Tag: SAP

Telco 2.0: The $50bn Enterprise Mobility Opportunity: What’s stopping telcos winning 500% more business?

Overview of Key Findings

STL Partners believe that mobility – the use of mobile data, new devices, new applications and communications services – is one of the most disruptive forces in today’s enterprise market. We think that a business philosophy to embrace mobility as a strategic asset and opportunity, rather than simply a technical challenge, will be a critical success factor for all businesses moving forward. Telcos can be a key enabler and business partner in this transformation, but to do so they will need to significantly change their approaches to working with enterprise customers.Key findings

Our new global research, independently produced by STL Partners and kindly sponsored by SAP, shows that many telcos are both ideally positioned but underprepared to exploit this fast emerging and evolving opportunity. We found that among the 101 global enterprise and 44 telco executives we surveyed:

  • Mobility works – 80% of enterprise execs thought their mobile app based initiatives had met or exceeded expectations
  • There’s big latent demand for telcos – 5 times as many enterprises (i.e. over half the total) would buy services and solutions from telcos than currently do
  • But telcos need to address credible capability issues such as security, product portfolio, app development, and process and industry expertise
  • And most telcos are underprepared – only 16% have a defined market offer or strategy, and internal adoption of mobility lags many other industries, with only 45% of telcos we surveyed offering internal apps compared to 61% in the enterprise sample.

Figure 1:  What would enterprises consider buying from a telco?
Figure 1: What would enterprises consider buying from a telco?

Source: STL Partners, On-line research, Enterprise >250 employees, Feb 2014(n=101)

Introduction

Background – the Business Context of Enterprise Mobility

Four major trends in demand are transforming the Enterprise Information and Communication Technology (ICT) market today:

  1. In pursuit of greater agility, new sources of revenue, improved efficiency, and closer customer relationships, enterprises are exploring opportunities to mobilise strategic aspects of their business.
  2. Enterprises are increasingly exploiting big-data, cloud, and mobile strategies to innovate and transform.
  3. To focus on their core businesses, they are outsourcing IT infrastructure and technology services.
  4. As employees increasingly use new digital technologies and services, enterprises have started to reduce spend on traditional telecoms services.

In response, telcos are looking to identify alternative ways to grow revenues from enterprise customers. This includes tools for the development, deployment, and management of enterprise apps, and managed infrastructure and technology services that offer flexibility and economies of scale.

In December 2013, STL Partners conducted a sizing study of the Enterprise Mobility market and identified a global opportunity of $50 billion (see Telco 2.0™ Executive Briefing: “The $50Bn Enterprise Mobility Opportunity: four steps for telcos to take today”).  This precipitated further exploration into:

  • Enterprises’ opportunities and priorities for mobile solutions
  • Their drivers and expectations vis-à-vis Enterprise Mobility, and their attitudes towards telcos as a prospective partner
  • The practical and perceptual inhibitors causing telcos to arrive comparatively late to the Enterprise Mobility party
  • How telcos can achieve the greatest value for their customers – and themselves – by developing or assimilating the Enterprise Mobility capabilities they lack today

New Research

In the first quarter of 2014, STL Partners carried out a combined research programme consisting of:

  • a survey of 101 enterprises worldwide (organisations with 250+ employees)
  • a quantitative study of 44 telcos
  • in-depth qualitative interviews with strategists and proposition owners representing 11 telcos

Figure 2: Enterprise customers – on-line survey respondents, per region

Figure 2: Enterprise customers - on-line survey respondents, per region

Figure 3: Telco – on-line survey respondents, per region

Figure 3: Telco - on-line survey respondents, per region

Table 1: In-depth qualitative interviews – contributing companies

Table 1: In-depth qualitative intervews - contributing companies

 

All the interviews were conducted on a confidential basis. Information and insights shared by the interviewees have therefore been anonymised.  Names and titles have also been withheld.

The findings – which suggest telcos are even further adrift of a robust Enterprise Mobility proposition than initially thought – are detailed in this report, together with recommendations on steps telcos can take to accelerate their go-to-market strategy and make up for the early momentum they have lost.

Overview – the enterprise perspective 

As demand for access to information on the go via mobile platforms is increasing, Enterprise Mobility is one of the hottest topics in IT. Mobile apps are fast becoming a business imperative to support better ways of working and business transformation. Enterprises must react quickly to harness the potential of mobile apps, while satisfying themselves that security, governance, and compliance across data, applications, and devices are fit for purpose.

Most Enterprises have started mobilising 

Our study revealed that most enterprises have already mobilised at least some of their organisation’s processes and interactions, generally starting from the inside out by prioritising internal initiatives over customer-facing ones.

Figure 4: Business processes already mobilised by enterprises

Figure 4: Business processes already mobilised by enterprises

Though we observed variations in adoption by sector and country that may indicate relevant differences (see Appendix – Industry and Regional Splits, page 48), the commonality of fundamental demand across regions and sectors is more significant.

Sales is the current lead application – but there’s more to come

Findings: field sales has always been a natural candidate area for mobilisation, borne out by the fact that more than half of enterprises in the study already had some form of sales app.  While the Shop Floor currently has experienced the lowest adoption of enterprise apps, it is also one of the areas of greatest potential for mobilisation, with 41% of enterprises contemplating mobilising their production facilities, concourse, or retail environment.  The highest levels of mobilisation or intent to mobilise were seen in Aftermarket Field Service, Transportation & Delivery, and Equipment Maintenance.

Figure 5: Internal / B2E mobile apps enterprises already have or are considering

Figure 4: Internal / B2E mobile apps enterprises already have or are considering

Opportunity: administrative apps are now a relatively mature, horizontal process market. Some telcos have had success selling these and it is an important area in which to have a compelling offering. However, such apps have lower price points and margins, whereas other sales and operational apps offer the potential for higher growth and greater business impact. Moreover, there is also potential for a new generation of intelligent sales apps to change sales performance in a more fundamental fashion.

Key Question: how can telcos best develop the agility and depth of ICT skills to sell and support both horizontal process apps and deeper vertical / operational needs?

Options: telcos have broad options to develop this internally, partner, or choose not to support these segments and their needs. See Four key enterprise mobility competencies for telcos, page 42.

In B2C: information first, marketing next

Findings: the customer-facing processes that had most typically been already mobilised were identified as Information & Reference (53%) and Paying Bills/Checking Balances (52%). The areas of greatest untapped interest in mobilisation were Social Media Sharing (33%), Marketing Offers (32%), and Scanning Barcodes/QR Codes (31%).

Figure 6: Customer-facing processes enterprises have mobilised or are planning to mobilise?

Figure 6: Customer-facing processes enterprises have mobilised or are planning to mobilise?

Opportunity: as an increasing volume of purchases are researched or made via mobile devices, traditional mobile marketing and shopping experiences in developed economies are likely to continue to evolve significantly.

Key Question: how can telcos develop and support the next generation of customer-facing mobile apps?

Options: again, telcos have broad options to develop this internally, partner, or choose not to support these segments and their needs. See Four key enterprise mobility competencies for telcos, page 42.

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Overview: the enterprise perspective
  • Most Enterprises have started mobilising
  • Issues for Enterprises managing Enterprise Mobility
  • The results: 80 % of initiatives met or beat expectations
  • More than half the enterprise market would buy from telcos: 500% more than today
  • So why don’t enterprises buy from telcos now?
  • The telco perspective
  • Stages of mobile maturity among telcos
  • 70% of telco execs found EM a ‘very attractive’ opportunity
  • Telcos are not ‘drinking their own champagne’
  • Only 16% of telcos have a defined strategy or market offer
  • Enterprises want apps, but are telcos listening?
  • Shifting culture: new markets needs new mind-sets, models and metrics
  • What sort of strategy to balance speed and risk/reward?
  • Enterprise Mobility success factors
  • Four key enterprise mobility competencies for telcos
  • Should telcos partner – and what are the criteria?
  • Steps to defining the strategy for telcos
  • Appendix – Industry and Regional Splits
  • Adoption and barriers by Sector and Region

 

  • Figure 1: Enterprise customers – On-line survey respondents, per region
  • Figure 2: Telco – On-line survey respondents, per region
  • Figure 3: Business processes already mobilised by enterprises
  • Figure 4: Internal / B2E mobile apps enterprises already have or are actively considering
  • Figure 5: Customer-facing processes enterprises have mobilised or are planning to mobilise?
  • Figure 6: Capabilities enterprise employees and customers are using
  • Figure 7: BYOD – Prevalence of corporate and employee devices
  • Figure 8: Number of devices across the surveyed enterprises’ workforces 16
  • Figure 9: Top challenges and obstacles in Enterprise Mobility
  • Figure 10: How do Enterprises manage app development?
  • Figure 11: How many enterprises use platform-based applications?
  • Figure 12: Strategic mobility enablers currently in place in enterprises
  • Figure 13: Presence of a formal enterprise mobility strategy vs. number of devices across the workforce
  • Figure 14: Success of Enterprise Mobility deployment(s) to date
  • Figure 15: Success of Enterprise Mobility deployment(s) to date – per role
  • Figure 16: What would enterprises consider buying from a telco?
  • Figure 17: What would enterprises consider buying from a telco – by role
  • Figure 18: Enterprises which would consider buying from a telco or already have
  • Figure 19: Why wouldn’t enterprises buy from a telco?
  • Figure 20: Enterprise Mobility maturity stages in telcos
  • Figure 21: Telcos’ concerns about core revenue declines
  • Figure 22: How attractive an opportunity is Enterprise Mobility to telcos?
  • Figure 23: Telcos are somewhat well-informed around Enterprise Mobility trends and development in mobile applications
  • Figure 24: Types of apps currently used within telcos
  • Figure 25: Processes / workflows telcos have mobilised or plan to mobilise with apps
  • Figure 26: Maturity of telcos’ own mobility programme
  • Figure 27: Telcos’ Internal enterprise app store deployment
  • Figure 28: Mobile portfolio management
  • Figure 29: Telcos’ biggest challenges or obstacles to internal mobilisation
  • Figure 30: Products and services telcos are currently offering, or plan to offer
  • Figure 31: Comparison between services enterprises would consider buying from telcos vs. services telcos are currently offering, or plan to offer
  • Figure 32: Telcos’ target market
  • Figure 33: Telco Barriers to taking Enterprise Mobility offerings to market
  • Figure 34: A hybrid approach can enable Telcos to achieve multiple concurrent stages of mobility evolution
  • Figure 35: Potential ‘Roadmap’ decisions for telcos addressing Enterprise Mobility
  • Figure 36: Business processes already mobilised by enterprises by industry sector
  • Figure 37: Internal mobile apps the utilities sector already have or are actively considering
  • Figure 38: Enterprise device landscape
  • Figure 39: Enterprise device landscape by region
  • Figure 40: Top THREE biggest challenges and obstacles in Enterprise Mobility by region
  • Figure 41: Enterprise mobile apps development / acquisition – per region
  • Figure 42: Enterprise mobile apps development / acquisition per industry
  • Figure 43: Platform-based applications per region
  • Figure 44: Enterprise app store penetration
  • Figure 45: Reasons Enterprises would not consider obtaining Enterprise Mobility services from a telecoms provider – per region
  • Figure 46: Reasons Enterprises would not consider obtaining Enterprise Mobility services from a telecoms provider – per industry

SAP Strategy Profile: Enabling Telcos to Operate at ‘Internet Speed’

Summary: Our top-level review of SAP’s vision of how it will enable telcos to ‘operate at internet speed’ against Telco 2.0 principles and the six key opportunity areas identified in our strategy research report, ‘The Roadmap to New Telco 2.0 Business Models’. We also challenged SAP to build a Proof of Concept implementation of a complex multi-sided business model with a leading European mobile operator within one month. How did it go? (February 2012, Foundation 2.0) Six Opportunity Areas within the Telco 2 Platform
  • Below is an extract from this 17 page Telco 2.0 Report. The report can be downloaded in full PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0
    Executive Briefing service here.
  • Additionally, to give an introduction to the principles of Telco 2.0 and
    digital business model innovation, we now offer for download a small selection of
    free Telco 2.0 Briefing reports (including this one) and a growing collection of what we think are
    the best 3rd party ‘white papers’. To access these reports you will need to become a Foundation 2.0 member. To do this, use the promotional code FOUNDATION2 in the box provided on the sign-up page here. Your Foundation 2.0 member details will allow
    you to access the reports shown here only, and once registered, you will be able to download the report here.
  • We’ll also be discussing business model innovation at the Silicon Valley (27-28 March) and London (12-13 June) Executive Brainstorms.
  • To access reports from the
    full Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service, or to submit whitepapers for review for inclusion in this service, please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

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Executive Summary

SAP’s new vision for telcos –  ‘operating at internet speed’ –  aligns well with certain Telco 2.0 principles and is supported by an interesting new set of tools, processes and pledges. To be more precise ‘operating at internet speed’ means driving change fast enough to match internet disruptors such as Google, Apple and Facebook.

This sounds great (and would truly be a boon for operators) but we have heard this all before and from just about everybody.  Vendors making this claim need to be prepared to prove it. The Telco 2.0 team, together with a leading European Mobile Operator and a team of configuration experts from SAP, got together to build a Proof of Concept implementation of a complex multi-sided business challenge.

The results were impressive and within a period of a month:

  • we defined the challenge and business model impacts in a 2-day workshop;
  • we developed a software implementation through three weekly iterations;
  • we deployed a complete reporting toolkit to measure performance against key metrics; and
  • all without writing a single line of software, just configuring SAP software.

The exercise convinced the Telco 2.0 team that operating at internet speed is not beyond the grasp of mobile operators, but it requires both a change in working practices and approach to partnering with key vendors. The barrier is organisational.

Based upon the success of the exercise, we will shortly be launching “The Telco 2.0 Challenge” to the wider Telecommunications Industry, and we’re now looking for more operators who’d like to set a new Telco 2.0 challenge. To find out more please email us at contact@telco2.net or visit SAP’s stand at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Introduction

The Telco 2.0 team was recently invited by the leadership team at SAP’s Telecommunications Industry Group to review its vision of the evolution of Telco business models and the capabilities required to support this vision.

SAP is a world leader in enterprise application software with a turnover in 2010 of €12.5bn serving in excess of 170,000 customers in over 120 countries, including over 1,000 telco customers. SAP software has long been present in telecom operators’ finance and supply chain departments. Recent acquisitions such as Highdeal (real-time rating), Sybase (database, device management and mobile payments) and Business Objects (customer insight) together with in-house product developments such as In-Memory Computing and Cloud Computing position SAP to serve more and more of telco computing needs.

At the heart of SAP’s vision for telecoms operators is that they should be able to operate with more dynamism and flexibility. SAP aims to support telcos both internally and externally: internally  SAP enables marketing, product and pricing teams to deliver a customized experience and quickly rollout and test new services; externally SAP enables enterprise customers and 3rd parties to integrate communications services and telco data services into their own.

Much of the SAP vision is aligned to key aspects of Telco 2.0 thinking. In this report we map the key aspects of the SAP vision to the Telco 2.0 future growth areas for telcos.  SAP also has many years experience of working with many other industries and therefore is well positioned to assist cross-industry collaboration which of course is essential to successful two-sided business models.

This report examines the SAP vision in the context of two-sided business models, and specifically against the Six Telco 2.0 Opportunity Types identified in our recent research report The Roadmap to Telco 2.0 Business Models. It examines the tools and pledges made by SAP to support business model innovation and implantation. Finally, it examines some of the specific features within the SAP software and their applicability to telcos.

Sponsorship and editorial independence

This report has kindly been sponsored by SAP and is freely available. SAP provided input to questions asked by STL Partners’ analysts and were given the opportunity to comment on working drafts. Research, analysis, and the writing and editing of the report itself were carried out independently by STL Partners. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of STL Partners.

Analytical Framework: The Six Strategic Telco 2.0 Opportunity Areas

The most recent of these research reports, ‘The Roadmap to Telco 2.0 Business Models’ – describes the transformational path the telecoms industry needs to take to carve out a more valuable role in the evolving ‘digital economy’, and outlines six key opportunity areas in which telcos can create new value. We have used this framework to analyse SAP’s vision at a top level.

These opportunity areas sit themselves within the context of Telco 2.0’s ‘two-sided’ telecoms business model concept, in which telcos remodel their businesses to serve both traditional ‘downstream’ customers (individual and business end-users consuming traditional telco services) and ‘upstream’ customers, or ‘merchants’ who instead use telco assets in new ways to achieve business goals such as improving business processes or services. This concept and the accompanying opportunities are described in depth in The $125Bn ‘Two-Sided’ Telecoms Market Opportunity report (see also page 14).

Figure 1 – The Six Telco 2.0 Opportunity Types

Six Opportunity Areas within the Telco 2.0 Platform
Source: STL Partners

The six opportunity areas are in summary:

a) Core Services

  • Redefine the customer experience for telecoms via:
    • Improvement of core product portfolio (voice, messaging, connectivity, TV/media), more engaging and ‘smarter’ marketing and DRM, leveraging of online sales channels, enhanced customer interaction and care
    • Engaging differently with existing customers is important, to create loyalty and retain the customer base, and also to build the base for up-selling and providing new services. A key part of the re-engineering required is to improve customer data access, both to enable analytics and internal performance improvements, and to make it possible to enable appropriate external use of this data in the Personal Information Economy.

b) Vertical Industry Solutions

  • Extend from telecoms into IT and networking for corporate clients via ‘verticalised’ solutions.

c) Infrastructure Services

  • Expand and extend wholesale and corporate offerings from network to infrastructure:
  • Provide infrastructure services such as mobile offload, data centre capabilities etc. to other operators and to corporate customers.

d) Embedded Communications

  • Integrate voice, messaging, and connectivity services into those of third parties:
  • Communications-enabled business processes, voice and messaging integrated with games (for example), M2M and embedded mobility connectivity.

e) Third party business enablers

  • Make (latent) telco capabilities available to third-party service providers:
  • Identity & authentication; marketing & advertising; payments; customer care.

f) Own-brand ‘Over-The-Top’ (OTT) services

  • Develop network-independent applications and services:
  • Copy internet players and provide valuable applications and services ‘OTT’ – could be free or paid-for.

The Roadmap also outlines a number of generic principles for success, which at a top level may be summarised as:

  • Unlocking the value and power of telco customer data is essential to both improve the design and delivery of existing services;
  • Telcos need to fundamentally improve their flexibility and operational capabilities to innovate and react;
  • changes enabling horizontal and ‘upstream’ partnerships will be essential to enable new business models;
  • and a list of seventeen principles for disruptive innovation.

SAP’s Telco Vision: ‘Operating at Internet Speed’

Dynamism and Flexibility lies at the heart of SAP’s vision for the Telco of the future. This future telco is a different organization from the one most of us is familiar with today. The Telco2.0 team took away four strands from this vision:

  1. ‘Sensing at internet speed’:  According to SAP, tomorrow’s telco “knows” what its customers are experiencing and is able to make sense of this knowledge.  To be fair, telcos have already made great strides in expanding real-time analytics beyond network management for customer segmentation and applying different rule sets for support and promotions. However, Internet best-practice, particularly in optimizing all aspects of customer experience, is still a distant aspiration.
  2. ‘Thinking at internet speed’:  In SAP’s vision, the telco of the future is able to assimilate, evaluate and act much, much more quickly than is typical today.  Part of this is down to better information, part down to better mechanisms for enacting decisions… and part is down to the decision-making processes and tools that support these.
  3. ‘Acting at internet speed’:  For the major and successful online players, real-time A-B testing of new propositions and continuously evolving these propositions in response to customer behaviour is second nature.  Telcos do this already… for their websites, but not for their services.  Introducing new packages, policies, services, on a targeted basis, several times a day is pure fantasy for operators (particularly where they have market power and may require regulatory approval for any new service).
  4. ‘Collaborating at internet speed’:  Exposing capabilities and assets to third parties for them to integrate into their own services is common on the web (at least common for the likes of Amazon, Google and Facebook).  They have spawned veritable industries around these capabilities.  Here again, we are seeing some isolated successes from telcos, but still so much work to do.

Ultimately, in SAP’s vision, this becomes a continuous process rather than a one-off sequence.

Mapping the SAP vision to Telco2.0 opportunity growth areas

All the Telco 2.0 opportunity growth areas require a step change in the organizations’ ability to adapt and change. Indeed, this is one of the underlying strategic imperatives for change in the digital economy. There is a however a certain degree of applicability for each strand to each growth opportunity as the diagram below highlights.

Figure 2 – Mapping the Internet Speed vision against the Telco 2.0 opportunity

Mapping the Internet Speed Vision Against the Telco 2.0 Opportunity
Source: STL Partners

For instance, the relatively asset intensive infrastructure services are slower moving than own-brand services. Similarly core services require less collaboration than with vertical industry solution and third party enablers.

However, in some instances, high speed sensing, thinking and acting may be required in these asset intensive services. For example, mobile offloading (an infrastructure service) requires real-time sensing and acting in it’s operation.

Equally, for some telcos, collaborating in OTT services may require more dynamism as some partners will need sensing information in near real-time…

To access the rest of this 17 page Telco 2.0 Report in full including…

  • Mapping SAP’s solutions to telcos in practice
  • Support for Multisided business models
  • Configurable by business people, not constrained by IT
  • Tools, processes and Pledges
  • Supporting Vertical Industry Solutions and ‘Embedded Communications’
  • Making Sense of Customer Data
  • Advanced Device Management
  • M-commerce
  • Conclusion
  • STL Partners and the Telco 2.0™ Initiative

…and the following report figures…

  • Figure 1 – The Six Telco 2.0 Opportunity Types
  • Figure 2 – Mapping the Internet Speed vision against the Telco 2.0 opportunity

…members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service can download it in full PDF format here.

Additionally, to give an introduction to the principles of Telco 2.0 and digital business model innovation, we now offer for download a small selection of free Telco 2.0 Briefing reports (including this one) and a growing collection of what we think are the best 3rd party ‘white papers’. To access these reports you will need to become a Foundation 2.0 member. To do this, use the promotional code FOUNDATION2 in the box provided on the sign-up page here. Your Foundation 2.0 member details will allow you to access the reports shown here only, and once registered, you will be able to download the report here.

We’ll also be discussing digital business model innovation at the Silicon Valley (27-28 March) and London (12-13 June) Executive Brainstorms.

To access reports from the full Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service, or to submit whitepapers for review for inclusion in this service, please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Cloud 2.0: Telcos to grow Revenues 900% by 2014

Summary: Telcos should grow Cloud Services revenues nine-fold and triple their overall market share in the next three years according to delegates at the May 2011 EMEA Executive Brainstorm. But which are the best opportunities and strategies? (June 2011, Executive Briefing Service, Cloud & Enterprise ICT Stream)

NB Members can download a PDF of this Analyst Note in full here. Cloud Services will also feature at the Best Practice Live! Free global virtual event on 28-29 June 2011.

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Introduction

STL Partners’ New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm & Developer Forum EMEA took place from 11-13 May in London. The event brought together 250 execs from across the telecoms, media and technology sectors to take part in 6 co-located interactive events: the Telco 2.0, Digital Entertainment 2.0, Mobile Apps 2.0, M2M 2.0 and Personal Data 2.0 Executive Brainstorms, and an evening AppCircus developer forum.

Building on output from the last Telco 2.0 events and new analysis from the Telco 2.0 Initiative – including the new strategy report ‘The Roadmap to New Telco 2.0 Business Models’ – the Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm explored latest thinking and practice in growing the value of telecoms in the evolving digital economy.

This document gives an overview of the output from the Cloud session of the Telco 2.0 stream.

Companies referenced: Aepona, Amazon Web Services, Apple, AT&T, Bain, BT, Centurylink, Cisco, Dropbox, Embarq, Equinix, Flexible 4 Business, Force.com, Google Apps, HP, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Neustar, Orange, Qwest, Salesforce.com, SAP, Savvis, Swisscom, Terremark, T-Systems, Verizon, Webex, WMWare.

Business Models and Technologies covered: cloud services, Enterprise Private Cloud (EPC), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Infrastucture as a service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS).

Cloud Market Overview: 25% CAGR to 2013

Today, Telcos have around a 5% share of nearly $20Bn p.a. cloud services revenue, with 25% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) forecast to 2013. Most market forecasts are that the total cloud services market will reach c.$45-50Bn revenue by 2013 / 2014, including the Bain forecast previewed at the Americas Telco 2.0 Brainstorm in April 2011.

At the EMEA brainstorm, delegates were presented with an overview of the component cloud markets and examples of different cloud services approaches, and were then asked for their views on what share telcos could take of cloud revenues in each. In total, delegates’ views amounted to telcos taking in the region of 18% by revenue of cloud services at the end of the next three years.

Applying these views to an extrapolated ‘mid-point’ forecast view of the Cloud Market in 2014, implies that Telcos will take just under $9Bn revenue from Cloud by 2014, thus increasing today’s c$1Bn share nine-fold. [NB More detailed methodology and sources are in the full paper available to members here.]

Figure 1 – Cloud Services Market Forecast & Players

Cloud 2.0 Forecast 2014 - Telco 2.0

Source: Telco 2.0 Presentation

Although already a multi-$Bn market already, there is still a reasonable degree of uncertainty and variance in Cloud forecasts as might be expected in a still maturing market, so this market could be a lot higher – or perhaps lower, especially if the consequences of the recent Amazon AWS breakdown significantly reduce CIO’s appetites for Cloud.

The potential for c.30% IT cost savings and speed to market benefits that can be achieved by telcos implementing Cloud internally previously shown by Cisco’s case study were highlighted but not explored in depth at this session.

Which cloud markets should telcos target?

Figure 2 – Cloud Services – Telco Positioning

Cloud 2.0 Market Positioning - Telco 2.0

Source: Cisco/Orange Presentation, 13th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm, London, May 2011

An interesting feature of the debate was which areas telcos would be most successful in, and the timing of market entry strategies. Orange and Cisco argued that the area of ‘Virtual Private Cloud’, although neither the largest nor predicted to be the fastest growing area, should be the first market for some telcos to address, appealing to some telcos strong ‘trust’ credentials with CIOs and building on ‘managed services’ enterprise IT sales and delivery capabilities.

Orange described its value proposition ‘Flexible 4 Business’ in partnership with Cisco, VMWare virtualisation, and EMC2 storage, and although could not at this early stage give any performance metrics described strong demand and claimed satisfaction with progress to date.

Aepona described a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) concept that they are launching shortly with Neustar that aggregates telco APIs to enable the rapid creation and marketing of new enterprise services.

Figure 3 – Aepona / Neustar ‘Intelligent Cloud’ PaaS Concept

C;oud 2.0 - Intelligent Cloud PaaS Concept - Telco 2.0

In this instance, the cloud component makes the service more flexible, cheaper and easier to deliver than a traditional IT structure. This type of concept is sometimes described as a ‘mobile cloud’ because many of the interesting uses relate to mobile applications, and are not reliant on continuous high-grade mobile connectivity required for e.g. IaaS: rather they can make use of bursts of connectivity to validate identities etc. via APIs ‘in the cloud’.

To read the rest of this Analyst Note, containing…

  • Forecasts of telco share of cloud by VPC, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS
  • Telco 2.0 take-outs and next steps
  • And detailed Brainstorm delegate feedback

…Members of the Telco 2.0TM Executive Briefing Subscription Service and the Cloud and Enterprise ICT Stream can access and download a PDF of the full report here. Non-Members, please see here for how to subscribe. Alternatively, please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003 for further details.