BOOST TO BUSINESS: OPERATOR STRATEGIES AND SOLUTIONS FOR ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS

In recent years, enterprise-based offerings have emerged as a strong component in operators’ service portfolios, with the Indian telecom market moving away from being purely voice led to becoming data oriented. This trend, coupled with the growing demand for communication services and technology platforms from enterprises across various verticals, has made a strong business case for operators, who have been struggling with dwindling profits. The introduction and large-scale adoption of virtualisation, cloud services, big data analytics and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications have opened new windows of revenue and growth opportunities for operators.

The enterprise market in India is estimated to grow at 10 per cent annually over the next five years. The contribution of this segment to operators’ total revenues currently stands in the range of 8 per cent to 12 per cent. This number is set to grow manifold as contemporary enterprise solutions such as cloud-based storage, data centre services and managed services gain traction.

Operator performance and strategies

Telecom operators have formulated various strategies to leverage the enterprise advantage. Some have defined their focus in terms of audience; Bharti Airtel, for instance, continues to stay focused on small and medium businesses (SMBs) while BSNL and RCOM have a strong presence in the government domain. Others have differentiated themselves on the basis of service offerings. Videoconferencing has found favour across all industry verticals. Enterprises are also shifting from traditional leased lines to multiprotocol label switching solutions in a big way. In addition, operators are investing significantly in the areas of integrated platforms and converged services. The IP transition of enterprises is giving way to a greater deployment of unified communications.

Key trends

• Evolving managed services models: Managed services have become a norm for large enterprises, which have been outsourcing their communication needs to telecom and IT partners in a bid to focus better on core areas. However, the scope and nature of managed services have evolved significantly as operators have expanded their offerings from traditional managed network or application services to managed videoconferencing, managed security and managed cloud.  Enterprises today demand network optimisation, custom reports and regular auditing of networking infrastructure in addition to network monitoring and uptime.

• New focus areas: With enterprises demanding applications that can perform real-time tracking and capturing of meaningful data, cloud-based services and big data analytics are witnessing increased uptake. Vodafone India has announced its plans to start a cloud services marketplace to widen its range of offerings to corporate and business customers. In another instance, Tata Communications recently became an authorised partner of Google Cloud Platform. Under the terms of this agreement, Google’s new service, Google Cloud Interconnect, will connect with Tata Communications’ IZO Public platform, which enables companies to set up cloud computing facilities.

• Growing enterprise mobility market: The enterprise mobility market has expanded significantly as enterprises move beyond emails to adopt enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, supply chain management, sales force automation, etc. Insurance, pharmaceuticals and logistics companies have emerged as the biggest users of such solutions, owing to a strong field sales force. In fact, several companies are now planning to mobilise these solutions and make them accessible through employee handsets. The bring-your-own-device concept is also finding favour among several enterprises, though security remains a concern. By mid-2015, the Indian enterprise mobility market is expected to reach $1 billion, as per some industry estimates.

• M2M and the internet of things: The industry is optimistic about the wide-scale adoption of M2M solutions across automotive, utility and retail verticals in India. For instance, Vodafone India has put bar-coded SIM cards in Mahindra Reva cars through which information like service requirements, battery charge and remote instruction downloads for maps can be retrieved on a real-time basis. Enterprises in the logistics, manufacturing and transportation industries are also increasingly adopting M2M services to automate processes.

Government emerging as a key vertical

With the launch of its ambitious Digital India programme, the government has opened new doors of opportunities for the telecom and IT sectors. The programme requires creating digital identities, making documents and certificates available on a cloud platform, making government services available on online and mobile platforms on a real-time basis, ensuring electronic and cashless financial transactions, and the seamless integration of government departments. Government businesses are already moving from e-governance to m-governance models, wherein most services can be accessed through handsets.

The Rs 1,130 billion Digital India initiative aims at transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. This cannot be done without the active participation of the telecom sector. Government departments will turn to operators in large numbers for the deployment of cloud and storage solutions, big data analytics, etc.

The establishment of 100 smart cities, as envisaged by the government, will also require significant support from telecom operators in terms of M2M communications and converged platforms. A smart city makes extensive use of information and communication technology (ICT) to facilitate advanced communications infrastructure like back-end intelligent systems to manage traffic flows, real-time monitoring and video surveillance to ensure public safety, and the installation of utility meters and systems for traffic information.

The way forward

Owing to its potential for high revenues and margins, the enterprise segment will attract significant attention from operators in the coming years. Factors such as digitisation, ICT adoption by government agencies, the upgrading of IT infrastructure by large and small companies, the usage of enterprise mobility solutions and the adoption of cloud services will drive growth in the segment, thereby promising a significant revenue potential for cash-starved operators in the future.

For more details visit us @http://www.urssystems.com

Read More

TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2015: IN THE NEW YEAR, MOBILITY EVOLVES, THE HYBRID CLOUD GROWS, AND BIG DATA WILL NEED MORE PEOPLE SKILLS

They're in no particular order, and most are not new -- they're just more relevant in 2015 given the long lead time for mass corporate adoption of new technologies, practices, and thinking despite what industry pundits get excited about and predict.

Continued cloud adoption, with growth in hybrid cloud

In 2015, IT organizations will continue to move IT services to third-party cloud service providers. Security will continue to be a cause for concern -- especially as the media's frenzied coverage of data breaches continues -- but integrations and service availability will rise to be two very practical concerns for enterprise cloud adoption.

The hybrid cloud, defined by analyst firm Gartner as "a combination of private, public, and community cloud services," will rise in popularity during 2015 as companies look to get the best benefits from the private cloud such as cost savings, flexibility, or scale and from public cloud such as cloud cost savings while still meeting internal or external governance requirements.

From an IT management point of view, companies will continue to seek out people with the ability to manage suppliers and cloud service delivery over the technology itself.

Increased automation

There's no escaping that people costs -- by that I mean the people who operate a corporate data center and its services -- continue to be a big part of total IT costs. The increased use of cloud services will continue to reduce people costs, but there's still a need to reduce human touch points, and the associated costs within corporate data centers and operational environments with speedier delivery and fewer human errors as benefits. In 2015, we'll see even more adoption of automation tools like Puppet and Chef by corporate IT groups under pressure to reduce costs and show business value.

The BYO epiphany and mobile pervasiveness

This is where corporate IT organizations will finally wake up to see that Shadow IT, BYOD, or BYO-anything are not being driven by consumer IT and cloud service providers, but by the IT organization's inability to meet stakeholder and user expectations across usability, cost, service, and agility.

The 10 years of "consumerization of IT" talk, with a focus on consumer gadgets, has thus been a red herring -- hiding the true root cause of customer discontent with existing IT supply. With this epiphany, corporate IT organizations will need to change quickly by placing more emphasis on how IT services are consumed and the expectations of the service experience. Additionally, improvements in and demand for anytime, anywhere, any device access to data and services will require better mobile apps, and most likely the continued use of personal devices for work purposes.

Not only will this dictate the need for better service and app design and delivery and more intelligent approaches to BYOD, but also the need to (re)consider the security implications of mobility such as data segregation issues -- with personal and business data and applications isolated from each other on the same device.

The need to manage more complex IT supplier environments

This will happen as enterprises exit outsourcing deals that have failed to deliver against expectations of service improvement, cost savings, and innovation. In 2015, the need for service integration capabilities, often called service integration and management (SIAM) or multi sourcing services integration (MSI), will come to the fore.

And this will happen not only for larger companies replacing previously outsourced scenarios across different suppliers, but also smaller organizations needing to manage a portfolio of third-party -- often cloud service -- providers. During 2015, SIAM will require companies to invest in people and skills, new or revised processes that manage third party services, and technology that enables this.

Big data insights

While there will continue to be big talk about big data, the real big data issue for 2015 will be the availability of big data people, and their big data skills, rather than big data technology itself. Companies will need big data people with analytics skills and also skills for building the new data architectures required to handle unstructured data and real-time input. Other advances will be required in areas such as product innovation, customer insights, internal decision-making, or IT service availability as the focus on large data sets continues to disrupt business and IT operations.

And finally...

Unicorn chasing will continue

Whether it's the large-scale use of cloud technologies or more DevOps strategies, enterprises in 2015 will continue their fascination with the IT operations of technology giants such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

Business leaders will also continue to ask why their IT organizations can't match these technology giants for unit costs, service levels, service experience, customer support, and agility. Thus, they'll continue to chase these unicorns, but I'm not sure that 2015, 2016, or even 2017 will be the year anyone catches them. But this won't stop business stakeholders from having elevated and probably unrealistic expectations of their IT peers.

Visit us @www.urssystems.com

Read More

SHAPING BUSINESSES AND GOVERNMENTS BY SOCIAL MEDIA, MOBILE, (BIG DATA) ANALYTICS AND CLOUD COMPUTING (TOGETHER CALLED SMAC).

The world is being swept away by certain forces in technology that are bringing people closer than ever before—and India is no exception. Together with telecom, certain emerging technologies are set to create a huge impact on how people connect with each other, how enterprises produce goods and serve customers, and most significantly, how governments engage with citizens for various purposes.

The industry has even coined a term for the new technologies coming together to shape how businesses and governments work: the 3rd Platform, which is driven by social media, mobile, (Big Data) analytics and cloud computing (together called SMAC). The 3rd Platform can indeed play a major role in delivering effective citizen services in tune with the ambitious agenda for e-governance under the Digital India initiative. With a planned outlay of R1 lakh crore and the goal of providing high-speed Internet access to about 2.5 lakh of the total 6.4 lakh villages in the country by 2019, Digital India envisions multiple government services to be made available on the Internet as well as through mobiles.

Under Digital India, various government ministries and departments are expected to come up with their own ICT projects for health services, education, judicial services and other areas that touch citizens on a day-to-day basis. It has been reported that, wherever feasible, the government will prefer to adopt public private partnerships (PPP) to speed up the rollout of programmes and services.

One way to enable such partnerships quickly and effectively is to build those public-private bridges through cloud computing, especially hybrid clouds. A hybrid cloud incorporates public clouds for access to a variety of applications and services, and private clouds for reliable performance and security for critical applications and sensitive data. The benefit of the hybrid cloud model is that the government can roll out applications more quickly and cost-effectively while at the same time, keep sensitive citizen and other confidential data secure and hosted on servers kept within its own data centres or premises.

Another 3rd Platform technology, social media, can help the government respond to the needs, complaints and suggestions of citizens on its schemes and programmes. Like mobile, social media is fast reaching a critical mass (around 100 million Indians are said to be on Facebook, for instance)—and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be used by the government optimally. Social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can be effective medium to deliver effective services during natural calamities. An alert mechanism can be built using Twitter, for example, to alert people of the neighbouring area about a disaster that has just struck a town or city. And within the disaster-hit city, the government can enable outreach for assistance through various social media sites in addition to, say, telephone helplines (which often get clogged in such times). The idea is to provide multiple means of interaction to address citizen issues and concerns.

On the mobile front, India has one of the fastest adoption rates in the world, be it in terms of smartphones or mobile apps.  At present, we have roughly over 900 million subscribers in India. The government must tap into the opportunity of providing services such as healthcare by hosting the applications on the cloud and making the same accessible through mobile apps. In a country where tens of thousands of people shift base among various cities for jobs or other reasons each month, the mobility of healthcare will be an added advantage to those citizens, who will be able to see their health data and access the services irrespective of which city they are in.

For India to be a truly connected society, the various modes of communicating with and serving citizens will need to be integrated in a cohesive manner. Such an approach will not only increase citizen-government interaction and make life easier for citizens, it will also avoid duplication of efforts and reduce expenditure on service delivery. Mobile banking, for example, is already bringing down the cost of serving customers significantly for banks.

There is a lot of potential on the Big Data front too. As the government collects ever-larger amounts of structured data related to various schemes and unstructured data through citizen engagement on different platforms, analysing and using that “Big Data” to derive insights for more effective planning and implementation will assume even greater significance.

The real key for the government will be to adopt a holistic approach to embracing the 3rd Platform in order to accelerate the realisation of a truly Digital India.

For more details visit us @www.urssystems.com

Read More

Building the talent pool for Big Data and analytics requires a blend of mass and customised approach. The mass training and orientation should be planned at high school and undergraduate levels.

Is Our Education System Gearing Up For the Big Data Boom?

The explosion of Big Data and the impact it has created on the businesses—big or small has rattled every one resulting in awe and amazement in some quarters and uncertainty and realisation of lack of readiness in some others. Whatever may be the nature of current response and readiness, one thing everyone is agreed upon is the inevitability of having to build capabilities to embrace this new phenomenon and take advantage of it rather than getting left behind.

According to IDC estimates the size of the ‘digital universe’ was around 130 exabytes about ten years back, which grew to 1,227 exabytes by 2010 and by 2015 it is expected to become 7,910 exabytes. What is unique about this data growth is that more than 90% of the data has got created in just last two years. With more and more sophisticated tools and methods being made available to extract as well as analyse data from customer interactions, emails, web browsing, social networks and machine sensors and a variety of new device options continuing to be made available enabling more and more web transactions, the data deluge is expected to impact every aspect of the economy. No business or for that matter even not for profit businesses can ignore the significance of Big Data. However, there is a yawning gap in terms of capabilities that businesses possess to take full advantage of the opportunities emanating from their web presence.

While intuition will always play an important role in decision making, ignoring data that could be tapped and made use of would lead to sub optimal decision making. This approach has to be inculcated with employees across the board. This leads us to the question of how is our education system getting geared to produce talent which is equipped with skills to think and act around the use of Big Data.

Building the talent pool for Big Data and analytics requires a blend of mass and customised approach. The mass training and orientation should be planned at high school and undergraduate levels. Customised or advanced techniques and curriculum could be introduced as part of the post graduate studies. Hence interventions should be planned in select schools, develop the proof of concept and train the teachers to tune their minds to the eventual areas where their students are expected to be contributing.

Once the system is ready to take off, it may also be worthwhile to consider setting up special schools for high school education with the objective of nurturing multi-disciplinary approach to teaching and lay a strong foundation for exploring the new frontiers of computing power leading to careers in research, applications and product development. The pre-eminence of the Indian businesses in the global knowledge services driven by Big Data and analytics is possible to be realised when we are able to create entry barriers for other countries and therefore we need innovation and the will power to have a radically different approach to education, skilling and talent pool development.

Read More