by Oded Ringer, Outsourcing and Management Services, Communications & Media Solutions, HP Enterprise Services and Jean-Charles Doineau, Strategy Lead, Communications & Media Solutions, HP.

Outsourcing both Network and IT management is not an easy task. In practice, it consists in transferring ownership of very complex systems built through the leverage of hundreds of different software components on top of which customer operations processes are modeled. In many cases, Telcos have as well funded development of adapters between these software components, monitoring and root-cause management tools, as well as optimization processes on top. Challenge is hence to improve service management quality whilst transferring operations management environment.

by Marie-Paule Odini, Chief Technologist, Communications and Media Solutions, HP.

I was amazed again this year by the number of people attending MWC: more than 60,000 people, device vendors, operators, developers, IT and equipment vendors. All the main industry actors converge to Barcelona to promote their latest technology and talk new business models: so much information for 4 days!

by Alain Decartes, Worldwide Senior Solution Marketing Manager, Applications and Cloud Enablement, Communications & Media Solutions, HP Enterprise Services.

February has always been an exciting month if you are in the mobile communications industry.  It is classically the time when tens of thousands of ICT professionals are sacrificing their Valentine’s date to go to Barcelona (it was Cannes before…) and hear about the latest handsets, networks, operation support, billing, cloud, and recently APPS technologies that the industry is announcing.  There has usually been a big launch effect in these events, such as SMS, MMS, WAP, 3G, IMS, 4G, LTE, smart phones, etc…  I suppose that every individual has pondered if the trip was worth the sacrifice.

by Marie-Paule Odini, Chief Technologist, Communications and Media Solutions, HP.

I was visiting some friends in Nice, south of France, and they pulled out their mobile phone to pay for the bus! I had left Nice few years ago when people did not even dare paying for the bus :-) I guess the municipality has understood that the better the tool is, the easier it is for people to use it !

by Jeff Edlund, Chief Technologist, Communications & Media Solutions, HP.

The opportunity to integrate machine communications to a human

Social networks and collaboration technologies have grown tremendously and have now started to enter the realm of business. Many businesses are faced with the challenge of aggressively social networking for business development or missing this new communications opportunity.Many executives in the business world still view open collaboration and social networking as having little value and may in fact jeopardize the business if it is not controlled like any other Enterprise IT process.

by Marie-Paule Odini, Chief Technologist, Communications and Media Solutions, HP.

Last week I got the chance to participate in a panel for the Electronic Business Group in Paris on "What's Hot" in our business. Interesting subject especially when you have different perspective with an analyst (ComScore), a NEP (ALU), an operator (Orange), a chipset vendor (QualComm), a Korean phone vendor (LG) and an IT vendor (HP)... But we all came to the conclusion that some subjects were definitely top of the list:

by Sigge Andreasson, Worldwide Solutions Marketing Manager, Communications & Media Solutions, HP Enterprise Services.

As consumers, rich communications and media services have become part of our lives, whether at work, at home, or on the move... Today, we're spoiled for choice with a constant stream of service offerings, promising new ways to do business and easier, improving interaction with friends and family. Only a few years back, new services arrived on the market once every ten or twelve months, if we were lucky. We've come to expect simply to click to subscribe and use new services in seconds. And we want it all delivered onto our devices of choice, wherever we are.

by Jeff Edlund, Chief Technologist, Communications & Media Solutions, HP.

We have just a few open slots for our next CTO Summit, co-hosted by Telecom Italia, focusing on the theme of M2M! You could join your industry peers from CenturyLink, Facebook, Qwest, Reach, Shaw Communications, Telecom Italia and USAID at our 11th HP CTO Summit in May 10-12 located in the beautiful San Clemente Palace Resort in Venice.

by Alain Decartes, Worldwide Senior Solution Marketing Manager, Applications and Cloud Enablement, Communications & Media Solutions, HP Enterprise Services.

When you are in Barcelona, Spain, you're usually enjoying a large blue sky while sitting in the sun. The weather is not a typical topic of conversation. Why should it be? It's normally so predictable. It takes an event like HP's Communications World to get people talking about clouds in Barcelona. And when the keynote speaker is Sally Davis, CEO of BT Wholesale, everyone forgets about weather forecasts and packs the conference room to listen.

by Joe Weinmann, Worldwide Leader, Communications Media & Entertainment Business (CME), HP.

In the first part of this post, I outlined arguments from a much lengthier analysis (PDF) regarding recent carrier announcements concerning tiered pricing for broadband services.

Not only is such pay-per-use a clear trend, but arguably the natural outcome of rational consumer decision-making as light users actively choose not to subsidize heavy ones by paying for more capital-intensive resources than they use. However, if pricing plans are no longer "unlimited", but increasingly granular and usage-sensitive, one can predict massive disruptions in the current ecosystem and reversal of some trends of the last few years. However, as with all such shifts, this will create new opportunities and drive new technology breakthroughs.

by Joe Weinmann, Worldwide Leader, Communications Media & Entertainment Business (CME), HP.

Exactly 20 years ago this month Tim Berners-Lee invented the browser, HTML, and the World Wide Web, but things really took off six years later when America Online switched from pay-by-the minute dial-up to unlimited flat-rate plans, causing usage per sub to more than triple (PDF). Recently, however, wire-line and wireless providers are circling back, either Your text to link...trialing or instituting tiered or pay-per-use pricing, and in the world of cloud computing, pay-per-use is touted as a major benefit. Pricing plans may seem like an arcane topic for marketing professionals, but are driving fundamental questions regarding global capital expenditures and the sustainability of the current content and network ecosystem. If pay-per-use prevails, what are the implications on industry structure and new business opportunities?

by Marie-Paule Odini, Chief Technologist, Communications and Media Solutions, HP.

Beyond the existing billion of PCs, tablets and mobile phones, more and more devices embed communication capabilities. Soon there will be more machines communicating with each others than humans! This is the hidden world... my fridge will tell the grocery store that I need more food, and a robot will start to pile food for me on a small electric truck with navigation system to come and deliver to my house! Ok I still need to open the door, but who knows -- soon there may be a robot for that too! I will simply use a remote control to authorize him to open the door!

by Alain Decartes, Worldwide Senior Solution Marketing Manager, Applications and Cloud Enablement, Communications & Media Solutions, HP Enterprise Services.

I enjoyed chairing the Mobile Device Management Telco Congress in Berlin, and while the reasons folks attended this event were varied, all were passionate about MDM and the industry at large and I have never seen such a large number of people staying for the last debate at the last hour of any conference I've attended in the past! Relaxing at the terrace of a brasserie facing the Brandenburg Gate while enjoying a Frankfurt Weise bier with some Berliner bratwurst, I sat recalling the events of the previous two days - and I'd like to share these with you.

by Jeff Edlund, Chief Technologist, Communications & Media Solutions, HP.

The origin of M2M communications is a bit cloudy because of the many different technologies that can claim their heritage and roadmap leading to the M2M category. RFID, Smart Metering, Telematics and Telemetry would all boast to have invented the category. M2M seems to have begun around the year 2000, possibly earlier, when cellular technology first began to be connected directly to other computer systems. An example of early M2M use is OnStar's in vehicle communications and telemetry system.

by Joe Weinmann, Worldwide Leader, Communications Media & Entertainment Business (CME), HP.

In today's macroeconomic maelstrom complicated by rapid technology change, evolving customer needs, and a shifting regulatory environment, how can carriers grow and prosper? Where should they enhance strategic competitive differentiation via internal development of proprietary capabilities, and where should they rely on upstream partners who have a critical mass of expertise and can achieve scale economies by amortizing innovation investments across a wide base of customers?

by Oded Ringer, Outsourcing and Management Services, Communications & Media Solutions, HP Enterprise Services.

As competition from "over the top" service providers continues to grow, CSPs need to be able to introduce new services quickly and cost effectively. And they must do this without increasing operational expenses.

by Nigel Upton, Customer Driven Initiative Leader, Communications & Media Solutions, HP Enterprise Services.

With the sheer number of mobile users soaring worldwide, mobile operators find themselves in a powerful position in the communications market. But they also face huge challenges with the emergence of over-the-top (OTT) services causing data traffic to skyrocket. Operators need to seize the significant new opportunities OTT offers by transforming the nature of their relationships with OTT providers.