Repositioning for Success
We have now reached a break point compelling enough for ICT eco-system players to form a strategic attack plan, and create and capitalize on an early-mover advantage
Generally defined as a “merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole”, convergence has become an easy word, yet as fashionable, to throw at the next challenge that presents itself to the ICT world. It is a word that has survived many different stages of convergence between information and communication technologies and the value domains they have created along the path. The chain reaction we see so far inevitably threatens yesterday’s successful business models while creating new paradigms and business opportunities ahead.
We have now reached a break point compelling enough for ICT eco-system players and their beneficiaries to recognize such new opportunities, form a strategic attack plan, create and capitalize on an early-mover advantage while leveraging their current market presence.
The Vicious Path of Convergence
We have left behind us convergence phases that created computing platforms, network elements and media engines which are common and scale to varying needs of information and communication services across service provider and enterprise domains. These earlier phases helped different applications and service islands to share a common infrastructure while benefiting from improving quantitative attributes such as capacity, speed, resolution, QOS. (Figure 1)
Today’s front-page articles put convergence around the Fix-to-mobile Convergence (FMC) and User Devices. FMC, at the first look, is the name of the race amongst wireline and wireless carriers to become a universal network provider. To much of their dismay, though, ICT users’ service and activity domains across business and private settings and their view of mobility and presence across web services have evolved to a much broader scale and complexity than the carriers’ scope. Therefore, FMC will involve solution providers that are shaping up enterprise and web domains to also claim a part in the end solution.
Liberation of User Identity
In the meanwhile, emerging user devices under the name of smartphones, notebooks and pocket PCS are already leapfrogging to a more universal world. (Figure 2)