Inside DiVitas

Carriers Need to Wake up and Smell the FMC Money

By DiVitas Chief Blogger

A few weeks ago I was surfing the Web and came across an amazingly bizarre article about how a Sprint customer passed away right around Christmas. This guy’s Sprint phone was bought at a subsidized price, and thus came with the typical two-year service contract, which Sprint insisted was still current and refused to terminate.

Given the man’s unexpected death came a just few days before Christmas, you can imagine how devastated his family must have been over his sudden death (he had adult children handling the debacle with Sprint).

Now imagine how his family reacted to the response from Sprint: sorry dude, a contract is a contract and you can’t get out of it, even if you’ve permanently stop breathing.

Reading about this family’s struggle with Sprint over the staggeringly petty issue of canceling a single consumer’s contract really struck home to me – The carriers just don’t get it. Instead of embracing the mobile-convergence market, the carriers are actually ignoring a huge opportunity in this fast-growing space. They are showing how rigid they are by sticking their heads in the sand, ignoring not only customer service but the opportunity to grow with this emerging market.

Carriers today view mobile-convergence as a threat, as something that will cause their customers to spend less money on cell minutes. What they fail to realize is that while the consumer segment is near saturation, the pool of potential business-cell minutes are practically untouched.

Even if a mobile-convergence user replaces some cell minutes with free WiFi minutes, carriers also – really – need to realize there is a large emerging business opportunity. An enterprise will buy data plans for its mobile workers once it adopts a mobile Unified Communications solution that includes a Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) component;a data plan is required for email, Instant Messaging and Presence.

Cha-ching! See? Mobile-convergence users will actually spend more money on carrier services in the long run.

Ironically, for all of the fuss, there’s really no great sacrifice or effort for carriers when it comes to getting behind the mobile-convergence movement. It basically means they need to encourage handset manufacturers to offer a wider variety of dual-mode handsets models. And they need to encourage manufacturers to innovate in technology areas such as improving battery life and WiFi performance, on devices that have been built so far.

It also means unlocking phones so that they are not tied to your proprietary cellular network.

On this matter, it seems that Verizon is one carrier that started to see the light. In November, the company announced this year it would open its network to “any apps, any device.” I say bully for you!

According to The New York Times, which printed an article on the Verizon announcement, “…Verizon will offer two flavors of service: its traditional bundle, which typically includes a subsidy for phone purchase and various other features, and a “bring your own” device service, which will be open to any device that meets “minimum technical standards.”

Verizon has not yet 100 percent crystallized details of these plans for public consumption, and there may be a downside for using a non-Verizon certified phone. Nonetheless, it’s a step that should help spur a very positive trend among carriers. If this is the beginning of a trend, this is good news for companies like DiVitas and, moreover, our users. This is because we should see more innovation in the area of dual-mode handsets.

And under this unlocked scenario, a family of Verizon users wouldn’t necessarily get stuck paying for a 2-year contract in the event of sudden personal catastrophe.

Frankly speaking, carries should just stop haggling for one minute over a few measly bucks, and instead put their energy into the mobile-convergence movement for business. They just might find themselves with some great money-making opportunities.

I think it’s called keeping “your eye on the enterprise prize.”

So when did being proprietary become cool?

By DiVitas Chief Blogger

I just read an interesting NetworkWorld article by Joanie Wexler that talked about Avaya’s new software solution for enabling mobile convergence. In explaining the technology and Avaya’s product positioning, the article quoted an Avaya official as saying, “… the system is not intended to be PBX-agnostic.”

That quote made me chuckle a little bit and definitely gave me cause-for-pause. After all, I work for a mobile-convergence company (and we often get lumped into the same market space as Avaya) with a mantra of being agnostic to every-and-all components of the mobile communications infrastructure: PBX, handset, WLAN, carrier network, channel partners and strategic partners, etc.

In fact, when you think about it, boasting about not being PBX-agnostic these days seems as politically incorrect as say, “Hey, check out the great deal I just got on a cool pair of Siberian-Tiger pants.”

While I understand that for Avaya, mobile-convergence is only a single component of a larger mobile solution, and selling the entire solution is the end-goal, somehow its product’s “non-agnostic-icity” just doesn’t seem to be the coolest thing to be showcasing. Not in today’s “down with proprietary” world.

Also worth mentioning was NetworkWorld’s laundry list of like-vendors playing in the same space. It’s amazing how grown up the mobile-convergence market has become in such the short space of time since DiVitas began shipping our product (one year ago).

But while these product solutions may appear similar in their mobile-convergence technology, there are a lot of ways to slice-and-dice this group, and in particular, it should be noted that there’s still a whole lot vaporware disguised as shipping product out there.

The list of mobile-convergence vendors who can today invite you to “kick the tires” is, in fact, a much more elite group.

FMC Travel Recap: Interop New York

By Vivek Khuller

I traveled recently for several months, solidly. I expect to be on the road a lot this year as well, but in the meantime, I’m giving a recap of my recent journeys to London, Lisbon and New York.

Jenni and I went to New York to spend some time at Interop. Although we did not have a booth at this show (we had one in Las Vegas 2007), we attended the show because, in part, I was invited to sit on an FMC panel. While on this panel, the key message I put forth was how carriers can benefit from our solution.

There is a major incentive for carriers to embrace mobile convergence. What is the first thing an enterprise will do once it adopts mobile convergence? It will buy data plans for all of its end users. This translates to a lot of money going straight into carrier pockets. It also gives carriers the opportunity to lock in their customers for a longer period of time, with no threat of losing their business when plans expire. Who wants to go back to a more expensive solution? Deploying a mobile unified convergence system takes the burden off of renewing cell phone plans and enables more architectural wins. What’s not to love about that?

Mobile-convergence technology has arrived. What we need now is for dual-mode phones to catch up and let us finish the job. Dual-mode phone users expect an experience equal to what they get with their personal cell phones today. Given the upside to being a mobile-convergence proponent, carriers should encourage handset manufacturers to innovate in technology areas such as improving battery life and WiFi performance.

Mobile convergence is a win-win for DiVitas and carriers. Hopefully carriers will see the light very soon.

Stay tuned for my next travels and my reflections on DiVitas and our market.

Travel Recap: Lisbon

By Vivek Khuller

I traveled recently for several months, solidly. I expect to be on the road a lot this year as well, but in the meantime, I’m giving a recap of my recent journeys to London, Lisbon and New York.

After visiting London to attend our first channel summit, I made a stop in Lisbon.

Nokia’s annual worldwide channel conference was our next big adventure. The event was held in Lisbon and more than 200 of Nokia’s channel partners were invited. We had the honor and privilege of being the only small company included in this exclusive event.

Attending this conference gave us a chance to better understand Nokia as a company, build relationships with Nokia folks and build relationships with Nokia’s top partners.

Once again, with formal work stuff out of the way, it was time to have fun DiVitas-style.

We did some sight-seeing and got a fantastic education about Portugal. One big thing I learned was how similar Lisbon is to San Francisco as far as its culture and environment (not to mention its bridge- which looks much like the Golden Gate Bridge). For example, its neighborhoods are built around hills and they are all connected by an extremely good network of trams.

Travel Recap: London

By Vivek Khuller

Like most CEOs, I travel a lot, and the past few months have been no exception to that. Although I accomplish a lot while on the road, most of my computer time is spent answering e-mail, and unfortunately I haven’t had time to blog for the past few months. The good news is things have settled down and I’ll be posting monthly (alongside some other DiVitians who like to get their thoughts on “paper”).

No matter the destination or the mission, I try to make the most of my time when I travel. The highlights of my most recent travels were London, Lisbon and New York.

My first stop on my latest journey started in London.

We recently held our first channel sales conference and it was done DiVitas-style (we have fun but we are cost-effective at the same time). The conference was in London and so in keeping with the locale, we started early morning (despite terrible rain and foggy weather) with a traditional English breakfast. We allowed 30 minutes for networking and getting to know each other, and then we jumped in. Gordon, our VP of sales, gave the opening speech and then I made a presentation in which I talked about the company: philosophy, marketing strategy, channel marketing strategy and a technology roadmap.

Right. With all of the formal stuff out of the way, it was time to have fun.

We rented a Mercedes race track and allowed two attendees to drive a Mercedes of their choice, as fast as they could for thirty minutes. The lucky drivers were rewarded for answering the most questions about the lecture based on a pop quiz, which they were given at the end of the presentations. The rest of us watched the “racers” while eating lunch by the track. I’m sure some folks were kicking themselves for not paying closer attention.

We recruited new partners and everybody had fun, so I consider the day to have been a total success. Joanne (part of the UK sales and marketing team) did an awesome job organizing the event.

Later that evening, the DiVitas folks went to a typical English pub and did some US/UK bonding over warm beer and bangers.

While in London, we also took time to brief the European press about what’s been happening at DiVitas over the past six months. The last time we met with the Euro-press was at NetEvents in February, and a lot has happened since then. Europe has been a great market for us. Look for us at NetEvents again this Feb.