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5 Ideas for Amazon AWS
Although the number of solutions Amazon AWS is offering has become very large, here are 5 ideas of what Amazon could be adding next.
API Marketplaces
There are thousands of APIs out there. However what is missing is an easy way for companies to control their costs. In line with other marketplaces Amazon runs, there could be an API marketplace. An API marketplace would allow third-party API providers to let Amazon do the charging. Companies would be able to pay one bill to Amazon AWS and use thousands of APIs. Also third-party API providers would be winning because they often can not charge small amounts to a large set of developers. Amazon already sends you a bill or charges your credit card, hence adding some dollar/euro cents for external API usage would be easy to do. The third-party API provider would avoid having to lock-in users in large monthly usage fees to offset credit card and management charges. Amazon of course would be the big winner because they could get a revenue share on these thousands of APIs. End-users would also be winning because they can easily compare different APIs and get community feedback from other developers and pick those APIs with the best reputation. The typical advantages of any online marketplace. Also cross-selling, advertisement, etc. and other areas can be reused by Amazon. A final advantage would even be to have Amazon be in the middle and offer a standard interface with third-parties offering competing implementations. This would allow developers to easily switch providers.
Language APIs
A lot of applications would be helped if they could use language APIs that are paid per request. Language APIs is a group name for text-to-speech, speech recognition, natural language processing, even mood analysis APIs. These are all APIs that are available individually but there is a clear economies of scale effect. The more speech you transcribe or text documents you process, the better your algorithms become. Also there is an over-supply of English language APIs but an under-supply of any other language in the world, except for Spanish, French and German perhaps. Another problem with existing APIs is that a high monthly volume is needed in the even the most basic subscription plan. Examples are Acapela VaaS pricing that costs a minimum of €1500. Very few applications will use this amount of voice.
M2M APIs and Services
Amazon is already working hard on Big Data solutions. M2M sensors can generate large volumes of data pretty quickly. S3 or DynamoDB would be ideal to store this data. However what is missing is an easy way to connect and manage large number of sensors and devices and their accompanying applications. There are few standards but with examples like Pachube, Amazon should be able to get inspired. Especially the end-to-end service management, provisioning, SLA management, etc. could use a big boost from a disruptive innovator like Amazon. Also M2M sensor intelligence could be offered from Amazon, see my other article about this subject.
Mobile APIs and Solutions
With billions of phones out there, mobilizing the Web will be the next challenge. Securely exposing company data, applications and processes towards mobile devices is a challenge today. BYOD, bring-your-own-device, is a headache for CIOs. We do not all have a MAC so we can not sign iPhone apps and launch them on the App Store. Ideally there would be a technical solution for enterprises to manage private app stores, deploy apps on different devices and be able to send notification to all or subsets of their employees. Also functionality like Usergrid in which developers would not have to focus on the backoffice logic would be of interest. Also tools to develop front-end for different devices would be appreciated, examples like Tiggzi come to mind. There are a lot of island solutions but few really integrated total solutions.
Support APIs and Services
Amazon is becoming more and more important in the global IT infrastructure business. This means that solutions will move more and more to the Cloud and sometimes be hybrid cloud. With these complex solution scenarios in which third-parties, Amazon and on-site enterprise services have to be combined, risks of things going wrong are high. Support services both from a technical point of view:
- detect failures and to automatically try to solve them
- manage support ticket distributions between different partners
- measure SLAs
- etc.
as well as from a functional point of view:
- dynamic call centers with temporary agents
- 3rd party certification programs in case small partners do not have local resources
- 3rd party support marketplace to offer more competition and compare reputations
- etc.
are all areas in which global solutions could disrupt local and island solutions that are currently in place.
How to be part of the mobile revolution?
There are more phones sold than PCs. In the near future there will be many, many, many more phones sold than PCs. Also most of these phones will be smartphones. Tablets are also going to surpass PC sales in the coming years.
With so many mobile phones and tablets how can the telecom industry generate new revenues?
The first thing to understand is what are people doing on their mobile. Any other industry would need to start doing surveys. However the telecom industry just needs to check their networks. This is the first possible new revenue stream. Big Data business intelligence about what mobile users are doing. Are they buying apps? From where? Are they using apps? Which ones? Are they browsing the web? Where? The data volumes are massive but the value is extremely high. Machine learning could be used to cluster different types of users. As soon as these clusters are big enough then it is possible to sell the data. The more precise the clustering, the higher the value.
If you know what customers do, then help them to do it better
Via opt-in it would be possible to actively help users. Recommendation based on similarity is possible: other users have “bought this app”, “looked at this page”, “subscribed to this service”, etc. If successful then advertisement will generate revenues.
Enable others to accelerate the mobile revolution
What would an entrepreneur need to start a mobile business? Likely 80-90% of the needs are the same:
- Find capital
- Register a company
- Find employees
- Design a winning product strategy
- Set-up a mobile presence (mobile portal, news, blog, etc.)
- Develop mobile application or SaaS (user management, single sign-on, reporting, analytics, code versioning, etc.)
- Test mobile application or SaaS
- Deploy mobile application or SaaS to different stores.
- Charge for in-app or content
- Advertisement
- Sales & campaign management
- Accounting
- etc.
Be the restaurant, tool shop and hotel, next to the gold mine. Do not try to look for gold. Try to make money from the gold diggers. Provide enablement services.
What would an enterprise need to manage the mobile revolution?
Everybody brings their own smartphone and tablet to work. This can save the company millions in purchasing equipment but on the other hand costs a lot more money in management.
- Enabling new devices to connect to enterprise resources.
- Securing access (storage encryption, single sign-on, etc.).
- Monitoring usage.
- Mobilizing business processes.
- Helpdesk support.
- etc.
Bring your own device (BYODaaS) and mobile business processes as a service (MBPaaS) are areas to focus on.
What would consumers need from the mobile revolution?
Lots of things. Unfortunately consumers are already heavily catered for by Apple, Facebook and Google. Operators are likely to fail if they go in direct competition with over-the-top players. However operators also have a history of being difficult to work with, slow and greedy. There is no killer app. There are only some assets operators have that are still valuable:
- Who calls who? (On iPhones and Androids this asset is becoming less valuable)
- Free call forwarding (Lots of business models do not survive paid call forwarding, e.g. Voicemail in the Cloud, PBX for consumers, etc.)
- Quality of Service (every day seems more like location. A big promise but at the end somebody else found a workaround.)
- Micro-payments and micro-subscriptions (Visa, Google Wallet, Paypal & Square are heavily attacking this one.)
- Identity (MSIDN is globally unique but OpenID/oAuth and other innovations are allowing Facebook and others to offer almost global identity)
- etc.
The number of unique assets is shrinking. It is now or never to make money with them.
10 ways telecom can make money in the future a.k.a. telecom revenue 2.0
LTE roll-outs are taking place in America and Europe. Over-the-top-players are likely to start offering large-scale and free HD mobile VoIP over the next 6-18 months. Steeply declining ARPU will be the result. The telecom industry needs new revenue: telecom revenue 2.0. How can they do it?
1. Become a Telecom Venture Capitalist
Buying the number 2 o 3 player in a new market or creating a copy-cat solution has not worked. Think about Terra/Lycos/Vivendi portals, Keteque, etc. So the better option is to make sure innovative startups get partly funded by telecom operators. This assures that operators will be able to launch innovative solutions in the future. Just being a VC will not be enough. Also investment in quickly launching the new startup services and incorporating them into the existing product catalog are necessary.
2. SaaSification & Monetization
SaaS monetization is not reselling SaaS and keeping a 30-50% revenue share. SaaS monetization means offering others the development/hosting tools, sales channels, support facilities, etc. to quickly launch new SaaS solutions that are targeted at new niche or long tail segments. SaaSification means that existing license-based on-site applications can be quickly converted into subscription-based SaaS offerings. The operator is a SaaS enabler and brings together SaaS creators with SaaS customers.
3. Enterprise Mobilization, BPaaS and BYOD
There are millions of small, medium and large enterprises that have employees which bring smartphones and tablets to work [a.k.a. BYOD - bring-your-own-device]. Managing these solutions (security, provisioning, etc.) as well as mobilizing applications and internal processes [a.k.a. BPaaS - business processes as a service] will be a big opportunity. Corporate mobile app and mobile SaaS stores will be an important starting point. Solutions to quickly mobilize existing solutions, ideally without programming should come next.
4. M2M Monetization Solutions
At the moment M2M is not having big industry standards yet. Operators are ideally positioned to bring standards to quickly connect millions of devices and sensors to value added services. Most of these solutions will not be SIM-based so a pure-SIM strategy is likely to fail. Operators should think about enabling others to take advantage of the M2M revolution instead of building services themselves. Be the restaurant, tool shop and clothing store and not the gold digger during a gold rush.
5. Big Data and Data Intelligence as a Service
Operators are used to manage peta-bytes of data. However converting this data into information and knowledge is the next step towards monetizing data. At the moment big data solutions focus on storing, manipulating and reporting large volume of data. However the Big Data revolution is only just starting. We need big data apps, big data app stores, “big datafication” tools, etc.
6. All-you-can-eat HD Video-on-Demand
Global content distribution can be better done with the help of operators then without. Exporting Netflix-like business models to Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin-America, etc. is urgently necessary if Hollywood wants to avoid the next generation believing “content = free”. All-you-can-eat movies, series and music for €15/month is what should be aimed for.
7. NFC, micro-subscriptions, nano-payments, anonymous digital cash, etc.
Payment solutions are hot. Look at Paypal, Square, Dwolla, etc. Operators could play it nice and ask Visa, Mastercard, etc. how they can assist. However going a more disruptive route and helping Square and Dwolla serve a global marketplace are probably more lucrative. Except for NFC solutions also micro-subscriptions (e.g. €0.05/month) or nano-payments (e.g. €0.001/transaction) should be looked at.
Don’t forget that people will still want to buy things in a digital world which they do not want others to know about or from people or companies they do not trust. Anonymous digital cash solutions are needed when physical cash is no longer available. Unless of course you expect people to buy books about getting a divorce with the family’s credit card…
8. Build your own VAS for consumers and enterprises – iVAS.
Conference calls, PBX, etc. were the most advanced communication solutions offered by operators until recently. However creating visual drag-and-drop environments in which non-technical users can combine telecom and web assets to create new value-added-services can result in a new generation of VAS: iVAS. The VAS in which personal solutions are resolved by the people who suffer them. Especially in emerging countries where wide-spread smartphones and LTE are still some years off, iVAS can still have some good 3-5 years ahead. Examples would be personalized numbering schemas for my family & friends, distorting voices when I call somebody, etc. Let consumers and small enterprises be the creators by offering them visual do-it-yourself tools. Combine solutions like Invox, OpenVBX, Google’s App Inventor, etc.
9. Software-defined networking solutions & Network as a Service
Networks are changing from hardware to software. This means network virtualization, outsourcing of network solutions (e.g. virtualized firewalls), etc. Operators are in a good position to offer a new generation of complex network solutions that can be very easily managed via a browser. Enterprises could substitute expensive on-site hardware for cheap monthly subscriptions of virtualized network solutions.
10. Long-Tail Solutions
Operators could be offering a large catalog of long-tail solutions that are targeted at specific industries or problem domains. Thousands of companies are building multi-device solutions. Mobile & SmartTV virtualization and automated testing solutions would be of interest to them. Low-latency solutions could be of interest to the financial sector, e.g. automated trading. Call center and customer support services on-demand and via a subscription model. Many possible services in the collective intelligence, crowd-sourcing, gamification, computer vision, natural language processing, etc. domains.
Basically operators should create new departments that are financially and structurally independent from the main business and that look at new disruptive technologies/business ideas and how either directly or via partners new revenue can be generated with them.
What not to do?
Waste any more time. Do not focus on small or late-to-market solutions, e.g. reselling Microsoft 365, RCS like Joyn, etc. Focus on industry-changers, disruptive innovations, etc.
Yes LTE roll-out is important but without any solutions for telecom revenue 2.0, LTE will just kill ARPU. So action is required now. Action needs to be quick [forget about RFQs], agile [forget about standards - the iPhone / AppStore is a proprietary solution], well subsidized [no supplier will invest big R&D budgets to get a 15% revenue share] and independent [of red tape and corporate control so risk taking is rewarded, unless of course you predicted 5 years ago that Facebook and Angry Bird would be changing industries]…
Usergrid – An impressive open source Mobile PaaS example
Apigee bought Usergrid. Usergrid is the type of Mobile PaaS that you would expect mobile operators to be launching. Usergrid is open source as well as available as a hosted service. Usergrid allows mobile developers to focus on mobile apps and not on the server. Everything from storing users, groups, roles, single sign-on authentication, social aspects (e.g. likes), feeds, queries, connections between users and objects (e.g. which friends of user X like restaurant Y), etc. is dealt with via an incredibly easy REST API. Usergrid also comes with toolkits for easy iOS and Android development.
Usergrid is impressive both as an idea as well as in how easy it is to build complex mobile applications, e.g. collective voting during a conference, etc. without back-end developement.
What is next?
Combining Usergrid with one of the many visual drag-and-drop mobile app development tools would allow users to create complete mobile apps without coding.
Being able to integrate other API based services into the same visual drag-and-drop development tool would allow even more complex applications: e.g. look at programmableweb for a list of thousands of public APIs. However ideally also private APIs (e.g. towards enterprise back-office systems) could be incorporated.
Finally being able to monetize these new mobile apps via in-app advertisement, enterprise mobile app stores, etc. would motivate developers to build millions of useful mobile apps.
Mobile PaaS is a very exciting domain and operators should be very actively investing in it…
What comes after SaaSification?
Fujitsu just presented SaaSification on Cebit. Existing applications can be easily brought to the Cloud and sold via App Stores and SaaS marketplaces. IBM is also working on SaaSification and even adds multi-tenancy.
What is next?
Everybody wants to have a full App Store or SaaS Marketplace, so SaaSification is the next step after launching your store. However converting a client/server application to the Cloud is only step 1. Step 2 is creating new services that are specifically built for the Cloud.
What does Built-for-the-Cloud means?
Application design is changing. Traditional Web applications are built on a LAMP architecture. New Cloud-Ready applications should be Big Data ready and should be looking at SMAQ architectures.
Cloud-Ready applications should also accept the new reality of APIs. Both for exposure as well as consumption. This means that applications need to be redesigned according to application slices.
So if SaaSification wants to be successful then it needs to add quick enablers for multi-tenancy, big data, integration with external APIs as well as API exposure, etc. This integration concept can be called iPaaS or integration platform-as-a-Service. iPaaS should not only focus on exposing or integrating APIs but on providing complex services by integration multiple SaaS solutions together.
Other enablers should be added as well. Basically 80% of a SaaS solution consists out of the same elements or tries to solve the same problems. These could all be provided via a SaaSification PaaS:
- Blog – to describe the newest ideas.
- Forum – for people to get answers from the community.
- IT PaaS – where you run the actual business logic and UI. Data storage is assumed to be provided by the Big Data elements.
- Portal and Mobile Portal – allows to quickly define the “static” content for the web and mobile site.
- Deployment management – ideally continuous deployment or integration tools that allow fast feature by feature deployment.
- A/B testing – allow new features to be deployed to subsets of users and check which version of a feature has the highest impact on the bottom-line. A/B testing was made popular by Amazon.
- Automated testing – lots of testing can be automated but especially end-to-end and performance testing are the harder tests that should be focused on.
- Configuration management – manage the version control of the code.
- Metering and billing – be able to meter the resource usage by users, companies or any other element you want to meter and be able to bill users both for subscriptions as well as for usage, ideally with advanced set-up with overage, etc.
- Marketplace listing and provisioning – automate the listing of products on the marketplace as well as the provisioning of new services.
- Single sign-on & identity management - allow companies to use their own user credentials (e.g. SAML), authorization for third-parties (e.g. oAuth), etc.
- Reporting and data warehousing – this can be part of the big data stack but especially being able to create ad-hoc reports for instance for A/B testing . Of course regular business reporting needs to be included as well.
- ERP – accounting, resource management, etc.
- CRM – sales and lead management
- Operations & Maintenance – automation of back-ups, monitoring both for the performance and fault management but as well business monitoring.
- Support – helpdesk, ticketing system, SLA management, etc.
- Social integration – tools to add social aspects like Facebook apps, Twitter feeds, etc.
- etc.
The idea is not that a SaaSification PaaS offers all these solutions by custom development. Instead the SaaSification PaaS should allow startups to assemble an ideal architecture by combining different solutions from different providers. For example you would be able to select the support solution you prefer, e.g. desk.com, zendesk.com, etc. and this solution would be completely integrated into the overall stack, e.g. CRM integration with help desk and fault management together with sign sign-on.
SaaSification 2.0 should focus on making sure that 2-5 people can start a new dotcom solution and focus on creating a killer service and not on building up yet another stack of solutions for configuration management, support, billing, etc. If a SaaSification PaaS can shorten the time to launch with months and reduce the needs to operate the solution with several people then startups will see the value. Instead of SaaSification PaaS a good term could be Incubation PaaS, to incubate SaaS solutions. Once the business model and solution is proven, there will be money to move to a custom-build stack but during incubation and crossing-the-chasm enterpreneurs should be able to focus on delivering value to their customers and not on re-inventing the startup wheel.
Social Niche Marketplaces and SaaSification
Google App Marketplace was the first marketplace for SaaS. However there has lately been an explosion of SaaS marketplaces. Unfortunately most of them are eCommerce sites that support subscriptions and resell Microsoft 365, some cloud backup and 3 to 5 things more.
Operators that are considering such a me-too marketplace should try harder
There is nothing like an average enterprise customer. Each customer is looking for a unique mix of services. You have innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards. You have self-employed, micro, small, medium and large companies. You have industries. Users are working on different functions within a company (finance, operations, sales, etc.).
However never has it been easier to personalize product portfolios according to market segments, industries, adoption likelihood, usage, etc. Operators should not set-up one marketplace but instead set-up intelligent personalized niche marketplaces. Users can tell you which industry they belong to, what their company size is, what their function is and if they are more eager to use the latest and greatest or if they want a full eco-system with a market leading product. This means that a highly personalized portfolio can be shown instead of a bunch of generalist products.
Why sell different products via different channels?
If you have customers segmented, then ideally all relevant products are presented in one personalized marketplace. Ranging from phones, tablets, mobile apps, SaaS, on-site equipment, advanced consultancy services, support, etc.
Bringing in intelligence and social commerce
The next step is to increase the likelihood of selling a product and cross-selling products. Users like product reviews and ratings. However users love product reviews and ratings from people they trust. What if each product in addition to a general section on product reviews and ratings also has a social review section. The social review section would be like:
- these contacts from my linkedin network have bought this service
- these contacts have bought these alternative services
- their ratings are
- in addition they also bought these services
How to go from 0 to 1.000.000 products?
Many operators offer services for “the average customer”. The product catalog is relatively small. Few have more than a couple of niche products per industry. Setting up a social niche marketplace is no good if you do not have a large catalog of personalized services to sell.
SaaSification to the rescue. Every industry has a lot of small companies that have build niche products. Most of these products require on-site installations. This means a lot of CAPEX. Often more is spend on buying the hardware, base software, services to maintain the data center, support services, etc. than on the actual software. By offering these small companies a SaaSification solution whereby they can migrate their on-site solution to an operator-hosted SaaS solution, the product catalog can be quickly extended with thousands of niche products. Offering tools to make single-tenant solutions multi-tenant and to make web solutions mobile-enabled, will substantially improve your chances to attrack ISVs.
New SaaS will move from the innovators towards the early adopters, early majority, etc. Early majority products will be niche market leaders, have strict SLAs, a support eco-system, etc. Leading products can be identified by the market. Operators can spot those niche market leading products and offer special deals, even co-branding. This strategy will allow a personalized long tail strategy without the long tail costs…
2012,The Enterprise Apps revolution
2012 will be the year in which Apple’s mobile app revolution will be translated to every device (PCs, tablets, mobiles, signage, m2m, cars, TVs, etc.) and to the enterprise. Instead of a static company portal and an IT-driven software selection, 2012 will bring apps to the enterprise. Workers will be able to use their PC’s browser as well as a BYOD (bring your own device) to select apps from a company-wide or global enterprise app store. No longer will you have to pay for an annual license to edit a video, image or CAD drawing if you only use it twice a year. Software will be a lot more social. Not only IT will loose power, also marketing and upper management. Crowd-sourcing can allow employees to vote and rate and as such let content and opinions bubble up that might not always fit upper management’s strategy. However when used correctly the opinions are likely to beat any internal reporting system or dashboard in accuracy.
What is still pending?
Except for easy-to-use apps, inter-app and Backoffice integration is very important. Expect new “standards” based on innovative dotcom solutions in this area. Enterprise PaaS, a là Salesforce.com but often in private cloud, will move a lot of Excel and Access apps into SaaS apps. Employees will be the major enterprise app creators and no longer programmers.
Easy over training
This app revolution will focus on mini apps with basic functionality and no longer full enterprise solutions that do everything but in a too complex way.
Telecom’ s involvement?
What I described so far sounds like an IT platform and solution however it will span communication services as well. The link between IT and telecom will become very blurry. For this reason it is important for operators to be active in this market.
Mobile SaaS Enablement Platforms, why are operators not offering them yet?
Cloud Computing is reaching the tipping point. SaaS is on the verge to balloon. Mobile apps are moving to the enterprise as we speak. Small, medium and large companies will need to mobilize their back office systems.
What better a solution can operators offer then a mobile SaaS enablement platform? A platform in the cloud that allows companies to connect in a secure way their back office systems and to expose internal data to third-party mobile SaaS. Hundreds of small software companies can be making specialized mobile SaaS offerings to allow companies to easily “approve travel expenses”, “monitor KPIs on the go”, “remotely reserve a meeting room”, etc.
Unified Back-office Exposure
Companies would find tools to expose internal data sources and back-office systems as web services. Data islands are exposed and protected via technologies like oAuth. User management and security are managed from a central dashboard. Unified web services interfaces can standardize the exposure of different back-office systems, allowing for mobile SaaS applications to work independent from for instance the back-office ERP that is being used.
The operator is the perfect companion to expose internal resources via secure communication links.
SaaS Builders
Developers can find a list of tools that take the repetitive tasks out of creating SaaS. Federated user management, multi-tenancy data store, mobile interface designer, integration frameworks (messaging, web services, oAuth, etc.), virtual application servers, long tail monetizing tools (e.g. subscription management), on-demand call center and CRM tools for support, etc.
Enterprise App Stores
Employees can access enterprise app stores in which they can use mobile SaaS applications, either on subscription basis (hourly, daily, monthly, yearly, etc.) or after one-time purchasing. Everything goes immediately on the cost center of their department after manual or automatic approval and is paid via the enterprise’s telecom invoice.
Long Tail Support
Eco-systems of support organizations, on-demand call centers, online trainings and certification programs, etc. can all make sure that enterprises get the support they need.
Show me the money
Operators can charge for sign-up or listing fees, get revenue shares from mobile app sales and support subscriptions, etc. Developers can move solutions from public app stores to enterprise app stores and charge instead of €0.79, several (tens of) euros as a one-time or subscription fee. Software would no longer have to be purchased by IT but can be “used when needed” and only paid for when it really solves a business problem. Also end-users would be able to use the software they really need and not have to wait for a corporate policy update.
