Enterprises are facing ever-more complex challenges in simplifying the delivery of network, communications, and collaboration services to their users, while trying to take advantage of the newest, most secure, and cost-effective services available.
Ovum’s Enterprise Telecoms team covers the networks and services that enable businesses to interact with employees, employees to collaborate with colleagues, and customers to communicate with the business. These include managed and hosted communications services, evolving communications networks, technologies, applications, and professional services. With this as our remit, we focus on providing guidance and advice to enterprises and service providers on unified communications for B2C and B2E environments, machine-to-machine, service management, enterprise mobility and network services – all within a framework of geographic and industry-specific insight.
Unlike many analyst houses, our enterprise team regularly interacts with suppliers and buyers during the sourcing process. This means our analysts’ perspectives are guided by practical and on-the-ground experience which is incorporated into our research program. Because we are regularly involved in the sourcing process, our view is always up to date and our opinions are not vendor-marketing-led.
Signature Research
Global Services Deals Analysis
Over 15 leading global telcos now supply us with anonymized detailed contract information, allowing us to build twice-yearly Global Services Deals Analysis studies. Every six months we plot key contracts for major global telcos, highlight successes in multinational deals, compare and rank operators for MNC market impact, identify strategic developments and trends in verticals or geographies, map telco capabilities against MNC requirements, and identify future market trends. While suppliers may use this research to track competitors, enterprises can use this, in conjunction with our enterprise strategy review profiles of each operator’s business services strategy, to understand operator capabilities and shortlist potential network and communications services partners.
Key Themes
Our Enterprise coverage areas support the Ovum Telecoms research super themes for 2012. Our planned focus on new communications applications provided on the “as-a-service” model aligns with the cloud coverage of other Telecoms practices and that of Ovum IT. We will also increase our focus on consumer-liable mobile devices used for business purposes, which will touch upon the connected devices super theme in Telecoms, as well as the consumerization theme in Ovum IT. In addition, we will continue to build on our strong reputation for coverage of customer experience management technologies and services, at the same time as we invest in analysis of new opportunities such as M2M and social media-enabled collaboration for telcos and enterprises alike.
Mobility and the enterprise
Mobility remains at or near the top of the agenda for enterprise ICT decision-makers. As more employees work anywhere, more enterprises are tackling the challenges of managing mobile devices, rolling out applications to support remote working, and developing the cost control, governance, and security infrastructure and best practices to ensure that the mobilization of the workforce supports the business’s overall objectives.
In 2012, we will cover managed mobility services from the device through to expense management, and the ways in which service providers are selling such services to corporates, and how companies can make the right decisions to enable their employees to work effectively from anywhere.
Enterprise cloud services and delivery models
Telcos have fully embraced cloud and utility computing. Ovum began analyzing telco-led cloud services three years ago, and we are sharpening our focus and ramping up our publications as the market takes off.
Our coverage of the enterprise cloud will include reports on user priorities and proclivities regarding cloud procurement, the evolving role of telcos and their networks in cloud provision, and strategies for cloud-based unified communications services.
Consumerization of enterprise communications
Consumerization threatens to replace cloud and M2M as the buzzword on everyone’s lips in 2012. In the domain of communications, the biggest impact of consumerization will continue to center on the bring-your-own- device (BYOD) phenomenon: more and more employees will bring their own smart devices to the workplace and either demand connectivity and support from increasingly harried IT staff or manage to hook the devices into corporate networks themselves.
We will survey employees (users) on attitudes and practices regarding their use of ICT and mobile devices, as well as IT managers regarding their reaction to such use and their plans to not just understand and control it, but turn it to their advantage. We will quantify consumer services used for business purposes and write on the use of consumer mobile applications in the enterprise, device management, and the emerging “social business.”
Evolving network and communications applications and services
In 2012 we expect there to be a further “productization” of managed communications services, as managed and hosted unified communications (UC) applications previously targeted at and geared towards smaller businesses evolve to support the needs of large corporates and multinationals.
Our coverage includes managed network services, telco IT services, and unified communications, from voice through to video. In 2012 we plan forecasts on IP trunking, Ethernet, IP VPN, fixed and mobile voice and data, managed and hosted IP voice, and contact center markets, technologies, and applications. We will continue to write on telco IT strategies, professional services, managed services deals, and customer interaction technologies and services.
M2M (machine-to-machine) communications
A huge opportunity exists to connect a skyrocketing number of devices to corporate systems, though doing so will prove tricky. Last year we covered service provider strategies in M2M, and in 2012 the Enterprise team will be working across Ovum Telecoms and IT to produce a comprehensive set of coverage on the Internet of things, including: analysis of vertical applications such as m- health, smart grids, fleet management, and the connected car; an investigation of vendor offers in M2M; and the opportunities for consumer goods, healthcare, and energy firms in M2M.
