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Feb 21

TEM Consolidation: What does it mean to you?

By Scott Fogle, Co-Founder

For those of us in the industry for the last 10+ years, the rate of change in the Telecom Expense Management industry is exciting. The strongest companies are growing and either putting the weaker companies out of business or buying them for a discounted value of their remaining customer base. One could argue that the consolidation started on January 20, 2004, when One Equity Partners (private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase) announced the acquisition of TSL and Digital Reliance, and began a string of four more acquisitions (including MSS Group, QuantumShift Technologies and Telwares) in 2004, and formed ...

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Jan 30

Is the Cloud a Security Concern for Your Business?

By Mac McClanahan, Senior Consultant

Whether a business chooses a private, public, or hybrid cloud for their computing strategy, it is crucial to carefully assess business and technology synergies before taking that step. Where enterprises begin their journey depends on where they are now and the process can generally be broken down into 3 steps. Step 1 begins with investigation. Which applications are mission-critical and require the highest levels of security? A public cloud enhances scalability and helps to reduce capital expenditures, but its multi-tenant nature may raise security concerns. In some cases, the security of using a private cloud behind a firewall outweighs the ...

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Jan 16

How did your wireless costs jump from 5% to 50% of your total telecom budget?

By Scott Fogle, Co-Founder

Today’s mobile professionals are demanding a variety of tools to support their business communications requirements. Many are even travelling and working with up to 5 different mobile devices! They also could be spending up to $135 per month on mobile data, not including device costs and in-plane Wi-Fi charges for the frequent flyer. What does this mean to the CIO? Telecommunications expenses are increasing at an incredibly rapid rate so executives must address their telecom budgets as well as their network security with the addition of tablets, smartphones, and other wireless devices.

Corporations have begun adopting a BYOD (Bring Your ...

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Dec 15

What is Your European Sourcing Strategy?

By Chris Woodward, Senior Consultant
Over the last several weeks, we've been discussing the European Mobility Marketplace and the unique challenges that it poses to multi-national corporations. The combination of regional and in-country operators can make sourcing engagements particularly complicated. However, with a focused strategy and roadmap addressing the challenges outlined below, a pan-regional sourcing project can drive down costs and increase efficiency for your organization.

Challenges
- Internal – Often times, the largest, and generally overlooked challenge (until it becomes painfully obvious) comes from within the organization. Internal stakeholders will be resistant to change, and if the sponsorship of the initiative does not have authority ...
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Nov 11

European Mobility: In-Country Operators

By Chris Woodward, Senior Consultant

As stated in my previous post, a pan-European sourcing event should include in-country operators as a best practice, to enable an evaluation of the widest breadth of options and ensure an optimally competitive environment. Below are some of the top operators in Europe sorted by the primary countries/regions for which they can address (note that if the sourcing effort includes the multinational business unit of Vodafone, the in-country business units or partners will typically not respond independently):

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Nov 01

European Mobility: Telefonica, OBS, & T-Mobile

By Chris Woodward, Senior Consultant

Moving on from last week's post on Vodafone, lets go into more detail about their largest competitors. Telefonica/O2, Orange Business Systems, and T-Mobile make up the remaining large multi-national carriers in the European market.

Telefónica/O2

Telefónica/O2 operates much the same as Vodafone, delivering via both owned assets and partnerships. They are eager to address opportunities with concentrations in Spanish-speaking countries, including opportunities which combine mobile environments in Spain and Latin America. However, from a multinational perspective, they tend to only focus on larger opportunities particularly when the mobility environment is more diluted, i.e., includes significant spend outside of these regions. ...

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Oct 27

European Mobility: Vodafone

By Chris Woodward, Senior Consultant

In a continuation of the previous blog introducing the European Mobility Marketplace, let's take a look at the world's largest mobile telecommunications company. Vodafone Global Enterprise and Vodafone International Enterprise are essentially two flavors of the same Vodafone multinational service offering. Vodafone operates its network using both owned assets (Vodafone Operating Companies) as well as partially owned and non-owned assets (Vodafone Partners). Regardless, the offering is branded as Vodafone in each country included in the contract framework. As Vodafone operates and partners with many of the strongest and most viable networks in Europe, they should absolutely be ...

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Oct 18

The European Mobility Marketplace

By Chris Woodward, Senior Consultant

As our society becomes increasingly global, the importance of understanding the telecommunications marketplace from an international perspective has increased dramatically. Over the next several weeks, through multiple installments, we will provide an overview of the European, Asia Pacific, and Latin American service providers and trends.

Europe enjoys a wide variety of mobility service options including pan-regional operators as well as in-country operators. In many countries there are multiple choices of the latter. Depending on the volume of connections and usage, it is often valuable to evaluate a number of the options in each country. From a pan-EU ...

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Oct 04

Is Your Network Diverse?

By AJ Leone, VP of Sales, Southeast Region

The term diversity, as it pertains to data networks, is often used and often misunderstood. Many IT managers know that having some form of diversity in their network is good thing. But what is diversity in your network and why is it important?

Having diversity in your network quite simply means having elements that are “different.” But there are many types of diversity or “differentness.” Each type of diversity has its pluses and minuses.

Let’s look at some common types of diversity in a WAN:

Carrier Diversity (or Alternate Carrier Diversity) – this is using ...

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Sep 22

Is Your Network Traffic as Congested as the LA 405 Freeway?

By Jon Stroup, VP of Sales and Business Development

An enterprise data network has traffic issues similar to the LA 405 freeway. There are rush hours, accidents, rubber necking, special events, population changes, and, occasionally natural disasters. From increased voice, data and video applications your networks performance can be unexpectedly slowed or reduced to below your users expectations. Changes can wreak havoc on network performance.

For example, many retailers have upgraded their POS systems in the last few years. Recently, Lowe’s announced they would deploy 40,000 iPhones to enable their associates to access more corporate information such as inventory data to enhance the shopping experience. With this, many new ...

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Sep 06

Below the Radar - Conferencing

By Jason Wile, Consultant

When was the last time your organization reviewed your conferencing services, costs, and needs? In a time when everyone is feeling the pressure to reduce costs and improve efficiency, here’s a simple and effective way to add value to your organization while improving the bottom line in more than one way. Whether it is reducing travel expenses, providing a more engaging customer meeting or keeping your staff and clients up to speed on trainings and certifications, the latest conferencing solutions are really becoming the coloration tools they’ve claimed to be for years.

Here it is by the numbers....

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Aug 24

Telecom Invoice Processing - There is a Better Way

By Jon Stroup, VP of Sales and Business Development

Every company processes an avalanche of telecom invoices each month. Usually, there is a cursory technical or AP review and the bill is paid early enough to avoid the late fee. Or there may be a team of specialists spending multiple days each month conducting the reviews. But surely there is a better way!

Ideally, every telecom invoice should be audited relative to pricing, terms, inventory, and changes and optimized to minimize costs. The invoices should be received and processed electronically – saving time, money, and trees. The details and trends should be transparent to management.

Telecom services and invoices ...

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Aug 09

Is Your Data Center Next to the Coat Closet?

By Jon Stroup, VP of Sales and Business Development

Is your Data Center next to the Coat Closet or in Class A/B Office Space?

So, your data center is either in your storage area, coat closet or just down the hall from your office. That’s convenient and reassuring, but it’s also vulnerable.

Traditionally, as small to mid-sized companies have grown their IT department has evolved and their storage, website, and internal IT services have expanded from a few servers in a closet, to a dedicated ‘data center’ located in Class A or B office space. This space works nicely for people who are flexible, mobile, and adaptable. If the ...

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Jul 26

Consumerization of the Mobile Space is Forcing Corporate Policies to Change

By Marco Kuysten, Managing Consultant

A few weeks ago a client told us they were pretty successful in limiting the number of iPhones connecting to their network. Company policy did not allow for iPhones and only a few exceptions had been made. After reviewing some log files, we concluded over 2,500 iPhones are connecting to their network. Although the number of corporate liable iPhones was limited, employees used their individual liable iPhone to access the network.

This is a prime example of how organizations are struggling to keep the mobile space under control. Employees are expecting they can use their device(s) of choice and communicate ...

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Jul 25

Advocate Networks Celebrates Our 10 Year Anniversary

By Scott Fogle, Co-Founder

10 Years in business, hard to believe! When we started the company in the summer of 2001, who knew the twists and turns we would face ahead. Events including the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001, amazing growth and change of the telecom industry, shocking fraud and failure at Worldcom, reconstituting AT&T, the exponential impact of mobility, the great recession of 2008+, the emergence of Apple and Google as the leading mobility technology innovators, the increasing complexity combined with the broad array of solution choices faced by enterprises around the globe – just to name a few!

Tim and I ...

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Jul 14

Telecom Billing Issues in the Spotlight on Capitol Hill

By Paul Shiman, Chief Marketing Officer

Cramming is a Telecom problem even a key Senate Chairman, Jay Rockefeller, agrees! Yesterday, in a hearing at the capital, a commerce committee found that AT&T, Verizon and Qwest made $650 million over the last five years through this common practice. So, what is cramming? It’s not last minute studying for an exam, but an even more painful type of cramming that costs consumers and companies millions. These carrier companies place unauthorized third-party charges on landlines assuming that their customers won’t inspect these complicated invoices. When did you last check your bill for voice mail services that were added to ...

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Jul 12

Data Center Build vs. Buy - What to Consider?

By Paul Shiman, Chief Marketing Officer

I recently attended a panel discussion in Chicago organized by the local chapter of 7x24 exchange. This organization is the leading knowledge exchange for those who design, build, use, and maintain mission-critical enterprise information infrastructures. The event, led by Tom Kutz from Affiliated Engineers, attracted over 125 attendees and was held at the Equinix Data Center in Elk Grove. The discussion focused on how an enterprise company evaluates and decides whether to build/expand a data center or buy services from a co-location or outsourcing provider. From electrical engineering companies, to construction, wiring, cleaning, and real estate, the audience ...

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Jun 28

Will the Private Data Center Disappear?

By Scott Fogle, Co-Founder

Given all the recent press and hype around cloud computing, a well-read Internet surfer would think that private data centers will all but disappear as everything a CIO needs will be available in the Cloud. Sure, the large data center users such as Amazon, Google, and the federal government will still have private, dedicated data center services due to their business models and security requirements. However, for traditional businesses, when will this transformation start? Has it already started? What does this mean for the IT leader and his/her team? How will you transform and re-tool, or will one generation of IT ...

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Jun 23

Is RIM Dead?

By Scott Fogle, Co-founder

With recent stock price woes and many industry pundits starting to play "Taps", the folks at RIM continue to face challenges and an uncertain future. We all know it can happen. Look at Novell, Nokia, Informix, Tandy, Digital Equipment and some would say "Microsoft". All are or were undisputed industry leaders that could not transform. They all let more nimble competitors better satisfy the market demand while continuing to milk the current strategy. Five years ago, the Blackberry was the desire of every hip mobile professional and end user. In fact, the term "Crack-Berry became very popular because the RIM ...

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May 20

Why do Telecom Expense Management Projects Fail?

By Tim Wise, Co-Founder

I was recently asked by a client “Why do TEM projects fail and not meet our management‘s expectations. This question is asked more than you may think, especially after the decision has been made, implemented and the consultants have left the building. There is a significant amount of consolidation in the TEM industry and therefore many systems deployed are no longer receiving the support and investment. (Another topic to discuss). The main reason TEM projects fail is a misalignment between your companies goals and the offered solution.There are many aspects than can contribute to the misalignment. To ensure success, a ...

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Mar 29

How will the AT&T/T-Mobile Merger affect Sourcing?

By Rob Stewart, Managing Consultant

From a wireless communications viewpoint this announced merger will decrease the competition and potentially raise price levels, reduce service levels and support. The FCC and DOJ will be scrutinizing this deal over the next year. The challenge that they must weigh is that customers will have less carriers to negotiate with for a multitude of services. Some impacts will be positive, but also expect a good dose of the negative. So what do you do if you are in the process of defining your sourcing strategy?

First, don’t make any drastic moves based on the news. If you just made ...

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Mar 20

Gartner lowers forecasts on PC sales in 2012...

By Paul Shiman, Chief Marketing Officer

So according to Gartner (read article) the shipment of PC's will be significantly lower in the next 2 years due to the increase in consumer purchases of tablets as an alternative to laptops and PC's. In fact tablets are expected to be almost 41% of all purchases in China. Wow, this can only mean that the requirement for more bandwidth will continue to grow at a rapid pace. So how does an enterprise business handle the influx of these new devices, applications and security as it relates to tablets?

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Mar 14

The Road to Best in Class Telecommunications Expense Management

By Gerry Carson, Managing Consultant

Are you a communications service provider? From Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC) to Multiple System Operators (MSO) to Wireless Providers and Conferencing Companies, you may ask: What is this road and where is my company today? In the beginning most companies have primarily paper invoices, a lack of cost per unit view and very limited leverage of total spend with their vendors. Further down the road, companies have a unit cost view, have benchmarked their spend and completed significant procurement/RFP events. Higher performing companies select a TEM vendor or purchase software to manage this in house.

All industries have a ...

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Mar 05

How do you move to the Cloud?

By Scott Fogle, Co-Founder

I recently met with an enterprise IT infrastructure director that asked me “How do I move more IT services to the Cloud?” We had a very interesting, wide ranging discussion on his current environment, how his company provides IT services to 5,000+ global employees. We touched on email, storage, security, hosting and data centers, desktop virtualization, telephony, contact center and core applications like ERP and Financials. We shared our views on Cloud IT services, risks and issues, various cloud IT service providers, where to start and how to create a roadmap.

Two key areas that emerged from the discussion ...

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Feb 18

What is driving all the data center space in Santa Clara, California?

By Scott Fogle, Co-President, Advocate Networks, LLC

Have you noticed recently the continuous announcements about new data centers popping up in Santa Clara? In the last 12 months, Digital Realty Trust, CoreSite, QTS, Vantage, Terremark, and others have announced new data center space in the market. What do you think is driving this density of data center offerings and what do you think will happen to prices for data center space in this market in 2011?

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Jan 14

It's here, Verizon iPhone...Will there be a stampede???

By Scott Fogle, Co-President, Advocate Networks, LLC

You are the Network Manager for a large enterprise. You have endured 5+ years of your end-user’s demanding all the latest wireless devices, and constant complaints on network coverage, battery life, download speed and synchronization issues. Your company was an earlier adopter of the iPhone on the AT&T Mobility network because the end-users just had to have it. The new device would change the way they did business and bring about untold benefits…Right. You have heard that before!

Then, the users that demanded the sizzling new iPhone, found out that it dropped 50% of their calls, and had amazingly poor ...

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Dec 01

Global Expansion - "It's a Small, Small World"

By Tim Wise, Co-Founder & Co-President, Advocate Networks, LLC

2010 has been another significant growth year for Advocate Networks - 64% growth in revenue; recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in the United States; and expanded our geographic presence in New York City, Washington, DC, Houston, Texas and the Carolinas. However, the most significant area of growth has been our clients with a global presence. These clients are based in every major region around the globe: North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions.

Operating in multiple global regions creates significant challenges for IT organizations, especially in terms of ...

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Jul 23

Droid vs. iPhone (and now iPad)

By Scott Fogle, Co-President, Advocate Networks, LLC

Yes, I am an early user of an iPad 3G. I'm in the business and justify it as "testing" the latest mobile productivity tool. I use the iPad as a semi-notebook computer replacement. After returning from a road trip to visit clients and prospects, just carrying the iPad catches people's attention and starts a debate on the benefits of this new tool. More about that later.

The title of this column and the thoughts in this story are based on my experiences as a demanding mobile professional and user of both the iPhone and now the Droid. In 2009, I ...

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