I spent Thursday in the Big Apple at Nasdaq Studios, observing the festivities as Synchronoss Technologies—the company whose software is used by AT&T to handle behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty associated with activating an iPhone—celebrated its first anniversary as a public company. Synchronoss officials were also in a jovial mood over the company's recently signed multi-year deal with AT&T to provide ongoing operational support of the Apple iPhone and its Monday unveiling of a similar deal with broadband Internet service provider Clearwire.
The day dawned a misty, muggy one; waiting for my Metro North train into the city from Westchester, I observed to myself that while it wasn't raining the air was nonetheless positively wet. It was also a day when some people's commutes were disrupted somewhat; as we rolled into Grand Central Terminal, a conductor announced over the PA system that some subways might not be running. This was due to the Wednesday steam pipe explosion about a block from Grand Central that left what someone later described to me as "a crator." Heading further underground to catch the 7 train to Times Square, I asked a police officer what the deal was and he told me that all trains were running but some exits were blocked.
I arrived at Nasdaq studios at 11:00, and met for about 20 minutes with Stephen Waldis, CEO of Synchronoss. (Full interview coming soon.) iPhone, of course, was among the topics we discussed. I asked him about the difficulties some people had activating their iPhones, and he observed that according to Reuters less than two percent of customers had this difficulty—a pretty impressive number considering the size of the launch. He also noted that "difficulty" in this case meant the customer wasn't able to activate in the roughly five minutes promised, which in and of itself is a very short amount of time.
Over lunch, which started at 11:30, I sat with a lively group of people including Omar Tellez (EVP of Marketing at Synchronoss), Paul Banco from market opinion firm SeekingAlpha, and Andy Cox (CIO at Synchronoss). We talked a lot about the future of wireless, including ways to improve mobile device battery life and the possibility that perhaps one day satellites will be used to blanket the planet with not just in on-demand radio but voice and data services too.
After lunch, Waldis gave a relatively brief speech in which he outlined the trends he sees in the triple play market. He concluded that what's ensuing now is a battle for the digital home—a battle that is really heating up because consumers are ready to spend money on converged services. He estimated that many households are willing to spend a total of $157 or more on various digital services for both practical and pleasurable purposes.
What consumers want, Waldis said, is to be able to access any content, on any device, using any network, via any application, at any time. The challenge for providers is to figure out how to meet this demand. Providers are challenged by network fragmentation, back-office disparate systems, manual staff, and device/content proliferation. All of these factors result in high defect rates, high costs, and lost revenue.
Nor surprisingly given the solutions his company offers, Waldis said the solution to these solutions is bringing separate silos together with a single platform. Such a platform will drive success by enabling fast, reliable networks and easy-to-use services. A single platform also offers the advantages of consistency, scalability/configurability and cost-effectiveness.
Waldis' presentation was followed by a panel discussion. The panelists were from three of Synchronoss' biggest clients: Catherine Avgiris representing Comcast, Joseph Varello representing Cablevision and Richard Digeronimo representing Level 3. Mark Winther from IDC moderated.
The panel topics largely centered around a prediction that, by 2010, 40 percent of U.S. households will subscribe to triple play services—and how providers are working to make that vision a reality. The panelists had similar but somewhat differing viewpoints. For example, on the issue of how to maintain sustainable triple play businesses by cutting costs in the back office, Digeronimo from Level 3 emphasized the need for automation; Avgiris from Comcast focused on the manta 'Don't automate, obliterate,' which refers to simplifying processes by removing unnecessary steps and automating the necessary ones; and Varello said the key is to view cost-cutting as an ongoing experience in which the provider must learn from past experience.
The discussion was followed by a Q and A with the panelists, and then a Q and A with Synchronoss execs. This wrapped up the main activities, but I hung around with some other folks for about an hour to view the Nasdaq closing ceremony at 4:00 in which Waldis rung the bell. While waiting, I enjoyed a nice cheese and fruit spread, and chatted for a while with Joe Mindo, account executive at Springboard, the firm that handles PR for Synchronoss. We commiserated about the frustrations of NYC metro area traffic and the terrific view of Times Square from second floor of the Nasdaq studios, among other smalltalk chit-chat.
While waiting, I observed highlights from the day's financial transactions. eBay was down -1.5 percent, Cisco up +1.8 percent, Google down -0.1 percent and Clearwire up +34 percent.
Just before the closing bell ceremony, it began pouring rain outside—a brief shower that was over by the time I left the building about 4:30. It seemed a good metaphor for the topics of the day's events: in the technology industry, there may be rough financial times, but things always bounce back one way or another.
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