Summary Bullets:
- Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive product line encompasses a slew of important capabilities, including analytics, CEM, IoT and OSS.
- To date, the vendor’s marketing in support of Motive has been sparse and, arguably, scattershot.
- A clearly defined and articulated marketing story is a key tenet of any strategy aimed at taking market share from incumbents.
At Alcatel-Lucent’s recently concluded Technology Symposium, held in New Jersey on November 11-13, the company devoted some of the program to talking about what it is doing with its Motive line of products. Google defines motive as “a reason for doing something, especially one that is hidden or not obvious.” That kind of sums up the marketing in support of the Motive product line. “Certainly not hidden, but not obvious” would be fair.
When acquired in 2008, Motive did device management. Now, six years later, the Motive product line is an umbrella that covers the company’s OSS, analytics, CEM and even IoT product portfolios. Arguably, these products sit right in the heart of Alcatel-Lucent’s Shift Plan – Chapter 2 story, which has been described as focusing on innovation, transformation and growth. Consider:
- It is widely acknowledged that OSS underpins a truly cohesive telco cloud and/or network virtualization strategy.
- It is widely accepted that analytics underpin next-generation customer satisfaction tools, retention schemes and revenue growth strategies.
- It is increasingly commonplace to view IoT as one of (if not the leading) drivers of the need for telecom-grade networking in a number of vertical industries… and one that will rely on OSS and analytics assets.
That is powerful stuff. And the world should know that Alcatel-Lucent has a clear, cohesive vision not only for what it all means, but also where it is all going.
Now, to be clear, we’re not just talking about marketing for marketing’s sake. A clearly defined and articulated marketing story is a key tenet of any strategy aimed at taking market share from incumbents. That is precisely what Alcatel-Lucent needs to do with Motive. Its OSS is all about disrupting the status quo of a deeply entrenched incumbent supplier base. Its CEM, while nicely deployed, does not command the same mind share as offers from Nokia, Amdocs and perhaps even Huawei or Ericsson. Its device management is quite well deployed, but does that translate into BDA dominance? Not yet.
Webster’s defines motive as “an inner drive that causes one to act in a certain way.” Leave it to the old standbys to help cut through the fog. In my mind, that’s what Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive strives to be: the inner drive of the ICT’s solution to customer retention, monetization and new market development – OSS, analytics, CEM and IoT – all increasingly, but not yet completely, obvious keys to future success in our industry.
Now, I think I’m starting to get it. Motive sounds like a marketer’s dream and nightmare rolled into one.