The world of M2M is changing as solutions move from single purpose devices that transmit data to and receive commands from an application in the network to an Internet of Things where solutions permit devices to be multi-purpose and applications to be collaborative.
The Internet of Things can benefit from global standardization efforts that:
In today’s, world M2M solutions abound and not much architecturally has changed since the 1970’s. The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems has described the definition of M2M as communication terminal independent of human interaction communicating with a core network or another terminal for the purposes of automating services.
Granted that while the network that facilitates the M2M communication has changed dramatically since the 1970’s and provides quite advanced capabilities (e.g., 3GPP Machine Type Communication), the architecture of the M2M solution has remained fairly static – A device in the field that communicates with an application in the core network for a specific purpose.
However, we are beginning to see paradigm shift for M2M, called the Internet of Things (IoT). Powered by the infrastructure of M2M, the IoT fundamentally changes the way devices and applications interact. We can look at this progression of how devices and applications collaborate using technologies enabled by the M2M infrastructure in much the same way that people collaborate using the social Web or in how commerce has been enabled using Web 2.0 technologies.
In the world of IoT devices once had a single purpose. But now it provides data or can be controlled for varying purposes across industry domains. For example, a pedometer can be used by:
It is the same pedometer but the data is used by different application domains.
Since the IoT is enabled by the capabilities of the M2M Service Enablement Layer, the IoT domain draws upon many of the benefits provided by global standardization efforts like oneM2M that help solve the challenges faced by the M2M industry today. Benefits like:
However, because the basis of IoT is the multi-purpose collaboration of “things” (e.g., pedometers, storage containers, and energy meters) there are challenges that are accentuated in the IoT domain like:
In this context, standardization provides benefits that enable this type of collaboration.
In fact there are global standards bodies working on these challenges today. They are providing definitions to aspects of the collaboration across application frameworks that enable an application development and execution ecosystem and provide a clear definition of interfaces for application providers and device (Thing) manufacturers. For example the work in the Home Gateway Initiative (HGi), W3C, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and oneM2M in the area of semantics in IoT. They are standardizing a common vocabulary and associated templates for “things” to be described in a context that suits the varying purposes of the “thing”.
One of the key issues in the exchange of semantic information is how the privacy and confidentiality of the information source can be maintained while still providing the needed semantic context. The capabilities to provide rights to the information source and anonymize the semantic information are just a few of the security that standards bodies like the W3C, IETF, ITU and IEEE are actively pursuing. The industry realizes that if privacy and confidentiality isn’t designed in up front and on top of the security capabilities (e.g., authentication, access control, data protection) provided by the enabling M2M infrastructure, the benefits of the IoT cannot be fully realized.
Realizing this, oneM2M is pulling these semantic vocabularies together in a framework that enables applications to efficiently discover, exchange and analyze semantic information across industry domains while providing the capabilities to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of the semantic information sources.
Standardization of the Internet of Things may seem like big hurdle to leap but if these organizations are successful, then the IoT is going to be a much friendlier place to work and live.
About Tim Carey
Tim Carey is the Industry Standards Manager of Alcatel-Lucent’s Customer Experience Division. Tim was recently inducted into the Broadband Forum Circle of Excellence to recognize his leadership in advancing the Forum's mission of driving broadband wireline solutions and empowering converged packet networks worldwide to better meet the needs of vendors, service providers and their customers.
Tim has over 18 years experience in the communications industry, working in the areas of solution deployment, system engineering and system architecture across a wide variety of technologies that include Optical, ATM and IP transport, switching and routing products as well as development of Home Networking devices and Network and Device management systems. In his current role as Industry Standards Manager, he is actively involved in a number of standards bodies that include oneM2M, ETSI, IEEE, Broadband Forum, Open Mobile Alliance, HGI, DLNA and UPnP forum providing expertise in the areas of network management, device management, home networking and machine to machine technologies.
Demand for broadband services is growing at an explosive pace as consumers look for richer and more personalized connected customer experiences. But service providers’ fast and reliable networks can’t win over every customer. In addition, competition from new brands is making it tougher to differentiate with devices, services and pricing. In short, to stay competitive, service providers (SPs) have an imperative to cater to the needs of the market that goes beyond traditional approaches.
While consumers are aware that new technologies can bring added complexity, they also expect their devices and services to keep bringing them simpler and more compelling experiences. Based on these trends, SPs need new differentiators to remain competitive. To stand out and deliver market leading customer experiences, SPs need to make their offers easier to buy, easier to use with more user-friendly options for payment.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive portfolio of solutions offers a four-pronged approach for SPs to step up their games:
Source: Alcatel-Lucent Motive
At the end of the day, SP ability to improve the customer experience is about engendering more immersive and enriching engagements. In fact, Alcatel-Lucent contends that with Motive Customer Experience Solutions SPs can increase profitability by:
With commoditization fast becoming the norm in many service markets, and alternatives only a click away, it is becoming increasingly clear that customer experience management may be the most important competitive differentiator in the future. SPs understand this and are aware that having the right tools in place to accurately measure and manage their relationships with customers will be critical to their success.
Thanks to significant advances in broadband communication technology in the past few years, people from many industries and disciplines are coming up with some pretty innovative ways to work, play and do business. These often-disparate innovations represent growing opportunity for even greater changes, and greater rewards, if devices, applications and infrastructures were more effectively brought together.
With that vision in mind, Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) founded the ng Connect Program, intended to create an end-to-end ecosystem for rapidly delivering next generation services and applications, by combining the resources of industry, business and academic leaders. Enterprises, consumers and service providers all stand to benefit.
The ng Connect Program rightly claims that, “The opportunity is unprecedented. “ It has eight main goals:
Connectivity, ALU points out, is rapidly converging in ways transformative to business, daily life, entertainment, and other areas. Individual companies, however, do not have the resources or expertise to rapidly deploy innovative services, create profitable new business models, or remove barriers to mass adoption.
The ng Connect Program addresses five main areas that represent barriers to success: innovation, connectivity and distribution, digital media management and QoS, applications and service integration, and business models and cases.
Addressing these barriers to success requires driving top line revenues, increasing competitive advantages, lowering OPEX, reducing churn, leveraging assets across networks, creating new business models, accelerating time to market, and speeding up resolution of standards and regulatory issues.
The ng Connect Program is driving innovation through three main elements:
The programs summarized below exemplify how various technologies and services are being brought together in innovative ways through ng Connect.
Want to be part of helping create the future? Participation in the ng Connect program is a way to explore how working together with other innovators is the path to accelerate your progress on the road to success.
]]>Today’s end user is looking for a richer conversation experience when using a variety of network-connected devices.
For example, new technologies are emerging that allow people to use any video-enabled device to enter a shared virtual space, and discuss and share information in a way that is almost like being together in the same physical space. As a result, these advances in video communications have provided a new opportunity for service providers to bring interactive video conversations to any device, from anywhere.
According to an article in Alcatel-Lucent’s Enriching Communications, Immersive Communications: A New Video Conversation Experience, with these new technologies users will no longer be limited to the confines of telepresence rooms to experience an immersive conversation at long distance. They will be able to experience this at work, at home and on the move – holding video meetings and sharing documents over PCs, tablets and smartphones.
Immersive communications includes both verbal and non-verbal communication such as gestures, body language, posture, facial expression and eye contact, which are necessary for remote participants to engage in honest, genuine and emotional conversations.
While videoconferencing has brought communications to another level, it hasn’t lived up to expectations since current video collaboration systems are often expensive, restrictive, complex and non-intuitive. The experience isn’t as rich or engaging as it is in related media, such as TV, movies and video games.
With immersive group video enterprises can adopt more flexible work models and distributed teams can engage in more creative and truly interactive video conversations, both scheduled and ad hoc.
Because immersive communications rely so heavily on the network, service providers are in the ideal position to take advantage of the new revenue opportunities it brings. SPs can leverage their networks, using the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) architectural framework to deliver real-time immersive group video services with consistently high Quality of Service (QoS).
They can also offer immersive communications as a hosted cloud service. In fact, many are already moving to distributed cloud architectures that are ideal for hosted and virtualized video services.
Those service providers that get involved early in the game will set themselves apart from the competition, giving them the greatest opportunity to capture and develop a large and loyal customer base for the immersive communications experience.
]]>In an increasingly competitive marketplace, service providers (SPs) are staying one step ahead by finding new and innovative ways monetize their offerings. For providers who recognize and leverage it effectively, the emerging new social conversation experience arising from the pervasive adaption and use of social media is proving to be a valuable tool in this endeavor.
Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) has been busy developing solutions for fixed and mobile SPs to help them leverage the evolution of social media. On the mobility side, much of this development has been focused on two technical projects—Rich Communication Suite (RCS) and RCS-enhanced (RCS-e)—led by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA).
In a recent white paper, “Building a Social Conversation Experience with RCS and RCS-E,” Alcatel-Lucent researchers explain that RCS (developed in 2008) is intended to: “Leverage the global interoperability and ubiquity of existing voice services and Short Message Services (SMSs) and enrich them with Internet-type features more in line with user demand.”
As of early 2011, when the more compact iteration of the capability RCS-e was launched, the RCS Group had more than 100 members, including service providers, device manufacturers, and infrastructure and software vendors. Alcatel-Lucent is among them.
The RCS standard, as the white paper notes, has three key attributes:
Since it was first developed, trials of RCS services were conducted by many service providers, including two 2010 nationwide tests in Spain and France. ALU has been involved with all the trials gleaning valuable insights about the new social conversation and what tools will most effectively give providers a leg up when developing services users demand.
The researchers stated that, “Users have a strong interest in Instant Messaging capabilities, mainly because IM corresponds to service already offered to them through other means.” It is thus not surprising that they further found, “Accordingly, for them, integration with social networks is logical.”
Because RCS is technically complex, some providers in the development group created a simplified version: RCS-e.
“RCS-e aims to provide assured services by delivering a simplified extension to voice and text, enabling subscribers to send IMs, video chat, and image/video share and transfer/exchange files in real time,” ALU’s authors state.
RCS-e has three key attributes, using the power of RCS to offer streamlined improvements:
The goal of RCS-e is to increase subscriber adoption of SMS services, using enhanced service activation, user discovery, service capabilities, and delivery assurance.
“With such assured services, there is no need to suspend one service or to bring up a new client and reestablish communications,” the authors say. In fact, the white paper concludes that, “This strategy attempts to replicate the success of SMS with a rich set of new services by providing the same mobile ubiquity and service assurance as SMS.”
The rapid global user adoption of IM, chat and texting of all sorts including he extraordinary ascension of Twitter has proven there is an insatiable demand for non-voice communications. In fact, it is a demand that is constantly seeking new conversation experiences that enrich social interaction. The good news, as ALU and those working on the development and rollout of RCS and RCS-e have discovered, is that improving the social conversation through these tools is a desirable means for SPs to not only captivate customers but also to monetize/profit from what can be a central role in evolving social media ecosystems.
As active transactional individuals in the Internet age, here are a few questions to ponder for a moment.
These are not existential questions. In fact, as pointed out in a previous blog, they are the subject of an important new book, Identity Shift : Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age, written by Alcatel-Lucent’s Allison Cerra and Christina James.
I recently had the privilege of speaking with author Cerra to get deeper detail and insights into her work with Ms. James. It happened to coincide with an Ad Age article by Michael Learmonth entitled, “CMOs Explain Why They're Flocking to Vegas for CES,” which was fortuitous.
The book is about advancing the science of understanding behavior (aka shifting IDENTITY) and the role and criticality of trust in a world of accelerating technologic change. The article had a great quote from GE CMO Beth Comstock that validates why the Cerra/James work goes far beyond being an academic exercise. Comstock says she and other marketers need to be at CES because, "I'm a marketer and that makes me a behavioralist…How is tech changing the behavior?" Finding the answer to that and other questions like the ones above is why CMOs should attend CES. She might have added, as the book does, that there is a vice versa involved here since what the Internet has done is profoundly change the nature and relative power in buyer/seller relationships.
A look between the covers
OK, so maybe this is not just a deeper dive between the traditional covers but the virtual ones as well. It is instructive to look at the flow of the sections of the book to get to the meat of the matter.
As mentioned in the previous blog, the research model employed is Ethnography. This approach goes beyond the number crunching of demographics and psychographics to focus on how close-up observation of human interactions correlate, corroborate and yield insights that can be extrapolated and used with insights from larger behavioral studies.
Cerra fleshed out the authors’ “3-P Model of Identity.” and why understanding the categories and where and how they intersect, as well as relate to the issue of trust, is so critical as a tool for causal explanations of what was observed and how the observations can be applied.
Presentation: This is the predominant thing most of us worry about. It is about how the world views us. In the physical world we tend to have more than a modicum of control over our image/reputation. However, in virtual world our image is as much created by anyone else as by us. This creates tension according to Cerra, “I can choose who I want to be, but have little or no control necessarily over who I am.” In the context of identity management online it means having a presentation strategy that encompasses our various persona modes —personal, professional, visible and known and anonymous.
Protection: Cerra says this is the one that grabs the headlines, but it turns out the research indicates people say they are very concerned, yet for the most part willingly provide information online without taking precautions. As she pointed out in the interview, “Not all harms are created equal. We are equipped with primal senses that guide us as to whether “fight or flight” is the path to feeling safe about our privacy, loved ones, and valuables.” She noted that physical defenses are rendered useless in the virtual world, and that the dynamics of constantly changing and blurred personae at any given decision point are all related back to the issue of trust in terms of behavior. This is a case of “watch what I do and not what I say”, since actual behavior can veer widely from stated intention.
Preference: This aspect of the role of identity looks at how, when, where and why future actions can be understood in the context of what we prefer is likely to be what we want. In fact, preference is an important component of sites such as Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, etc.
Cerra cautions that the conscious and sub-conscious dynamics of these aspects of identity can turn on a dime which is why observation of individuals as they act are key.
Universal laws
Based on the model, and a close analysis of observed behavior as tested against a broader look at the actions of 5,000 individuals, the authors came up with what they call “universal rules.” They are examined in the book to demonstrate how the power of rationalization and confluence exemplified in these laws, “lay the foundation of behavior and perceptions that unites consumers, no matter their age, socioeconomic status or gender…Represent the entry point for understanding individuals in a virtual world – whether as ourselves or as consumers we attempt to serve.”
The laws are as follows:
It is all about trust
The section following universal laws on identity attributes during life stages is worth a read because it shows that when it comes to transactional issues and how we behave when faced with a decision, even taking into account the laws, where we are in our life and what is important to us at that stage matters. However, at the end of the day, the 3P Model and the universal laws, roll up into that “behaviorist” thing, i.e., given our various personae in a virtual world, whether we are driven by presentation, protection, preference or looking through the world via age-colored glasses, it all comes back to trust.
In other words, at any given moment in time, based on the policies and rules we associate with the virtual dissemination of our volition via electronic means, what level of control are we willing to give up/tolerate to not only get what we want, but to feel good about the experience. Why the book is such a breakthrough is the application of its analyses as predictive of what identity profiles are willing to accept, including such things as privacy conditions and opting-in versus opting-out models of interaction, to be transactional. This includes a thorough discussion related to the title that our identities are not static but are constantly shifting. In fact, they need to be mediated by us manually, automated through the enforcement of our policies and rules, or in partnership with trusted service providers.
In fact, as Cerra highlighted, the book goes a step further. It provides a peek into the value of the analysis. She offered a couple of titillating findings from the authors’ testing of 20 possible identity-oriented services against the 3P profiles:
In addition, they found that when they measured trust there was a 60 percent correlation with a willingness to pay for identity services. And, reflecting the universal laws, customers love or hate of a brand seemed to bear little or no correlation with willingness to pay if a customer perceived value in the offering. As Cerra stated, “it turns out that what I say is different from what I do and from what I value.” This is certainly a profound finding for CMOs.
Getting closer to finding the Holy Grail
As the saying goes, “the bottom line is the bottom line!” CMOs as accurately observed are behaviorists. They do need to understand technologic change and its impact on shifting consumer transactional tipping points. CES is the perfect place for them to get educated. However, they also should read, Identity Shift: Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age, if they want deeper context.
People do not buy and use technology for technology’s sake. The Internet changed that aspect of the buyer/seller relationship forever. It has also accentuated the need to recognize, understand and act upon the shifting nature of our multiple personae, especially as more and more of who we are, and how we act/transact moves into the virtual world.
A marketer’s Holy Grail is being able to target a market of one with perfect knowledge as to what can/should/will motivate a transaction. A consumer’s Holy Grail is having perfect knowledge, absolute comfort when they purchase something, and control over the terms and conditions of a transaction. Are we there yet on either front? No! In fact, as we all know there are no perfect worlds. However, there is certainly invaluable illumination to be gained from the quest.
That said, thank you, Allison and Christina, for your contribution to making the journey well worth it.
By Susan Campbell
Service provider (SP) revenues are taking significant revenue hits from application and content providers (ACPs) as the disaggregation of content from physical access shifts value generation opportunities toward third parties. At the same time SPs are also attempting to ward off “free” offerings, such as people using things like Skype for making phone calls who are willing to put up with inferior quality, by attracting people to superior services they will pay a premium for. The challenge, which every day gains more urgency, is how to react to both trends.
The objective is to be relevant and central in evolving ecosystems and thereby be in a position to maximize new opportunities while minimizing risks. The vehicle for turning things around is embodied in the desirability of creating a new conversation experience with customers based on a holistic strategic approach.
A recent Alcatel-Lucent article, The Value of the New Conversation Experience highlighted the need for service providers to increase the average revenue per user and reduce churn, two of the major revenue corrosive issues. It focused on the reality that to accomplish these goals, SPs must quickly bring to market enhanced service bundles and also rapidly introduce innovative service offerings with compelling and differentiated perceivable value as critical to combating free services.
According to research and business models provided by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), establishing a new conversation experience offers SPs the means to create sustained business value. It cautions that the value has to be communicated correctly to users and made attractive to all members of evolving ecosystems as well.
ALU’ research reveals that service providers willing to leverage things like IMS technology can capture and keep the attention of their customers through by enabling a more intimate relationship that is experienced as being personal, seamless, secure and social. However, a rich communication suite is not enough.
The research found that users want something with the attributes of ALU’s new conversation experience if they are to remain loyal which in turn can provide service providers with a broad and long term business value.
To truly deliver this new conversation experience, it’s critical that service providers understand what is required. For instance, the article says that customers want such things as:
The key to all of the above and many more is that each of these services can deliver only short-term business value when delivered alone. Worse, they can be easily commoditized. When the services are bundled together, however, they are the foundation for the delivery of the new conversation experience.
To position service providers to generate new and sustainable revenue streams, ALU contends that the focus needs to be on creating integrated communications solutions, combining services and delivering enhanced bundles. This may include a Multimedia Pack to extend enriched voice, intuitive messaging and live video and access to enhanced bundles to deliver on the new conversation experience.
The key for the service provider is to develop the right offering and the right strategy for taking the offering to market. They must then employ sophisticated business modeling techniques so they can react quickly to maximize opportunity and minimize risks in a rapidly changing world.
ALU contends that the new conversation experience is the best way for service providers to create long-term differentiated and sustainable value and that now is the time to start the conversation before as they say, “the window of opportunity is closes.”
As with so many aspects of modern life, the Internet has profoundly changed the nature of relationships between buyers and sellers. Choice and not dictates are the rule and not the exception, and the customers because of access to information and alternatives now have historically unprecedented leverage. They are willing to talk but under new terms and conditions which are going to require new approaches to engagement both short and long term. It is as stated, a new conversation experience. It certainly appears to be a conversation worth getting started.
]]>Assessing the performance of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) servers in a multi-vendor environment is a difficult proposition for today's service providers. This issue is mostly due to the lack of common SIP call log standards, a reality that allows vendors to develop call logs based on their own format.
The myriad of call log formats acts as a barrier for service providers that want to review SIP transactions across multiple vendors, evaluate and troubleshoot their servers, and analyze call trends.
Fortunately, the answer to this concern – SIP CLF (Common Log Format) – has already been developed and is currently in the process of being standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
SIP CLF is a signaling protocol that creates a common log format that enables complete visibility and network management across all Session Initiation Protocol servers, no matter how many vendors are involved. This is highly important for carriers that deliver messaging, voice, video and other multimedia services using SIP.
The benefits of SIP CLF for service providers will be immense. Vijay Gurbani, a distinguished member of technical staff in the enabling computing technologies domain at Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs, recently discussed these industry gains in a TechZine post, Easier Network Management with the SIP CLF.
Gurbani notes that, when implemented, SIP CLF will allow service providers to assess the state of SIP transactions across multiple vendors, thus providing trend analysis and traffic reports that help carriers better their service and streamline their network. In addition, SIP CLF can train anomaly detection systems to trigger alarms and enable the use of SIP equipment tests.
SIP CLF "provides an easily digestible log of past and current transactions, and its format allows quick parsing to discover relationships between transactions," says Gurbani. "In addition, it provides a foundation for creating other innovative tools that can be used to simplify call tracking, troubleshooting and identifying calling patterns."
Gurbani stresses that the signaling protocol will provide carriers with a number of different ways to improve their network performance, including the enabling of trend analysis and troubleshooting tools. Specifically, SIP CLF will eliminate the time-consuming and costly process of correlating data from a diverse set of SIP servers.
The common log format can also help create a standardized diagnostic trail to follow SIP call sessions across the globe, and make troubleshooting adjustments accordingly. The protocol can even help detect attacks based on perceived anomalies.
Gurbani expects SIP CLF to be standardized in the near future. "And as it is implemented throughout the industry, it will give service providers better ways to maintain high performance for multivendor networks, resulting in a better quality of experience for end users," he says.
By Peter Bernstein
With Facebook about to pass the 1 billion user mark, YouTube taking the #2 rank as a global search engine, Zynga having gone IPO and Twitter on the way, the total of mobile phone devices having blown past the number of wired ones, three things have become apparent:
All of this and more is captured in a fascinating new book, Identity Shift: Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age, written by leading market research experts, Allison Cerra and Christina James, from Alcatel-Lucent. The second in “The Shift” series of Web 2.0 analyses, this latest edition looks at consumer behavior across all the key stages of life and how they are influenced by communications technologies.
Findings from the 242 page book (available on Amazon.com) are based on a year-long qualitative research effort that included interviews with more than 5,000 American consumers, as well as with more than 30 in-home visits across the United States.
Co-author Cerra puts the findings in high-level context: “As more of our lives are being lived on networks and the growing variety of devices that are connected to them, we are exposing more about who we are to others and companies serving us…Earning the coveted trust of consumers is the key to unlocking new value and creating service potential in today’s networked age. But whether or not you are part of the technology industry, the findings in this book will open your eyes to how people set their public and private boundaries and how they differ across defining moments of an individual’s life.”
Indeed, as the authors contend in an important finding, with the boundaries between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ lives breaking down, positive and negative implications are emerging for consumers and are driving the identity shift(s).
Methodology and findings
The primary research model utilized is known as Ethnography, a research practice with its roots in anthropology, where an emphasis is placed on close interaction with subjects as a means for understanding their lives and the social dynamics within it. The authors developed a construct for identity that strives to capture our sense of self in a virtual world called the “3-P Model of Identity,” the elements of which are:
This construct is not just a view of virtual identity but also relates to how shifts in any of these domains have a profound effect on our physical selves. The book delves deeply into the intersections of the 3-P Model, how these piece parts of identity are interconnected, and how they influence trust which the authors define as “meeting at the crossroads of identity.”
While spending some quality time with a great read is not a bad way to spend the holidays or start the New Year, some of the highlights are worth a mention.
Trust
Social Networking
Online Commerce/Protection
Teenagers in the Networked World
Parenting
Midlife
It is all about TRUST
As the authors stated, there is good news and reason for skepticism about the impact of identity shifting and how it will play out. At the end of the day, if people do not trust that their interactions online, including the interactions of their virtual agents, are not being executed according to their policies and rules in a manner they perceive to be satisfactory, a breakdown in trust could curtail not just interpersonal interactions but also commerce.
Right now the study seems to indicate that while there are some discrepancies in the levels of trust based on stage of life, trust is relatively high. This is true not just for conversations but also for doing transactions. Whether even these levels are sustainable —as people employ context-based multiple personae (agents, avatars, alias, etc.) based on whether they are operating in personal or professional mode and the various sub-personae for each (friends, family, strangers, local and virtual merchants, banks and other third parties) —remains to be seen and is clearly an important area for continuing research.
Looking at the shifting nature of identify through the prism of the 3-P Model of Identity, it is clear that the blurring of the physical and virtual worlds and how people extract perceived value from the management of their multiple identities as they evolve really is all about trust. However, trust is tricky. It is subjective and not objective. Once lost, it is hard to regain.
In future postings we will look in-depth at what the authors think about their findings, and where they think their research is pointing.
]]>The time is right for service providers to recognize new opportunities in converged services strategies as we consistently move toward an all-IP world. With convergence in place, the flexibility to deliver new services and business models is enabled. At the same time, a holistic, go-to-market strategy is essential to support new opportunities in this space.
A recent Alcatel-Lucent article, Converged Services Go To Market stresses that service development is key to staying competitive in today’s market. With constantly changing dynamics, it’s critical that service providers participate the right way in the right markets. The traditional methods for doing business have to evolve to include multi-sided business models that support more sophisticated settlement models, partner ecosystems, new delivery channels and new ways to measure success.
The go-to-market strategies in place today fail to support the all IP-world as they were developed in an effort to support subscription-based postpaid and prepaid models for text, voice and Internet data access services. New areas such as pay-per-use and digital media delivery demand new approaches as advertisers are playing a significant role and areas such as mobile money and M2M are gaining significant ground.
In a new market where converged services are in high demand, new go-to-strategies must require that service providers experiment in the market to correctly identify the next model that ensures a win not just for themselves, but also for their customers and partners. These strategies must also act as a catalyst for innovation, effectively opening the door to new opportunities.
Enabling converged services in an all IP-world requires a converging of networks to a single IP access and service layer. It entails moving more and more capabilities to the converged services network edge to enable what Alcatel-Lucent calls the High Leverage Network. This approach allows service providers access to the operational efficiency and cost savings necessary to deliver traditional and next-generation messaging, voice, data access and content services. This convergence also ensures service providers have the necessary flexibility to deliver new services and business models.
Service providers can leverage converged, all-IP networks to open their network APIs for third party developers and aggregators seeking to create new retail and wholesale services, combining their own assets with Web innovations; combine disparate data sources with IT systems to offer a new level of subscriber intelligence for monetization; enable optimal content experiences on any screen through new content delivery networks; deliver HD voice, video calling, Rich Communications Suite and Unified Communications; provide platforms to enable new cloud services; create an environment to support M2M applications in key industries; and use network and IT assets to leverage growing opportunities in new areas.
To develop the right strategies to leverage these new opportunities, service providers need to explore new go-to-market strategies, incorporating accelerated convergence where possible, experimenting with new models enabled by converged networks, align the organization with new opportunities, change their approach to evaluation and measurement, share the risk, keep customers at the center, and find and protect the right partners.
The market has changed and will continue to evolve in a new direction, creating new opportunities for service providers at every turn. Those unable to develop new go-to-market strategies will be quickly left behind.
Yoga has been in the news lately and for network operator strategists, who may be feeling more like pretzels than yogis as they try to twist this way and that to accommodate rapid changes in the value chain, the idea of letting go of strict control over their networks and opening up to a world of potential security threats is anything but relaxing. Yet network operators who ignore these changes, risk falling out of the whole chain of innovation and in the process, defaulting to a commodity utility business, rather than maximizing their revenue streams as innovative and differentiated customer experience providers.
So how do you bring these two opposing views into alignment?
Today network operators who operate the broadband data networks (wireline and wireless) have thinner margins than in the past, while at the same time; all kinds of new players are making money by creating new applications that we did not even know we needed to run on the networks. Innovation brings disruption and disruption brings opportunities and threats. It transforms application and content value chains.
The telecom business is evolving from selling network connections to a more complex circular value chain with all kinds of transactions happening on their networks that are creating an immense value chain, especially in the world of business and enterprise.
The real top-line opportunity is in opening networks to innovation from other value chain players to use their particular expertise to create new things with the exposed abilities of the network at a price. For example, what if Netflix were to cut a deal with the carrier to provide QoS for a premium monthly charge? The network operators start to get a slice of that revenue pie. Imagine further that all kinds of different capabilities such as location, presence, security, content caching and delivery are made available to developer communities and enterprises and the carrier is compensated per transaction? Their business moves from connectivity to transaction fees over time.
This is analogous to how Apple is leveraging APIs to increase their core business. Twitter had 11 billion API calls per day (May 2011) and Amazon has over 260 billion objects stored in S3 (May 2011) and even Netflix had 10 billion API calls per month at the start of 2011, according to Programmable Web (a company recently acquired by Alcatel-Lucent). Like Apple the internet players all use APIs to support their core business models.
Google is a good case in point. APIs give Google traffic, more traffic gets Google access to targeted traffic as they understand how people are using specific applications and can potentially segment according to the information that the application uses. This subscriber intelligence leads to more effectiveness in their advertising which leads to more money being generated through their search/advertising business. No wonder Google has announced $1 billion in mobile revenue.
Similarly, eBay uses traffic from transaction APIs to pay for the core auctioning business. There is huge value in understanding and playing in this new market with many different types of developers: all the way from large enterprises and development houses to the stereotypical “in the garage” developers working on the next popular “must-have” application.
To understand the speed at which this market changes, look no further than the Kindle Fire from Amazon. Released on Nov 15th, 2011, by early December, it was already the second best selling tablet! In just a few WEEKS it leapt over all other tablet suppliers except the market leader, Apple, with the ubiquitous iPad. Looking at the iPad, its use is proliferating across many industries in innovative and previously unimaginable ways. It is even becoming popular with parents as a must-have gift for the 2011 holiday season. And, iPad capabilities are being integrated into toys . This market doesn’t just require more flexibility from operators; it also demands agility, speed, imagination and the ability to strategically change business models rapidly in response to extremely rapid market demand changes.
For network operators, this requires an integrated plan to use network intelligence and to nurture an ecosystem that allows service creation by outside developers and enterprises without compromising the security of the network or their customer data. Network operators essentially need to evolve up the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) stack. In addition to providing the physical telecom network, network management and OSS/BSS services, the network operator now needs to provide a platform and APIs for securely integrating applications from application and content providers, developers and enterprises in order to enhance the services that they can offer to their end-users - thereby increasing the value of the network core business (the network and communications services) and by extension, their revenue opportunities.
In yoga, stretching and letting go leads to stronger muscles. Could the same be true for Network Operators? By expanding their ecosystem and sphere of influence, their business models and revenue becomes more robust and flexible too.
This is a paradigm change, not just an inversion. It is not a case of evolving the network to 4G and then thinking about what services to offer on it after the fact, nor is it a case of developing 4G services behind closed doors and then upgrading the network to support them. Both of these approaches miss the point. It is about developing an ecosystem that includes everything needed to enable innovation and finding new ways to get paid for it– wherever in the value chain it comes from and making sure that in the provision of that ecosystem are APIs with business models that will enable network operators to get a fair share of revenue for services offered.
]]>By Susan Campbell
Humans are an increasingly mobile species, relying on technology to keep them connected to people, information, processes and more. While continued mobile technology innovation is a key in meeting the needs of a rapidly changing world, consumers are now demanding more than just technology – they want a new conversation experience. This experience is focused not solely on technology, but instead on improving the content and context of human interactions.
A recent Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) article in the company’s Enriching Communications business e-zine entitled, Needed: A New Conversation Experience, the focus was on the importance of human interactions, stressing that the new conversation experience needed to be more personal, secure, social and mobile. It detailed how network intelligence will enable the new conversation experience and as well as how open innovation helps to enhance the experience, while also encouraging service uptake and loyalty for service providers (SPs).
The new conversation experience is provided through the unified experience across all screens, devices, applications and networks. People want to easily connect, share and optimize social interaction opportunities when, where and how it fits into their schedule and location. They don’t want to think about the technology – it just needs to work. Fortunately for SPs, users are willing to pay for this.
The need to create a new conversation experience was driven by challenges inherent in traditional technologies. Users have often been frustrated:
There is a demand for network intelligence that transforms application and content value chains to eliminate these frustrations. The objective is to enable the new conversation experience by eliminating the complications. More is not always better, and users can improve the overall experience when services and capabilities are simplified to harmonize.
Put simply, the new conversation experience will simplify and harmonize communications as it effectively ties together networks, screens, devices and applications to provide communications that are more social, personal, secure and mobile. This approach eliminates the struggling and juggling, ensuring that conversations are not stranded as they work seamlessly across ACP and service provider services.
The new conversation experience ensures that mobile messaging conversations can be sent to anyone, even if they’re operating on Apple iMessage or Google Talk. Plus, a single application from an SP can extend the social conversations from any pervasive social networking site. Anyone operating any device can leverage excellent video calling experiences, and legacy SMS services will work with new IM services.
By leveraging new technologies, SPs can deliver this new conversation experience by enabling users to connect, share and organization their conversations across all networks, applications, devices and screens. They can eliminate communications islands through provider collaboration, and can enhance the overall experience through new partnerships and business models with ACPs and thereby drive relevance within the application and content value chain.
The bottom line is the bottom line, i.e., not only happier users, but increased revenue to support strategic goals for long-term sustainability and profitability.
]]>Global mobile traffic has increased with a factor of 30 in 5 years time; 6 billion mobile apps have been downloaded in 2010. Besides being a challenge, this explosive growth also presents an opportunity for communication service providers (CSPs) to engage in new ecosystems and business models – embracing cloud services and working with over-the-top players to transform application and content value chains.
Today, a large portion of the return for mobile applications comes from the mobile data revenues that they drive (growing from $260 billion in 2010 to $500 billion in 2015). Given that mobile data revenue is more than a 100-fold the revenues from mobile apps purchases, it is clear that stimulating mobile data consumption is the primary monetization vehicle for service providers.
With a need to increase mobile data usage - and changing market dynamics – it is clear that CSPs have to launch new application services in their markets as soon as possible to monetize the mobile application opportunity.
In order to shorten time-to-market, however, they need to do things differently - opening up their network assets for internal and third-party app developers so that the innovation demanded by the market can occur in a very flexible way.
In order to scale, CSPs also need to build a new ecosystem for apps, whether it is for their internal developers, their strategic partners or the large crowd of external app developers.
As a matter of fact, each of these three groups can be linked to a different zone in the hyperbolic “Value – Volume” graph of long tail apps and content services, in which we distinguish between three apps types: “head”, “shoulder” and “tail”. Each of these three types of apps demands a different go-to-market strategy by the CSP.
Although engaging long tail developers can enable innovation at the speed of ideas, this type of apps is also the most difficult one to get a grip on and should not be the main priority for the CSP when kicking off their apps strategy. The community of long tail app developers is very fragmented and scattered all over the world. Moreover, CSPs usually need to build the skills for exposing and documenting APIs in a simple way. As long tail apps are not generating large revenues in the short term, they should be part of a longer-term strategy – with the support from top management.
Alcatel-Lucent helps CSPs understand the challenges and opportunities associated with the rapid transformation of application and content value chains. It has a content-rich resource library where you can learn more about capitalizing on evolving ecosystems.
By Susan J. Campbell
The customer relationship for the service provider can offer an on-going lesson on the power of expectations. These relationships have been complicated by the introduction of new devices, services and apps, putting more pressure on the service provider to meet heightened customer expectations to ensure satisfaction. Optimal customer experience management demands a customer experience transformation.
A recent Alcatel-Lucent-sponsored article, “Supporting a Better Customer Experience,” explored these complexities and the importance of smart support delivered to end users to improve customer satisfaction, and as a by-product, profitability. The customer experience transformation is possible through leveraging key subscriber data and developing solutions and services customers demand to meet their needs today and into the future.
The consistent introduction of new devices into the service provider/subscriber mix is increasing the complexity of the relationship. When customers experience problems with their devices, they reach out to the service provider for help. If the customer cannot get the needed support from the service provider, frustration ensues. This frustration then lowers the perception of the customer experience and can fuel dissatisfaction.
Recent research is instructive:
In all reality, improving customer relationship efforts also helps to offset the decline in application and service usage rates and service revenue that can result from customer dissatisfaction.
The key to positive change for the service provider is not only a focus on customer experience management, but also an effort to balance customer satisfaction and profitability. This balancing act is most evident within the help desk environment as customers seek out help desk associates for help on service, devices, applications or even problems that have nothing to do with the service provider offering. If help desk agents lack quick access to information on devices, applications, networks and services, the customer experience is degraded and the cost of care can skyrocket.
Fortunately, the customer experience transformation can take place within the help desk environment as it offers an opportunity for differentiation. With a customer-first approach, service providers can turn the help desk into a vital division that attracts, satisfies and retains customers. This customer-focused support ensures all customer needs are met and customer satisfaction is maximized.
To drive the customer experience transformation, Alcatel-Lucent offers the Alcatel-Lucent Customer Experience Transformation (CXT) program to enable service providers to focus on a customer-first strategy.
The CXT program ensures the delivery of best-in-class customer experience management (CEM) and provides a portfolio of purpose-built solutions and patented consulting methodologies to enable the prioritization and implementation of data-driven and precise improvements in existing products and services. Service providers are then armed with the necessary tools to transform the customer experience in a way that drives brand loyalty and secures superior relationships with all customers.
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