"93% of strategy execs said that exploring new business models is as important in this current economic climate as cutting costs and retaining customers."
STL Partners Brainstorm Participant Survey

Overview

Introduction/Background
Representing a set of new services and benefits, cloud represents the next wave of IT. Almost all organisations are saying that they will adopt cloud computing to a greater or lesser extent, across all segments and sizes, and almost all vendors of products and services are preparing or have prepared cloud-based offerings.

Cloud services will be worth c$44bn by 2013, and in our recent analysis we’ve concluded that some telcos are well placed to deliver cloud services and could grow Revenues 900% by 2014 - provided that they don't blow it. Yet as a relatively immature and fragmented industry ‘cloud services’ will face considerable evolution in the coming years, and as with any disruptive technology, the cloud will spawn a new set of winners and losers.

Our hypothesis is that to be amongst the winners, telcos need to play to their strengths. Which areas they should attack first and the importance of urgency are some of the issues that this session will address.

Session Benefits
Learn about what opportunities exist in the cloud both for telcos and their partners, and what steps telcos and partners need to take to exploit them.

Format
STL’s ‘Mindshare’ interactive format, including cutting-edge new research, case studies, use cases and a showcase of innovators, structured small group discussion on round-tables, panel debates and instant voting using on-site collaborative technology.

Format and Draft Agenda (5 sessions spread across 1 day)
Each session uses STL’s ‘Mindshare’ interactive format to achieve pre-set learning goals. The sessions comprise short stimulus presentations (new research, case studies or use cases), structured small group discussion on round-tables, panel debates and instant voting.

Sessions:

Cloud Services - Where’s the money? Pinpointing the business potential of each cloud services segment, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS).
Cloud Services - How can telcos play a pivotal role? Cast-iron connectivity is vital for cloud computing, giving telcos a potentially strong position in the value chain.
Content & Application Delivery Networks - How CDNs can turbo-charge cloud services
Payments 2.0 - Sustainable business models that grow the whole ecosystem
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, the Great Game - Who will win out in the fast-evolving digital economy, and how to cooperate with them?

AGENDA

0800 Registration Open

0830 Welcome, Introductions & Warm Up

Andrew Collinson, Research Director, STL Partners

0900 Cloud Services: Where’s the money?

Introduction/Background - Click Here

Key objectives of this session

Map out the cloud services market, its segmentation and revenue potential
Identify the leading players today, telcos and other service providers alike
Explore how this nascent but fast-growing market will evolve

Hypotheses

Cloud services bring a myriad of new and genuine benefits to both small and large companies
Cloud services is not a single homogeneous market, but a group of distinct, but related, markets
Most IT vendors and service providers either have, or are developing, some kind of cloud offering
Most cloud services are immature and will evolve considerably in the next few years

Key questions to debate

What are the key opportunities in cloud?
What are the barriers to greater adoption of cloud services?
What do telcos need to do to maximise their cloud revenues?
How should they be addressing the market?
What lessons can be drawn from the progress of the telcos so far?

Presenters and Panellists
Short stimulus presentations x 3, followed by debate with participants using our ‘Mindshare’ interactive technology, followed by a panel discussion:

Stuart Hill, VP London Olympics 2012 Programme, BT Group
Andrew Collinson, Research Director, STL Partners
Frank Elter, Product and business development, Telenor Norway

1030 Break (and Exhibition)

1100 Cloud Services: Will telcos play a pivotal role?

Introduction/Background - Click Here

Key objectives of this session

Identify those actions that will move telcos towards a leadership position in the cloud services market
Establish which cloud services segments are the most strategic for telcos
Prioritise the market segments where telcos need to make an impact quickly

Hypotheses

The telcos cannot afford to ignore the cloud computing market
The telcos are well-placed to take advantage of the growth of cloud computing and can help validate it
Urgency is required if the telcos are to take a leading position in cloud computing

Key questions to debate

Which areas of the cloud should telcos target first?
What are the telcos' strengths, and how can they maximise those advantages?
What must telcos do to secure their share of the cloud?

Presenters and Panellists
Short stimulus presentations x 3, followed by debate with participants using our ‘Mindshare’ interactive technology, followed by a panel discussion:

Peter Roe, Strategy & Market Insights, Global Banking & Financial Markets, BT
Mirko Voltolini, Director, Network Design and Architecture, Colt Technology Services
Robert Brace, Head of Cloud Services, Vodafone Group

1230 Lunch

1330 Content & Application Delivery Networks: New Mobile and Federated CDN/ADN Opportunities

Introduction / Background - Click Here

Key objectives of this session are to explore:

new developments in mobile content delivery networks, app prioritisation/acceleration and quality of experience
federated content delivery networks in practice
industry confidence in telcos’ overall CDN prospects, and specifically mobile and federated business models

Hypotheses

Telcos are looking for ways to improve quality of experience for their data users, while lowering costs
Operators are also hoping to find new revenue sources from enabling partners to deliver content or application to end-users more effectively
The opportunities and challenges of mobile and fixed ADNs/CDNs are very different
Federating Application Delivery Networks (ADN) and CDNs is one possible way for telcos to compete with CDN global players
There is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy for operators, although the need to reduce costs and improve quality for customers is common

Key questions to debate

How is the CDN/ADN market evolving?
Who are the major players and what do they do?
What roles should telcos take in the evolving CDN/ADN market?
Should operators be building their own CDN and ADN platforms, or allow incumbent Internet CDNs to extend their reach into their networks?
What do the timelines for implementation look like?

Presenters and Panellists

Dean Bubley, Senior Associate, Telco 2.0 Initiative
Paolo Campoli, Head of SP Architectures & CTO, Cisco

1415 Digital Money 2.0: New Business Models at the intersection of offline, online and mobile

Introduction / Background - Click Here

Key objectives of the brainstorms

To clarify the strategic opportunities within the emerging global 'Digital Money' market
To share latest innovations and case studies of success/failure from around the world
To explore the opportunity of leveraging 'personal data' to create new business models
To help understand how the ecosystem will develop, roles of different players and how to manage non-traditional partnerships
To determine how best to 'grow the pie' for Digital Money for the benefit of all

Hypotheses to test

Purchasing transport tickets will be a leading-edge application, so speed and ease-of-use in consumer solutions are absolutely key
There will be a battle royal between the Internet players and telcos for 'control points' within the Digital Money value chain
Digital Money will grow, driven by Internet players and telcos eager to capture more transactional data online and offline
Mashing up contextual, real-time Personal Data with other data can stimulate new business models. Telcos have a unique role in this space.
Vendor fragmentation, user confusion/apathy and poor regulation will delay mass-market adoption in many countries
Any solutions that depend on new handsets will be slow to take-off

Key questions for debate

Studies make it clear that consumers around the world see the potential value of Digital Money. So how can we build a vibrant ecosystem that directly addresses consumer needs
How can co-opetition be managed such that the success of different players in the market supports others?
How can we leverage related developments from around the world that are already getting traction - such as EMV chip card, SEPA and Identity standards - to create market enablers?
How can we use mobile strong authentication capabilities to strengthen the security of and trust in the offline/online payment scenarios?
How can payments facilitate the world of new services enabled by NFC?
How could real-time personal data be leveraged in the short term in the Digital Money space?

Presenters and Panellists
Short stimulus presentations x 3, followed by debate with participants using our 'Mindshare' interactive technology, followed by a panel discussion (with 2 additional panellists):

Charmaine Oak, Senior Associate Analyst, Digital Money, STL Partners
Thomas Gregory, Head of Digital Payments, Barclaycard
Stefan Reinhardt, SVP Sales, ClickandBuy (a Deutsche Telekom company)
Daniel Angel, Head of Mobile Payments, Everything Everywhere
Johan Lindstrom, Business Leader, eCommerce Payments Europe, Mastercard Worldwide
Innovators Showcase: Janos Koka, Chairman & CEO, Cellum

1555 Break (and Exhibition)

1615 Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Skype - the Great Game

Introduction / Background - Click Here

Key objectives of this session

To establish how the distribution of profits is shifting in the TMT sector
To explore what telcos can learn from the leading disruptors
To identify the size of the threat presented by the disruptors to telcos’ core business
To identify opportunities for telcos to co-operate with the disruptors for mutual benefit.

Hypotheses

The big five disruptors typically have stronger brands than the leading telcos
Unlike telcos, the big five disruptors are trusted by investors to spend heavily pursuing new growth opportunities
Apple’s and Google’s strength in the smartphone and tablet markets means they are well-placed to lead the rapidly evolving mobile commerce market.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Skype are each building potent two-sided platforms that leave them well-placed to act as brokers between businesses and consumers
Telcos can learn a lot from the net giants’ single-minded focus on the consumer experience.

Key questions to debate

Will iOS and Android carve up the smartphone and tablet OS market between them?
How will the “patent wars” impact the balance of power in the mobile ecosystem?
Why are Apple devices so desirable?
Will Google be as dominant on the mobile web as it is on the conventional web?
Is Facebook a passing fad?
How successful will Amazon be in selling digital content?
How can telcos exploit the growing conflict between the disruptors to their advantage?
How will HTML5 alter the balance of power in the great game?