Tech in 2023: Here’s what is going to really matter

These are the technologies and issues that will matter to you in 2023.

As the turn of the year approaches, the annual ritual of identifying tech trends and making predictions for the next solar orbit swings into action. Such exercises are always interesting but also inherently risky – particularly in uncertain times such as those we have recently experienced and continue to live through.

For example, few at the end of 2019 would have forecast that the world of work would be turned upside down during the following year by a global pandemic, leading to an unprecedented focus on devices and services that facilitated remote working, and ushering in a likely permanent shift to a hybrid model.

Then, just as economies were adjusting to and recovering from the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused a sharp rise in energy prices, increased inflation, supply chain issues and fears of widespread recession. This series of shocks has profound implications for the IT industry that look set to continue through 2023 and beyond.

So perhaps the biggest benefit of the annual round of tech soothsaying is not so much the fine-grained detail – which is often derailed by contact with unexpected events – as the chance to take stock of the general direction of travel.

Let’s look at the latest crop of trends and predictions.

What the analysts say

Gartner 

Gartner’s top 10 strategic technology trends for 2023 are grouped under three themes:

• Optimizing IT systems for greater reliability, improving data-driven decision making and maintaining the value integrity of production AI systems.

• Scaling vertical offerings, increasing the pace of product delivery and enabling connectivity everywhere.

• Pioneering business model change, reinventing engagement with employees and customers, and accelerating strategies to tap new virtual markets.

Overarching all these trends is sustainability: “Every technology investment will need to be set off against its impact on the environment, keeping future generations in mind. ‘Sustainable by default’ as an objective requires sustainable technology,” says Gartner’s David Groombridge. Support for this view comes from Gartner’s 2022 CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey, which found that environmental sustainability was the third largest driver, behind performance and quality, among the 80% of CEOs planning to invest in new products in 2022/23.

Here are Gartner’s top 10 trends:

Image: Gartner

A digital immune system (DIS) uses a variety of techniques – including AI-augmented testing and software supply chain security – to improve the quality and resilience of business-critical systems. Applied observability takes raw data, adds context and analytics, and generates data-driven business and IT decisions. AI trust, risk and security management (AI TRiSM) covers AI model governance, trustworthiness, fairness, reliability, robustness, efficacy and privacy.

Industry cloud platforms combine software, platform and infrastructure as a service with tailored, industry-specific functionality. Platform engineering provides the tooling, capabilities and processes required to optimise developer experience and accelerate digital delivery. Wireless-value realization covers the delivery of business value via end-user computing, edge devices and digital tagging (RFID).

Superapps are an amalgam of an app, a platform and an ecosystem, where third parties can develop and publish their own mini-apps. Adaptive AI systems use real-time feedback to adjust their learning and adapt to changing circumstances in the real world. Metaverse is a ‘collective virtual 3D shared space’ with an economy based on cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

IDC 

IDC’s worldwide IT industry predictions for 2023 cover the key drivers for the next five years – which, as we have outlined above, are likely to see significant economic turmoil. Or, as analyst Rick Villars puts it: “For the next several years, leading technology providers must play a leading role in helping enterprises use innovative technologies to slide through the current storms of disruption.”

Villars points out that the imminent recession will be the first to hit the ‘As a Service’ economy, in which old-school tactics such as delays to capex projects (hardware and software upgrades, for example) will not be available to IT leaders. Instead, says Villars, the focus in 2023 will shift towards driving down operational expenditure (optimising cloud spend, renegotiating XaaS contracts, eliminating duplicates of SaaS tools, and concentrating on projects that deliver the highest business value), with more permanent opex reductions sought in 2024 and beyond (via lower cost per IT unit and lower labour costs for administration).

However, the wider message is more optimistic: “Technology and IT is not about where we cut – technology is where we invest to help the rest of the business navigate the recession,” says Villars. “This is the continued transition, which we started to see two years ago, towards digital business.”

For IDC, ‘digital business’ covers everything from processes, through products and services, to experiences, and will be delivered by a ‘dream team’ combination of IT and business units.

Here are some of IDC’s key predictions:

• In 2025, 60% of infrastructure, security, data, and network offerings will require cloud-based control platforms that enable extensive automation and promise major reductions in ongoing operating costs.

• Through 2024, shortcomings in critical skills creation and training efforts by IT industry leaders will prevent 65% of businesses from achieving full value from cloud, data, and automation investments.

• Sovereign assertions in sustainability, resiliency, and asset residency through 2025 will force CIOs to shift staff, budgets, and operating processes for more than 35% of IT and data assets.

• In 2023, 70% of enterprises’ adoption of as-a-service infrastructure/software will be curbed more by an inability to assess promises of faster innovation and operational gains than by cost concerns.

• By the end of 2024, 60% of platinum-Level aaS offerings in security, business operations, and DaaS will include bundled access to specialized SME teams to help reduce impact of skills shortages.

• In 2026, 45% of G2000 enterprises will continue to face material risks due to frontline workers’ and business leaders’ unwillingness to trust actions initiated by vetted autonomous tech systems.

For the remainder, see here.

Image: IDC

IDC’s final thought for 2024 and beyond is that automation – of IT operations, business processes and application development – will be critical for scaling digital business.

“We are creating a whole new technology delivery system – one that is more reliable, more secure, more sustainable, and that’ll be the task that CIOs are going to be dealing with,” says Villars.

Forrester 

Organisations need to concentrate on their core missions and strengths in difficult times, according to Forrester: “In 2023, smart business leaders will get focused – pruning efforts that aren’t bearing fruit and prioritizing long-term growth. Economic and geopolitical turmoil will sow fear and disruption, yet panic, short-sighted revenue grabs, and poorly planned returns to the office will only make things worse.”

Here are some of Forrester’s key predictions:

• Consumers are cautious but don’t pull back on spending.

• A skills shortage challenges CX teams’ ability to thrive.

• Monitoring technology riles employees.

• Greenwashing becomes a serious business risk.

• Leaders try to force employees back into the office, with disastrous results.

• Metaverse experiments fall short of capturing the public’s imagination.

• The talent crunch pushes tech executives to seek new sources of candidates.

• Scandals at tech companies burn through consumer trust.

A key business/tech priority for 2023, Forrester says, is trust – in various guises. “Customers are increasingly weary of organizations playing fast and loose with their personal data, and regulators aren’t far behind. And it won’t stop there – fueled by the ire of fed-up customers and employees, regulators will scrutinize greenwashing, misinformation, and employee surveillance.”

CCS Insight 

One research firm that is very much in the business of fine-grained prognostication is CCS Insight, which recently held a three-day online event featuring analyst presentations, interviews with executives from Samsung, EE and Qualcomm, and no fewer than 100 predictions.

CCS Insight’s 2023 predictions are grouped into 10 categories: Silicon Foundations, Sustainability, Infrastructure Advances, Connectivity Providers, Regulation, New Opportunities, Personal Futures, Changing Workplace, Virtual Worlds, and Connected Devices.

Rather than list all 100 predictions (you can find them here), I’ve selected a couple from each category that caught my eye:

Category	Prediction
Silicon Foundations	Attempts to rebalance the geographic diversity of semiconductor manufacturing fail, and Taiwan maintains its lead
	Quantum computers achieve 60-second coherence time by 2025
Sustainability	By 2027, mobile apps enable users to track their carbon footprint in real time
	By 2024, an international standard develops for calculating the carbon emissions of cloud services
Infrastructure Advances	China’s early development of 6G results in at least two competing standards in the East and West
	By 2024 a major mobile network suffers an outage as multiple DNS gateways fail simultaneously
Connectivity Providers	By 2025 satellite broadband provider Starlink is spun off from SpaceX as a publicly listed company
	By 2025, at least 25 telecom operators offer connected car services as an add-on to consumer 5G plans
Regulation	The EU’s Digital Markets Act ends preferred product placement in search results by 2024
	Clear signs of a Russian–Chinese “splinternet” emerge by 2023
New Opportunities	Apple enters the US health insurance business in 2024
	By 2026, more companies follow Tesla in investing in mineral supply chains
Personal Futures	By 2028, a “blockchain of you” lets developers build viable digital twins of people to support personalized services
	By 2030, intelligent wireless body monitoring leads to pervasive and personalized healthcare
Changing Workplace	By 2024, enterprise collaboration tools add immersive spaces to help replicate the in-office experience
	Demand for software that measures and tracks the link between employee experience and customer experience accelerates in 2023
Virtual Worlds	Apple’s venture into spatial computing entirely avoids using established terminology such as virtual reality, augmented reality or the metaverse
	By 2025, Meta launches a virtual reality headset controlled by an inbuilt neural sensor
Connected Devices	By the end of 2026, more than 25 million people access the Internet through a mobile phone connected directly to satellites
	Apple launches a foldable iPad in 2024

---

In a panel discussion at the event, CCS Insight analysts discussed how satellite connectivity is likely to complement rather than usurp terrestrial fixed and mobile networks, while noting the recent flurry of satellite service announcements from smartphone manufacturers. Also covered by the panellists was the state of play in the metaverse, sustainable technology and the smart home.

A roundup of 2023 predictions

There’s clearly a lot to digest in the analyst predictions described above. To try and get an overall picture, we’ve taken these and predictions from a range of other recent forward-looking surveys and articles, and assigned them to emergent categories. Here’s what the resulting chart looks like:

Data & chart: ZDNET

It’s no surprise to find connectivity – wi-fi, fixed and mobile broadband, and satellite – heading the rankings, as this basically underpins the entire digital world. Similarly, prominent showings for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), cybersecurity, cloud computing and software development are not unexpected. The metaverse’s runner-up spot, along with VR/AR/MR/XR, confirms its status as the most-hyped technology of the moment, while the presence of ‘Geopolitics & tech supply chains’ in sixth place is a sign of the times.

A more permanent bellwether, hopefully, is the occupant of the number-four spot: sustainability. As the importance of combating climate change becomes accepted by all but those with vested or ideological interests, it’s gratifying to see so many analysts and pundits building green considerations into their predictions about devices, IT infrastructure components and the networks that connect them.

By: Charles McLellan, Senior Editor
Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-in-2023-weve-analysed-the-data-and-heres-whats-really-going-to-matter/  14 11 22

6G does not exist, yet it is already here

The Average Revenue per User, ARPU, in LATAM -as in any other areas, has kept declining, in spite of an increase in network use -data transfer- and an increase in network performances. Image credit: Global Market Intelligence, 2019

I had, recently, an interesting conversation with some analysts looking at the implication of 6G. That in itself was surprising since most of the time analysts are looking at the next quarter. Yet, they were interested on what kind of impact 6G might have on telecom operators, telecom manufacturers and on the semiconductor industry. Of course, looking that far down the lane they were also interested in understanding what type of services might require a 6G.

I started the conversation saying that 6G does not exist, but then I said that it was already here, in terms of “prodrome”. In other words, looking at the past evolution and at the present situation it may be possible to detect a few signs that can be used to make some prediction on 6G. Since this is more a crystal ball exercise than applied science, I would appreciate very much your thoughts in this matter

Lessons from “G” evolution

If you look back, starting from 1G, each subsequent “G”, up to the 4th one was the result on the one hand of technology evolution and on the other of the need of Wireless Telecom Operators to meet a growing demand. Market was expanding (more users/cellphones) and more network equipment was needed. Having a new technology that could decrease the per-element cost (with respect to capacity) was a great incentive to move from one “G” to the next. Additionally, the expansion of the market resulted in an increase of revenues.

The CAPEX to pay for expanding the network (base stations and antennas sites mostly) could be recovered in a relatively short time thanks to an expanding market (not an expanding ARPU, the Average Revenue per User was actually decreasing). Additionally, the OPEX was also decreasing (again measured against capacity).

The expanding market meant more handsets sold with increasing production volumes leading to decreased price. More than that, The expanding market fuelled innovation in the handsets, with new models stimulating the top buyers to get a new one and attracting new buyers with lower cost models. All in all a virtual spiral that as increased sales increased the attractiveness of the wireless services (the me too effect).

It is in this “ensemble” that we can find the reason for the 10 years generation cycle. After ten years a new G arrives on the market. New tech is supporting it and economic reasons make the equipment manufacturers (network and device) and telecom operators ride (and push) the wave.

How is it that an exponential technology evolution does not result in an exponential acceleration of the demise of a previous G in favour of the next one? Why are the ten years basically stable?

There are a few reasons why:

• The exponential technology evolution does not result in an exponential market adoption
• The market perception of “novelty” is logarithmic (you need something that is 10 times more performant to perceive at 2 times better), hence the logarithmic perception combined with an exponential evolution leads to a linear adoption
• New technology flanks existing one (we still have 2G around as 5G is starting to be deployed)

With the advent of 4G the landscape has changed. In many Countries the market has saturated, the space for expansion has dwindled and there is only replacement. Also, the coverage provided by the network has reached in most places 100% (or at least 100% of the area that is of interest to users). A new generation will necessarily cover a smaller surface expanding over time. Hence the market (that is each of us) wil stick to the previous generation since it is available everywhere. This has the nasty (for the Operators) implication that the new generation is rarely so appealing to sustain a premium price.

The price of wireless services has declined everywhere in the last twenty years. The graphic shows the decline in the US over the llast ten years. Image credit: Bureau of LLabor Statistics

An Operator will need to invest money to deploy the new “G” but its revenues will not increase. Why would then an Operator do that? Well, because it has no choice. The new generation has better performance and lower OPEX. If an Operator does not deploy the new “G” someone else will, attracting customers and running the network at lower cost, thus becoming able to offer lower prices that will undercut others’ Operators’ offer.

5G is a clear example of this new situation and there is no reason to believe that 6G may be any different. Actually, the more capacity (performance) is available with a given G (and 4G provides plenty to most users in most situations) the less the market is willing to pay a premium for the new G. By 2030 5G will be fully deployed and people will get capcity and performance that will exceed their (wildest) needs.
Having a 6G providing 100 Gbps vs a 1 Gbps of the 5G  is unlikely to find a huge number of customers willing to pay a premium. What is likely to happen is that the “cost” of the new network will have to be “paid” by services, not by connectivity. This opens up a quite different scenario.

The Shannon theorem, expanded, to take into account the use of several antennas. In the graphic W stands for the spectrum band, B in the original Shannon theorem, and SNR for the Signal Noise ratio. Image credit: Waveform

Spectrum efficiency

Over the last 40 years, since the very first analogue wireless systems, researchers have managed to increase the spectral efficiency, that is to pack more and more information in the radio waves. Actually, with the 4G they have reached the Shannon limit. Shannon (and Hartley) found a relation between the signal power and the noise on a channel that was limiting the capacity of that channel. Over that limit the errors will be such that the signal will no longer be useful (you can no longer distinguish the signal from the noise):

C=Blog(1+S/N)

where C is the theoretically available channel capacity (in bit/s), B is the spectrum band in Hz, S is the Signal power in W and N is the Noise power in W).

Since the spectral efficiency is a function of the signal power you cannot give an absolute number to it, by increasing the signal power you could overcome noise, hence pack more bit per Hz. In practice you have some limit to the power, dictated by the regulation (max V per meter allowed), the kind of average noise  in the transmission channel (very very low for optical fibre, much much higher from wireless in a urban area, even higher in a factory…) as well as to the use of battery power.

Today, in normal usage condition and with the best wireless system, the Shannon limit for wireless system is around 4 bit per Hz (that is for every available Hz in the spectrum range allocated to that wireless transmission you can squeeze in 4 bits. Notice that because of the complexity of the environment condition you can find numbers from 0.5 to 13 in spectral efficiency, what I am indicating is a “compromise” just to give an idea of where we are). A plain 3G system may have a 1 bit per Hz in spectral efficiency, a plain vanilla 4G reaches 2.5 and with QAM 64 reaches 4.

This limit has already been overcome using “tricks” like higher order modulation (like QAM 256 reaching 6.3 bit per Hz) and most importantly using MIMO, Multiple Input Multiple Output.

This latter is really a nice way to circumvent the Shannon limit. This limit is about the use of a single channel. Of course, if you use more channels you can increase the number of bits per Hz, as long as these channels do not interfere with one another. This is actually the key point! By using several antennas, in theory, I could create many channels. one for each antenna couple (transmitting and receiving). However these parallel transmission (using the same frequency and spectrum band) will be interfering with one another.

Here comes the nice thing: “interference” does not exist! Interference is not a property of waves. Waves do not interfere. If a wave meets another wave, it does not stop to shake hands, rather each one continues undisturbed and unaffected on its way. What really happens is that an observer will no longer be able to distinguish one wave from the other at the point where they meet/overlap. So, the interference is a problem in the detector, not of the waves. You can easily visualise this as you look at a calm sea. You will notice small waves and in some areas completely flat patches. These are areas where waves meet and overlap annihilating one another (a crest of one adds to the trough of the other resulting in a flat area). If you have “n” transmitting antennas and “n+1” receiving antennas (each separated from the others at least half-wavelength, then you can sort out the interference and get the signal. This is basically the principle of MIMO. To exploit it you need sufficient processing power to manage all signals received in parallel by the antennas and this is something I will address in a future post. For now it is good to know that there is a way to circumvent the Shannon limit and expand the capacity of a wireless system.

6G will not just exploit massive MIMO, it will be able to do something amazing: spread the signal processing across many devices, each one acting as an array of antennas. Rather than having a single access point in 6G, in theory at least, you can have an unlimited number of access points, thus multiplying the overall capacity. It would be like sending mails to many receivers. You may have a bottleneck in one point but the messages will get to other points that in turn will be able to relay them to the intended receiver once this is available.

Source: https://cmte.ieee.org/futuredirections/2020/10/07/6g-does-not-exist-yet-it-is-already-here-ii/ 07 10 20

5G and IoT are main drivers to telcos’ digital transformation

Photo by Mario Caruso on Unsplash

 

Nearly 70% of leading telco  said that 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) are the most important emerging technologies driving their digital transformation over the next five years, according to the latest EY report, Accelerating the intelligent enterprise.

Other emerging technologies that are pushing forward the industry’s digital transformation journey include automation (62%) and AI (58%).

However, according to the report, the telcos’ current use of digital technologies is heavily weighted toward customer-related rather than network-related gains. And while telco leaders are optimistic about the promise of digital transformation, but there is a lack of synergy in the application of emerging technologies at the network layer.

“While the network accounts for the lion’s share of industry investment and operational expenditure, telcos continue to focus the power of emerging technology around the customer,” said Tom Loozen, EY global telecommunications sector leader. “It is now critical that they take a holistic approach to the adoption of AI and automation by shifting their investment priorities and applying greater focus to use cases in less advanced areas like networks.”

The results of the EY report showed that nearly half (48%) of respondents said improving customer support is the main catalyst for adopting automation, while 96% said customer experience is the main driver for analytics and AI use cases over the next five years. Only 44% see network-related use cases as critical during the same timeframe.

Telcos must tweak current approach

The report found that the current approach to emerging technology adoption is out of sync with telcos’ long-term ambitions. Seventy-six percent say IT and the network are most likely to benefit from improved analytics or AI capabilities over the next five years, despite their reluctance to move beyond customer applications. This disconnect is echoed by the views of nearly half (46%) of respondents, who believe that a lack of long-term planning is the biggest obstacle to maximizing the use of automation.

Inadequate talent and skills is also cited as a key barrier to deploying analytics and AI, according to 67% of global industry leaders surveyed, while a third (33%) cite poor quality data.

“Migration to 5G networks and the rise of the IoT means the pace of evolution across the telecoms industry is rapidly accelerating. Operators have no choice but to transform if they are to remain relevant to consumer and enterprise customers, and achieve growth,” Loozen said. “To succeed in this environment, they need to take a long-term view of emerging technology deployment and create a more cohesive workforce that thinks and collaborates across organizational barriers.”

The imperative for telcos to be bolder in their approach to digital transformation and innovation is highlighted throughout the report.

Nearly all respondents (92%) admit they need to be more agile to realize transformation gains, while 81% agree that they should adopt a more experimental mindset to maximize the value of analytics and automation. As the choice of emerging technologies and processes continues to widen, most respondents (88%) also believe that their organization requires a better grasp of interrelated digital transformation concepts.

In the next wave of telecoms, are bold decisions your safest bet?

Telecoms must transform to remain relevant to consumer and enterprise customers. Our survey findings explore priorities and next steps.

The global telecoms industry landscape has been changing rapidly for many years. But today, the pace of evolution appears to be faster than ever before. Migration to 5G networks, growing use of evolving technologies, such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI), and the rise of internet of things (IoT) applications, are coinciding with intensifying competitive and regulatory pressures.

The result is that operators have no choice but to transform if they’re to remain relevant to consumer and enterprise customers. It’s clear the major driver for this transformation is digital technologies. The only question now is how to plan and navigate the transition successfully.

Accelerating the intelligent enterprise, EY’s global telecommunications study 2019, monitors and evaluates the views of leaders across the global telecommunications industry.

Information technology (IT) spending continues to shift to digital …

As telcos’ 5G investments ramp up, the complexion of IT spend is also changing as they overhaul their IT estate to lay down a solid bedrock for digitization. The next few years will see the balance shift decisively from conventional IT to digital, which includes new cloud infrastructure, edge-computing systems, content delivery networks (CDNs) and other elements. This will account for over four-fifths of IT capex by 2024.

… as emerging technologies power the transformation agenda

At the same time, emerging technologies, such as AI, analytics and automation, are critical to serving customers’ rising expectations while delivering greater levels of agility and operational efficiency. EY research on the announcements made by the top 50 telcos worldwide by their revenue shows that adoption of analytics capabilities is in a mature phase, with automation initiatives ramping up in 2018 to play a complementary role.

Despite progress, profitable growth remains challenging. Overall, the telecom industry’s digital transformation is yet to be translated into sustainable financial gains. Revenue growth has fluctuated over the last 10 years, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margins remain low compared to the previous decade.

Over the past three years, operators’ aggregate revenue has increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.7%, while EBITDA margin has risen by just 0.6% over the same time frame. Given that ongoing investment in network expansion is a necessity, the underlying task facing telco leaders today is to find a way to break out of this holding-pattern of continuing profit pressure.

Chapter 1

Five key findings

Based on our survey results, we’ve identified some areas where digital transformation and adoption of emerging technologies resonate most strongly.

1. AI, 5G and automation are the key technologies driving digital transformation.

IoT or 5G networks, automation and AI are identified as the key drivers of change by the survey respondents when they were asked which emerging technologies and processes would be most important in driving their organization’s digital transformation journey over the coming five years. More than half of respondents ranked them one of their top three transformation drivers.

It’s clear that the transition to 5G is viewed as a fundamental game changer, with AI and automation not far behind. Automation will have a fundamental impact on both the customer experience and the back office.

“5G moves IoT from being a data network to being a control network. The network becomes more predictable and you can control things, and 5G helps move this control into the cloud. It is vital to resetting the value of the connection.”

However, other emerging technologies are at a much more nascent stage, with less than 1 respondent in 10 mentioning blockchain, and less than 1 respondent in 20 citing edge computing or quantum computing.

While there are hopes that blockchain may be valuable in helping to overcome issues around data and asset ownership, as telcos form more vertical industry partnerships, the general view was that its applicability in telecoms isn’t yet clear. Edge computing’s low score may be more cause for concern, given its role to enhance data processing and storage in a 5G world.

2. Customer experience improvements are the top rationale for AI, with agility the key driver of automation adoption.

Zeroing in on the importance of AI and analytics to telcos’ long-term digital transformation agendas, we asked participants about their most important rationales for building these capabilities. Almost four-fifths of the respondents cited that the importance of optimizing the customer experience was the key reason for their adoption of AI.

More than half of the respondents also said accelerating business efficiencies was a top-three driver of AI, while four in ten picked out the new business models and services.

The verbatim comments from the interviewees underline both the rising tide of investment in AI in the telecoms industry, and also its pivotal role in efforts to improve the customer experience.

Looking ahead, respondents see customer experience — including sales and marketing — retaining its prominence as an AI use case over the next five years. This is understandable given the gains operators are achieving in terms of NPS. Network performance management is another important domain for AI, cited by almost half of the respondents.

However, operators are less confident in AI’s role to improve service-creation activities, with only one in five seeing this as a critical use case in the long term and concerns surrounding customer trust issues acting as a potential inhibitor.

Turning to their reasons for adopting automation technologies, telco leaders view increasing agility and scalability as their leading driver. Greater workforce productivity and improved customer support rank second and third respectively.

Automation’s role as a catalyst for incremental digital transformation is a little more muted, with less than one-third citing this as a reason for adoption.

Across all rationales, OPEX and CAPEX gains are important considerations — a point underlined by the respondents’ verbatim comments. Yet, respondents’ focus on productivity and customer experience gains also show that the human outcomes of automation, be it for the customer or the employee, are also one of the major concerns. “We’re a bit late to process automation and need to play catch up. For us, it’s about fixing the basics.”

3. Missing skills, poor data quality and a lack of long-range planning are holding back the transformation agenda.

While telco leaders are energized by the potential of AI and automation in areas such as customer experience, they also acknowledge that they face significant barriers, both strategic and operational, that prevent them from realizing the full potential of these technologies.

As cited by 67% of respondents, inadequate talent and skills are overwhelmingly the leading pain points affecting the deployment of analytics and AI. Beyond this, lack of alignment between analytics or AI initiatives and business strategy, low-quality data and metadata, and poor interdepartmental collaboration — all feature as significant hindrances.

All of these barriers are reflected in the respondents’ verbatim comments, with a surprisingly heavy focus on the problems posed by the “silo mind-set,” an age-old issue for many operators.

Looking at the barriers to successful automation, telco leaders mention a range of issues, with no single factor alone being cited by more than half of the respondents. Out of the many cited issues, the most frequently mentioned one is a lack of long-term planning, followed by poor linkage between the automation and people agendas.

What shines through is that many telcos lack an overarching approach to automation and that the organizations must bring their people with them on the automation journey. Both of these factors are underlined by our respondents’ verbatim comments.

4. Customer and technology functions are viewed as the prime beneficiaries of AI and automation over the next five years.

Customer and technology functions lead the way as the parts of telco organizations most likely to benefit from AI and automation over the next five years. Although marketing is seen benefiting more from AI than from automation, the balance with other functions such as finance and human resources (HR) is the other way around — with AI expected to have a greater impact.

Together with the verbatim comments from participants, these findings suggest that there’s still plenty of impact yet to come from AI in sales and marketing, and that network teams are also in pole position to take advantage of both automation and AI. Interestingly, while three-quarters of respondents see IT and network teams as primary beneficiaries of AI over the next five years, under half of the respondents see network-related use cases as critical over a similar time frame.

5. Operator sentiments on emerging technology pain points diverge according to market maturity

An analysis by geography of telcos’ responses regarding technology drivers and AI and automation pain points shows their sentiments vary significantly. When asked which emerging technologies will drive transformation, emerging market operators more likely put AI, automation and 5G on an equal footing as transformation drivers.

Developed market operators have a more singular focus on 5G and IoT networks as a catalyst for transformation.

Also, the perceived pain points regarding AI and analytics vary between regions. Low-quality data and metadata are the leading concern alongside missing skills in developed markets, underlining that elemental challenges persist even while use of analytics is in a mature phase.

Meanwhile, lack of skills, leadership buy-in and collaboration all rank higher as barriers in emerging markets, underlining the need for better organizational alignment.

 

Chapter 2

Four next steps for telcos

To maximize the value generated from analytics or AI and automation across their operations, telcos can prioritize these areas.

Step 1: Prioritize the mutually reinforcing impact of emerging technologies with an informed and holistic mindset.

The impact of emerging technologies is not limited to IT, but are pervasive across the organization. They’re also mutually reinforcing, amplifying and enhancing each other’s ability to create value.

Given these factors, it’s vital to take a holistic approach to deployments that defines the optimal interplay and phasing of different technologies, balancing growth and efficiency goals in the process. It’s also important to take a long-term view of emerging technology deployments — while automation is already delivering plenty of benefits, long-range planning is often lacking.

Assessing emerging technologies and processes

As the choice of emerging technologies and processes continues to widen, it’s essential to take action in order to increase internal knowledge and education, particularly given the potential interplay between them. The vast majority of telcos agree that they need to do more in this area.

Step 2: Engage and empower the workforce as agents of change

To transform successfully, telcos need to leverage the most powerful change lever at their disposal — their own workforce. This means ensuring they take their people with them on the journey and begin taking actions to create a more cohesive workforce that collaborates across age-old organizational barriers — including those between IT and the business.

To achieve all this, and drive transformation at the necessary scale, engaging process owners is critical. Instilling a greater sense of ownership of change among them by more clearly articulating roles and responsibilities around digitization is important.

A renewed sense of purpose among process owners will also support relatively new leadership roles, such as that of a chief digital officer, that are designed to broaden organizational commitment to transformation.

At the same time, telcos need to do more to break down silos. Trust between business units is often lacking, and sustaining collaboration between product development, marketing and IT remains challenging.

Also, centralization strategies remain in flux, making it more complicated to create and apply a consistent transformation agenda across geographies. All of these internal barriers need to be tackled through a new mindset, roles and ways of working.

Step 3: Extend AI and automation efforts well beyond the customer

Telcos’ current use of AI or analytics and automation is weighted heavily toward optimizing the customer experience. However, use cases for AI in areas, such as networks and security, where they’re currently less advanced, would benefit from greater focus going forward.

This will require a shift in investment priorities and telcos should also take into account that AI and machine learning have an important role to play in supporting new business models, through capabilities such as such as network slicing for enterprise customers.

Step 4: Revisit and refresh your digital transformation fundamentals

If telcos are to maximize long-term value creation in the evolving landscape that we’ve described, it will be essential for them to have an agile transformation road map — one based on fundamentals that they would need to revisit and refresh continually to stay abreast of developments and ahead of competitors. Nearly all operators in our study agree that they require a step-change in agility levels in order to maximize their digital transformation journey.

This will involve applying four specific principles. One is prizing innovation as well as efficiency gains. Compared with the previous surveys of industry leaders, our 2019 survey underlines growing fears around telco rates of innovation.

AI, analytics and automation have a substantial role to play in overcoming this challenge by providing greater levels of customer- and product-level insights that can aid new service creation.

The second principle is to achieve a better balance between experimentation and execution. Experimentation remains a critical route to new learnings and new competencies. The overwhelming majority of telcos in the study agree that their organization needs a more experimental mindset to get the greatest possible value from analytics and automation.

The third principle for maximizing value from AI or analytics and automation is applying improved governance and metrics. As digitization matures within telcos, new forms of measurement and oversight will be essential to maintain visibility, control and alignment with the strategy.

Finally, it will be vital for telcos to recognize not just the potential of digitization, but also its limits. Transformation is a human-centered process, and while AI and automation have a major role to play, it’s imperative for organizations not to lose sight of the human aspects and also to ensure they take their people with them on the journey.

Sources:

EY: 5G and IoT are main drivers to telcos’ digital transformation

https://www.ey.com/en_gl/tmt/in-the-next-wave-of-telecoms-are-bold-decisions-your-safest-bet
03 12 19

Blurred lines: are network planning and network optimization merging?

Here is the worst-kept secret in the entire telecoms industry:  small cells are going to play a critical role in network evolutions over the next several years. A lesser-known reality is that, as a direct consequence of the growing number of small cells deployments, the lines between network planning and network optimization are blurring. They will no longer be two separate, distinct processes handled by different teams. Instead, they will become one process – network planning and optimization – as they are inextricably linked. This unified process will act as a foundation for a more proactive and agile approach to managing mobile networks, with small cell deployments at the heart of it all.

There once was a good reason for the distinction between network planning and network optimization — the workflows were based around different sets of engineering software that often required a long series of manual steps. The focus was mainly on delivering network coverage to high-paying customers and reactive issue resolution. Today, we see a different story. The main goal for network planning and optimization efforts is to help mobile operators cost-effectively deliver the quality of experience (QoE) that customers expect in order to reduce churn. Mobile operators also need to match rapidly changing customer demands with adequate capacity. They face the dual challenge of managing the evolution to large, multi-technology networks while also controlling OPEX costs. As network complexity increases, mobile operators need unified systems rather than individual tools for specific tasks — systems that provide properly synchronized network data and plans across multiple technologies, and instant and accurate views of network coverage, quality and performance throughout the whole network lifecycle.

Mobile networks are evolving at a rapid-fire pace unlike anything we have ever seen before because subscriber expectations and demands for data are increasing like never before. While dealing with the challenges associated with constant network evolution, it is important to remember that this is actually a very good thing. Mobile operators have been raising the bar in terms of quality of service (QoS) and QoE to better serve their customers. As a result, subscribers are using more mobile data and expecting fewer service interruptions. They continue to raise their own expectations, and while the ever-growing adoption of mobile services in society is a great cause for celebration, it also means that there’s no time for mobile operators to rest on their laurels — especially when over-the-top (OTT) services threaten their revenues.

With the right platform, mobile operators and RF engineering teams can get direct access to up-to-date network intelligence, allowing them to automatically generate usage and coverage simulations based on current network intelligence. The network planning and optimization process can be streamlined so that new capacity and technology deployments are made strategically, at the right times and in the right places. This allows operators to leverage predicted traffic loads based on the traffic development in the network, and gives them the opportunity to identify evolving hotspots and prevent issues in the network before they are noticed by subscribers. Such a proactive approach is critical if mobile operators expect to improve QoE and stand out among their competition, while improved accuracy in network analyses and shorter turnaround time leads to both CAPEX and OPEX savings.

Like I mentioned earlier, customer expectations are growing, and as network technologies advance and networks become more complex, the network planning and optimization processes will become one and the same.

So where do small cells fit into all of this? While micro, pico and femto cells have been around for a while, it’s only in the last few years that small cells have really risen to prominence as a tool for mobile operators to substantially expand their network capacity and improve their coverage. Operators in all markets are showing interest in various small cells solutions, spanning from residential solutions to large deployments of outdoor metro cells. For example, mobile operators in Korea have focused early on LTE small cells, while major US carriers like Verizon and AT&T have outlined their plans to deploy large numbers of small cells in 2014 and beyond, and others are guaranteed to follow suit.

We already know that small cells are capable of expanding network capacity and coverage, in turn enabling operators to deliver a better level of service and user experience, provided they are used in an efficient manner. Analysys Mason estimates that moving forward three to four small cells will be deployed per macro cell and other estimates go even higher. And there’s the link between network planning and optimization and small cells. Small cells and heterogeneous networks (HetNets) will be much more complicated to manage and, without a unified network planning and optimization approach, OPEX will skyrocket. Essentially, the prevalence of small cells is causing the lines between network planning and network optimization to blur, making a single, unified process all the more critical.

The reality is that mobile technologies and networks are constantly evolving. There isn’t a beginning and an end in the traditional sense. And, no matter how well operators plan their networks, the need for network optimization will always exist as subscriber bases grow, their usage behaviors change and their expectations increase. This non-stop evolution means that network planning and optimization must be an ongoing endeavor following a strategy that is regularly updated to address increasing subscriber expectations and technology enhancements operators are facing.

This brings us back to the relationship between network planning, network optimization and small cells. Small cells are one of the best solutions available today for mobile operators to expand their networks and simultaneously improve QoS and QoE for their customers. But, in order to reap those benefits, mobile operators must unite the siloed network planning and network optimization tools into a single network planning and optimization system that engineering teams can use to fuel the strategic deployment of small cells.

Source: http://www.telecomreview.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1107:blurred-lines-are-network-planning-and-network-optimization-merging&catid=73:february-2014&Itemid=190

LTE to LTE-A What You Need to Know Right Now (whitepaper)

LTE is rapidly evolving to LTE-Advanced – this White Paper describes the main drivers behind this, and the benefits that it promises both to operators in terms of reduced OPEX/CAPEX and spectrum utilization and to subscribers in improved data speed and capacity.

Dowload white paper: http://lnkd.in/bSvJP5z

Source: Aeroflex.

 

 

Envisioning a Software Defined IP Multimedia System (SD-IMS)

This post takes this idea a logical step forward and proposes a Software Defined IP Multimedia System (SD-IMS).

In today’s world of scorching technological pace, static configurations for IT infrastructure, network bandwidth and QOS, and fixed storage volumes will no longer be sufficient.

We are in the age of being able to define requirements dynamically through software. This is the new paradigm in today’s world. Hence we have Software Defined Compute, Software Defined Network, Software Defined Storage and also Software Defined Radio.

This post will demonstrate the need for architecting an IP Multimedia System that uses all the above methodologies to further enable CSPs & Operators to get better returns faster without the headaches of earlier static networks.

IP Multimedia Systems (IMS) is the architectural framework proposed by 3GPP body to establish and maintain multimedia sessions using an all IP network. IMS is a grand vision that is access network agnostic, uses an all IP backbone to begin, manage and release multimedia sessions.

The problem:

Any core network has the problem of dimensioning the various network elements. There is always a fear of either under dimensioning the network and causing failed calls or in over dimensioning resulting in wasted excess capacity.

The IMS was created to handle voice, data and video calls. In addition in the IMS, the SIP User Endpoints can negotiate the media parameters and either move up from voice to video or down from video to voice by adding different encoders.  This requires that the key parameters of the pipe be changed dynamically to handle different QOS, bandwidth requirements dynamically.

The solution

The approach suggested in this post to have a Software Defined IP Multimedia System (SD-IMS) as follows.

In other words the compute instances, network, storage and the frequency need to be managed through software based on the demand.

Software Defined Compute (SDC): The traffic in a Core network can be seasonal, bursty and bandwidth intensive. To be able to handle this changing demands it is necessary that the CSCF instances (P-CSCF, S-CSCF,I-CSCF etc) all scale up or down. This can be done through Software Defined Compute or the process of auto scaling the CSCF instances. The CSCF compute instances will be created or destroyed depending on the traffic traversing the switch.

Software Defined Network (SDN): The IMS envisages the ability to transport voice, data and video besides allowing for media sessions to be negotiated by the SIP user endpoints. Software Defined Networks (SDNs) allow the network resources (routers, switches, hubs) to be virtualized.

SDNs can be made to dynamically route traffic flows based on decisions in real time. The flow of data packets through the network can be controlled in a programmatic manner through the Flow controller using the Openflow protocol. This is very well suited to the IMS architecture. Hence the SDN can allocate flows based on bandwidth, QoS and type of traffic (voice, data or video).

Software Defined Storage (SDS): A key component in the Core Network is the need to be able charge customers. Call Detail Records (CDRs) are generated at various points of the call which are then aggregated and sent to the bill center to generate the customer bill.

Software Defined (SDS) abstracts storage resources and enables pooling, replication, and on-demand provisioning of storage resources. The ability to be able to pool storage resources and allocate based on need is extremely important for the large amounts of data that is generated in Core Networks

Software Defined Radio (SDR): This is another aspect that all Core Networks must adhere to. The advent of mobile broadband has resulted in a mobile data explosion portending a possible spectrum crunch. In order to use the available spectrum efficiently and avoid the spectrum exhaustion Software Define Radio (SDR) has been proposed. SDRs allows the radio stations to hop frequencies enabling the radio stations to use a frequency where this less contention (seeWe need to think differently about spectrum allocation … now).In the future LTE-Advanced or LTE with CS fallback will have to be designed with SDRs in place.

Conclusion:

A Software Defined IMS makes eminent sense in the light of characteristics of a core network architecture.  Besides ‘cloudifying’ the network elements, the ability to programmatically control the CSCFs, network resources, storage and frequency, will be critical for the IMS. This is a novel idea but well worth a thought!

 

Source: http://gigadom.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/envisioning-a-software-defined-ip-multimedia-system-sd-ims/

2013 LTE Capex and Opex predictions. By 2017, U.S. carriers expected to spend over $90 billion in capex and opex

According to a recent LTE capex and opex forecast published by iGR, Tier One operators (AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile USA) and Regional and Small Operators (RSOs) are projected to spend  by 2017 $37 billion in LTE capex and $56 billion in opex.

“US capex spending is forecasted to be 10% of global capex spending and will peak in 2013″ said Iain Gillott, President of IGR. “The radio equipment, which includes base station equipment, tower modifications, installation and construction, represents 70% of the $37 billion capex budget, with backhaul and evolved packet core expenditures representing the balance.”

“By 2017, US opex spending by US carriers is projected to be $56 billion,” said Gillott. “and represents expenditures required to keep the network running every month. Specific elements include radio maintenance coupled with ongoing cost of backhaul and transport.”

Key takeaways from the interview include:

• In 2013, Tier One expenditures will be $10 billion compared to only $750 million by the RSOs.
• Of the total U.S. LTE infrastructure capital expenditures forecast of $37.5 billion, RSOs are expected to spend only $3.2 billion.
• Operating expenditures by RSOs are expected to be $2.1 billion, a small percentage of the expected $56.5 billion opex expenditure forecast.
• iGR’s LTE cost model is based on the amount of data the network is able to support and deliver. The Capex cost model is based on the cost required to add 1 GB of data capacity to the network, while the opex cost model is based on the cost per user per month.
• Equipment vendors selling to RSOs will need to adjust their sales and product strategy because RSOs will deploy more hosted solutions to include shared packet core and policy engines.

Source: http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20130810/carriers/2013-lte-capex-and-opex-predictions/?goback=%2Egmp_136744%2Egde_136744_member_265061682%2Egmp_136744%2Egde_136744_member_265031717%2Egmp_136744%2Egde_136744_member_264928582%2Egmp_136744%2Egde_136744_member_264858554

Achieving retail operation excellence through unified communications

Huawei Enterprise Retail Solution Blog

Retail eCommerce and mobile channels are not restricted by space limitations of physical store front and thus can make the full inventory of merchandise available for shoppers to view and compare, and shoppers can easily find third party or peer reviews that they trust. On the other hand, traditional retail stores bring that personal touch and more upselling opportunities. Huawei’s retail video solutions boost retailers’ omni-channel strategy and operation efficiency by increasing the level of product expertise among sales representatives, promoting tight and real-time collaborations across the full supply chain, and bridging the gap between stores and other retail channels by enhancing physical experience with virtual content.

Huawei Digital Signage Solution

Huawei’s digital signage solution is a centralized management system to control audio, video or graphic content displayed on devices located in physical retail stores. It consists of media creation, media distribution, media management and media display functionalities, and can…

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First Steps to Creating a Cloud Computing Strategy for 2013

2013 will be one of the most pivotal years for cloud computing because trust in these technologies is on the line.

Expectations are high regarding these technologies’ ability to deliver business value while reducing operating costs.  Enterprises’ experiences have at times met these high expectations, yet too often are getting mixed results.  Managing cloud expectations at the C-level is quickly emerging as one of the most valuable skills in 2013. The best CIOs at this are business strategists who regularly review with their line-of-business counterparts what is and isn’t working.  These CIOs who are excelling as strategists also are creating and continually evaluating their cloud computing plans for 2013.  They are focusing on plans that capitalize the best of what cloud computing has to offer, while minimizing risks.

CIOs excelling as strategists are also using cloud computing planning to punch through the hype and make cloud technologies real from a customer, supplier and internal efficiency standpoint.  Lessons learned from these cloud computing planning efforts in enterprises are provided below:

• Cloud computing needs to mature more to take on all enterprise applications, so plan for a hybrid IT architecture that provides both agility and security.  This is a common concern among CIOs in the manufacturing and financial services industries especially.  As much as the speed of deployment, customization and subscription-based models attract enterprises to the cloud, the difficult problems of security, legacy system integration, and licensing slow its adoption.  There is not enough trust in the cloud yet to move the entire IT infrastructure there in the majority of manufacturing companies I’ve spoken with.

• Reorganizing IT to deliver greater business agility and support of key business initiatives will be a high priority in 2013.  The gauntlet has been thrown at the feet of many CIOs this year: become more strategic and help the business grow now.  Cloud is part of this, yet not its primary catalyst, the need to increase sales is.  IT organizations will increasingly reflect a more service-driven, not technology-based approach to delivering information and intelligence to the enterprise as a result.

• Recruiting, training and retaining cloud architects, developers, engineers, support and service professionals will be a challenge even for the largest enterprises.  There isn’t enough talent to go around for all the projects going on and planned right now.  State Farm Insurance has 1,000 software engineers working on their mobility applications for claims processing and quoting for example.  And they are hiring more.  Certifications in cloud technologies are going to be worth at least a 30 to 50% increase in salary in specific positions. This is very good news for engineers who want to differentiate themselves and get ahead in their careers, both financially and from a management standpoint.

• Measuring the contributions of operating expense (OPEX) reductions is going to become commonplace in 2013.  From the cloud computing plans I’ve seen, OPEX is being tracked with greater accuracy than in any other year and will be a strong focus in the future.  The capital expense (CAPEX) savings are clear, yet OPEX savings in many cases aren’t. Cloud computing’s greatest wins in the enterprise continue to be in non-mission critical areas of the business.  This is changing as cloud-based ERP systems gain adoption within businesses who are constrained by monolithic ERP systems from decades ago.  Plex Systems is a leader in this area and one to watch if you are interested in this area of enterprise software.  SaaS is dominating in the area of lower application costs and high user counts, which is the Public Computing Sweet Spot in the following graphic:

Source: 2013 Cloud Computing Planning Guide: Rising Expectations Published: 1 November 2012 Analysts: Drue Reeves, Kyle Hilgendorf

 

• Start building a SaaS application review framework including Service Level Agreement (SLA) benchmarks to drive greater transparency by vendors.  Gartner forecasts that the SaaS-based cloud market will grow from $12.1B in 2013 to$21.3B in 2015, with the primary growth factors being ease of customization and speed of deployment. CIOs and their staffs have SaaS frameworks already in place, often with specific levels of performance defined including security and multitenancy audits.  SLAs are going to be a challenge however as many vendors are inflexible and will not negotiate them. At a minimum make sure cloud service providers and cloud management platforms (CMP) have certifications for ISO 27001 and Statements on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16, as this shows the provider is making investments in availability, security and performance levels.

• Create a Cloud Decision Framework to keep technology evaluations and investments aligned with business strategies.  Business and application assessments and the vendor selection process need to take into account application requirements, role of external cloud resources, and how the RFI will be structured. These process areas will vary by type of company – yet concentrating in application requirements goes a long way to reducing confusion and forcing trade-offs in the middle of a review cycle.  The following is an example of a Cloud Decision Framework:

 

Source: 2013 Cloud Computing Planning Guide: Rising Expectations Published: 1 November 2012 Analysts: Drue Reeves, Kyle Hilgendorf

• Mitigating risk and liability through intensive due diligence needs to become any cloud-based companies’ core strength.  Regardless of how the HP-Autonomy litigation is resolved it is a powerful cautionary tale of the need for due diligence.  And let’s face it: there are way too many SaaS companies chasing too few dollars in the niche areas of enterprise software today.  A shakeout is on the way, the market just can’t sustain so many vendors.  To reduce risk and liability, ask to see the financial statements (especially if the vendor is private), get references and visit them, meet with engineering to determine how real the product roadmap is, and require an SLA.  Anyone selling software on SaaS will also have revenue recognition issues too, be sure to thoroughly understand how they are accounting for sales.

• Design in security management at the cloud platform level, including auditing and access control by role in the organization.  One manufacturing company I’ve been working with has defined security at this level and has been able to quickly evaluate SaaS-based manufacturing, pricing and services systems by their security integration compatibility.  This has saved thousands of dollars in security-based customizations to meet the manufactures’ corporate standards.

Bottom line: 2013 is the make-or-break year for cloud in the enterprise, and getting started on a plan will help your organization quickly cut through the hype and see which providers can deliver value.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2012/12/18/first-steps-to-creating-a-cloud-computing-strategy-for-2013/

The 2020 services network

As 2013 approaches, and as we look as far as 2020, the pragmatic view is that mobile networks will become more capable and agile with the use of macro and small cell networks to better handle capacity requirements from consumers and enterprises, and bring forth the true potential for cloud and application services. Our focus is on access, but what we are enabling are services.

We are seeing the emergence of a common service network infrastructure where macro/micro/small cells work in close tandem with intelligent physical and virtual routing of access and services.

Enterprise small cells have emerged as the most promising technology to deliver high-capacity and 3G coverage inside offices. Analyst firms such as Infonetics, ABI Research and Informa expect enterprise small cells to be the fastest growing segment of the small cell market. ABI predicts small cells for enterprise deployments will catch up with DAS by the 2016 timeframe – reaching the $2 billion mark by 2016. (August 24, 2012: http://tinyurl.com/9o8gktv).

The battleground is for sustainable ARPU and the enterprise markets. With cloud and application services, mobile operators become a true partner to enterprise CIOs. Mobile operators can offer enterprise customers reliable Mobile Applications and Cloud Services (MACS) to help mobilise people and move expenses from the Capex to the Opex side of the equation, with clientless and effortless communications services enabled by the system. Unified Communications (UC) could be offered by mobile operators, thus taking cost and complexities away from enterprise IT. Do It Yourself (DIY), or ask the experts for help?

What if there was a way forward that enabled UC to be more successful and reduce the burden on Enterprise IT and the device owners? Is this even possible?

The answer is “yes” and it revolves around RAT Détente. What do we mean? UC suppliers need to embrace the Yin/Yang of wireless technologies with the wireless service provider community globally. Yin/Yang is actively building software so each RAT does what it’s best at in order to deliver a magical experience for the device owner. Let 3G, and eventually, LTE support voice, and 3G/LTE/Wi-Fi support data. To make this a reality:

• The Mobile Operator needs to provide blanket coverage and capacity inside structures to enable the strategy. You cannot move forward without adequate quantities of the digital oxygen that the mobile devices breathe.
• The Mobile Operator needs to bridge the gap from their networks into the Enterprise UC architecture. The mobile plumbing must play its part in recognizing an enterprise’s dial plan and routing calls to their PBX!
• The Enterprise UC vendors need to insure their clients are more agile, and correctly support Integrated RAT UC in addition to legacy Wi-Fi only UC.
• Mobile Operators treat enterprise calls as free when using the solution (assume a monthly rate for each mobile UC device).

Meeting the four conditions above will allow Enterprises to:

• Eliminate Capex requirements, and move to a predictable and scalable Opex financial environment.
• Move Telecom and Network operations headcount to more strategic roles in IT.
• Eliminate, as desired, desk phones for mobile workers.
• Support ANY device an employee brings in, for minimally voice+IM/Presence. Feature phones can be a UC extension!
• Only support mobile UC client for non-real time functions (non-SMS IM, Voicemail, etc.).
• Simplify Wi-Fi architectures and deployments.

Meeting the four conditions above will allow Mobile Operators to:

• Increase ARPU while enabling the enterprise to save even more.
• Create value to enterprises that are mobilizing their workforce.
• Simplify the support landscape of the enterprise.
• Create deep and important relationships with the enterprise UC vendors to leverage their sales teams.
• Leverage your premise based heterogeneous network investments currently underway in a unique and powerful way that both UC vendors, or enterprises, cannot do by themselves.

We are at a turning point where small cell systems, like SpiderCloud’s, will not only enable heterogeneous networks, but solve problems that were previously unaddressed. With the presence of a “local controller” or a “Service Node”, operators now have one leg in the enterprise premise, and the other leg in the Mobile network, boasting a powerful onboard virtualization platform. Together we can enable the true potential of Unified Communications to finally be realised on mobile devices in a magical way that caters to the needs of enterprise business users. The enterprise services opportunity is enabled with targeted deployments of coverage, capacity and an open door for services. Deployment of scalable small cell systems starts taking hold inside medium to large enterprises, to compliment DAS, or in places where DAS does not make economic sense.

2013 is the year when operators can start to offer true managed mobility services to the enterprise to include BYOD, MDM, Wi-Fi and PBX Integration – offering UC-clientless access to mobility, applications and cloud-based services, after they prove themselves as trusted providers of reliable indoor coverage and capacity for enterprises with 100 to 10,000 people, with 3G, Wi-Fi and 4G/LTE access.

To help the mobile operators, small and large vendors must be able to provide the ability to build very dense small cell networks to address their own network coverage and capacity needs, before they can offer enterprise customers with reliable mobile, application and cloud services – as they help transition enterprises from a wireless to a mobile connected business.

Everything is changing, and we’re entering into the ‘glide path’ for a true services network of the future where instant on-demand availability of operator services, additional capacity, applications and movies is determined by your referred sensory profile, time and place. The 2020 services network is not far away.

Source: http://lteconference.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/the-2020-services-network/