Summary Bullets:
- Every year, many of our analyses get largely ignored – read many fewer times than the rest. In 2015, the topics of these reports were varied, including: big data, OSS/BSS, branding, video, SDN/NFV solutions and corporate acquisitions.
- In many ways, the least read reports shared common themes with the most read reports. To that end, all include important insights key for telecom vendor and operator success.
Looking at the top-read reports of 2015 (see What Was Hot in 2015: The Technologies, Topics, and Events You Cared About) was an exercise in tracking what was most important in telecom over the last year. It might not be surprising, then, that SDN/NFV, 5G and strategic vendor moves (acquisitions and partnerships) dominated the list. Against that backdrop, it should be surprising that many of the same topics were well represented in a list of our least-read reports. And yet, looking at reports that generated well below average readership (25% or less of the average 2015 report), this is exactly what we found; reports focused on SDN/NFV, 5G, vendor acquisitions…not to mention video solutions, data analytics and back-office evolutions.
The message?
The reasons for any given analysis generating fewer hits than average may vary – from weak interest to event timing that puts many people out of the office when our analysis is published. Regardless, these reports still include critical insights into the market and insights into how vendors and operators, alike, need to be thinking about their strategies.
What follows are 10 of our least-read analyses from 2015, mirroring our Top 10 report, along with an explanation of why they deserve more attention than they might have gotten. These all represent important themes that shaped 2015 and will remain relevant into the new year.
- TEOCO Supports the 5G Innovation Center, but Backing Does Not Alter Portfolio Limits. 5G discussions are often dominated by RAN considerations and network infrastructure heavyweights. The importance of the service layer (planning, analytics, end-to-end visualization) – and smaller players supporting it – cannot be overlooked.
- Corporate and Product Rebranding – Useful or a Convenient Diversion and Just a Costly Expenditure? By now, the themes of telecom vendor messaging and re-branding are well-worn: service velocity, organizational change, immediacy, vendor-operator partnerships, solution engineering. However they are expressed, it’s important to understand how they compare and how effective they are.
- Ericsson Integrates BDA into Preemptive Services to Meet Operator Demand for Robust Incident Management. Data analytics have long been hyped as critical to transforming service provider operations and business models. Ericsson is a telecom networks leader and professional services heavyweight. The intersection here might not be revolutionary, but it does point to service evolution.
- ‘X’ Marks the Spot as Comverse and Acision Become Xura; Smart Branding Now Needs Smart Execution. Combining an acquisition (Acision by Comverse) and rebranding with legacy messaging expertise, the newly minted Xura should have been something competitors paid attention to – if only since many established network equipment providers are partners in the midst of developing their own communications solutions.
- ActiveVideo Books a Flight to Joint Acquisition by ARRIS and Charter. As video and multi-play competition intensifies, the acquisition of ActiveVideo – a cloud-based UI and video app player – by a video networking incumbent and a cable operator points to a potentially important new market dynamic.
- Overture Creates the First VNF for CE 2.0 Services (ECE), but Is It Free to Run Anywhere? As much as NFV represents an opportunity for operators to transform their networks (and vendors to profit from the transformation), it was bound to attract the focus of a wide array of vendors. Where Carrier Ethernet services are a prime VNF target, understanding how CE specialists are playing in the space is important.
- Sonus Takes a ‘Treq’ Deeper into the SDN Control Plane: Good Fit, but Small Scale. Despite being a small acquisition of assets with limited proven traction, movements in the SDN solution space – especially where they could span service provider and enterprise use cases – should be of interest to everyone evaluating their SDN strategies. That should mean every network infrastructure vendor and telecom service provider.
- Infinera Introduces Open Transport Switch Product, Addressing the Part of SDN That It Can Uniquely Do. Again, we see the breadth of technologies and services touched by SDN along with an example of how specialists (here, an optical networking vendor) are leveraging their specific expertise to tap the trend.
- The Quest for Dominance: OpenFlow or NETCONF for Networks Outside the Data Center? While SDN and NFV discussions have often implied the primacy of OpenFlow, NETCONF (along with YANG) has proven more than capable of managing routers and switches, all while playing well with SDN. As suggested in early 2015, we would see both vie for operator attention throughout the year.
- Alepo: Planning to Make Data Plan Shopping Smarter with SE 9.2 Framework. Lost in the discussions of mobile network technology innovations is the discussion of how network capabilities will be fully monetized and how end users will actually choose from the options available to them. As a strategy for driving back-office success, addressing the issue – alongside a customer reference – is a move competitors need to understand.