Telecommunications Architecture Corner

Operators have a golden opportunity to increase revenue streams from new  data services by delivering the personal services subscribers want. Application management is driving a new wave of mobile technologies.

In the mobile world, users are the ultimate arbiters of which applications and services are useful to them. Regardless of what is delivered pre-installed on a particular device, users will only embrace and use those applications and services they need and want. Consumers are demanding a more personalized, customized mobile data experience, while enterprises are mobilizing business-critical applications.

At the same time, mobile operators and service providers are looking to deliver a wider set of services to users - promoting increased mobile Internet activity is one route to meeting increasingly diverse customer needs and creating new revenue streams. Mobile operators are working with Internet service providers and others to help them build and deploy new and compelling services: services which can be tailored to the diverse requirements of both consumer and enterprise customers.

This should be a win-win situation for all. Consumers get the personalization they crave; businesses get the applications they need to be more efficient and effective and operators continue to increase their revenue streams. However for this to become a reality, it is critical for operators to have the flexibility to customize the handsets and services delivered to customers. These services depend on applications, all of which need to be deployed to and managed on subscriber devices.

Until recently, mobile operators have pre-packaged selected applications onto the devices they supply, hoping to capitalize on the mobile application opportunity. However, a number of factors have restricted this opportunity, including: limited operator control over the handset build; the need to define service requirements as much as 24 months prior to device launch; limited ability to adjust pre-loaded applications or services during the device lifecycle and the fact that specific applications can generally only be deployed onto a few handset models, representing only a very small proportion of the user base.

Mobile operators are now starting to overcome these issues by working with partners to provision new services and applications on subscriber handsets after they are deployed. In doing so, they have opened the door to a cost-effective way to improving and personalizing the individual end-user experience.

Application management systems deliver applications or application updates over the air to mobile devices. The ability to dynamically enable new services and applications on subscriber handsets after they are deployed is effectively changing the rules of the game. Service provisioning can be ‘de-linked’ from the handset development cycle, enabling operators to distribute applications at the point of sale or while the handset is in use. As market conditions and subscriber preferences change, services can be optimized through over-the-air updates to the applications. The usage of services can be monitored, tracked, and used to determine trends and preferences.
Most importantly, application management can be applied to every device in the marketplace, enabling a proactive ‘push’ model for offering new applications and services. This drives a more diverse set of mobile propositions for users, giving a whole new interactive dimension to the relationship between operators and their subscribers. Service providers can flexibly tailor packages of services to groups of subscribers across device platforms at any point in time. These packages can be heavily targeted, combining specific applications together with such things as a customized look-and-feel and menu structure.

In addition, the ability to dynamically enable new services and applications reinforces the role of the mobile operator as service provider by offering a central point of management for subscriber devices. The operator ensures that the device and services are optimized; this underpins a great user experience and ensures that the operator can retain primary control of the mobile customer relationship.

On the enterprise side, the dynamics are different. The enterprise is mobilizing but until recently, the most commonly mobilized enterprise applications have been a small percentage of corporate email in-boxes and one-off enterprise applications (e.g., CRM), for specific groups of employees. A more general mobilization of enterprise applications is underway. Illustrating the point, ABI Research recently forecast that mobile application revenue will grow at a CAGR of over 102 percent to reach $5 billion by 2012.

To underpin this increasing mobilization, IT organizations need the ability to manage and secure the mobile environment remotely. Application management is a critical capability, enabling IT departments to support the initial distribution and subsequent update of mobile applications, change application policies and settings, enable application audit and inventory and provide visibility into the applications and versions on the device when there are problems.

However, most enterprises do not currently have these capabilities and until they do any business wide mobilization efforts will be fraught with problems. Without these capabilities most organizations will struggle to get things like sales force or CRM applications onto the diverse range of handsets used by their employees. Even if they do, they then have the problem of maintaining and updating them. They won’t be able to use the systems management tools they have typically used in their IT environments, not least because these mobile devices are unlikely to be connected to their corporate networks in the same way as laptops and PCs.

It is for these reasons that enterprises are looking for management solutions to support their mobilization efforts. A recent survey of top-500 CIOs highlighted a significant increase in both the number of enterprise users of high-end mobile devices as well as a significant increase in the number of mobilized applications.

Growing usage will undoubtedly lead to a need for more management. Furthermore, it is clear that enterprises are looking for help in managing an increasingly complex and business-critical mobile environment. For mobile operators this represents a significant opportunity, especially when you consider that 92 percent of the CIOs surveyed indicated that they are looking to mobile operators to be involved in the provision of management and security services. Operators should be creating value-added device and application management services tailored to the specific needs of the enterprise. Not only does this satisfy a critical need for one of the most profitable customers segments for any operator, it creates new revenue steams while also deepening the relationship between operators and their enterprise customers.

This is an exciting time for the mobile industry. The advanced mobile services market is burgeoning and long-awaited technologies for delivering and managing mobile  applications are now available.
Application management technologies support top-line strategic objectives to expand the revenue streams from new data services and enable a more customized experience for subscribers. These technologies also help strengthen the operator’s service provisioning role. For operators, the execution of application management strategies in the enterprise segment will differ from the consumer segment. In either case, the market is crying out for faster mobilization of applications and services and the mobile operator has a golden opportunity to lead and make it happen.

Reference: mCube Digital