Alan Quayle Weblog

OneAPI - Canadian Operators Show Us How To Do It!

2010-02-23T14:21:28Z

At MWC 2010 there was a workshop on OneAPI were the GSMA announced the launch of a commercial pilot in Canada with the country's operators Bell Mobility, Rogers Communications, and TELUS to demonstrate the viability and benefits of providing third parties with standardized application programming interfaces (APIs).

Through the OneAPI initiative, the GSMA is promoting the adoption of a common, lightweight and web-friendly set of APIs to provide third parties with easy access to network capabilities. The Canadian pilot is the first time commercial access to network assets of multiple operators is possible through a single gateway, in a consistent and simple way using OneAPI. What this means is a third party does not need to worry about which operator the user is with, its a single API framework with common authentication, common terms and conditions, and common charges. Pricing is yet to be announced, which is a critical issue - I hope they've listened to third parties on what they require.

A few examples of what this means.

HomeCamera, the world's easiest to use internet home surveillance service, is one of the services being launched through this pilot; throughout Canada HomeCamera now have a single API to access, making it simple for customers: they just enter their mobile number and can receive motion detection alerts by SMS or MMS as well as clips from their webcams. So in a matter of a few minutes, with NO modification to the service platform HomeCamera is available to all Canadians.
If an Enterprise wants of add SMS alerts to its internal approval process to speed up decision making. An internal IT developer can add the capability with just a few lines of code. There's no complexity of working out which network the employee is on, building three versions of the interface and trying to get the CFO to sign off on three separate charging plans.

This is a critical step in the industry getting its act together and a necessary step in working with third parties, which is a much broader category than simply web developers as discussed in this previous article. No operator has an excuse in not following the Canadian lead, unless they have decided being a pipe provide is their preferred business model, and are happy to forgo up to 36% of their revenue to OTT (Over The Top) providers. I show below the slides presented at the workshop to get the message out to the industry - we need to act fast.

One Api Pilot

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Mobile World Congress 2010 Summary

2010-02-18T19:07:10Z

Entry through Barcelona airport was strange this year, no queue at immigration, no queue for the taxi, and there were even a couple of spare seats on the plane. This uncrowded entry was in line with the number of people letting me know they were not attending this year. Many western European operators had only 2 to 5 people attending when in the past it would have been 50 or so, and American operators remain notably absent except for a few senior execs. Its the impact of operator cost controls and many suppliers cutting marketing budgets to focus on regional rather than global events. Though, with that said, there was good operator attendance from Middle East, Eastern Europe, APAC (those countries not celebrating Chinese New Year, as a festival think of it like the western Christmas and New Year combined then doubled) and LATAM. This re-disribution of operator attendance calls into question whether MWC should permanently reside in Europe. Compared to last year, attendee numbers were up by perhaps 10%, most of my customers were happy with traffic to their stands by the end of Wednesday.

But back to my entry into Barcelona, the experience at the airport contrasted to a city organized fun-run that closed the roads into the city. There were some heated discussions between the taxi drivers and guards stopping their entry, which the snow shower didn't cool down (that's right, snow in Barcelona). Sunday-Wednesday were cool (compared to NJ it was warm) and overcast, but the sun did finally come out on Wednesday afternoon. Last year in a discussion with a local policeman to report with a friend his stolen bag, the policeman revealed that thefts are tolerated by the locals because the thieves only target visitors, this avoids it becoming a political issue. I pass no comment on the rule of law being a 'political' issue. His advice was to look like a local to avoid being targeted. Its a sad indication on Barcelona that I consider MWC the most dangerous conference I attend, a view shared by attendees from many other parts of the world. But with that said, MWC remains the only conference I must-attend every year.

Getting down to the meat of what happened at the show...

WAC (Wholesale Application Community - not Committee) was the biggest news of the conference, its 5 years late, but at least the fragmentation issues are being tackled. 24 operators have signed up to create an application warehouse including América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Mobilkom austria group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind. Together, these operators have access to over three billion customers around the world. The GSMA and three device manufacturers (LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson) also support this initiative. The release looks like it was done in a rush, so there are many more questions than answers, some of my views on the announcement include:

Enables operators to efficiently fill the crapp-store part of their inventory. That is copy the apps in the Apple Store which are racing to zero price. This is a key point, Apple is a CE (Consumer Electronics) manufacturer so does not care about the profitability of its app store (iTunes is different); Apple cares about selling more devices. I use the term crapp-store as the margin generated for operators is likely to be low to negative, however there's lots of customer value - especially those free apps.
Enables operator developer community / open innovation programs to focus on the 'fat middle' of services that use and differentiate their network compared to OTT (Over The Top) services; and focus on partners as well as app developers, e.g. enterprises, local content, local system integrators, local authorities, etc.
Enables the industry to focus on specific platforms and form factors, e.g. Java, Symbian, Android, to minimize fragmentation.
Endorses OneAPI and BONDI as the supported network and device APIs.
JIL has joined WAC, perhaps they realized the error of their ways in their widget obsession?
Must start with a 70:30 revenue split as per other stores, with a business plan that can support 80:20.
Must have a common ingestion process into a warehouse that allows developers to select the operators; and the app just goes into those stores. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Must support updates, this is very important, updates show the customers they're continuously loved and reminds them of their applications; but sensible limits should be applied, e.g. max update of once per month.
Operators must sort out the confusion WAC generates with their development / open innovation programs. Each operator should state clearly the focus given WAC, they still need both if they want to innovate. WAC will help fill the crapp-store, and depending on its focus enable innovations from other markets to be available to all.
Operators must focus on creating a compelling store front across the handset, web, STB (Set Top Box), CSR (Customer Service Rep), and retail stores. And build an engaged customer base for that store. Store must including search, rating and community features to make finding apps / services as easy as the web, and critically ensure adequate performance of store - some browser based solutions may struggle.
In the limit there will be as many 'apps' as their are web sites, web games and web services, its all just the internet not the "mobile internet." I'll do an article on the evils of the investment house analysts creating the contrived category of the Mobile Internet soon, it is their attempt to continue to steal money from our retirement accounts.
WAC must be more than widgets (a current obsession of some operators). A widget running on a widget engine in a browser on a mobile OS has significant limitations in performance compared to a native app. Operators need to be very careful in not focusing on technology, user experience is orders of magnitude more important. Apple has a highly optimized proprietary stack, so just choosing 'widgets' will not give an Apple-like experience.
I currently put WAC's chances of success at 20%, JIL I had down at 5%. Once operators start to announce how WAC works with their open innovation programs, we understand better WAC's focus, and operators better understand the difference between the 'crapp store' and their 'network services store' (apps/services that use their network and make money for them) I'll revise the chances.

Set against the WAC fragmentation reduction opportunity we have increasing OS fragmentation: Bada from Samsung, MeeTo (sorry MeeGo the Nokia/Intel OS) and Windows Phone 7 Series. Hopefully WAC can help focus this fragmentation. Windows 7 now looks like a 2 year old mobile OS with the inclusion of some community aggregation features and a rather 'square' looking start screen. As its not available until the end of the year it will only be 3 years behind the pack at launch. In playing with many of the devices at the show, it still looks like functionality is being pushed in preference to performance, e.g. app switch times, time to fire up the browser, and importantly scrolling through the address book all feel a slightly sluggish compared to my acid test of the good-old Nokia 6310i address book experience.

Ericsson came late to the table with its app store - that's so 'last year.' Ericsson Mobility World, sorry Developer Connection, is a great way to waste a developers' time. To be relevant, the store must have direct access to an engaged customer base; sitting in a demo lab is of little value.

Applications / Services I'd like to highlight that operators should have deployed last year include:
HomeCamera - world's easiest to use home surveillance service;
Dial2do - voice control to text, tweet, or conference;
4dk - context aware communications;
Aonta - next generation software based conferencing; and
hSenid - customer created VAS.

All of the above services use the operators' networks, they need the operator to be the trusted agent, and will make significant margin for operators, rather than the 'race to zero' crapp store. Open Innovation is about enabling operators to launch tens/hundreds of these services per year by working directly with these companies who obsess about their services. Operators should really only be wasting one or two junior engineers' time on having one hundred thousand bookmarks (sorry widgets) in a store.

During Eric Schmidt's speech there was some churlish questions, Google is entitled to compete in whatever markets it chooses using all available legal means, though its been quite naughty with Buzz and EPIC will sort them out. The industry must realize Google's model is not aligned to the end users' best interests as Google's customers are the advertisers and they will pass that information to whomever will pay. As scams get more sophisticated people will realize the risks of being a 'means to an end,' rather than an 'end in itself,' and the Buzz incident is just one small example. Telcos must focus on how to remain the trusted agent for their customers in this emerging web 3.0 world, rather than stamping their feet in front of a great competitor that forces us to step up our game.

Congratulation to Huawei for winning the Best Service Delivery Platform at the GSMA awards, as the global SDP (Service Delivery Platform) supplier to Telefonica group this is great endorsement by the industry. Congratulation to Ecrio for winning the best RCS (Rich Communications Client) mobile client and second place in the PC client; and congrats to WIT software for the best PC RCS client.

At the NEPs (Network Equipment Provider) stands LTE, femtocell, mobile advertising, WiMAX, and IMS were still being talked about, and the problems were again being swept under the carpet. Such an approach does not move the industry forward.

Some of the BOSS (Business and Operational Support Systems) vendors appear to be moving away from the scary-complex TMF architecture and putting a customer centric model in its place. That is lining up telco operations around the value delivered to the customer, rather than continuing to fuel the IT and Network Operations internal war. All Telco CEOs should but network ops and IT under the CIO as its all just "software running on servers", including the switches, messaging gateways and many other network elements. This bring me back to Google, they understand that in the limit costs of operations will be dominated by the data center. Operators should compare their data center economics to Google's ('Gloud' economics) as in the limit they're both service providers with software running on servers.

On industry sentiment: optimism is up, but the skies are not blue, clouds still linger. There's a tiredness from many of the large organizations as further consolidation / downsizing is inevitable. Yet there's still much dynamism from the small and medium companies that are the factories of service innovation for this industry and which operators need to work with much more closely to capture that energy, rather than crushing it through a strategic supplier. Hence why an open innovation program remains critical - props to Jose Vallez for what he's doing on open Innovation with Open Telefonica.

Overall, I think MWC is a global show in transition. Devices are really now the focus of CES (Consumer Electronics Show), the crapp store is a passing fad, this is not the right location / forum to engage the web development community. The core of MWC is the mobile network, its operations, and the gap is a serious focus on the services that use the network. There should be halls dedicated to Enterprise, M2M, Smart Grids, Telemedicine, Green networks, Open Innovation, etc. Where not just the suppliers to mobile operators, but the other ecosystems members are there. Mobile is no longer an ecosystem to itself, to survive it must work with other ecosystems. It must not impose self-focused standards, but work together with those ecosystem. Just like Canoe Ventures is working between the cable and advertising industry in the US for targeted advertising. And serious consideration should be given to a new location given the shift in operator attendance away from Europe.

As a final note, around the show and outside in the hotels (because its cheaper than being in the show), there were lots of incremental innovations taking place in mobile backhaul congestion mitigation; the tying together of operators' channels across web, physical stores, devices and CSR in selling services; low energy technologies; batteries; cloud services; well thought through on-device store experiences; and cute user interaction technology. This time next year it looks like we'll finally be able to point to specific operators who are making the necessary first steps in remaining their customers' trusted agent and service provider. Keep an eye on what operators are doing in India, Canada, Nordics, Singapore and possibly the UK.

Fonolo iPhone App Released

2010-02-09T14:54:49Z

I've covered Fonolo in previous articles since 2008, last year they were one of Time Magazine's top 50 websites of 2009, in the same league as Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.

If you need to call your bank, airline, operator, car rental agency, travel service, or one of those many other companies that waste your time by making you wait on the phone. Fonolo does all the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) navigation and waiting for you, then once connected to an agent calls you back.

They now have an iPhone app, here's the announcement on their site, and below I show the UI (User Interface). Its an obvious service for operators to provide - call mediation between enterprise and their customers - yet they have not. For enterprises, connecting with customers is important, hence why they have 800 numbers. But customers' time is much more important than a call which is generally at zero incremental charge given today's phone plans. Fonolo intelligently connects enterprises to their customers, in a way that helps respect the customer's time and ensures more accurate call center navigation.

This service bypasses the operator from providing value in connecting enterprises and customers. This is a core value proposition of operators, yet they have missed the boat in delivering value around their core product. They can be forgiven for struggling with handset centric games and content, its a fragmented business where they lack control. But in the core voice product no such excuses apply, this is a clear signal to the industry that unless things change soon and fast operators are heading towards commoditized pipes.

Why operators need an integrated Security Strategy to remain relevant as a service provider, not just a pipe provider

2010-02-07T14:31:23Z

I presented at a recent sales conference for a large security / IT solution provider on the evolution of the telco industry and the role security and protection plays in that evolution. I show below a cut down version of the slides I presented, removing the discussion on specific market opportunities and actions.

In the discussion on telco evolution I focused on 4 area:

Web evolution: discuss the 3 phases of web evolution and the emerging role of a "trusted agent." Operators know much more about their customers than web service providers. Critically, ad-sponsored models mean the advertiser is the customer not the user. However, for telcos the users are the customers, hence telcos have far better fit in being the trusted agent than most web service providers. Yet operators remain dumbfounded on how to adopt this role. TiVo and Amazon are two examples of trusted agent, e.g. with TiVo I turn on my TV and my favorite shows as well as suggestions of shows I may like are there. TiVo uses my data to create a vastly better experience than flicking through uninteresting channels. Operators can do what TiVo does but on a much broader scale.
Power of devices: we've moved to the PC model for mobile devices, and as STBs include Java so that will be the case for IPTV within a few years. In mobile we'll likely consolidating onto 5 OS (Operating Systems), significantly reducing the fragmentation that's stifled growth in mobile applications. However, end devices will need protection. An operators' security layer must focus on the device, as well as the network and services.
Customer perceptions: I've covered this in several previous articles, customers no longer make a distinction between web and voice services they're all just services. For operators to remain relevant as service providers they must play a role across a broader range of services, and not just act as a pipe-provider also a trusted agent.
Rate of service innovation: Operators are opening their networks to increase the rate of service innovation, but in doing so its never been easier to get malware onto a phone and in time a STB. The 'elephant in the room' in opening the network is security. Operators must take an integrated approach using their SDP (Service Delivery Platform): including network, devices and services - because its about their customers NOT just their network.

In summary: customer data, trust, security and protection are critical for operators to get right in this emerging environment.

Operators need an integrated security and protection layer, not point solutions for each service as is the case today. That is protection from malware across all network services e.g. IP, SMS, MMS, WAP push, widgets, apps, etc. And protection in the network, in devices and in services.

SDP vendors need an integrated security solution across network, services and end-points, which means a partnership with a leading security/protection technology provider is key. Its a rapidly growing problem as its a highly profitable and more importantly safe criminal business compared to drugs or prostitution; hence a specialist security/protection partner is essential.

Telco Evolution Sample

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Case Study on why Ripping out the old IN to put in an open source NG SDP makes business sense

2010-02-01T19:19:23Z

Even though M1 is a small mobile operator, roughly 1M customers, it remains one of the most innovative mobile operators. M1's business strategy is simple: to constantly deliver value to its customers by rolling out new and innovative applications and services. In mid-2008, M1 began its search for a next generation service delivery platform (NG SDP) to provide a framework for traditional telecommunication services, next generation of value-added services, and enabling it to remove its old IN that limited its ability to innovate.

M1 selected an open source JAIN SLEE (Java™ APIs for Intelligent Networks Service Logic Execution Environment) solution provided by its long-time IT partner hSenid, called the mChoice SDP. M1's relationship with hSenid goes back to 2002. For nearly eight years, hSenid has helped M1 implement major projects such as the deployment of MySQL cluster, mChoice Rewards, mChoice Recharge, and mChoice Reporting - a comprehensive business intelligence system to help M1 to make strategic decisions and revenue calculations. These solutions were built on open source, resulting in significant cost savings in terms of licensing and maintenance fees.

The standard application programming interfaces (APIs) help M1 provision, control and bill for all the value-added services they provide, whether the services are developed in-house or created by third-party application. This is a key point the APIs are not just for third parties, they're for internal consumption as well. M1 set out with the objective of looking for a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) based solution, given their enterprise architecture. I discussed SOA in this article.

For M1 its main benefits in adopting a NG SDP are:

Opens up service innovation, letting third parties offer services to M1's customers or using M1's network capabilities to their customers, which opens up 1000s of new applications and services;
Launch new services faster, moving from months to days in launching new services (factor of 10 improvement);
Protects existing investments while enabling future growth, i.e. reusing amortized equipment, e.g. SMSCs, while putting growth onto lower cost platforms (a 10/100 factor cost reduction for growth); and
Lower operational overhead by simplify on-boarding, contracts, etc. enabling M1's limited people resources to launch 100s more services each year.

hSenid's whitepaper provides more details on the M1 case study.

There's an interesting discussion the industry needs to have on whether a SOA or a looser web-centric integration framework is the right long-term approach. For smaller operators this distinction is mute, but the larger the operator, the closer its cost-basis need to tend towards Google - as in the limit they're both service providers.

Unmuddling APIs, Developer Communities, Developers, Third Parties, App Stores, App Warehouses, and Widgets.....

2010-01-22T17:33:12Z

Network APIs do not require a developer community. Its just an API: publish, provide code examples, define the process on how a third party can access the API, and you're done.

Network APIs are not necessary for an operator's App Store. For example operators have been selling content and apps on their portals for years, its a $71B business. APIs can make some apps cooler, easier to use, contextually relevant; but the two are not dependent, i.e. an operator can offer APIs without an App Store, and can have an App Store without APIs.

Developers are not a homogeneous group, they have a multitude of needs and business models. They varying from geeky individuals to global enterprises. Operators must think about a broader category of "Third Parties" when they examine customers of their APIs. Examples include:

Enterprises (e.g. where an enterprise's IT developer may want to use presence for their corporate communications);
Trusted third parties (e.g. local SIs that can use the APIs for the solutions to their SMB (Small Medium Business) customers);
Trusted third parties that can help operators work better (e.g. someone helping T-Mobile analyze their customer data to they finally start treating me as a customer not a credit card to be billed monthly);
Content owners that can use APIs to make their audience relationship stronger (e.g. Real Madrid giving up on email and now using SMS to great effect); and
Developers / service providers who need a channel to market through the operator or web-based developers / service providers who have their own channel.

Developer communities are necessary for OS platforms, e.g. Java development community or the Apple iPhone developer community. Operators do not need a developer community, they need an ingestion process to get stuff into their stores, and they need a simple process to get third parties approved to use their APIs - these two processes are different. It makes a lot of sense for the developer communities (e.g. Java) to also act as warehouse, making it much easier to retailers (e.g. operators, Amazon.com, etc.) and developers to have a single point to remove the critical barrier of approval expenses - we're taking about 1000s of approvals being removed per app.

Widgets are just a bookmark with the logic preloaded, data is loaded at the point of execution. They run in a browser. It is not a business model, its not revolutionary, its just making things better given the vagaries of internet connectivity over mobile networks. Think of it like WAP (but its not crap), it makes it easier for customers to use web services on their phone. Voice, SMS, WAP, and the web browser are equally useful interfaces for accessing services depending on the device, the application, and the customer.

I show below in a single diagram the two faces of the operator as a network, and as a channel to market. And linking that to APIs, Developer Communities, Developers, Third Parties, App Stores, App Warehouses, and Widgets.

API Management Whitepaper

2010-01-08T16:03:16Z

API Management has been touched upon by several articles in this weblog. To expand on this topic to help us understand its function and strategic importance to operators I've put together a whitepaper with Sonoa Systems, a leading provider of API Management to companies such as MTV Networks, Alcatel Lucent and Guardian Life Insurance. The API Management whitepaper is available here.

To set the scene on what is covered in the whitepaper: within and between enterprises APIs have been used for over two decades, from the early days of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to today's rich RESTful protocols. The reason API Management arose is that delivering simplicity in APIs to developers involves significant complexity in operations for the provider, some of the issues include:

Authentication and security from multiple providers;
Multiple API calls and calls across multiple services;
Different protocols, API versions, and interaction models;
Variance in performance between different APIs;
Composition of off-network APIs such as Facebook and Twitter
Poor visibility into API performance;
Limited troubleshooting and debugging capabilities for API calls;
Limited bandwidth, connectivity issues over the wireless network;
Scalability of the servers underlying the API endpoint;
Limited memory, CPU, storage on the device limits the client-side API processing capability.

APIs are also fundamental to telecommunications; there is a very long history. Back in 1878 the world's first commercial telephone exchange was opened in New Haven, USA. The switch exposed an interface that enabled people to make requests to set up telephone calls. Over 130 years later telephony switches are still exposing an API for exactly the same purpose. What has changed is the magnitude of types of requests and the sources of those requests - people, computers, private branch exchanges, credit card machines, and many other clients.

As waves of technology have followed the birth of the Internet 40 years ago, enabling the emergence of the World Wide Web about 20 years ago, driving widespread broadband access over the past 10 years. We have now reached a point where telecommunications and the web are merging into a powerful pervasive services platform.

Previous work has shown that capability exposure has the potential to raise average ARPU by 12-36%. There are many examples of operators today making money out of capability exposure such as Telenor's Content Provider Access which generates $100M per year. Globe in the Philippines generates 1000 new value added services per year with over 1B transactions; that project had an ROI (Return On Investment) of under 2 months. And Telus was able to launch 40 rather than 4 applications per year to its small medium business segment and lower its cost to launch new services by over 75%.

However, operators' networks remain surprisingly under-utilized by the millions of developers building the web; Apple shows the power of harnessing that community for just one proprietary handset. Critical factors in its success are providing direct access to a large engaged customer base; and of relevance to this discussion a rich, easy to use set of web-centric APIs within a common framework. Developers care about cash and/or fame - customers are necessary for both. Operators must reach a point where web developers consider an operator's STB as easy to reach as an internet site is today for the delivery of their services.

Wholesaling capabilities is a core competence of operators since the emergence of the intelligence layer on top of the telephony switch. As an example, 800 (free phone) numbers are a capability that is applied to many business problems. Operators do not create "airline customer complaint toll-free phone services," they enable businesses do that with the capability they wholesale. This is a critical point: APIs are not limited to consumer applications; rather, enterprises are major adopters of APIs. For example, in an enterprise workflow where a request to made for a new purchase, this triggers a message to the approving manager, who confirms the order is OK, and the order is placed. If the messaging and confirmation are done via an SMS or automated phone it can speed up a business processes from days to minutes - which is a very compelling business case.

As telecom and web merge the operator can wholesale a multitude of capabilities, including messaging, billing, click to call, mobile content, conferencing, location, single sign-on, address book, age verification, identity, profile, presence, call control, mobile lookup, IPTV content, connection status, quality of service, messaging short codes, video streaming, set top box APIs, mobile device APIs, to name just a few. All of these need to be provided under the secure policy control operators provide today for their customers. As these APIs are offered to web developers, most operators are struggling to provide the simplicity and scale necessary to gain adoption while maintaining security and reliability of these services. The figure below shows the role of API Management.

Operators are sitting on a gold mine of capabilities. A new generation of applications are being built by a rapidly expanding pool of developers. These developers are trained in web applications and services, searching for differentiation, and driving consumer demand for mobile internet service. Success will be driven by the population of innovative apps, which in turn will be driven by the simplicity and consistency of access to the operator's capabilities. API management plugs a critical gap in an operator's ability to monetize its existing capabilities and more importantly enable a rich, easy to use set of web-centric APIs within a common framework and a consistent security model to engage the millions of web developers building applications today.

I know it is frustrating for many in the telecom industry that have just persuaded their management team to invest in API exposure, that we must now step-up-the-game and invest in API Management. But we've got to try and increase our rate of innovation towards that of the internet to remain relevant to developers, partners and most importantly our customers. The API Management whitepaper is available here.

Quantifying the Extent to which US Mobile Operators are not Customer Centric

2010-01-07T15:27:26Z

Previous articles have raised the problem of poor customer service from US mobile operators based on my own experience, with the punative charging regime that severely limits the trust customers place in operators for experimenting with new services.

I was chatting yesterday with Ed Finegold from Validas, who help consumers and companies save on their mobile bills. As a result, they have a vast repository of information about usage and charging across US operators. Their stories on the savings they've provided to customers are both heart warming and depressing as it is a sad indication of the lack of customer centricity in the US mobile industry. As an international example, O2 in the UK makes a point of ensuring its customers are on the best plan given their usage, and has offered business customers free of charge bill optimization services for many years.

Below is just one sample of the punative US charging regime in place on voice calls; overage minutes are billed at an exorbitant rate; nearly 2000% of the standard cost per minute, or 700% of cost per plan minute. This is nothing less than extortion, no wonder customers rapidly adopt other service providers such as Apple and Google for new services when they're treated like this by the US mobile operators. And its not just voice, comparing the cost of data between iPhone and Blackberry users shows Blackberry users are also getting stung just based on the device they're using.

Operators must urgently adopt a customer-centric approach, they should be offering services such as Validas to their customers; else risk loosing customers for all value added services in the future.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

2009-12-27T14:58:07Z

This article reviews some upcoming themes and the passed year's themes.

Looking Forward: MWC 2010 and some themes for the coming decade

What will probably be the main themes of MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2010?

Unfortunately, LTE (Long Term Evolution) will be a key focus of the show. I've discussed previously why most operators do not need to jump on this bandwagon immediately. We do not appear able to change our focus from "feeds and speeds" to also encompass service innovation with the same level of investment (at least of time if not cash); this risks further relegation to dumb pipes. Being a Utility business is OK if you have a monopoly over supply, operators do not, and therefore their price/earnings multiple will move from 7 to 1 or 2 with the current focus on pipes. Also there are very few unique 4G services, if any; most also work on today's deployed networks. Note IPTV does not work economically on LTE, no matter what some suppliers claim. Please remember to raise these points when some suppliers start rambling on about 4G services, they're just re-branded services that can be provided today.
Android will be on a significant number of smartphones, this is obvious, though the handsets will all look samey and do stuff we've come to expect, e.g. easy access to web based services. You'll find few operators innovating with services specific to their local market, check out Smartone-Vodafone (respect to Chris Lau and his team) for one of the impressive few. On a related matter, we keep getting excited about there being over 100k apps in the Apple app store, but there are 180M+ web sites on the internet, so Apple has a long way to go. But this point does highlight the convergence of both web and application search / social recommendation. Also we keep focusing on the application part of the App Store, but it's a device store front for the sale of lots of stuff including content, and it's an efficient content delivery channel at 70:30 revenue split.
Common Micro USB charger standard will be touted, a very small step is dealing with the critical issue of device fragmentation - a serious impediment to our industry, which I'll come back to later when I discuss what I'd like to see at the show.
Symbian will remain a question mark, its attempts at open source have not yet been successful; will it become just a Nokia OS (Operating System)? At the show we'll likely see continued questioning about its future, especially given the number of Android based devices at the show. On a tangential point, what I don't understand is Android means resembling a human; Android's lego-like 'metal mickey' logo looks nothing like a human - perhaps this is what Google wants us all to become....
Service exposure will be a theme and I hope we'll see a move from technology demonstration to commercial reality. I'm hoping for some significant progress on OneAPI with operators driving it, not just the GSMA.
OTT (Over The Top) service growth, in particular video, and its attendant backhaul congestion will be theme; LTE will likely be thrown at that problem even though it's a radio interface and the SAE (System Architecture Evolution, LTE's core) will not solve backhaul congestion. Instead a range of compression, optimization and content delivery solutions that are video aware will be presented as an integrated access network solution.
In summary, we'll see handsets and pipes, the usual gap in service innovation and only a few bright spots in OneAPI and a few operators doing cool services in their local markets (e.g. Smartone-Vodafone)

What I'd like to see (wish list) at MWC!

ALU (Alcatel Lucent) and NSN (Nokia Siemens Networks) announce their merger and halving the joint workforce in an attempt to create an oligopoly in telecom supply rather than the emerging duopoly of Ericsson and Huawei. Duopolies are never good for the customer, and watching ALU and NSN's death march is not fun, just boring.
GSMA join forces with the Cable Industry's Canoe ventures to achieve a global telecom approach to targeted advertising with a focus on the advertisers needs rather than the many failing / niche self-focused attempts.
Operators announcing services, e.g. SFR did recently did with HomeScope, its easy to be critical about the service (see Home Camera for a better option, though I'm biased) but SFR are actively innovating on services and we need much much more of it.
Operators, as an industry, tightly define 2 or 3 handset OS and a few handset display formats they will only ever buy, in a long overdue attempt to constrain the fragmentation that is killing the industry; and as critically they will actively enforce compliance.
The industry finally owns up that there is no such thing as the mobile internet, it's just the internet which is accessed from different devices, e.g. mobile, PC, eReader, TV, and STB (Set Top Box). Should we be talking about the STB internet?
Operators sign up to OneAPI and do something about it. With many incumbents, I hear them worrying about helping competitors in working together on OneAPI. I can not contain my frustration at such self-defeating thinking. Risk is minimal, not working together will ensure OneAPI is dead on arrive which will hurt everyone, and further push operators into being dumb pipes.
Apple gets on board with the industry, in particular OneAPI.
Operators announce API management solutions across ALL the APIs they can expose including BONDI, OneAPI, web, content and other operator's capabilities. All under a common policy and security framework: Sonoa Systems, 4DK and ALU's Service Exposure Suite are good examples of technologies that enable operators to deliver on this.
Enterprise services, CEBP (Communication Enabled Business Processes) becomes as important a theme as consumer content. Enterprise services remains one area where operator service innovation has remained solid - though the cloud initiatives from IBM, Microsoft, and Google will start to become a significant threat in the coming years.
An LTE reality check: a honest assessment on the lack of customer acceptable devices (not clunky demo phones), and the reality of migration through HSPA/HSPA+. So we stop the hype that distracts the industry from the 'bread and butter' work of customer service and service innovation.
The Java community gets its act together and makes Java certified mean something and is aggressively backed by all operators.
People leave the show talking about services, not the latest phone or how LTE solves all problems. People talking about how Dial2do, Home Camera, Fonolo, Voicesage, Fun Mobility, Bubble Motion, Ifbyphone, Affle, etc. make their life better.

Then looking out a little further, into the coming decade a few themes I think will be important:

PayTV Industry Disappears in 2020

OTT (Over The Top) services will continue to flourish, from Amazon on Demand, Sony Store, AppleTV, Netflix and Hulu; customers like them, use them and in some cases pay for them. We've talked about this for years, with services like YouTube, which is fun but is commercially limited by the quality of its content. Hulu, Netflix, Amazon on Demand, BBC iPlayer, and TiVo all mean customers can now get what they want when they want through an integrated (PC/Console and STB) experience - this is sowing the seeds of change in customers' expectations.

The PayTV industry is currently a $140B business, growing to $222B by 2013. By 2020 that industry will collapse in most developed markets as customers and the 6 major content conglomerates fundamentally change the industry with a direct relationship over the internet. The critical enabler is not technology but a fundamental cultural change in how people consume TV content, the seeds of which are being sown today. From being frustrated that there's nothing to watch on TV today, in 2020 as they turn on the TV their favorite programs, shows, movies, as well as popular and relevant stuff will all be there with none of today's waste. Customers win with lower costs, better entertainment, more time and real choice. Content owners win with greater revenues.

What will this mean to the US Cable Industry in particular? We're already seeing consolidation between the producers and PayTV providers with Comcast / Universal and Time Warner / Time Warner Cable (TWC). Will the industry start to consolidate with smaller MSOs (Multi Service Operators) being swallowed into these two conglomerates? Can the industry continue to throw lots of low quality "channels" at customers for which most would not pay if they had a choice? For example, my wife hates the fact that we have no choice but to pay ESPN $3.80 for channels she dislikes, as they're in the basic package - Governments can get away with it in how they spend our taxes, but can a competitive commercial business? The US ecosystem is very much an established old-boys network, which is resistant to change; perhaps the PayTV industry outside the US will change first. Though we're already seeing cracks here in the US as Fox is advertising that TWC may drop it. As long as I can access 'Lie to Me' and 'Lost,' I really don't need the Fox channel. Once a significant minority of customers think like that, things are going to change.

Operator Consolidation to between 6 to 10 Global Consortia by 2018

We'll likely see a hold out for 3 or 4 more years through outsourcing and margin erosion, but size matters in the economics of a commoditizing industry. If large operator groups get there act together by reducing the regional overlapping roles and force through commonality, we'll start to see a large gap in operator economics which will trigger a consolidation bandwagon, likely beginning in 2015 and in full swing by 2018.

IPTV becomes Hybrid TV

Hybrid TV is defined by the presence of a hybrid STB that is part IPTV (using a managed IP network) and part broadcast (receiving the broadcast digital content from a non-IP service like Digital Terrestrial, Digital Cable, or Digital Satellite). There are many examples including Verizon FiOS and BT Vision. For many IPTV over DSL service providers, to provide a basic competitive product requires they deliver the popular TV channels at the expected quality; which in many cases requires the IPTV provider to use the free to air digital terrestrial service. Put simply, IPTV by itself is inadequate, interactive services are only nice-to-have. Customers still prefer to select by means of channels - e.g. BBC1, Sky1, etc. So through 2010/11 IPTV will become HybridTV; however the long term prognosis of such payTV systems does not look so rosy as described previously.

Clearwire's Long Slow Death

They backed the wrong technology, costs will remain 50-100% higher than the global LTE standard, their capacity per customer compared to fiber is minuscule (<1/100th), wet leaves impact the reception of the service, and it can not adequately support OTT TV (which will become a customer decision criteria). It would be best for their business to admit the mistake and restart, but with so much money poured into a broken business model it will likely take until 2013/2014 for the business model gap to become apparent to the analysts.

Service Exposure Industry Litmus Test in 2011

If we can not make service exposure work as a business it's a good litmus test for the industry that we're likely well down the road to being a pipe provider. I think by 2011 we should do the test and then plan accordingly...

Cloud Computing's Impact on Telecom

Cloud computing is a big business, in 2008 it was $16B and it looks well on its way to $43B by 2012. Its mainly been the focus of web based service providers and early adopter businesses, e.g. cash strapped start-ups; but things are slowly changing, though security and reliability remain the main inhibiting factors.

Over the next couple of years we'll likely see telecom operators taking over content delivery networks as the margins in that business get squeezed and it becomes a value added service on any national / global transport agreement. For example Deutche Telekom could likely buy Edgecast, Global Crossing or Level 3 could buy/merge with Limelight. Though not technically cloud computing it demonstrates an important merging of transport and web-centric business services.

Cloud Computing and the Enterprise is a real threat for operators as the likes of IBM, Microsoft and Google build out their services for, in particular, the small and medium sized businesses (SMB). Also Skype's initiative in targeting SMBs is creating a global VoIP community, if partnered with one or more of the above cloud service provides it could provide very attractive economics, again reducing an operator to nothing but a pipe provider to the cloud.

Motorola and Cisco Merge to Become a Video Powerhouse?

Droid will not be Moto's savior, unless you're a 220lb+ person who may think the phone is not that heavy. Moto has a strong STB / cable business, yet it continues to struggle in the rest of Telco. Cisco remains focused on routers and anything that encourages the sale of more routers (e.g. their Telepresence initiative has little to do with video conference, its really just about selling more and bigger routers.) Cisco also has a strong cable business thanks to the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta; perhaps Cisco and Moto together will have enough momentum to create a globally robust router and CPE business across all segments including Telco.

Copper Retirement and VDSL (Very high speed Digital Subscriber Line) Fails

By 2015 we'll likely see some operators (outside those with national FTTH (Fiber To The Home) plans like Singapore) announce the retirement of their copper plant. Operators using VDSL will continue to struggle in achieving the promised 50 Mbit/s. So after three decades of talking about FTTH we'll likely see those telcos finally bite the bullet and make the ultimate commitment, else die as a business, unless they're a laggard state run monopoly in which case they'll act as a tax of business and social prosperity.

Looking Back: Reviewing the passed year

The key theme has been as an industry we're being driven by customer behavior, rather than leading it we've become reactive. This is new, as an industry we've always been way too far ahead of customers, launching services sometimes a decade before customers were ready. We're never going to regain that position as web and telecom converge, the emerging challenge is defining if telecoms has a role beyond pipe provider.

Some of the trend this year were:

App Stores. Let's face it, the ODP (On Device Portal) which has been around for many years is the app store, its just we blew it and let Apple take the lead.
A focus on widgets, or a hope that a browser can remove device variations. This works to a limited extent but its not an answer; JIL (Joint Innovation Labs) is going to struggle if it just focuses on widgets.
Customer service gap. I've referred to my own experiences in the weblog with telcos' poor customer service and how that limits an operator's role in service innovation as customers simply do not trust them when experimenting with new services.
Web services and telecom services: customers do not differentiate and as such they increasingly view some telecom value added services as dated and out-of-touch.
OTT services' relentless growth, the continued explosion in video over the internet, and the failure of mobile TV.
Regulation - open access is inevitable for the good of the national economy (competition / innovation) and just as importantly the voting public like it. Nothing gets the public angry like BT blocking BBC iPlayer - they paid for internet access and now it comes with strings!
Power is at the edge. Witness the latest Samsung TVs with internet access built-in, TiVo, iPod Touch (iPhone that costs $300 rather than $2400), games consoles, eReaders, and smartphones which are reaching near 70% of phone sale for some operators. Power at the edge is empowering the customer to choose their service provider.
Focus on other ecosystems. Advertiser just want to buy inventory they understand and can measure as part of their existing business; content owners want a direct customer relationship (device store fronts with a 70:30 split is a good deal). Telco is a small piece of each of those and many other ecosystems, we must understand how fit in to maximize value rather than trying to own customer as in the end we risk owning nothing but a pipe.
SDP (Service Delivery Platform) became mainstream, so the technology is now in the network, the challenge is changing the culture to harness what it enables.
IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) regardless of hype has been internalized by operators and is generally being used for core voice applications where appropriate. See my IMS report for more information.
O2 Litmus showed operators get it in the importance of direct access to an engaged customer base. Open Telefonica and Verizon Developer Community show a similar trend.
CEBP (Communication Enabled Business Processes) started to gain main stream attention. See Pat Murphy's CEBP report.

We witnessed this year the passing of many telecom-centric start-ups focused on service innovation. Operators are taking too long to get new apps to their customers, a culture change is required to focus on service innovation, not just network operations. Given the infrastructure is now being put in place to protect the network (SDP) there should be a far greater willingness to launch many new services. This is NOT copying the bookmarks of Apple (that drives data traffic which is good), but communications centric services and enabling other ecosystems to deliver their goods and services to their customers with greater value and satisfaction all round.

Its no longer a technology issue its an industry-wide culture change to accept much more risk to innovate around services and business models (which means failing much more often) to remain relevant to our customers as service providers, else they will choose our future...

Why Telco's Continue to Loose Customers' Hearts

2009-12-18T19:17:53Z

Apologies for the gap in publishing, with the birth of my son, Liam, on the 28th Nov, and a rush of end of year projects; I've just not had the time. But with the holidays coming up, I have a backlog of material to publish :)

Today I had an experience that is critical to a theme of this weblog on how operators can remain relevant as service providers.

I asked Verizon for a cablecard so I could record programs on my DVR (Digital Video Recorder), they were due to come round this morning, they did not. It appears a dispatcher was required to confirm the appointment, it would have been nice for them to have let me know, but they did not. As they're my telephone, internet and TV service provider they should have been able to contact me; there are enough presence indicators so show I'm connected to their network; and they could have sent a message to my voicemail, mobile, STB or even email. So half a day of my life wasted waiting for Verizon, a spoiled Christmas surprise for my wife and not even a Saturday appointment.

Compare this to my experience in getting Amazon on Demand working through my DVR. I connect to the internet, entered my credentials, and within minutes a vast library of content is available, and a couple of great titles already downloaded; at least the DVR is not completely useless this weekend. Its just a sad example of why customers are increasingly turning their backs on operators as their preferred service providers. Telcos need to utilize their networks much more effectively in the basics of customer relationship management. The network APIs I've discuss for use by third party developers should be used by their internal systems as well to avoid the poor experience I had today.

An Analogy to Genghis Khan: How to avoid becoming a Vassal (pipe provider) of the Mongolian State (Cloud-based Service Providers)

2009-11-27T17:31:04Z

Last year I was reading Jack Weatherford's book "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World." One of Genghis Khan's early critical achievements was stopping the inter-clan wars, so the Mongols focused outside Mongolia, and went on to conquer most of the known world. Taking each city-state in turn through a simple 3 step plan:

Shock and awe;
Containment with the latest siege weapons; and
Logistical support to outlast the city and cause its fall.

The above summary is a gross simplification as they also innovated in war technology and strategy (feigned retreat). The simplification is for the purpose of this analogy.

The success of open web-based APIs got me thinking about that early achievement of Genghis Khan. It has enabled a far richer service environment over the web than any individual service provider could hope to achieve. One simple example, check out the latest Samsung's InternetTV with a whole range of widgets built into the TV covering YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo! etc.

Telcos are still behaving like the city states. Thinking they're safe with the wall granted by a state license from the OTT (Over The Top) threat. But looking to history showed those walls were of little use against the 3 step plan. So drawing an analogy to today's situation:

Shock and Awe: The financial analysts and investment bankers (both of whom grossly lack regulation, but that's another story) have partially created the 'shock and awe' in the valuations they assign to telcos versus the cloud/web-based service providers. As well as the popular prophesy-type messaging on the inevitably of the Telcos' demise, it reminds me what Cisco did in the '90s with its evangelical marketing on the inevitability of IP. But more importantly, operators themselves are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy: I've presented many service innovations, and talked about some of them in this weblog, yet the common refrain remains "Yes, but..."
Containment with the latest siege weapons: Service innovation is the latest weapon of choice from the cloud-based service providers, its success is evidenced by customers increasingly using OTT (Over The Top) services, not just on mobile phones such as iPhone, but on any internet connected device, e.g. Samsung's InternetTV.
Logistical support: The vast global data centers of cloud-based service providers; e.g. Google has over 350k servers distributed throughout the world. It is so vast that it has changed the structure of the internet in the passed 2 years, creating a category of hyper-giants such as Google and Microsoft who are no longer dependent on a global transit backbone and directly connect to IXP (Internet eXchange Points) forming a significant component of the internet backbone.

For operators to avoid the fate of the city states, in becoming vassals of the Mongolian state they must harness the same principles of acting together, open APIs, service innovation, and global logistics.

Act together: this goes beyond GSMA's OneAPI, which is critical. Cable Labs in the US is a great example of an industry co-coordinating. Fragmentation is killing the industry, co-ordination is required in committing to common OS(s), committing to devices over multiple years (like Apple's commitment to the iPhone), committing to common cross-carrier services that do not require IMS, committing to acting as a vibrant innovative services industry. Also as a petty peeve of mine; there are very few 'special requirements' - the number of meetings I have with multinational operators and hear about how one OpCo (Operational Company) has special requirements based on what appears to be no other rational argument than maintaining their job.
Open APIs: operator must bring together the web, network and device based APIs in a way that's easy to use for developers, content owners, enterprises and their customers. I've discussed API management in the SDP Asia Summary article and will also be discussing it in more detail in a later article in December.
Service innovation - just do it, no more "Yes, but..." We should be honest with ourselves as an industry, we just don't know exactly what is going to be a successful service; so its important to fail and fail often as that is the essence of innovation (as long as you learn a little each time you fail.)
Global Logistics. The telecoms industry as whole has a combined computing resource far in excess of the Cloud-based service providers. Operators need to examine how to create a federation of clouds to share services, capabilities, and application-level connectivity to deliver valuable services to end customers that just work.

The Telecoms industry must meet the 'Genghis Khan' challenge head-on with the same tools and strategies, else become a vassal (pipe provider) of the Cloud-based Service Providers. Being a pipe provider does not give an operator the same valuation multiple as a utility (generally 7), Telecoms operators do not have a monopoly like water or electricity - hence their multiple will tend to 1!

Vote for Home Camera at the Crunchies

2009-11-16T13:40:43Z

The Crunchies are to technology what the Oscars are to Hollywood. The awards celebrate the best tech accomplishments of 2009. Voting is now on for the third Crunchies award ceremony on Friday January 8, 2010 at 7:30 pm the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

I've reviewed HomeCamera before in this article. The HomeCamera webcam security software makes it easy for people to use their webcam for internet home surveillance, office surveillance, and more. Subscribers in over 180 countries around the world use HomeCamera as nanny cams, to watch over their babies, their young children, elderly grandparents, their vacation homes, dogs, cats, fish (and yes, even hamsters and rabbits!).

Their subscribers use HomeCamera's built-in motion detection for security cameras, to receive image and video intrusion alerts on their email and mobile phones. Features like automatic recording schedules enable users to see what happened in their home throughout the day, even while they're on an out-of-town work trip. Business customers use HomeCamera to watch over their factories, their shops, warehouses, and more.

You can follow them on their Facebook fan page. Some of their customer stories are amazing, they're making a difference. VOTE HERE for HomeCamera in the best international start-up category, thanks.

SDP Asia 2009 27-28 October 2009: Moving to Operational and Commercial Performance Improvement

2009-11-11T12:25:32Z

The 4th annual SDP Asia Conference took place in Singapore from 27-28 October 2009. It was as well attended as ever, with over 70 attendees from around the region. Some of the operators presenting at the conference included:

Krishna N Basudevan, GM, Information Technology, Aircel Ltd, India;
Clark Lam, Director of Service Platforms in Consumer Products, SingTel, Singapore;
Rahadian Krishna Sundara, Head of Business Research, R&D Center PT Telkom, Indonesia;
Andrea Demaria, Project Manager Service Layer & Messaging Innovation, Telecom Italia, Italy;
Alex Ibasco, Group Head, Strategic Business Development, Smart Communications, Philippines; and
Dr. Jan-Bon Chen, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan.

For me the key theme was a shift in the focus of the conference away from 'why an operator should deploy a next generation SDP' to commercial and operational performance improvement. Operators such as SingTel and Telecom Italia were sharing their deployment experiences from 3 years of operations. I show below a summary of some of the slides I found interesting at the conference. In my opening presentation I claimed we've reached the end of the beginning in the SDP story, the focus must change from technology to how the SDP can transform operators so they remain relevant to customers as service providers, not just bit pipe providers.

Sdp Asia Summary

View more documents from Alan Quayle.

My presentation at the conference was titled "SDP Evolution: Revolution, Convolution, Amalgamation or Elimination?" I examined the impact the confluence of several critical technologies / developments have on the SDP such as: cloud computing/managed services; and open initiatives such as Joint Innovation Labs, GSMA's OneAPI, OMTP's BONDI, and OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative). Reviewing key trends in operators' requirements and their competitive environment as web and telco converge on the handset. Presenting a view on the current and likely future evolution of the SDP: will it change, get more complex, will silos finally consolidate, or will it simply go away? A key message was the importance of API management for operators across the device, network and web.

Sdp Evolution Issue 1

View more documents from Alan Quayle.

On Thursday the 29 October I ran a one day workshop at the conference entitled: Application Stores, Developer Communities, Content, Games and Widgets: Strategic Market Review and Operator Opportunity / Risk Analysis. A sample of the workshop is shown below.

Sdp Asia Workshop Sample

View more documents from Alan Quayle.

I also presented at a supplier event during the week on why Operators need Developers, presentation is show below. The week spent in Singapore was a turning point for me in the SDP journey. SDP is now a core part of an operator's capability set, the challenge now is how to use the capabilities provided to remain relevant to customers as service providers given the Over The Top (OTT) Tsunami that's about to hit the industry. What we've witnesses to date with Skype, Jahjah, Yahoo! IM, YouTube, and Hulu is only a trickle, the OTT business case now makes business sense.

Why Operators Need Developers

View more documents from Alan Quayle.

Virtualization Technology and Telcos (and another survey request)

2009-10-22T18:51:34Z

Cloud Services are already a significant market (estimated at $23B this year), and growing rapidly to $43B by 2012. We've seen several operators launch cloud computing services, e.g. AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom (Zimory exchange), KPN, NTT, Orange, Verizon (CaaS (Computing as a Service) where HP was its main technology partner), and Vodafone.

There is a lot of confusion about cloud computing. Particularly the distinction between cloud-based services (e.g. SaaS, Software as a Service) and computing infrastructure offered on-demand (IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service). The diagram below attempts to depict how the virtualization technologies and cloud computing services map.
A generally accepted definition of cloud computing is the provision and management of rapidly scalable, remote, virtual computing resources, charged according to usage, generally using the internet to connect the resources to the user. But in virtualizing resources a user no longer knows what is running where, or the proximity of processors to storage. This impacts security, bandwidth and control requirements - which is where telcos come in as they can help in solving these issues and offering a complete package on a simple metered basis.

Some example suppliers include:

Virtualization, Infrastructure management and grid engine technologies: 3Tera, Cassatt, Citrix, Eucalyptus, Hadoop, IBM, Microsoft, Novel, Oracle (Sun), Parallels, Red Hat, Virtual Iron, VMWare
Multi-tenant, deployment and cluster management technologies: 3Tera, Appistry, Elastra, Enomaly, Ecualyptus, Globus Alliance, Hadoop, Oracle (Sun), Platform Computing, Q-Layer, RightScale
IaaS providers: Akamai, AT&T, Amazon, Citirx, ElasticHosts, Flexiscale, Globus Alliance, GoGrid, Joyent, Layered Technologies, Microsoft, Rackspace, Soasta, Verizon

However, as customers come to rely upon Cloud Services we've seen a number of failures:

The recent Microsoft Danger outage: loosing contacts and messages for over 500k customers
Google: Mail, search, news and apps have all had outages over the past 18 months
Twitter and eBay PayPal: Both out in August up to half a day
Rackspace: Down for one day
Windows Azure: Down over a weekend in March
Force.com: Down on Jan 6
Amazon S3: Down last year

To gather opinions in this rapidly emerging space I've put together a short questionnaire. If you're involved in this area, please complete the Virtualization Technology and Telcos Questionnaire and I'll share the results.

On an earlier Hybrid TV questionnaire the results have been quite surprising, Satellite, Cable and IPTV providers are all moving to Hybrid TV. When I get a chance I'll put an article together on the results; but its almost like a silent paradigm shift has happened in the PayTV industry without anyone noticing.

Hybrid TV Questionnaire

2009-10-15T16:34:26Z

Early IPTV deployments showed customers expect firstly a broadcast TV experience. The on-demand experience is secondary. Hence the entry level IPTV bouquet (set of channels) must include the region's 'standard' broadcast quality package.

Hybrid TV is where an IPTV connection and either a digital terrestrial, cable or satellite connection are delivered to the STB (Set Top Box); providing a full broadcast package and a rich on-demand service.

Examples of Hybrid TV services include:

BT Vision which uses FreeView (digital terrestrial TV) for the broadcast channels, other operators following this model include Fastweb, Telecom Italia, JazzTel and Telefonica.
Canal+ Le Cube whose satellite STB also includes an internet connect for video content (though more internet TV that IPTV (no managed IP access) I'll let is pass as Hybrid TV.
Verizon FiOS which uses MoCA (Multimedia over Coax) for the delivery of VoD and widgets, rather than over the digital cable multiplex.

The purpose of the Hybrid TV questionnaire is to gather requirements, opinions and experiences on Hybrid TV. Please click here to take the survey, I'll share the findings on my weblog.