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result of decades of internal development and many teams of people in various locations who do everything from designing the devices and building the supporting software back-end to establishing and testing the wireless connectivity they need. The folks who've been developing these systems talked regularly about how they dragged their communications providers kicking and screaming into the future to support the logistics applications they needed to move more than 8 million packages a day.
Cooperation from telecom was relatively poor. The networks couldn't support what they claimed, and didn't provide data coverage everywhere their maps suggested. The carriers' support teams couldn't answer questions rapidly and were entirely reactive. When the UPS folks were out drive testing their new handhelds, there wasn't an engineer from the wireless operator riding along with them. There was no real sense of partnership here, despite the billions in revenue a company like UPS ultimately represents. Somewhere between the device revolution and this kind of customer-facing conundrum is the elusive answer to the question "What's next for telecom?"
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A few major telecoms understand the enterprise opportunity and are working on what's necessary to do things right. |
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in real-time and can deliver actionable business intelligence to its customer about the problem.
The major banks know exactly how much they earn per minute of uptime on an ATM, and know exactly what they lose when a machine is out of service for any reason. They know exactly how much value Verizon Business brings to the table for every second they can shave off of recognizing and repairing a problem. This is an example of where telecom's experience and skill sets form the basis for attractive business partnerships that go well beyond, and are much more valuable than, plain old connectivity.
That said, it's a big leap for many telecoms to become this sort of partner. Most, for example, still have manual processes just for generating quotes on connectivity. Their
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Getting it Right
A few major telecoms understand the enterprise opportunity and are working on what's necessary to do things right. For example, Verizon Business has moved beyond a pure connectivity provider to become a real communications partner. Sticking with the device example, Verizon Business helps major banks to manage all of the connectivity to their ATM devices, and also manages the machines themselves. Where once the company only monitored the circuits it provided, Verizon Business now can provide a complete topology map for all of a customer's connectivity - regardless of who provides the actual circuits. Further, if an ATM machine runs out of cash, breaks down, or is hit by a runaway bus, Verizon Business knows about it
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value proposition hasn't advanced much beyond reliable networking, and they don't tend to make it easy on their customers to compare quotes or understand their real costs for their network services. At the end of the day, it's up to the enterprise to figure it out, then to wire all of the connectivity together in such a way that supports their devices, financial transactions and so on. Telecoms aren't involved, in most cases, in this bigger game, and are likely cutting themselves out of a bigger revenue stream as a result. Connectivity is a commodity and the business has become all about price. This would not be the case if that connectivity was differentiated. The differentiation comes with
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