Just before Christmas the news was released that Israeli TEM player MTS acquired the Telecom Expense Management Operations of US based AnchorPoint. This is yet another TEM acquisition/merger ……in 2008 Tangoe acquired Information Strategies Group (ISG) and HCL Technologies acquiring Control Point Solutions.
Market consolidation in the TEM space is taking place and will accelerate. Why? Here are some reasons:
Telecom Expense Management is becoming more and more important for Multi National Corporations (MNC) attempting to keep costs under control. A key trend is that companies take a global approach towards Telecom Management by centralizing telecom with the objective to reduce costs and streamline business processes.
Many TEM vendors have a national service and approach and must seek strategic partnerships (or build themselves) to be compliant to the enterprise trend moving away from national to global services. An example of this trend is the announcement of the global partnership between Ezwim and Movero Technology to deliver a joint lifecycle management service globally. The joint service is based on the full integration of the respective Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms.
The integrated offering will be available in Q1 2009. The benefit to enterprises: a total lifecycle management approach for policy development, procurement, administration of services and expense management across multiple carriers, allowing for more effective cost control, service and support.
AOTMP, the resource for telecom environment management, announced the final selections for the 2009 Industry Excellence Awards. The Awards were developed to recognize enterprises and industry suppliers committed to telecom and IT management best practices.
TEM players selected as finalists for Innovation of the Year include a.o. Ezwim, Visage Mobile and Asentinel. Stay tuned for the final winners that will be announced in February during the TEM 2009 conference in Orlando, Florida.
European telecoms ministers have rejected European Commission proposals to harmonize oversight of communication networks across Europe under a commission-controlled “super-regulator” that would have been able to overrule national decisions. The current position is to give the current European Regulators Group (ERG) a new name, but to keep its current loose co-ordination role that is able to take decisions by qualified majority.
Any idea of how employees use their mobile: what the personal vs. the business spend is and what the percentage roaming, data, SMS and international costs are? The annual Ezwim Telecom Monitor provides some real answers. A statistical analysis among Ezwim’s Telecom Expense Management user base offers an accurate and clear picture of how the corporate mobile is being used.
Industry analyst Informa released some figures showing that mobile phone sales is forecasted to slow significantly in developed markets and will not exceed 2% CAGR, smartphones are predicted to represent the major growth area. Informa thinks revenues from smartphone sales will represent over 55% of total market value in North America, Western Europe and Japan. Looking forward, it is becoming clear that, in these regions, handset vendors can no longer rely on mobile phone sales to sustain growth. They have to look at content creation and service offerings and product differentiation will increasingly shift from hardware to software.
MANASSAS, Va., Nov 20, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — The Telecom Expense Management Industry Association (TEMIA), the premiere organization for the telecom expense management industry, announced today the appointment of Joe Basili as Managing Director. This appointment highlights TEMIA’s deep commitment to grow the association, raise awareness of the values and benefits of TEM solutions, further its mission of optimizing the telecommunications supply chain, and help organizations achieve ideal results from TEM programs.
“Joe brings a background that is well suited for this work with more than 20 years experience in marketing, launching and growing new businesses, and developing research for the TEM market. He also brings positive relationships with existing members, potential new members, enterprises, and analysts,” stated Dave Spofford President of TEMIA.
This bears a comment.
The Canalys quarterly global smart phone shipments update shows some very interesting developments;
Many organizations are in the midst of their annual budgeting and planning cycles for 2009, cost reduction programs have become the key priority in order the weather the current economic crisis. Telecom is a top 3 expense category with MNC’s spending 1.500 – 4.000 $ per employee per year.
To help enterprises survive the current economic meltdown. Gartner offers help by means of 25 tactical tips for the CIO to cut IT costs. In the cost category Networks & Telecom Gartner recommends Telecom Expense Management Services to cut costs by 10%-35%.
