Last week, I wrote about the pro and cons of convergence. But what does the future hold because of convergence? Due to the capability of the converged networks, hosted offerings have morphed into cloud computing offerings and we have seen communication-based cloud computing offerings emerge. Cloud computing is about a $100B business, split between SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, with VoIP/UC accounting for $5B. It stands to reason that communications is at least 10% of the $100B business. Even IaaS has entered the picture for mobile carriers, as there are mobile carrier/MVNO business models where the wireless infrastructure is outsourced as a service.
Convergence is not over yet. The next great convergence we’ll see is the user experience convergence. Users will want to access anything, with any device, at any time, anywhere and will want a great experience. Let’s say you are watching TV at home on your HD TV. Then you leave the house and want to resume watching the show on your tablet. Then you move to work and want to watch it on your laptop (during lunch of course). Then you watch it on your mobile phone and then finally finish watching it once again at home. Those in the industry who meet this need first will thrive.
Next week, I’ll talk about the factors that need to be considered when it comes to user experience convergence, and how Dialogic can help make this possible.
