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Leveraging Ecosystems Eclipses Developing Products

Widgets for TVs, application stores for wireless phones, applets for the connected home and automobiles... The trend is clear as smart ecosystems have emerged on the scene as a new way to generate revenue while locking in customers to specific hardware/software solutions. For many manufacturers such as Avaya, Cisco, RIM, Nokia, Apple and makers of televisions, it is no longer adequate to focus exclusively on the products your company develops. Now you have to figure out how to build a smart ecosystem around your offerings in order to leverage an able and willing (hardware and software) developer community who will evangelize your platform and develop long-tail applications, services and add-ons which boost the value of your ecosystem.

In order to help educate the emerging smart ecosystem community, TMC has partnered with Crossfire Media and distinguished college professor Mary Cronin PhD to launch a smart ecosystem portal containing news, thought leadership and analysis called SPEC which stands for Smart Product Ecosystems Connection and located at www.specosys.com.

As you may recall, Crossfire Media is home to Carl Ford and together we have already partnered to build online and live communities (4GWE and M2M Summit) in the 4G and M2M spaces.

This partnership also includes Mary Cronin, a professor in the Information Systems Department of Boston College's Carroll School of Management. Mary is a true thought leader in the space and you can expect to hear her prescient thoughts on how ecosystems will take root and evolve. Her first article is titled Five Rules for Smart Product Ecosystems.

The coverage areas will extend into a variety of industries and for now they include Telecom & Mobile; Health & Medical; Automotive & Telematics; Home Automation and Connected Home Entertainment Devices; Energy Monitoring and Personal Energy Management Solutions. We are open to adding new areas so drop us a line with suggestions.

It is evident that as time goes on, companies in all industries will be looking to tie their products and services into more and more ecosystems. They will either develop their own and/or leverage others on the market. In order to stay up to date on the investment, partnering and other opportunities ahead, be sure to bookmark the new SPEC smart ecosystem site and check back often.

I have been a strong proponent of carriers rolling out WiFi networks as they provide another sticky service which customers are loathe to give up. Cablevision's Optimum WiFi which is a free WiFi service rolled out in much of the cable company's footprint is an example of a service which has been proven to reduce churn and is currently running at over one million minutes per day of usage.

AT&T's acquisition of Wayport and Verizon's partnership with Boingo show the carrier of the future needs to blend WiFi into their offerings. It should come as no surprise that wireless carriers are looking to WiFi networks running on unlicensed spectrum as they are being hammered by smartphones and iPod Touch devices.

The company providing the equipment which powers Cablevision's offerings is BelAir Networks and they have a product called the 100S which the cable company strings every 800 feet on their poles. They are plug-and-play devices that light up vast areas quickly. More recently they rolled out a 100SX device which also provides WiMAX.

An important point made during our conversation is how carriers are WiFi-enabling sporting and concert arenas to offset the network congestion becoming so rampant in areas where people gather.

I just had a conversation with Martin Suter the VP, Business Development at BelAir Networks about some of the exciting things happening in the space and some of the best points are captured in the video below.