The emergence of ubiquitous connectivity–changing the meaning of location in our lives as a global network lets us be wherever we want–provides enormously rich research fodder for Yankee Group analysts. The move to Anywhere is nothing more, but nothing less, than what we care about here.

Summer is for reading, and I enjoy seeing what our clients are reading of our analysts’ work. And read they do; to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the written word are widely exaggerated. (Mostly spread, I suspect, by people who don’t like to write!) Here are the six most widely read reports by thousands of Yankee Group clients in the last three months — and what they have to say:

1. Anywhere Network Scorecard: Phil Marshall sets out Yankee Group’s unique assessment methodology for the work we’ve begun to score global network providers on their journey to building out the Anywhere Network.
2. Surviving the Digital Home: Josh Martin calls out the winners — technologies, behaviors, companies — in the game to build out the fully digital home environment. Given spiralling energy costs, it’s good to see that tele-working will improve dramatically.
3. Riding the Wave from Mobile Commerce to Mobile Transactions: Jon Paisner, Chris Collins, and Nick Spencer explain how and when mobile transactions will finally emerge after years of wishful thinking, as Anywhere Consumers embrace financial services on mobile devices.
4. Advancing Mobile Applications through Managed Services: Nick Spencer shows how application architectures and the IT channel play in increasing adoption of enterprise mobility.
5. Thinking Beyond Flat-Rate Business Models: Ari Banerjee says that next-generation business models for network providers–charging a premium for quality of service, for instance– means tackling new kinds of charging technologies inside the network itself.
6. Finding a Femto Future: Roberta Wiggins forecasts the world market for femtocell technology: cool in-home bandwidth distribution that’s a game-changer for consumer broadband. But she also sees potential beyond residential applications, into the SMB/SOHO markets too.

The first report is available free on our homepage; the others are only available to Yankee Group Link Research clients. Check them out — and tell me what else you think we should be investigating on the road to Anywhere.  Happy reading!

The rattle of jackhammers and traffic gridlock welcome any visitor to London after the ides of March.

The UK financial year is ending: Spend your budget by April 5 or expect a cut, particularly if you’re in public works.

This year, the thud of suitcases locking and money swooshing down the Thames join this noisome mix. London’s non-doms and investors are in startled exodus.

The cause: severe new UK tax laws. And they’re empoverishing our industry.

Read the rest of this entry »

A certain whiff from the boys’ locker room has invaded the air. It’s hard to think otherwise when telcos persist in talking up the physical endowment of their infrastructure.

Step up for a dose of Febreze: End users - and particularly enterprises - don’t care about core and access technicalities, how many football pitches your datacenter assets cover, or the number of petabytes transiting your next-generation network.

What they demand is proof on how such infrastructure supports them. But if juvenile posturings rule our industry we fail our customers and we lose money.

The danger signs are here. In a recent Yankee Group survey on managed IT and communications services, a shocking 25% of large European enterprises told us they’d taken outsourced network management services back in house. Third party applications management and desktop management suffered similar fates. The reason: Service providers failed to deliver on promised quality or cost savings.

Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps it’s the influence of Lent, but I’m filled with the spirit of penitence. And in totting up my transgressions, it struck me that it’s hard not to sin in the converging industries of telecoms, media and IT - either personally, or professionally.

Clap me in irons, but I’m a Wifi piggybacker, shameless in the theft of bandwidth from those with unguarded networks. And in the bad old days before VOIP, I happily used callback services on my travels to reduce telephony costs.

In the late 1990s, the pan-European operator for which I then worked eagerly monetized bandwidth swaps with its peers. It made our balance sheet look good, and our highly-paid accountants advocated it. We also weren’t shy in refiling voice traffic via various island-based operators with favorable onward settlement rates.

Of course, there’s a difference between sins of omission, and sins of commission. But the problem is that what’s defined as a good, bad or just plain iffy can radically change in fluid industry environments.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always liked being a girl. You live longer and can blub freely at the Sound of Music. But the industry in which I work remains male dominated. And that demographic distorts how the industry views its innovations.

Take presence, a core component of unified communications (UC). To my mind, Susie Orbach needs to quit her riff on fat: Presence is a feminist issue.

I recently spoke at the U.K. Communications Management Association’s annual conference. In a two-day span, no less than 8 presentations advocating presence were made. I’ll single out John Mann, director of the Innovative Communications Alliance at Nortel EMEA. His live demonstration of presence was articulate, persuasive and technically flawless.

This went down awfully well. I looked across the sea of dark suits in the audience. Of course they love it, I thought, they’re (nearly) all men. It’s in their genes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let me be a nay sayer about global recession. In fact, if it happens at all, I’m betting recession will be a blessing in disguise for service providers worldwide.

Recently, the fat cats kibitzing over their fondues at the Davos World Economic Forum were eager to predict doom. They point to the turgid U.S. economy for evidence, and expect a global domino effect.

But I question how far this ill wind will blow.

The resurgence of the fiber optic cable market is a case in point. With few exceptions, the routing of new cables coming into service over the next few years illustrates the uncoupling of the U.S. economy from its central role. Instead, forthcoming cables such as Reliance Flag’s NGN system, IMEWE, TGN Eurasia, SEACOM and others are putting emerging economies on a redefined global map where interaction with Europe - and each other - figures large.

And let’s not forget the recently upgraded and expanded routes of Russia’s Transtelecom and Rostelecom which streamline trans-continental connectivity between Europe and Asia.

What we’re witnessing is the growth of new trade axes redefining traffic streams and demand.

Read the rest of this entry »