Insights from my discussion on “India Focus: Convergence of Telecom & IT – Telco’s going Cloud” at Cloud Security Summit, Mumbai 7th May2015.
This discussion was not just about security, but looking at the future source of revenues and if Telcos are ready . While the general agreement was that Telcos have lost some initiatives, they still have direct relationships with Enterprises and mid market a reach that is unparalleled and not available to cloud service providers.
There are many challenges and over the next 18-24 months Telcos will have to work harder to earn trust and loyalty of their customers:
- New entrants: like Rjio will add to hyperactivity.
- Lot of Commoditization and little innovation / differentiation amongst top players in terms of services, pricing and coverage.
- Dubious quality of services user experience for data services (Ericsson report on services quality in India) is way below satisfaction.
- Customers have little idea how to measure service or understand what they want, and as long as operators are only seen as a commodity, there will be no trust.
- Transparency will be key, resulting in better share of revenues.
- “Net Neutrality” will effect perception and resulting loyalty etc.
- Business don’t rely on single service provider anymore
- Regulatory mechanism still evolving…can make or break a value-chain
- Data Integrity will define the flow and usage of data across the entire value chain. Data Protection / Privacy issues are back at the top of mind of the customer (Data users)
- Consolidation /innovation will create new challengers
Exploring upcoming opportunities (e.g. Cloud) will need operators to shed the minutes and GB mindsets. Operators need to move fast to offer cloud services as they are playing CATCHUP.
- Telcos need to move up the value chain – from IaaS provider to may be CLOUD BROKER?
- Telcos are losing their traditional stronghold or the tool used to bargain – Customer Ownership and in the future, customer ownership will move to multiple custodians (IT providers, Device Providers, Other services / brokers/ Integrators) from Telcos
- Skill Upgradation: Telcos sales teams will have to trained to sell apps and digital services.
- Mid market and SMEs /MSMEs can be a big opportunity for Telcos in India esp selling new services like Cloud
- Well a great deal of challenges, does not mean that everything is doom….but if you are part of the industry time to think on these lines and work towards newer more collaborative way of working towards future.
Unfortunately most Telcos in India are not inclined towards providing business (both Enterprises and SME’s or Mid Market) cloud services. Despite the fact, that, there is a BIG opportunity emerging.
Will Telco’s arrogance work against them??? Only time will tell.
Share with us your thoughts on Telcos thinking on these services, some interesting case studies, Proof of concept or deployments and what are the steps to differentiate these services from other cloud providers.
Attached below are some of the snaps of the event. Follow us for more insights in upcoming posts. Keep writing and commenting to us @
girish.trivedi@monkconsulting.co.in
