you just want to quickly check something.  Note, an app can be just a link to a website (HTML5 page or widget).  It is just about the user interface not some fundamental platform or network or middleware or other 'game changing nonsense.'  There are a group of fat-cats peddling "revolutionary" ideas to promote companies for M&A that takes wealth away from companies not adds to it.  CTOs need to start doing their job and openly criticizing the BS-peddling fat-cats who are simply out to force bad M&A deals on companies that should focus on their customers and keeping them delighted.  And companies should hold the CTO responsible for ensuring their future success as no one else in the company has that responsibility (unless the CTO role gets split with a Chief Strategy Office role), not treat the CTO as a geek they keep in the closet to occasionally bring out and translate when people start using acronyms.

I could rant on, but it would get very boring for you, so I'll continue ranting to myself.

I'll be gave a Webinar on "Making Money through Service Exposure (APIs) and the New Business Models It Enables" on Wednesday, April 04, 2012.  Its now available for viewing here at the TMForum website.

The webinar covered:

• Why telecommunications is lagging behind most other industries in API adoption
• Where the money is in network APIs
• Communication Service Provder advantages with network APIs
• Multiple models of success
• Verizon's use of telco APIs
• Telecom Italia's use of telco APIs

We were only able to address a few of the many questions generated by the webinar.  You can email at 'info at alanquayle dot com' if you'd like me to answer your questions.

I'm often asked what's the difference between Aepona, Apigee, Twilio, Voxeo?  The diagram below is my attempt to provide a framework to understand the similarities and differences between the 4 suppliers.  This can only present a current snapshot and my view, other frameworks are possible, and of course all 4 suppliers have a future vision which likely overlaps more than I show here.  Please note Apigee disagrees with this analysis and we're trying to find a framework that works.

One of my assumptions in putting the framework together is that a telco may choose not to build-out a general purpose API infrastructure, for which Apigee is a leading choice.  Some tier 2/3 operators may decide to partner on a reduced set of APIs and business scope.  And want the partner to do most things, even bringing a developer community.  A good analogy presented to me to help understand why the framework can be considered confusing is it's like I am putting a professional services firm and a Telco in the same graph, the two are very different businesses. 

This helped me think about one of my assumptions, as an enterprise can use a managed network service from a telco or a professional services firm; the solution is the same from the enterprise's perspective even though the roles behind the managed service can be different.  As always the perspective of the viewer can be very different depending on your location in the ecosystem.  This framework is just one view of the many ways the market can be segmented.  Just as API management became critical to the business of APIs in telecom over the passed couple of years, I'm seeing a segment of operators evaluating managed solutions given their limited budgets and resources.

The framework shown below has 5 categories:

• Network Gateway - the traditional network gateway and the core set of network APIs it exposes for example based on OneAPI.
• Derived APIs, Other APIs and API services - this covers two layers in practice.  APIs built on top of OneAPI or exposed from other than the network gateway.  And services necessary for example to make the payment API a viable payment service (business solution), e.g. settlement, currency conversion, etc.
• API management - an API without management is near useless to most developers.
• Developer platform - capabilities to enable developers to create and run their applications using those APIs.
• Developer community - real people using the APIs to solve real business problems.

Within the operator I identify 4 sources of assets that can be exposed by the operator: network assets, IMS assets (broken out as Voxeo can talk directly and its possible QoS (Quality of Service) APIs could be exposed from the PCRF (Policy Control Resource Function) to an API management layer), cloud assets and other operator assets (e.g. business and operational support capabilities.)  And I show a spectrum of APIs from informational (e.g. device type or profile) to transactional (e.g. call control.)

Aepona began as a traditional network gateway, previously known as a parlay gateway, which exposes OneAPI defined APIs, protects the operators' network, and implements all the policies and security for each developer's access to each API.  Aepona has expanded over the years to include API creation (beyond OneAPI), mash-up, management and analytics (Agile Service Enablement); and a payments and settlement engine to enable a payment API to become a payment service thanks to its purchase of Valista.  This extends Aepona's functionality across the "Derived APIs, other APIs, API services", "API Management" and into "Developer Platform".

Apigee began in the enterprise API management business and has expanded into telecom API management.  It offers a horizontal capability providing API management (including analytics) so developers can run their business on the APIs provided, and through the acquisition of Usergrid now has developer platform capabilities such as user management, social networking, notifications and storage, which can run from the operator's cloud.

Twilio aggregates a focused set of operator capabilities covering messaging, call control and number provisioning.  It offers a simple XML descriptive set of API to its developer community. Twilio spends time and resources on developer enablement ensuring that HowTos, helper libraries, GitHub repositories are constantly updated resulting in impressive launch rates. 

Voxeo offers more sophisticated communication APIs to its developer community which come from its enterprise call center / PBX business.  Voxeo's SIP heritage means it can also work directly with IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) assets, and its leadership in WebRTC (Real-Time Communications) create a rich communications API environment across traditional operator devices and web browsers. 

Twilio and Voxeo address different segments of developers, and demonstrates how the same core set of capabilities can be exposed in quite different ways to drive different lines of business.

Depending on what you have in your network, your API business plan, the types of APIs and addressable market segments will influence who and how much of their solutions you use.  The great thing is operators have choice in suppliers with a rich and rapidly expanding set of capabilities increasingly focused on making money with APIs, rather than simply exposing them.

The week of the 23-26 April is going to be busy for anyone involved with IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) or policy control and real-time charging.

From the 23rd-26th April 2012 at the NH Eurobuilding, Madrid, Spain the IMS World Forum will be running.  In reviewing the status of IMS: Verizon continues its aggressive roll-out of IMS, accelerated by its commitment to LTE (Long Term Evolution) and VoLTE (Voice over LTE).  Though as we've seen over the past year it has suffered a significant number of IMS outages.  Many mobile operators that were circumspect on IMS in 2009 have now implemented IMS as part of their LTE roll-out or RCSe/RCS5 plans, for example Rogers Wireless in Canada.  Put simply, they changed their minds.  Advanced voice services are now being launched on IMS, e.g. enterprise unified communications.  

At the conference we'll be hearing from Larry Baziw, Director, Voice Product Development & Next Generation Services Planning, Rogers; as he reviews the launch of Rogers' One Number service, their first IMS service deployment.

• Connecting Mobile Circuit Switch domain to IMS domain offering IMS Services to Circuit switch mobile subscribers
• Rogers One Number Service review
• Advanced calling functions
• Network address book
• Creating a connected life user experience through

The conference includes many operator deployment case studies as well as some frank reviews on the environment IMS will find itself in, for example there is a panel session on: "Facilitating interoperability between operators and OTT Players - Partnerships and competition for the future" which includes Alan Duric, CTO & Co-Founder, Telio Holding ASA, who I am convinced will make it a highly entertaining and frank discussion.

I'll be running a pre-conference workshop on the 23rd April, outline shown below, which includes some of the results contained in the IMS Status Report: Moving Up The Slope of Enlightenment.

Course Objectives:

• Provide a deep-dive quantified analysis of the IMS market status, enabling attendees to understand what operators and suppliers are thinking and planning.
• Learn from real-world operator deployments understanding their challenges and opportunities.
• An aim is not to provide yet another IMS technology training session; the vendors provide enough of them, rather a focused workshop of the practical realities of deploying IMS.  However, a brief IMS review is provided so all attendees no matter their background (especially non-technical) can understand the survey results and case studies.
• The case studies will review the environment in which IMS is deployed, including IMS and SDP (Service Delivery Platform), Next generation IN (Intelligent Network), legacy IN, and JAIN SLEE (Java IN Service Logic Execution Environment).

Pre-Requisites:

• Basic IP-knowledge
• Basic telecom knowledge

Who should attend this class?

• Non-technical or technical managers responsible for, or whose platform will need to inter-operate with, IMS.

From the 24th-26th April 2012 at the Krasnapolsky Hotel, Amsterdam the Policy Control and Real-time charging conference will be running.  The conference will include operator presentations / case studies from Swisscom, Reliance, Turkcell, Vodafone, KPN, Orange and many more.

I'll be running a post-conference workshop on the 26th April entitled Policy Control and Charging Workshop: An Independent and Quantified Review, the outline is shown below.  Global broadband traffic continues to grow at 75% every 6 months, fueled by over the top video (e.g. YouTube globally and Netflix in the US) and the rapid growth of broadband connected subscriptions and devices, e.g. smartphones and tablets. Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones and 15.43 million iPads (more than HP sold PCs) in Q4 2011. Broadband providers face an ever widening gap between the costs of supporting the traffic load and revenues. Other data points include:

• Mobile broadband subscriptions have grown around 60 percent year-over-year and have reached close to 900 million;
• The spread observed for mobile PCs is between 1 and 7GB per month.   Mobile PCs have the highest average monthly traffic volume per subscription over 3G (global average at 1-2GB), followed by tablets at 250-800MB and smartphones at 80-600MB;
• YouTube remains the single most popular mobile Internet destination, accounting for 22% of mobile data bandwidth usage and 52% of total video streaming;
• Skype continues as the undisputed VoIP market leader with 82% of mobile VoIP bandwidth, although its market share has been slightly reduced by newcomers such as Viber; and
• About one third of operators have implemented some form of application-aware charging models.

It's important to understand there are two problems being managed through PCC, managing customer behavior and willingness to pay to generate the best revenue / utilization of the fixed resources of the network (yield management); as well as creating new charging models and unlock new revenues (revenue management). Telecoms is an old hand at yield management, remember those peak and off-peak charges for fixed line telephone calls? In the UK, even in its early period from 1878 when telephony was provided by private sector companies such as the National Telephone Company (NTC), they had peak and off-peak charges!  Nearly 100 years before the airlines coined the term yield management.

Course Objectives:

• Provide a deep-dive quantified analysis of the PCC market status, enabling attendees to understand what operators and suppliers are thinking and planning.
• Learn from real-world operator deployments understanding their challenges and opportunities.
• An aim is not to provide yet another PCC technology training session with lots of speculation on possible ways to make money; the vendors provide enough of them, rather a focused workshop of the practical realities of deploying PCC.

Pre-requisites:

• Basic IP knowledge
• Basic telecom knowledge

Who Should Attend this Class?

• Non-technical or technical managers responsible for, or whose platform / services will need to inter-operate with or take advantage of PCC.

The 6th SDP Asia Summit was held in conjunction with 3 other conferences:
Smartphone Applications & Operating Systems (OS) Asia
3rd Mobile Value Added Services Asia
OSS/BSS & Convergent Billing Asia

The SDP Asia Summit and Convergent Billing Asia were run as a single stream which made sense as they are both platforms necessary to support the services discussed in the other two streams on VAS and smartphone applications.  This conference brings together critical parts of the Services Domain, across the network, devices, services and billing. 

Too often such conferences are siloed, separated, while here in Asia they are brought together.  This is important as it is focusing on operators' needs in bringing relevant service domain components together for a cross-domain discussion and sharing of experiences and ideas.  The conference was attended over 100 people, mostly operators.  Many attendees found the major differentiator for this event is it promotes open and frank discussions throughout the event. 

The operator presentations were very good; TanTo Suranto, Integration Platform & System, SOA Lead at Telecom Indonesia gave an excellent review of their experiences in deploying an organization-wide SDP.  Tanto identified 7 keys to success for the project, shown below.  The Services Domain report echos many of these issues across its case studies.

• Support from BoD (Board of Directors)
  
• Structure should be strong enough
• Staffing fully dedicated (core team)
• System should be clearly defined
• Staging the quick win
• Skill development arrangement
• Score Card your weekly activity

Dr Ampai Pornprasertakul gave a frank and insightful presentation on the challenges in implementing Converged Billing.  Her story though common to many operators is rarely explained with such clarity and frankness, providing important insights and lessons for operators and suppliers alike.

I gave a presentation, shown below, entitled "Making Telecoms the Essential Spice of Every Business Ecosystem: The Slow, Painful Rise of APIs in Telecoms."  The presentation reviews:

• The importance of APIs to telecoms
• Fundamental Misconceptions
• Its about Business not Technology
• Its across the Tail, not the Long Tail
  
• Quantifying the opportunity
  
• Why all businesses are moving to APIs
• Understanding the Telecom situation
• BlueVia Case Study
• Verizon Case Study

This report provides an extensive update to the original IMS Status Report written in 2009, it compares and contrasts the 2009 and 2012 results to understand how the industry has changed.  It also provides an update on the status of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) based on a market survey performed from November 2011 to January 2012, and a review of the over-the-top services impacting operators who are responding with developments such as RCSe/RCS5  (Rich Communications Suite enhanced) which should not be confused with RCS (Rich Communications Suite).  The two have very different user experiences and business purposes, as will be discussed in this report.

The report is 164 pages long, with 82 diagrams, and brings together the thoughts of 122 respondents (82 operators) to the 2012 survey, and 137 respondents from the 2009 survey.  With 6 named operator case studies, 2 unnamed, and 1 general discussion on what operators are discovering in the practical implementation of IMS that bring together many of the informal discussions stimulated during the questionnaire. With a set of frank independent recommendations on what IMS means to all members of the ecosystem.

So where is IMS?  Verizon continues its aggressive roll-out, accelerated by its commitment to LTE (Long Term Evolution) and VoLTE (Voice over LTE).  Though as we've seen over the past year it has suffered a significant number of IMS outages.  We'll discuss generically the issues with IMS that are leading to the problems operators are experiencing in deploying IMS.  Many mobile operators that were circumspect on IMS in the 2009 report have now implemented IMS as part of their LTE roll-out or RCSe/RCS5 plans, for example Rogers Wireless in Canada.  Put simply, they changed their minds.  Advanced voice services are now being launched on IMS, e.g. enterprise unified communications.  

The business focus of the industry has moved to remaining relevant to customers as the communication service provider as over the top voice services continue their rise in customers' awareness.  SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) application servers are being purchased to enable a range of new communication services and capabilities built on IMS, many of those services are being enabled through APIs (Application Program Interfaces).  Third parties and existing partners of the operator are being brought into the mix to enable innovation and go to market strategies that operators alone would struggle to achieve.

No one can argue against the need for IP multimedia session control with dynamic QoS (Quality of Service), to enable 'reliable as the PSTN' voice communications across any capable network, and for call features to work transparently across those disparate networks and around the world.  Given the recent transition to all IP in mobile operators over the past year with their investment in LTE, IMS is moving up the slope of enlightenment.  

The focus has moved on from whether to not to move from an IMS trial to deployment, rather the focus is now to set out and implement a robust IMS-enabled service road-map focused on keeping the operator relevant to customers as their primary communication service provider.  As we will see from the survey and case studies, the implementation of IMS is not set in stone as we adapt technology defined one decade ago in standards meetings to the market and technology realities of today.

This document continues to aim at providing a valuable independent status report that can help all in the industry have a clear view on the current status of IMS, the likely paths operators will take in the evolution of their networks, and a status report on the impact of over the top voice and the industry's competitive and cooperative reaction.

The report is available for purchase direct from my website, this is my second attempt at directly selling digital goods online, after the success of the Services Domain report.  I'm using the PayPal payment service, that's the "buy now" button which links to the PayPal payment service.  On process:

1. If you do not want to pay by credit / debit card, preferring the purchase order process, or want a group or company license for the report please contact me at info@alanquayle.com.
2. If you want to pay by credit / debit card or PayPal, then click the Pay Now button you'll be taken to the PayPal payment service, there are two options, paying by PayPal, and the second one is paying by credit and debit cards (the one most people choose).  
3. Take care when entering your email address it's a required field and the last one, double check that its correct.  Even if you do enter it incorrectly you can email me at info@alanquayle.com.
4. Once you've made the payment you'll see a success page and then receive an email within 24 hours from me (usually by return of email once when I receive the notification) with an email containing the automatically generated link, username and password to your copy of the report where you can download it.  
5. As you read the report, as my customers know, I'm only an email away for questions.

Title: IMS Status Report: Moving Up The Slope of Enlightenment
An independent and quantified view of what is happening with IMS in the telecoms industry.  LTE and RCSe/RCS5 drive rapid adoption in mobile, fixed/cable adoption slows.  Focus changing to implementation and commercialization best practices as some IMS deployments experience significant outages.
Published: March, 2012
Pages: 164
Figures: 82
Operators Interviewed: 82 (plus an additional 40 suppliers) in 2012 survey. and 137 responses to the 2009 survey.  This report tracks the changes in the market.
Detailed Operator Case Studies: 6 names, 2 unnamed, and 1 general discussion on implementation challenges
Single User: $499
Company License: Contact me

The Table of Contents, Table of Figures and Foreword are shown below.

Go to the Buy Reports section of my website to purchase this report.

I'll be giving a Webinar on "Making Money through Service Exposure (APIs) and the New Business Models It Enables" on Wednesday, April 04, 2012; 12:00pm - 1:00pm New York / 5:00pm - 6:00pm London.  You can sign up here.

In the webinar we'll be covering:

• Why telecommunications is lagging behind most other industries in API adoption
• Where the money is in network APIs
• Communication Service Provder advantages with network APIs
• Multiple models of success
• Verizon's use of telco APIs
• Telecom Italia's use of telco APIs

In March 2009 I wrote an article about "Why the Mobile Industry needs to keep an eye on Cable's Canoe Ventures".  This article was prompted by what I saw at MWC 2009 (Mobile World Congress), where the mobile advertising initiative announced in 2008 at MWC between Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Three was quietly swept under the carpet.  The reason: because it failed, through a lack of agreement and also a lack of engagement from the advertising industry.  

Well, in Feb 2012 Canoe Ventures laid off 120 of its 150 employee, and from now on, with the 30 employees left, Canoe will focus on ads for video-on-demand / TV Everywhere.  The MSOs (Multi Service Operators - Cable Cos to those outside the industry) that own Canoe publicly said they were spending $150 million on the joint venture. Likely they will have spent closer to $191 million on Canoe from the time it was announced to the time all of the laid-off employees leave.  This was an expensive mistake.

True to my contention that we must learn from our mistakes: Why couldn't Canoe be successful?  This was an industry, the US Cable MSOs, that had a long history of working with the advertising industry.  They worked together and brought in one of the leading advertisers to run this business, it looked like it had the ingredients for success.

The creation of Canoe was simply to expand the advertising dollars MSOs receive, currently about $5 billion out of a pie of $60 billion.  The thought was that the MSOs could offer to the advertisers addressability and interactivity to expand the MSOs share of the ad dollars.  They are significant players in the advertising business, so this rationale made sense, it was simply about execution.  They knew the language Madison Avenue liked to hear - addressability - only targeting those relevant to the message giving efficient ad spend, improved response and recollection rates, and all the other measures used to see if advertising impacted the brands bottom-line in a region.

Everyone has their opinions on the reasons for Canoe's demise, here are mine:

• In herding the MSO cats, it proved too difficult to get to the necessary customer data to enable addressability and critically implement the changes in the network to execute on that accessibility.  Instead the focus was on interactivity, which for the advertisers comes after addressability.  Interactivity ups the per impression cost by a factor of 10-1000, especially if the click requires a sample to be sent through the post.  You need to be confident that accessibility works first, before upping the costs.
• They went through a number of business model changes and ended with a technology focus requiring someone else to sell the inventory they created, that is this dreaded "platform" that magically retains value without any direct customer relationship.  They needed a direct Business Development and sales-force to open up the market and sell what they were creating.  They had to persuade people to do something differently.
  
• I think we've seen enough failures to realize a preordained build-it-big approach that requires network operators to play nice together just doesn't work.  Businesses need to grow, find their place in the world that works.  For example, they could have taken a number of approaches to improving accessibility, e.g. it could have been a project in NCC (National Cable Communications) Media, or a couple of different start-up approaches.  Most of the MSOs are also partners in the cable spot business, through NCC.

What can we take from this to the current mobile operator initiatives is:

• Business development and sales are as important as the platform and require equal resourcing.  A platform opening up a new business needs a direct paying customer relationship, someone else isn't going to do it for you.
• Implement multiple approaches, do it your self (e.g. Comcast have a go), fund a couple of start-ups with different approaches, examine existing businesses and see if you can through a couple of small projects move them in the necessary direction.
• Listen to the customer (advertisers) on their needs, if the network operators limit your ability to deliver on what the customer wants, pack up immediately and do not waste their cash.

Mobile operators please take note.

As an experiment we've decided to have a go at cutting the payTV cord this week.  An important facet of our TV viewing that enables us to consider cutting the cord is we do not watch sports nor reality TV.  Since we got a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) several years ago our viewing of live TV has dropped to near zero.  We read the news on the web and have apps for the weather.  We tracked our viewing over a 12 month period to understand the content we like and when and where we watched it.  For example, Dexter is a show we enjoy, but we didn't get around to watching the episodes until 3 months after the show ended; we're not appointment TV viewers.  These characteristics put us in a minority of TV viewers.

Our son is the TV Everywhere viewer, he uses the Kindle Fire (with Amazon Prime and Amazon on Demand), the iPad and our iPhones for about 50% of his viewing.  The other 50% being on a regular TV for shows on PBS kids.  Our viewing is restricted to those 1 to 1.5 hours in the evening when the kids are in bed and we have a little time to ourselves, generally viewing content from the TiVo connected to the HDTV in the basement.

We attempted to set up a free to air (FTA) antenna, this is a significant barrier to cutting the payTV cord.  We did not have a legacy FTA antenna, so we needed to get one set up.  Finding an installer proved challenging, we used Redbeacon and got very high $1000 quotes.  In the end we selected a local home theater installer who was frank about the challenge we faced in getting FTA working as we wanted the antenna in the attic.  We're on north west side of a hill, surrounded by trees.  We used a long range antenna and amplifier, in the attic the local channels like NJN came through strong, the picture quality was amazing.  But ABC, NBC and Fox were not detected.  Even up on the roof we could not receive those signals.  So it looks like the local channel service from the payTV provider is the only option at $12.99 per month. Just getting to this point took significant research and effort, and I can see most people simply giving up and continuing with PayTV at this point.

On calling Verizon this week I discovered I'm actually trapped in a 2 year contract so have until the middle of August to wait, else pay a $345 early termination fine.  It looks like the FCC hasn't got around to pro-rating those early termination fines for fixed services only mobile.  So the cord cutting isn't happening yet.  On what we save once August arrives.  Verizon is currently charging $171 per month.  The annoying thing is they give you a good bundle offer and 6 months later the prices hike up and you're locked in.  But the savings should be around $100 per month as we already subscribe to Amazon Prime, and will likely experiment with Hulu+ and Netflix to see which makes most sense.

I'll do another installment once we finally get around to cutting that PayTV cord when Verizon lifts its early termination fine of $345 in August.  But it takes stamina; if I hadn't persuaded the rest of my family to do this experiment I have a sneaking feeling I'd have given up by now.  Our experience to date has been a failure to launch!

This year I brought my wife and 2-year-old son to Barcelona; we arrived on the Thursday before MWC (Mobile World Congress).  Barcelona is great for small children with lots of playgrounds, some with crèches that bring out their toys to play with making it great fun.  The restaurants go the extra mile in making the experience of dining out with small children a delight, yes I did say 'delight' and 'dining with small children' in the same sentence.  The later date (end of Feb) avoided the clash with Valentine's day and Chinese New Year, and meant Barcelona's warm enough to eat outside in the evening.  But enough of the holiday experiences in Barcelona, down to the business in Barcelona, MWC.

Summing up the feel of the event:

This was the year the Mobile World clearly entered middle age, growth even in developing markets is slowing, and as discussed previously we're entering uncertain times with respect to regulated service revenues.  With middle-age comes that spare tire around the waist, aching joints, and just not being able to move as fast.  There are only two things to do to mitigate them: eat healthier (adopt web principles) and exercise more (work harder, faster and smarter - i.e. use the years of experience (failure) to your advantage).  As we reach middle-age, we know what we need to do; it's just motivating ourselves to do it as old habits are hard to change, but change they must else the industry could reach its demise prematurely.

It was clear at the event that the mobile ecosystem is having the revenue sucked out of it from other more agile ecosystems such as Consumer Electronics, Web, and Enterprise / IT.  The growth in Apple's revenues is coming directly from the mobile ecosystem, witness operators complaining about Apple's impact on their profits.  The signage around the event was focused on smartphones (Consumer Electronics).  Another topic was the impact of OTT (Over The Top), that is the web ecosystem sucking out and also destroying telecom revenue.  And there's another ecosystem that has beaten telecom to the much heralded opportunities in payment services, M2M, and cloud; the Enterprise / IT ecosystem with its strong existing customer relationships and the ability to deliver business solutions to business problems not just marketing telecom services.  We've got to understand these other ecosystems if telecom is going to compete.

Some of the operator discussions felt like I was watching King Canute (Knut) commanding the tide not to come in, as they talked about cloud or M2M or payments or why OTT providers should pay for using their network.  I hold the GSMA partly to blame for this lack of realism, it's a greedy political talking shop, not an industry trade body helping us manage the transition to middle-age.  However, as we'll discuss in this weblog, some operators are managing the transition into middle age better than others.

The Future of MWC:

I'm predicting a long, slow decline in the conference over the coming years for several reasons:

• Continued decline in operator attendance, most of the conversations were between two suppliers going, "I'm great, you're great, let's be great together!"  They don't need to travel to Barcelona to do that.
• The GSMA is not fulfilling its charter of "representing the interests of mobile operators worldwide" rather is behaving like a greedy monopolist with the show.  Given the crime problems and now social unrest, remaining in Barcelona for the next 7 years shows a disregard for the safety of its 67k visitors.  The move out of the city ensures suppliers cannot use local hotels for their meetings, they're forced to use the over-priced GSMA rooms.  The move to a larger facility ensures the GSMA can add more themes to get more revenue and make the conference even more unfocused.  It will be much more difficult to get to the show as its out of town, so travel is now totally at risk from strikes.  Greed has over-ridden common sense in the GSMA.  MWC has become too expensive, too unfocused, too much BS and political double-talk, and not enough open balanced debate.  Operators please start holding the GSMA accountable to clear, quantified objectives.  If you're restricting attendance to MWC, as discussed in this article, something is wrong with what the GSMA is doing with this show.
• In the beginning of the show's history it was quite operator centric (and run by Informa), a serious event focused on solving the challenges the industry faced in building out the GSM mobile network.  As the networks got built the show became more vendor-centric as their marketing dollars drove the agenda (and the GSMA took over).  And today it's now become GSMA centric: pack as much in (unfocused), avoid serious debate (political), and charge rates that make no sense given the GSMA is a not-for-profit organization.  Medium sized companies now spend between $250-750k at the show for a few leads given the low operator attendance, hence it's now not generating the necessary returns.  In my meetings many suppliers are considering downsizing their involvement in the show.  My recommendation is hire an evangelist and get a much better return on investment.  
  
• Operators need to hold the GSMA to its charter.  Demand the GSMA cut the political BS, represent the industry not itself, cut costs, and shake up MWC to help the industry manage the transition into middle age rather than further lining the pockets of the GSMA.

Interesting data points and observations:

Most bankers find it difficult to get reasonable company valuations on telco pure-play start-ups; the start-up needs an enterprise / web story as well.  Telco is now just a vertical in the IT industry, and an unattractive one at that for most investors.  This has a serious impact on the ability of the mobile industry to innovate.

Based on all the operators I contacted before the show; European operator attendance is down about 15%, APAC about the same, North America up (thanks to a large contingent from AT&T), and Middle East & Africa down slightly. Most of the visitor growth came from suppliers.  This was corroborated by other operators and suppliers, I see an increasing gap between what people are saying on the floor of MWC and the BS from the GSMA's announcements.

Handsets have become very samey, in the hardware there is now rapid commoditization, its all about the ecosystem in retaining value.

The HTC One X and Intel Medfield reference design have finally removed the 'Android-lag', an annoying problem for those trapped in the Apple ecosystem.  Its becoming increasingly difficult to point to the differences between Apple and Android experiences.  If the Amazon Phone(s) also remove the 'Android-lag', then Apple will finally have serious ecosystem competition.

Android was again the highlight of the event, their stand in Hall 8 demonstrated again this year the power of an ecosystem.  Network Equipment Providers please take note.  There were many interesting innovations including embedding capabilities everywhere, e.g. in ski goggles with a heads-up display.

Industry BS:

The word developer was used everywhere.  However, most of the people using that word had no idea what it means, given what they claim developers want.  I've worked on many developer surveys over the years, I'm on the board of developers, I employ developers (so I am technically a developer as well), and many friends are developers.  I know enough that I cannot adequately speak on their diverse behalf.  But at the show people with no experience were talking with such confidence yet what they were saying was absolutely wrong.

Formulaic tag lines were everywhere: "made-up word for some product or service" by "company name ending in usually i or z" enables awesome awesomeness.  It says nothing, it's a waste of resources, and likely shuns B2B customers.  I really do no care for all your made up words, you have a company name that's OK, for everything else keep it simple and clear.  Make it easy to understand specifically what you do.  You don't need new categories, just use the old ones and mash them up like "cowboys in space" for Star Wars, rather than using lots of acronyms, buzz words and claims of new categories

Handset vendors appear to have run out of ideas, its down to mine it bigger / faster than yours.  Its now clearly all about the ecosystem.

Augmented reality demos were everywhere at the show, telecoms is only 4 to 5 years behind the web guys with such demos.  It reminded me of hype around virtual reality about 20 years ago.

There's no such thing as the mobile internet, it's the internet, we can access it over multiple networks.  Also the term mobile is used very loosely for any device beyond a desk-top PC that accesses the internet via wireless.  iPod Touches, the majority of iPads, all Kindle Fires, most laptops, tablets, and slates, are lumped into mobile, even though they cannot connect to a mobile network.  They're wireless devices, not mobile devices.  So operators need to be very careful on the numbers they're being quoted on addressable markets as true mobile devices account for only a small fraction of the market, and bare in mind most customers will use the devices in WiFi mode at home or work, bypassing (not off-loading) the mobile operator.

MWC's free WiFi didn't work most of the time, 3G data was painfully slow, voice barely intelligible. I must be using Skype too much these days and getting used to HD Voice.  SMS was the only service that worked.  MWC is the industry showcase to the world, let's get the basics working at the show.

Dear AT&T, your joke SMSs that inform me 1MB of data costs $20 every time I land in a country has become quite old.  Seriously, why don't you use those triggers to make me an offer that is fair and reasonable, rather than as a reminder that you still think you're a monopoly.

General Review:

Nokia feature phones were impressive.  The Nokia 808 with a 41Mpixel camera will differentiate itself from the pack for those who only care about numbers not picture quality.  Some were claiming Nokia has turned the corner, I think its still wait and see, it's the market that will decide.

Joyn, the implementation of RCSe/RCS5, was launched at the event.  Let's make it clear, Joyn is not about new revenues, its about remaining relevant as a communication service provider.  Think of it like embedding an iMessage/Facetime experience in call path of most phones.  Yes its late, it took too long to be defined, it was designed by a standards committee which makes it too complex, detached from reality, and increases its chances of failure.  But with Joyn I'll potentially be able to HD call, video share, and do it with anyone that's also has a Joyn enabled phone (likely hit 50% of mobile phone users within 3 years) and is data connected.  It breaks the silos of Apple, Viber, WhatsApp, etc.  Its the operators' last best chance at remaining relevant.  Its not perfect, but we need to give it our best shot.  The US should just adopt the current specs, instead of wasting time on  pointless standards horse-trading.  Seriously, AT&T, Verizon, Rogers: just swallow your pride, stop causing complexity and wasting time we can not afford to waste.

HetNet (Heterogeneous Networks) were one of the main themes.  However, there was an inadequate story on loss of security once handsets switch over to WiFi.  Small cells: for the fixed network guys also know as Fiber to the Kerb (Curb) is the most expensive access network architecture you can choose from a Total Cost of Ownership.  I think the mobile network guys need to talk with the fixed network guys and understand the economics better of the architecture's they're considering.

IMS deployments are ramping-up, I'll be reviewing this in the update on the IMS Status Report coming out in a few weeks.  By the end of 2012 over one quarter of operators will have IMS deployed.

HD Voice is finally getting into devices with the Nokia Lumia 610, Huawei Ascend D Quad, ZTE Era, HTC One X and the Sony Xperia all supporting HD Voice.

Policy Control and Charging has hit mainstream.  There is confusion in the market as there are several approaches to the market.  I'll be reviewing this in the workshop I'm giving on PCC in April. I'll provide a preview of that in a later weblog article.  Notably, Oracle and Comptel are advancing the story on PCC through the addition of business intelligence, customer context, and near real time decisions.  Just imagine receiving an apology from the operator when your call drops and the minutes being doubly reimbursed.  Or rather than AT&T sending the joke SMS of 1MB costing $20 for the 100th time, actually sending a fair and reasonable offer.

Mobile Payments remains a theme, its a bit like the previous theme of mobile advertising until operators discovered they'd lost the market.  There are existing well-developed payment services for merchants.  Operators offering a mobile-only payment API to developers only demonstrated they don't understand the market.  Merchants want all payment mechanisms covered by the payment service and they expect a fair fee (0-5% depending on the mechanism not 20%).  There were many announcements at the show including Orange and Visa and Ericsson and Western Union; but again the bankers' consensus opinion was operators are only going to see a small share of the business.

Mozilla announced a web-based smartphone, which is interesting, but its all about the ecosystem.  So Mozilla needs to address that issue before it has any credibility.

Concern remains on impact of Google buying Motorola on the Android ecosystem.  The German ruling in favor of Apple on the Motorola patents, with any appeal being deferred for one year, is claimed by some to put the whole acquisition in question.  The Motorola acquisition continues to weaken the Android ecosystem.

Deutsche Telekom's CEO Rene Obermann made a claim that the Cloud will save them.  No it won't, that's just a stupid claim that technology can save them.  Unless operators deliver compelling services to individuals and business solutions to enterprises on fair and reasonable terms customers will continue to flock to the competition.

Telefonica Digital were demonstrating their over the top 'Viber / Whatsapp - like' communications service which they built themselves.  Its cool, slick, with an interesting business model that clearly demonstrates some mobile operators are managing the transition into middle age better than others.  I've reviewed previously how Telecom Italia's over the top video on demand service CuboVision achieved success once they fully adopted OTT principles and became just an app on connected TVs.  Operators adopting OTT is not new, AT&T offered OTT voice with a service called Callvantage over 10 years ago.

Ones to Watch:

• Solaiemes are doing RCSe/RCS5 the right way, demonstrating a great range of capabilities and innovations enabled through its gateway.
• Voxeo Labs, a leader in WebRTC (Real Time Communications), makes every browser an endpoint for communications.  Operators need a leadership position in this technology, else the revenue decline will accelerate.
• Apigee will become BIG, they shared their vision and its impressive.  I'll review later how Apigee, Aepona, Voxeo, Mobicents, Twilio etc. fit together as there's significant confusion amongst operators.
  
• Wadaro just keeps building on their solution that enabled operators to know what customers are actually experiencing, its based on a SIM app (a critical and under-utilized piece of operator competitive differentiation).  This should be part of every CEM (Customer Experience Management) solution.
• Apex has created some slick innovations in video comms, making it a must-have service for operators deploying LTE.
  
• Aonta has made conferencing just software, transforming the price points, flexibility, and extensibility of conferencing. 
  

In Summary:

Attendance was up 11% at 67k visitors, its a pity little if any of that increase was operators.  GSMA needs to focus on its charter, it's there for its members, not itself, and should refocus MWC on helping the industry successfully manage the transition into middle age.  MWC needs to change.

An operator is composed of three domains: Network, IT and Services.  Historically we've treated the services domain as something that can be solved by a piece of technology, called the SDP (Service Delivery Platform).  This has resulted in the industry's slow response to the competitive threats of web-based service providers, which are now starting to bite.  The services domain encompasses people, processes and technology: the technology is IT centric; the processes use methods like Scrum / XP (eXtreme Programming) and embrace risk; and the people are focused on the customer not the shareholders or technology or the network.

This report brings together the successes we're seeing in the market through a series of case studies, an independent survey of the market to capture the reality of where we are and what we are planning, with a set of independent recommendations on how we can move forward and better nurture service innovation rather than kill it.

The market survey was conducted across operators and suppliers from November 2011 through to January 2012.  117 responses were received: 73 from operators and 44 from network equipment providers, system integrators, software solution providers, and other technology suppliers.  The survey gathered as globally a representative sample as possible across operator types, markets, supplier categories, and the respondent's role within their organization.  

We are entering a period of unprecedented revenue uncertainty in regulated services, as discussed in this previous article.  The market survey gathered a range of views on the revenues within the telecoms industry through to 2019.  In the optimistic case the industry revenue growth varies between 1-1.75%, with mobile and fixed data driving the bulk of the growth, and mobile voice remaining flat and fixed voice continuing its decline.  Giving a total regulated revenue of $1.6T in 2019.  In the pessimistic case the decline varies between flat in 2014 to a nearly a 2% decline in 2019 with a total revenue of $1.4T.  Unregulated services are now critical to the future growth of the industry and the services domain is critical to enabling competitive unregulated services.

Governance is a fundamental issue that continues to retard the implementation and success of the services domain.  The IT and network domains, which are starkly different to the services domain because they cannot fail which permeates everything they do, dominate budget spend and revenues within an operator.  They consider the services domain to be a tax on their organizations.  And similarly the OpCos (Operating Companies within an Operator Group) dominate what they do in-country, and consider group-wide services domain projects to equally be a tax on their hard earned revenues.  It is all about people and processes within operators, not technology.

The small services domain projects by spend and revenue impact are simply too small for the CEO to be concerned about, and the time frame of their impact is beyond 3 months, hence out of the CEO's focus which is the next investor call.  Yet that is what is required to enable the change necessary to a services and customer focused organization.  Arguments of, 'it's strategic', have been tried before with the SDP and failed.  Something different is required as we're entering a new phase of our industry, revenue growth is now uncertain.

There is no obvious answer to the governance issue; else it would already be solved.  The Telefonica case study has shown how exception people can make the services domain happen, but the Telefonica story is far from over, as discussed in the case study the battles between Telefonica Digital and the IT Domain over the UNICA SDP are not yet apparent.  The Mobily, Etisalat and STC case studies highlight the importance of CEO involvement, but now the spotlight is off them the challenges may come back.  We need a systematic way of solving the innovators dilemma, and that can only come from the top.  The future success of the operator needs to matter more than it currently does given the inflexion point.  Other Case studies reviewed include: Oi Brazil, SoftBank, Telkomsel, Etisalat Sri Lanka, Vodafone, Telenor, Telecom Italia, Aircel, Verizon, Rancore, Megafon, Telefonica, China Mobile, America Movil, and Tata DoCoMo.

The report is available for purchase direct from my website, this is my first attempt at directly selling digital goods online.  I'm using the PayPal payment service, that's the "buy now" button which links to the PayPal payment service.  On process:
1) If you do not want to pay by credit / debit card, preferring the purchase order process, or want a group or company license for the report please contact me at info@alanquayle.com.
2) If you want to pay by credit / debit card or PayPal, then click the Pay Now button you'll be taken to the PayPal payment service, there are two options, paying by PayPal, and the second one is paying by credit and debit cards (the one most people choose). 
3) Take care when entering your email address its a required field and the last one, double check that its correct.  Even if you do enter it incorrectly you can email me at info@alanquayle.com.
4) Once you've made the payment you'll see a success page and then receive an email within 24 hours from me (usually by return of email once when I receive the notification) with an email containing the automatically generated link, username and password to your copy of the report where you can download it. 
5) As you read the report, as my customers know, I'm only an email away for questions.

Title: The Services Domain.  Market Status, Case Studies, Analysis and Recommendations.
Subtitle: An independent and quantified review of what is happening with the services domain in the Telecoms Industry.  This is no time to worry about being a "dumb-pipe" opportunity is everywhere!
Pages: 267
Figures: 132
Operators Interviewed: 73
Detailed Operator Case Studies: 17

The Table of Contents, Table of Figures and Foreword are shown below.
What others are Saying about the report is shown in this weblog entry.

Go to the the Buy Reports section of my website to purchase this report.

In putting together the "The Services Domain. Market Status, Case Studies, Analysis and Recommendations" report, peer review is critical to delivering a quality product, no man is an island.  Below are some quotes from those willing to give their time in reviewing the report:

Lucia Gradinariu
http://www.linkedin.com/in/luciagradinariu
Chief Market Strategist at Huawei
Founder, Principal Consultant at LGG Solutions
"With this report Alan Quayle is finally trailblazing the path for bringing the non-price regulated telecom services into the light of truth about the status, pains, confusions and hopes surrounding this business, debunking the "gold rush" created around Service Delivery Platforms and in network equipment and in IT markets.  His view on the topic rise above that of most market analysts who, probably owing it to no more than our innate confirmation bias, have torn apart the SDP concept as mere elements in the network, SOA IT artifacts and Web oriented components leaving little to be understood about its role in developing new business around non-price regulated services. 

In this comprehensive analysis, Alan retraces how the telecom industry can respond to opportunities in addressing new consumer-consumption modes, in radically improving other industries operations and in breaking barriers of traditional social and cultural behaviors by focusing on "Services Domain" with a strategic intent, which is not to be confused with moving to broadband/future networks and improving business agility through IT.  Alan relies on facts, data and industry knowledge as well as his extensive international consulting, training and marketing experience, surfacing the voice of 117 people whom he knows and who work directly or have a stake in this "problem domain".  

This report is the missing strategic guide for telecom industry decision makers who want to:  

1. Understand solution design and best practices for Services Domain through case studies which take into account not only the existing dispersed and distributed assets but also the realities of functions and responsibilities in operator organizations, multi-countries business operations servicing multiple markets, and the need to motivate collaboration in innovation of services and business operations inside and across operator and industry domains.
2. Engage in "value over volume" strategies by investing in Services Domain as a multi-sided business platform for non-price regulated value added and utility services, to hedge the rate of return from investing in regulated services which is exposed to "forward looking" and "transaction per second" costs of technologies as well as substitution of demand for telecommunication services

Sam Ramji
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sramji
Director at Open Cloud Initiative
Vice President, Strategy at Apigee
President of the Board at Outercurve Foundation.
"Common sense meets computer science in Alan's comprehensive wake-up call and guide for telecommunications in the 21st century.  Reminding us constantly that we need to build developer and customer-centric businesses in order to survive in the App Internet, he offers broad grounding in the current telecommunications reality and makes clear what we need to do next.  Ignore this magnum opus at your peril."

Martin Geddes
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mgeddes
Founder at Martin Geddes Consulting Ltd.
"Alan Quayle is the best available guide over the telco services domain, and this Service Domain report is the best available map. Unlike many, he has the practical learning of crossing the terrain repeatedly, rather than second-hand analyst stories. The report lays out in detail the reality of the landscape today, and what is likely to be built on it. It should be high on the reading pile of every strategy and product manager at network operators and their suppliers who wants to venture into the future in safety."

Jonathan Bell
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jonathan-bell/0/132/a50
CMO OpenCloud
Company Director at Dihedra
"Alan has created a unique report that provides the frank, independent analysis the telecommunications industry needs to understand and guide us through the emerging challenges and opportunities we face in remaining relevant to customers as service providers.  It is packed with thought leadership, quantified market analysis, and in-depth case studies that frankly share the hard-won learning for successfully implementing the services domain.  It is particularly useful in that it brings color to the subject with case studies, anecdotes and asides grounded in the reality rather than the hype and hyperbole that is so often the case in our industry.  I strongly recommend you devote the time to reading this report, and make sure your colleagues and especially your management team review the report as well."

Dinesh Saparamadu
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dinesh-saparamadu/3/278/85b
Founder & CEO at hSenid Mobile Soultions
"The "Services Domain. Market Status, Case Studies, Analysis and Recommendations" report is the first analyst report I've read that clearly understands the market and provides critical guidance to operators, suppliers and investors on the direction of the telecoms industry, and how to best navigate the changes.  Though, I know Alan would not appreciate being referred to as an analyst, he is really a practitioner in our industry working with operators, suppliers and start-ups at the coal-face.  Helping them build new services and businesses, by using his extensive network of trusted relationships and his deep and expansive knowledge of IT and telecoms.  This report is unique, it captures the inflection point our industry is facing, and clearly shows through many case studies and much straight-to-the-point commentary how we can continue to grow as an industry across developed and developing markets."

Ivelin Ivanov
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivelinatanasoffivanov
Chairman at TeleStax
Investor and advisor at Ringful Health
Founder at Mobicents.org
"The Services Domain report compiled by Alan provides the broadest and deepest review of telecom service innovation I've ever seen.  It's a deeply researched and refreshingly accurate portrayal of the current 'state of the art.'  The analysis spans strategy, marketing, processes, people, technology, and organizational change; with his unique independent view having worked in operators, suppliers, and start-ups; the report has the deep insight that can only come from being an insider, but critically the analysis has the detachment and frankness that can only be achieved from being independent.  Read it!"