Mobile data growth fuels need for service providers

IT&T analyst group, Ovum believes mobile service providers are still falling short of multi-nationals’ enterprise mobility needs.

It believes the gap between multi-nationals’ priorities and their current mobile service provider’s capability remains significant.

Claudio Castelli, senior analyst for Ovum told CRN that it found managed mobility is the main focus of new sourcing plans within multi-nationals.

“Managed mobility services are currently used by few of the companies we spoke to, but 60 percent of respondents to this survey said that they are planning to use managed mobile services contracts within the next two years,” he said.

“They see the most important components of managed mobility service as being the billing and analysis tools, management of contracts with multiple mobile network operators and device management.”

According to Castelli, mobility has become more difficult to for multi-nationals, especially with the take off of mobile data usage.

“There are more mobile users and a broader range of devices and applications,” he said.

“The complexity and costs with management has grown. This pushes for more managed services.”

He claims there is more certainty than a year ago about who will fill the managed mobility provider role.

Mobile network operators are well placed to win managed services contracts from multi-nationals and some have been actively pursuing such opportunities.

“However, the companies we spoke to are just as likely to turn to a systems integrator as a mobile network operator for managed mobility services contracts,” said Castelli.

“Mobile service providers need to listen to multi-nationals’ concerns about the cost of doing business internationally, improve tariff consistency across territories and take action to resolve further issues.”