As Principal Analyst for Enterprise Mobility and IoT at GlobalData, Kathryn is responsible for analyzing events, companies, products and technologies within the wireless enterprise services, IoT, and private wireless solutions space.
• In 2012, IT service providers (ITSPs) are increasingly focused on mobility as a growth area for consulting and managed services. What are their focus areas today and what have they added to their portfolios? (See IT Service Providers Focus on Apps and Security, November 5, 2012)
• How do ITSPs differ from mobile operators and should the latter worry about direct competition?
This year the top global ITSPs are focusing not only on managed services and consulting for mobility deployments, but there is an increased emphasis on new areas including: consulting, implementation and managed services to help with BYOD; virtualization for mobile devices, mobile application development and delivery; and mobile security. These are many of the same service areas that are in mobile operators’ managed mobility portfolios. Continue reading “IT Service Providers Up the Ante in Mobility”→
With all of the confusion in the market regarding BYOD and its effect on application development and delivery, mobile device management, and mobile security, a logical option for enterprises would be to ‘outsource’ these functions to an IT service provider or mobile operator.
A recent Current Analysis survey of enterprise readers shows mixed results. A ‘do-it-yourself’ mentality still leads enterprise mobility initiatives, but the use of managed mobility services is growing.
According to a recent study among the Current Analysis IT Connection base, 24% of respondents (including IT managers and CIOs) are using the managed mobility services of IT service providers or mobile operators for telecom expense management (TEM) today, with mobile application stores and mobile application management (MAM) also seeing relatively high usage at approximately 21% of respondents. Another 18% were using mobile device management (MDM), mobile security, and mobile strategy services from these providers. (Multiple answers were encouraged, so the percentages do not add up to 100%). However, 27% of the survey respondents were not using external services providers today for these functions (although 20% of these companies would consider doing so in the near future). Continue reading “Current Analysis Enterprise Users Starting to Leverage Managed Mobility Services”→
MobileCon (née CTIA Wireless) 2012 is nearly half over, and while it is by far the smallest Fall CTIA show yet, the major vendors in the enterprise mobility ecosystem showed up to demo their wares, hold informational sessions, and talk to the analyst community. There has even been a sprinkling of announcements.
While the fate of the show itself may be in doubt, the growth of both the overall enterprise mobility market and the M2M segment in particular is apparent. The usual suspects (operators, mobile device management/mobile application management vendors, smartphone manufacturers, m-health providers, UC enablers, mobile application ISVs, systems integrators, and M2M aggregators and technology suppliers) are all here. So, what were some of the major announcement from Day One?
Sierra Wireless announced a major new partner, Amazon Web Services, which will be providing Sierra customers with its cloud-based infrastructure on which to run their M2M applications. The Sierra AirVantage cloud (which provides asset, data, and device management) has been integrated with Amazon’s service to provide a joint offer for building and deploying M2M applications with no IT infrastructure costs. Continue reading “‘Live’ from CTIA: Day One at MobileCon”→
It has taken awhile, but not only have large SIs such as Accenture, CSC, IBM, and HP finally realized that enterprise mobility is a substantial growth area, but mobile access (and mobile-powered business transformation) is also becoming increasingly integrated into their technology-oriented and vertical consulting and integration initiatives. Even M2M is now a major focus.
Mobile operators are also focused on professional services and managed mobility for large enterprises and MNCs, where they would theoretically go up against the large SIs. How do they differ?
Talking to the large SIs (e.g., Accenture, HP, IBM, CSC, T-Systems) makes it clear how important mobility has become as an enabler of business transformation, in addition to its traditional role as a way to ensure equal access to remote and traveling employees. Mobile operators have recognized this for a long time, but SIs are starting to ramp up their initiatives in a major way. It just took them longer to appreciate how important and transformative mobility is becoming. With BYOD on everyone’s lips, and MDM and other ‘point’ solutions giving way to a view of providing secure, equal ‘anywhere, anytime’ access to corporate information to all endpoints regardless of technology, the perception of mobility is changing for many service providers, whether IT-focused or communications-centric. Continue reading “IT Service Providers Continue Mobility Focus: Are They a Threat to Mobile Operators?”→
Mobile application management (MAM) became the ‘new’ buzzword in enterprise mobility in 2011/2012 as enterprises and service providers shift their focus from mobile device management (now somewhat commoditized) to mobile app development, delivery, and security. A large set of relatively small vendors (many of whose names start with ‘App’) is selling solutions for app development, app and content management, and app security. However, the market is now split into ‘pure-play’ MAM vendors (with a number of sub-categories and niches) and MDM vendors that have been adding some of these capabilities to enrich their core offerings.
From the channel perspective, mobile operators and IT service providers have taken note of this trend and are trying to make sense of yet another set of potential partners. Service providers can resell MAM solutions, but they could also potentially strike more meaningful relationships with MAM vendors as platform providers for managed mobility services. Or, they can stay with their core MDM partners and hope they are up to the task of adding MAM functionality.
MAM vendors include companies that may provide platforms for mobile app development but also focus on app delivery, ongoing management, and security. They often help customers set up role/policy-based enterprise app stores and many feature app-wrapping technology that secures each individual app rather than the device. Examples include AppCentral, AppBlade, App47, Appcelerator, Apperian, and Partnerpedia. Worklight (acquired by IBM in 2012) provides “open standards-based app development with tools and a console for easy deployment and maintenance of mobile apps, as well as enterprise integration to enable secure device/server connectivity and secure device storage.” Mocana and Nukona (the latter acquired by Symantec in 2012) focus more on the security side, providing ‘app-wrapping’ technology and enabling data access/authentication, usage controls, and protection policies such as per app file encryption and copy-and-paste prevention. Continue reading “MDM Vendors Look to Mobile Apps/Security Management for Differentiation”→
AT&T’s announcement that it will gradually (market by market) shut down its 2G network to reutilize spectrum resources for higher bandwidth technologies and applications (and that this re-farming will be complete by 2017) spurred controversy last week. Competitors implied that many M2M customers would be stranded and would either have to change providers or pay more to AT&T for 3G or even 4G connections.
AT&T notes that only 12% of all post-paid connections over its network are 2G today . While the make-up of these connections or how many of them are for M2M deployments are unknown, the general estimate in the market has been that at least 80% of worldwide M2M connections are on 2G networks and that this is still sufficient for the kinds of low bandwidth, infrequent data usage scenarios that still dominate the market.
Competitive operators have been the most vocal about AT&T’s plan. Those operators that do not plan to shut off 2G (or haven’t officially announced such plans) include Sprint and T-Mobile (along with the latter’s MVNO partner, RACO Wireless) , although T-Mobile is actually re-farming about 75% of its 2G spectrum but keeping about 5 MHz available for M2M and other 2G customers. Verizon has not announced any specific plans and is looking to other sources of new spectrum (such as its deal with several cable companies) to fuel its continued LTE build-out and ensure high-capacity and good performance on the new network. So Sprint and RACO appear to be excited about AT&T’s plan, because they intend to lure those 2G M2M customers who really have no need for an upgrade. Continue reading “2G Re-Farming: How Does this Affect the Growth of M2M?”→
Operators, MDM vendors, IT services companies, and everyone else in the enterprise mobility ecosystem has been talking about the huge and imminent rise of BYOD for a year or two.
In the real world, there appears to be a bit of a backlash, with some companies retrenching and questioning the alleged cost savings that accrue to a BYOD approach.
BYOD and IT consumerization are old news by now, with companies trying to accommodate their employees and save money at the same time. The positioning of MDM software platforms and (to a lesser extent) TEM services over the last year as panaceas to deal with this ‘troubling’ trend has allowed a large number of companies in the enterprise mobility ecosystem to look gleefully to new revenues among customers that are looking for help in managing the costs and the inherent unmanageability/insecurity of personal devices. Continue reading “With BYOD Backlash, TCO Questions Are Raised”→
For years, operators have been trying to crack the code on how to offer cost-effective global M2M services that can span multiple network footprints.
Two alliances – one from Jasper Wireless-enabled operators and one from standards bodies across the world – point to new models that may accelerate the growth of global M2M.
Over the last couple of weeks, there have been some unusual partnership announcements from the M2M ecosystem that may solve a set of problems which have thwarted the widespread growth of global M2M deals. Last week, KPN, NTT DoCoMo, Rogers Communications, SingTel, Telefónica, Telstra, and Vimpelcom agreed to form an alliance to support a single, global platform that multinational businesses will leverage to enable connected devices to span multiple countries cost-effectively with a uniform SIM. Since these operators all use the Jasper Wireless service delivery platform (as does AT&T, which was not part of the partnership), they can also service customers consistently; the Jasper platform provides a uniform portal for service activation, SIM management, troubleshooting, and subscription/rate management. While a number of operators such as Orange, Vodafone, and AT&T have already developed global SIMs that can be used in multiple countries to simplify inventory management and related expenses, there has still been a lot of work to do to make global M2M seamless and cost-effective. Some operators have also been working together to offer global connectivity at prices below the traditional expensive commercial roaming rates, but in many cases, enterprises have either had to set up relationships with multiple carriers or gone to aggregators to try to bridge together a global network with a single point of contact and single contract. Continue reading “Global M2M Partnerships Heat Up, but Will They Succeed?”→
The top U.S. carriers for enterprise mobility (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint) held analyst events over the past two months, disclosing service strategies for the business market.
How different are their plans, do they see the same trends in customer deployments, and what kinds of new offerings are on the horizon?
The season for analyst events is not quite over, with a number of European operators still planning to host analysts over the summer and fall. These events provide a general perspective on each company’s strategic focus, performance, key service areas, customer case studies, and in some cases, planned service launches. Do they all have the same priorities in providing solutions to enterprise customers? Continue reading “The Season of Analyst Events: Operators Look to the Enterprise”→
Sprint’s morale is up, with discussions of its financial turnaround, excellent customer satisfaction, and positive net adds at the heart of its messages to the analyst community
While consumer topics took up more air time, Sprint also remains focused on its sweet spots in the SMB and mid-market business segments, looking towards a resurgence in PTT and continued momentum in M2M
The annual Sprint analyst event at the carrier’s headquarters in Kansas was upbeat, as Sprint views that it now has hard proof of its turnaround (beyond third-party customer service accolades) and is looking forward to a future in which net adds continue to grow across all user segments. While it still has a ways to go (and a few years of serious capital expenses to bear) as it continues to build out LTE, Sprint is certainly faring better than it has in recent years. While a good portion of its customer additions are coming from the prepaid segment, it still has a solid core of business customers and prospects, especially among the SMB and mid-market segments. While other carriers have increasingly separate business and consumer sales, marketing and product development organizations, Sprint has now consolidated many of these groups to reach across segments; therefore there was something for everyone at the event. Continue reading “Live from the Sprint Analyst Event”→
You must be logged in to post a comment.