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Back to the Clouds
We’ve spent a fair amount of time, recently, talking about the potential value that lies within the realm of cloud computing. That is, of course, because there is a definite push by service providers to monetize these services.
“Some of the hosted/managed/cloud (call them what you like) offerings that CSPs are rolling out to businesses, especially small/medium businesses, are or should be good revenue generators,” said Ruzicka. “I say ‘should be’ because if the B/OSS isn’t multi-tenant, automated, and integrated there are no economies of scale and the services are less profitable.” However, closer attention to these services could be accompanied by a great deal of revenue potential.
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I think that CSPs have mostly missed the opportunity to provide information about users of their networks. |
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Depends on the Player
Ultimately, however, there isn’t a single answer for all CSPs when it comes to what business models will bring success and what business models will bring only pain. “There’s no magic bullet,” said Baker, “You’ve just got to be excellent at what you do.”
And it’s easy to fall prey to the urge to compare CSPs to other companies in other areas. “There are a lot of personas that CSPs can assume and many different ways to be successful,” said Ruzicka. We, the journalists,
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Mobile Payments
In addition, some operators around the world have started to see the value in doing more of the things that they are very good at in a slightly different context. Charging, for example, is something that most CSPs are quite adept at, and that talent is being leveraged, increasingly, for the purpose of enabling mobile payments.
Providers like NTT DoCoMo have been on top of mobile wallet services for years, and now a number of US providers are finally bringing their companies deeper into the mobile financial services space. (For more on this, see this story from our NewsWire: Click Here to Read.)
And user information?
However, one of the oft-trumpeted channels for increased CSP revenue may be too far gone. “I think that CSPs have mostly missed the opportunity to provide information about users of their networks,” said Lancaster. “By moving too slowly to embrace as exciting anything to do with the core network, CSPs have lost this revenue opportunity to the companies that monitor what we do on the internet.”
However, just as in Don Draper’s era, privacy is a potential revenue generator.
“The flip side of selling information about customer usage,” Lancaster notes,” is to sell customers protection against sale of their usage information. Privacy services could well be the golden egg.”
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should remind ourselves that not every CSP can be compared to a company like Google. “Google is successful in what they want to be successful at,” said Ruzicka. “I would argue that AT&T and Verizon and Orange are successful at what they want to be successful at.”
And that’s the rub, really. These are successful companies. They’re profitable and capable and full of smart people who know the space and are thinking of the long-term and short-term possibilities. However, they, too, are capable of myopia in spite of… or even because of their charmed past and gifted staff. “Examples like IBM that overcame the ‘big iron’ stigma to grow into an amazing services business or Ford that remade itself into the right kind of company for the economy that they’re in,” said Ruzicka. So, too, can CSPs shoulder a massive overhaul.
But will they? “CSPs need a big overhaul and maybe the pain isn’t great enough yet for that to happen,” said Ruzicka.
And that may be what it comes down to. Just a wait for the pain to increase before service providers begin to explore alternative business models with more urgency. However, the most daring among them may just have a head-start when that day arrives.
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