Advancing business opportunities for service providers. (Viewpoint - Services).

An Aberdeen Executive White Paper discusses the need for service providers to adopt a robust, integrated platform for deploying personalized communication services that will suit the needs of consumer and business customers. The platform sets the stage for a cost-efficient, lifecycle adoption approach to new services. In addition, platforms form a springboard the next generation of "Web services, "which hold huge promise as open, efficient ways to assemble and deliver applications.

Mastery Over Complexity Is Essential

The ubiquity of the Internet and next-generation wireless networks is fueling a communications upheaval around the globe. All forms of messaging are soaring. In 2000, daily e-mails totalled 9.7 billion, according to industry estimates. In 2001, the daily number is expected to rise to 34.6 billion e-mails globally. Typical e-mail size is increasing as more users attach data objects to their messages. Furthermore, estimates hold that by 2002, one-third of all documents delivered globally will be moved electronically. This growth will be augmented by the wireless revolution. Research shows that before long, more people will access the Internet with a wireless device than with a wire-line personal computer. Already, an estimated 35% of the North American workforce is mobile. And, of the 400 million cellular telephone users worldwide, 300 million of them are accessing the Internet in some form. Currently, the biggest driver of mobile data services is text-based messaging from short-message service (SMS)

usage. An estimated 96% of all mobile data revenues in 2000 came from SMS usage, according to various industry reports.

Additionally, industry reports predict that worldwide corporate use of instant messaging will grow from 18 million users in 2001 to a projected 229 million users in 2005. Dwarfing those numbers is the burgeoning global use of Web- based instant messaging, which continues its rapid growth - both with business as well as with home users. Instant messaging is also growing in prominence as a way to contextually link applications to applications, not just people to people.

Given the speed at which multi-mode communications and new delivery modes are gaining ground, the pressure on businesses and service providers to manage the flow of information will compound. Such a multi-faceted challenge requires a sophisticated response. A proper mix of hardware, software, and support services is required to sustain these activities and to anticipate the new and compelling service demands to come.

Adapting to the Future - The Need for a Platform Approach

An industrial-strength, platform is needed to keep complex communications from spinning out of control. Service providers must expand their value-added application services offerings to stay in front of the commoditization curve. Analysis shows that messaging services will need to support not only e-mail and calendaring but also wireless multimedia messaging, unified communications, secure business transactions, and mobile commerce.

A specified platform must also enable business objectives such as building new revenue, reducing customer chum, efficient scaling of services, guaranteed quality of service, ease of user account management, and the ability to add new features that meet each individual subscriber's needs. The future direction of communication services requires infrastructure that can manage complexity, scale, interoperability, and higher levels of automation, while allowing for the integration of new components and by taking advantage of previous investments in existing systems.

The Value of Third-Party Identity Management

Providers also need to prepare for Web services by putting the platforms and directories in place that will enable them to lead users to Web services, rather than lose customers to another vendor's hold over identification and authentication services. The contents of the identity management system for any provider, portal, or Internet-savvy enterprise will rise dramatically in strategic value. Identity management is now at the focus of Internet computing.

Increasingly user profile information will migrate to directory services for every Internet-facing business process and customer solution. The directory will become the most valuable asset any company owns; yet very few enterprises can master the implementation or usage of directories. The solution to these problems is in an automated way to codify user policies and preferences - identifying users within the context of their communication services so applications and services can react intelligently to them. By using identity management and user profiles as the linchpin to a communication platform, service providers can control relationships with end-users enabling far broader application and services uptake.

Businesses and consumers, will need a trusted third-party service provider to organise the strategic benefits and power of consumer identity management. Trusted third-party service providers - from postal authorities to Internet service will allow customers to retain control over their profile information, sharing it only with mutually agreed arrangements.

Platform offers Optimized Services Lifecycle

An Internet standards-based platform approach to communications provides risk reduction, protection of investment, and the ability to adjust to rapid additional services adoption. Providers need an architecture that suits them in the long term as a flexible platform for new applications and aggregated components.

A standards-based platform implements services such as messaging cuts the costs for customized creation and development, and reduces the time to market (Figure 1). The ability to enter markets first, and to add new services quickly in volume, extends the opportunity to bill for the services - and staves off the trend to commoditization. The more applications that use the optimized lifecycle, the bigger the payoff from platform-based service revenue - and the higher the return on investment (ROI) for the overall platform.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Among the key communications components that any major provider should be prepared to offer as a baseline are e-mail and multimedia messaging, shared calendaring, wireless access, location and presence detection, SMS, personal address books, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer activities. These services - integrated through a centrally managed, distributed identity management service - will set the stage for a rapid services adoption lifecycle. Other applications beyond communications can be brought into the solution via the platform standards for reduced deployment times,

How Integrated Platforms Benefit Service Providers

Additional Revenue Per User

Service providers need to continually offer services that attract new customers and keep regulars coming back for more. Value-added services such as calendaring, personal address books, wireless access to multimedia content, instant messaging, and secure messaging build the average revenue per user (ARPU), while offering additional revenue opportunities for bundled services at different price-points. Building customer loyalty through an integrated end-user experience can reduce customer chum. These factors enable providers to recuperate the investment in each customer acquisition. Flexible platforms and enabling infrastructure lower cost per sale, with higher ARPU, increased numbers of products sold per customer, higher customer satisfaction and retention, and an overall larger "share of wallet."

Efficient Scaling of Services

Platform infrastructure in service provider environments must be strong enough to hold up the world. Consider the burden placed on a modern wire- less access provider's personal address book directory. As a leading provider of wireless access services in Asia, it has 10 million accounts, and each user has an average of 50 entries in his/her address book at any given time. This is a directory of 500 million entries that will be activated 5 to 10 times per day by each user. Additionally, public network and governmental needs - for e-mail for life, tax filing, bill payment, and postal services - require the highest scaling for mission-critical, secure document delivery and certified delivery services.

Quality of Service Guaranteed

Internet service providers, especially, need to sustain a reputation for supplying continuous uptime and high levels of reliability and performance. The directory must deliver high quality of service or risk inundating users with meaningless or redundant content. A lost e-mail could be a lost customer.

Ease of User Account Management

Account manageability is closely aligned with the integrated platform. The subscriber profile repository (database, directory, presence store), controls the delivery of personalized application results to users. Application content and transactional results may also be delivered to other affected applications regardless of network, platform, or the spectrum of edge devices.

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