At Verizon, M2M’s a game-changer

At a time when the cloud and mobility are fast changing the enterprise IT architecture, Verizon sees this combination disruptively changing the way the enterprise IT is delivered by the service providers. Apart from this, the machine-to-machine solutions, too, are finding significant takers in the global enterprise market, John Harrobin, chief marketing officer of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said during a recent media interaction. Excerpts:

How do you see the enterprise segment changing?
We see a massive disruption in the IT marketplace. It’s changing. The cloud plus mobility is the biggest such change. We believe there are a handful of people serving these changing machine-critical needs in the world. The technology for delivering enterprise IT is shifting to cloud base and this is massively disruptive. Here we see an opportunity for Verizon to reposition itself in the marketplace.

What is the kind of trend you notice there?
Technology today is able to deliver just everything as a service. The IT delivery model now requires cloud and mobility. Broadband networks wired or wireless plus cloud are not only resulting in cost savings but also bringing in business process transformation. The CIOs are beginning to emerge comfortable with consumerisation of IT. These trends jointly with the assets we already have make us compete very effectively in the global market.

How is Verizon positioned to take advantage of this?
In order to tap these opportunities we are also changing our practices at Verizon. We have a two-pronged approach for this and the first is to unlock the value in our core businesses. The second is about seizing opportunities in the high growth markets.

How are you aligning with the trend?
Historically, we have been responding to customers’ requests and building highly complex and customised solutions. In fact, clients pay us for doing that. It sounds good but there are two unintended consequences of this model. The first is we can’t replicate what we had built. The second is about clients scaling up their needs and this model makes it inflexible. It’s an issue that concerns the industry in general. But by taking a platform-based approach, we expose our platforms to the market place. Using these platforms, Verizon, clients or the third parties can deliver the required applications. This has many benefits for us and the clients as well.

How about the machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions market?
M2M is an equally big opportunity. Most of the enterprises are realising the need to deploy M2M solutions. I will give you an example. We worked with a global beverages major to deploy solutions to manage their vending machines. These machines now talk to each other and send the data to the company on what products are being sold and what flavours are being sold in a particular area. The machines also send data on inventory management, etc. There are many such sectors that are willing to move to M2M.

Which segments are slow in adopting cloud?
The financial community has been a little bit slow in coming to cloud. But we have started moving applications and functions that result in cost savings to cloud and test them on cloud.

Which areas are you keen on expanding in India?
Network and security is one important area. We know there is a need and demand for cloud in India. In fact, India is a growing market for the services and cloud is definitely an important part of the activity. We don’t have any mobility service in India, but our other services find good market in India.