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New Innings

2020 Workplace.. my favorite recent read.

Data Driven. Prioritized. I Like it.

now that I have caught upto 2009, I kind of like the 3GS. Stayed in the dark side only because Android on AT&T is.. lacking, and Win7 hasn't been built for the enterprise.

The answer is 42. Now implement it.

Acceptance Test Driven Development

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Henry Kissinger

eMobility - Business Models around charging EVs

Finally got some cool insights on smart grid business models for communication and utilities.. all around charging cars:

So owner pulls up to charging station (maybe it's free at work) .. uses SIM to plug in.. think roaming.. so there's rating and billing for the customer maybe from a carrier.. and there's rating and billing (B2B) between station and utility.

SAP VP on Billing/CRM talked about a model on prepaid energy.. you buy car, utility leases you the battery and replaces at no cost.

Neat stuff.

Beyond Bundling: True Quad Play for Cable MSOs

Thoughts on the most fascinating session I attended at #itexpo by Mazen from LightningGlow and Dr. Madkour from Huawei..

So it's all about who can keep their consumer in the mobile screen ecosystem. whoever controls the screens wins the war (comcast xfinity now on iPad!). Mobile screens esp. with tablets are blurring the boundaries between tv, smart phones, pcs etc.

So the contention is that MSOs need to dominate in atleast 2 of: pipe, device, content, operating env (think google platform for YouTube or MS), or content curation (Netflix).. if weak, price wars will drag them down.

The best strategy to establish and maintain control is by providing a singular, seamless user experience across screens, and services. Keep the user in the Cable MSO ecosystem by providing integrated .. not just bundled .. services. Offering VoIP and pay-tv where the user can't leverage both in an integrated, mobile manner will just expose the MSO to competing with Vonage and Hulu. Seamless translation through devices, integrated/converged quad play use experiences, unified simple user-based billing (not device) are the best bets for cable operators.

True quad play integration avoidance, via not offering wireless or worse partnering with a MVNO is a lose-lose. although MVNOs are low capex, it forces the operator to lose control of the most important "play" .. mobile/wireless in their ecosystem. Worse, they can experience MVNO lock-in fatigue by becoming overly dependent on them.

This doesn't mean Cable MSOs should build a whole Verizon-esque network out (although they certainly have the experience).. but rather, go for hybrid approaches: build hotspots (complement with wifi).. cover 80% of the traffic by just reaching 20% of the area, or build micro/pico/femto sites that can help monetize traffic and improve user loyalty rather than risking on a MVNO.

Using such heterogenous networks, Cable MSOs are uniquely positioned to control the user ecosystem, screens via quadplay and remain relevant in the 60B connection, 7.5B user, 500x device traffic market of 2020. Once quad play is truly integrated as an offering across multiple screens, Cable MSOs can look at dominating device, content (read Comcast buying NBC), env or curation along with the pipe.

Start with your consumers/employees as the focus... resegment them according to their digital/mobile profile, find opportunities at the edges/intersections of industries, and most importantly.. learn to fail fast, cheap, and often!

Customer Focus in the Intelligent Energy Economy

The utilities industry with smart grid roll outs seems to be following the same pattern as the telcos when they became deregulated.. leased rotary phones eventually get replaced with iPhones, distribution becomes commoditized (IP), and for the first time, energy carriers have to think about active customer relationships (from the regulator to the end user)... just like telcos did with increased saturation.

They are clearly not used to this - and there is a deficit of trust (due to lack of interaction points) between the consumer and the utility. How often does your utility call you to sell.. how many times do you have utility questions? AT&T lost 60% market share through deregulation years before coming back.. are utilities headed the same way with new entrants who offer a clean-slate and better interaction points?

It will be slow - deregulation is only truly in play in 3-4 states (Pennsylvania being a clear example), regulators are still the 'voice of the consumer' and utilities still have not adopted best practices from the service industry - CSAT scores, surveys, transparent interaction/call metrics etc.

The business cases that may typically drive fierce consumer focus are still somewhat weak - conservation/cost driven primarily (1st call resolution, no truck rolls) as opposed to the lucrative cross sell/upsell in the communications space. Dynamic pricing may make some headway here .. but a lot of education is still required before consumers become grid-savvy just like they are net/mobile-savvy.

I've yet to see more appealing practical, real life business models to monetize the smart grid besides energy management.. Which is huge.. but just not there for true consumer-driven economy.

on a side note.. finally ran into a competitor today .. SAP with their Billing/CRM solutions for utilities. Interesting...

ITEXPO .. doors open.

Business Models in the Energy Internet (SmartGrid)

With the implementation of smart grid, utilities will start producing about 10-12x amount of data than today .. close to 850TB annually - what new business models does this create? I heard two interesting ones today @itexpo from Dr. Massoud Amin and Cullen Jennings at Cisco:

utilities will shift (focus) from pricing the quantity of electricity to the reliability and quality of power. pay for no outage model, essentially. You and I still stay as customers.

you and I become products (instead of customers) in a new value chain. Unlike our online habits which may or may not reflect our true selves (did you really have that many friends from high school or do you really buy supercars just because you look at them online?) resource usage habits present a more realistic picture of who we are.. so temperature/energy fluctuations in our fridge may indicate what we eat when.. while doing what (i.e watching tv for instance). So, this 'product' data becomes valuable to companies who may wish to purchase it for analytics.

Or there might be both types of models that co-exist. Utilities become commoditized platforms which make money by ensuring availability/quality and support an ecosystem of partners (think Netflix over comcast) that offer usage-based services, whether it's selling analytics to large advertisers or providing efficiency-type services to end consumers.

this 2 way exchange of electrons is going to transform the world just like the 2 way exchange of bits.. if not more. Talk on convergence of communications and energy tommorrow at #itexpo excited!

MSO/Carriers in an all-IP world

Return on Invested Capital for Cable (-4.9%), Wireless (-3.0%), Wireline (-2.1%) .. $180B in value destruction over the past 10 years.. but.. I can watch NetFlix HD best over my cable (compared to FiOS, DSL/4G) so thanks Comcast!

So now that price competitions are exhausted for carriers.. can only go so low.. the real test is how they can partner/provide IP based services.

Brough Turner (netBlazr) predicts 10 more yrs for the pay-SMS party to be completely over.. just following normal adoption trends and cultural habits. Other Social stuff is already done.. all over IP.

Now it boils down to video.. carriers competing with 99c HD movies in iTunes same day as DVD or the 10M Netflix subs by 2011. 2/3 of all Internet content per Cisco will be video.. existing distribution models for video content will be gone.

VoIP is harder to replace voice.. once 4G LTE (all IP based) rolls out. Carriers will probably end up partnering (think Verizon-Skype) and providing hybrid plans to stop the revenue bleed and recover some of that ROIC

Who pays the bill? Monetizing M2M

So it's a $20B market by 2014, 74m smart meters already implemented .. services rolling out like Audi offering car hotspots .. but who pays the $$$?

Let's look at the value chain.. you've got MVNE (think wireless vending machine) with a MNO SIM (think tmobile) talking to a network (mvno using one or the actual network like tmobile.. interesting thought.. can MVNOs provide wholesale M2M services downstream?..any value add in that if MNOs get overwhelmed?).

So where does the MNO come in? Interestingly they are positioning themselves something like a platform (pipe, sim) and toolkits (biller, analytics).

TMobile presentation today where they touted their nextgen billing platform (go @Convergys for the wholesale side) selling the fact that they bill for exact data use (important in M2M with micro data.. you don't want the carrier BSS rounding), provide real time activation and access to the SIM, and a great portal (think Jasper) to manage invoices, connections, sessions etc

So who pays? It depends right? Some MVNEs like Audi will just pass the cost to the car buyer, others might pick up that cost to give away services (think google, and then come back for the data to sell or ads), and others might have some creative models - which is where the real money is as the pipes/sims (read carriers) get commoditized.

M2M Defined

best definition @itexpo: M2M is using a device (wireless, wired, sensor) to capture an event (location, status, condition) relayed through a network (sat, cell or hybrid) to applications(s) that crunch the information into useful data .. and charge for it?

met the 'father' of the smart grid

cool moment @itexpo ... I want to coin a term like that!

Only 3 things happen naturally in an organization: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.

Peter Drucker

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