How many customers does it take to matter in the world of wireless infrastructure? Well, if you are trying to partner with customers on the product roadmap for an important technology, maybe one is enough. And if it’s one of the biggest operators in the world, even better. So Mary Chan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s 4G/LTE group is excited to have won the Verizon deal. It has given them a real goal to execute on this ambitious transformation for the industry.

Most operators would prefer to work with one partner who can share the risk and reward of a multi year technology roll out. ALU is betting on that as it rolls out its wireless LTE plans. The desire to be seen as an end to end player in this technology space is a differentiating factor for ALU as highlighted in the diagram below.

I spoke to Mary Chan earlier this week and here is what I learnt about their wireless/LTE plans:

• Create one organization within Alcatel Lucent to provide end to end service on the wireless LTE technologies.
• Leverage its strength in IP wireline products and technology and bring it to bear for the IP mobility solutions and achieve scale. Focus on adding policy management, mobility management features to the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) architecture.
• Go it alone and not co-develop the RAN aspects of the architecture with NEC.
• Launched the ngConnect program last month to allow partners to develop applications on the LTE technology platform.

The streamlined organization structure within ALU creates a point of differentiation for them. My belief is that this was one of the reasons for Verizon choosing to partner with ALU. Given that LTE is the next big wave in infrastructure spending, it is a crucial win for ALU to remain competitive.

Although there is a risk of sending mixed messages by not partnering with NEC on the core Radio Access Network (RAN) architecture  and yet being open to partnerships under the  ngConnect umbrella, it makes business sense. ALU is focusing on what they are known for- solid proven engineering of the wireline and wireless products and solutions. It demonstrates the ability to focus on their strengths and change what was not working that well in the first place.

They must pay careful attention to managing this “open’ eco system to truly encourage greater innovation and creativity rather than apply a heavy hand in the management of the program.

One customer win is a solid start to make the LTE possibilities real. I am looking forward to hearing more details of their wireless LTE strategy as CTIA concludes this week.

I don’t frequently use this medium as a means to discuss impending research, but as I have just completed a project that I think will be of particular interest to those concerned or excited about the opportunities connectivity affords I felt compelled to take to the blog.

A few months ago I decided to create connected device forecasts for a bevy of product categories. The first five are home networks, digital media adapters, Blu-ray players, digital audio players, and HDTVs. More will come in subsequent quarters including game consoles, photo frames, digital cameras, etc. The sizing of the connected world is important, as it provides insight into how much of a threat connectivity will offer to established businesses. The importance of this is outlined in the framework report that will accompany the forecasts.

However one aspect of forecasting that I always wanted to change was the inability to provide an end user the ability to manipulate the forecast model for themselves. Therefore, these connected device forecasts will have a set of assumptions that can be changed – including growth rates, current penetration, total addressable market, etc. While Yankee Group created this forecasts with a firm idea of where the market is heading (and this is reflected in the model) it seemed a user controlled model would be most compelling.

Therefore, within the next few weeks the new models will be available and then updated with new devices in the coming quarters. From the model you will be able to see the expansion or contraction of the connected universe by changing a few simple assumptions. This is an important step forward for Yankee Group’s coverage of connected devices and as such, I felt it was helpful to post the news on the blog.

While there is sure to be a large faction of pure capitalists that blanche at the Obama administration take over GM’s HR department, government/corporate cooperation/coercion is here to stay in the telecom sector.

Case in point: China Development Bank and ZTE signed a five-year strategic partnership under which the bank will provide the vendor with a $15 billion credit line to help finance “overseas project financing.” From my perspective, it’s a new take on the old line of vendor financing. This time around though the cash is coming from a government owned and operated bank.

At ZTE’s Global Analyst Event last week in China the company was matter-of-fact about the deal, noting that this type of government involvement with private entities is routine. More important to the ZTE executives was the fact that this arrangement helps them compete with the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, etc. for deals in emerging markets.

For those vendors ithout the advantage–or perhaps the burden–of government-backed financing, competing in some rapid growth markets just got a little more difficult.

I interrupt my regular stream of commentary on the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity–what YG calls Anywhere–to give the New England technology community a quick heads-up.

I have had the good fortune for the past few years to be connected with the Massachussetts Innovation and Technology Exchange, better known as MITX (“my-techs”). One of our most important activities each year is the recognition of the latest wave of digital technology innovations in the New England region. This culminates each year in June with the Tech Awards, a fun evening that celebrates the best work we’ve all done or seen in the past year. But before we get to the snack, drinks and awards in June, we host a competition in the spring to identify the best stuff.

Over the past six years, this competition has honored hundreds of emerging companies and enterprises, and the number of award finalists and winners that have enjoyed successful IPOs or extremely favorable acquisitions is incredible. A few highlights of past finalists:

• 2005 Winner, Technology Operations Application: Ardence was acquired by Citrix Systems
• 2006 Finalist, Web 2.0 Application: Maven, acquired by Yahoo!
• 2006 Winner, Mobile: m-Qube, acquired by VeriSign, Inc.
• 2006 & 2007 Finalist, Mobile: ThirdScreenMedia, acquired by AOL
• 2007 Winner, Mobile: Enpocket, acquired by Nokia

Here are the key facts:

What is this ? The Annual MITX Technology Awards honor innovative technology applications developed by New England companies.

What to enter? Technologies developed in the following categories: Analytics and Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Devices, Enterprise Technologies, Gaming, Marketing/Customer Relationship Technologies, Mobile, Online Advertising, Rich Media, and Social Media.

Who can enter? Startups to mature enterprises. Companies with solutions that may not be fully deployed and have been in existence for less than 2 years, but show promise to make a significant business impact. And companies with technology platforms or applications that are deployed and have delivered a significant business impact/customer story.

Why enter? It’s a great opportunity to showcase technologies and services to the media, investment and general business community; providing validation of solutions to current and prospective clients.

Submission Deadline: Friday, April 3rd. Need to know more? www.mitxawards.org/technology

Doing something cool with digital technology in New England, or know someone who is? Get to the site, fill out a submission by next week. And plan to join us for dinner in June!

OK, I now return you to my regularly scheduled stream designed to inundate you with Anywhere.

Yesterday, I hosted an open Q&A webcast for analyst relations professionals. I recapped Yankee Group’s Q1 achievements, including our Framework Reports and our work tackling U.S. broadband policy issues, and previewed some of our upcoming research and events. There were some great questions addressed in the session and I encourage you to take a listen.

The webcast runs about 45 minutes: audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).

The information communications and technology (ICT) marketplace is on the verge of its most significant transformation yet and is poised to hit the $4 trillion mark worldwide by 2016. This transformation is shifting IT complexity into the network cloud, making it possible for the corporate experience to more closely reflect the consumer experience.

Yankee Group predicts that Anywhere IT will change the way people work, and dramatically reshape the enterprise vendor landscape. Even amid the current economic turmoil, Yankee Group analysts advise organizations to begin exploiting Anywhere IT now or risk losing a competitive edge.

Yesterday, Zeus Kerravala and I hosted a webinar where we discussed the impact of Anywhere IT, how it will transform the corporate worker and interactions with the extended enterprise and what companies should do today to prepare for this transformation.

The webinar runs about an hour: audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).

The downturn is forcing tough decisions about what remains core. In the past week, three telecom operators made their choice: KPN’s Belgian subsidiary BASE is outsourcing network operations to Alcatel Lucent; Nokia Siemens Networks will run Orange’s UK and Spanish networks; and Vodafone UK will hand over network maintenance and operations to Ericsson along with 350 employees.

They are not alone: Globally, deals are escalating in size, scope and length, according to our historical analysis of more than 800 telco outsourcing transactions since 2002. Operators will double annual expenditure on outsourced and managed services from $16 billion today to $32 billion by 2013, as noted in my report, Redefining the Core: Outsourcing and the Virtual Telco.

But let’s not get carried away. Outsourcing can bring rapid balance sheet results, but that doesn’t automatically translate into long-term business value. There’s a vast difference between externalizing to achieve financial re-engineering versus business transformation. Yet this is exactly where many operators and their investors are getting confused.

Scattergun usage of outsourcing as a weapon to cure all corporate ills is more than unwise, it’s dangerous. A vendor can nearly always be found to undercut internal operational costs – and how attractive if they can also rebadge employees, or pay a success fee up front to win the business.

While this might improve the bottom line, it won’t drive top line growth. That’s the real issue that operators must address – with or without external help.

Today we announced our “CIO’s Guide to Cost Cutting” series of reports which Steve Hilton and I have been working on for the past few weeks. In this series we demonstrate that businesses can achieve major cost savings by embracing Yankee Group’s vision of Anywhere IT. And by using Yankee Group’s legacy IT environment as a starting point for our cost modeling, we are able to quantify these savings for a typical SMB:

• Get a corporate wireless plan and save half. Stop reimbursing individual-liable cell phone bills and move everyone to a single, corporate plan. Apply a fair standard to qualify employees, adopt a common platform (like BlackBerry), and leverage your concentrated spend to provide better and more consistent support to more employees than you do today. Our test SMB saved $96,000, or 47 percent in the first year alone — and eliminated dozens of paper expense reports each month.
• Ditch your mail server(s) and save over 80%. Moving from traditional Lotus or Microsoft premises-based e-mail application to a cloud-based messaging solution like Google Apps Premier Edition saved our model SMB a staggering 83 percent (about $64,000) in the first year. The three-year savings approached 90% (more than $200,000).

“Less” and “worse” all too commonly follow budget tightening, but “different” gives “better” and “more” a fighting chance.

In a recent Yankee Group report on Nokia’s Service Strategy, I mentioned said that some handset manufacturers could pursue a similar strategy and some could not. I said Research In Motion (RIM) aka Blackberry was one of those who could be selling applications but wasn’t doing so extensively. Last week the analyst community was given a chance to peak under the hood of RIM’s applications strategy, and the hot topic was the announcement of Blackberry App World.

Whereas I could only find just under 90 applications for sale on the RIM / Blackberry website, the company says there are “thousands” available through third-party developers and the new App World is designed to facilitate their distribution and sale. The revenue split with developers is very attractive but the company will not discuss — for obvious reasons — the splits they are negotiating with operators. Giving about 10 points more than usual to developers, RIM says they are not trying to make a huge profit on the site but rather to encourage applications and the relevance of the Blackberry to end users.

In the logic of my recent paper, RIM is subsidizing the developer side of the two-sided Blackberry application market to encourage the supply of applications and by so doing, encourage the development of the Blackberry operating system itself.

The launch will come “soon” but for now only in the US, UK and RIM’s home market of Canada. Asia Pacific is the next priority (no date yet) and other regions will follow.

Certification of applications will have two steps: certification of the developer and certification of the particular application. RIM says this should take less than 10 days but this still means a careful certification process and so not a rapid buildup of titles. But given Blackberry’s core franchise of users perhaps an Apple App Store kind of title list is unnecessary.

The company expects most applications to be enterprise oriented but App World will be designed for individual purchases not for CIO’s licensing their entire Blackberry base. This reflects the trend we at Yankee Group call the “Consumerization of the Enterprise”. Enterprise-oriented smartphones like the Blackberry have to serve two masters: the CIO AND the individual user.

Usually it takes me much less time to break my new years resolutions, but my strenuous objections to joining Twitter finally succumbed today. The pressure of having to be witty for the 300 to 500 words a blog requires is just too high. I mean last week I couldn’t even think of a whimsical title for my Apple post! So from now on you can find my insights* both here and on Twitter. My username is JoshSMartin or I can be found via my Yankee Group e-mail, jmartin@yankeegroup.com. You can find me there until a service that only demands 50 characters or less becomes in vogue.

*insights and wit are not guaranteed but I promise to try my best