Owning the end user

If the traditional telecom operators in this world have anything going for them it's the end user billing relationship and knowledge about the end user. All the Internet players do not have any billing relation with their end user. This means operators are in a unique position to expand this trusted and paid-for relation with new Internet services.

One of the key aspects is that once the operator launches VoIP or CoIP services across PC, Mobile and other conncted devices, they are already arm's lenghts ahead of the others. Secondly, once you have the CoIP clients running on these devices, this means that you are on their desktops. As this is the exact same thing google and others are trying to accomplish, this is EXTREMELY improtant for telecom operators to ensure they do not own the desktop of the PC but even more Mobile devices.

The battle for the end user's desktop has already begun a long time ago, but it's in the telecom operator's own hands to own each user's device's deksopt to ensure their survival and if done well, their path to profitability.

VON Berlin 2006: does the industry need something new?

I went to VON Berlin yesterday and this was probably the smallest VON I've been to so far. That of course does not have to mean that it's not good. However, it was just boring to be honest. Nothing really "exciting" was shown and if it was something fancy, it did not have a UI and consisted of sand.

Again I ask: where is the end user experience? Is it missing, did it leave the building? OPERATORS are looking more and more towards the end user experience, so the industry and VON better change towards that area, and display some REAL end user services and what the benefits are for these users.

To see or not to see, that's the question

I've bumped into many people that are divided in two camps:
- Video call: who needs it?
- Video call: a major addition in telecommunication.

I belong to the second category, and here's why:
- sales of webcam in Holland are higher than computer mice. The only reason is MSN, and therefore people want to see live video
- youtube: 65000 uploaded videos cannot be wrong; people want to share
- A recent trial we did with an operator of our Communicator mobile client showed that teenagers' first question was, Where is the video call button.
- Technically it is possible: whether circuit switched or IP, video on handsets is here.

Of course I don't expect anyone above 30 years old to start using Video calls, not even in the enterprise. Video simply adds a nice personal touch to the conversation. Mobile video will be used to:
- person to person to enrich calls and add a personal tuoch
- see-what-I-see: instant "push-to-Video": look at the BMW driving by

I personally do not see too much value in Group video calls outside the enterprise, as not too many people use it on MSN on the Internet, which means there is less demand for this.

The power of a simple user experience across devices

I was giving some pretty important presentation today to a mobile operator on the importance of a clear and smart strategy on IMS clients and why the user experience will determine a successful rollout. It appeared to me I kept on repeating myself using the same arguments which I strongly believe in personally (ie this might not be be the same opinion as my employer):
1- The easier the client and user experience, the more the user communicates
2-The more end-points available to the user, the more he can and will communicate
3-The more rich the user experience, the more satisfied the user, the more he will communicate

In short, the more he communicates, the more bills are sent by the operator. If you think there are even more important drivers, let me know.

Islands of end user services

In the last couple of months, I've been asked several times by operators on their launch strategy for IP Communications services. The main question is whether they launch services in "silos" or "islands of technology" (ie Video Sharing only or IM only) or whether they should launch integrated services (so an all-in-one client for all sorts of communication).

My personal opinion is that the user should have access to an integrated client. From one of our user experience studies it is clearly shown that one of the key dissatisfaction points of mobile messaging is that SMS and MMS and Email are all handled using different applications on a mobile device. Add to this the different call, video call and other applications, and a user needs to navigate through different applications on the device. As a PC user I have the same frustration that even prevents me sometimes from checking my emails, as I do not want to open different applications to check my email (browser, MSN, Email client).

As an end user I want to have an integrated end user experience, and not by opening different applications on a PC or Mobile. I understand the issues an operator could have by providing all the backend functionality, but think about how powerful it would be to have Voice, Video, and messaging all from one client.

Back to my all-time favorite: the easier it is for an end user, the more he will use it!

Multimedia computers in an (un)connected world

A few days ago Nokia published it's new N95, the top of the line mobile multimedia computer, as they call it. It's amazing how, in such a short time, mobile phones have progressed into multimedia computers, even the price is as much as my home Media Center PC with 19 inch LCD screen...

The device comes pre-installed with GPS, blog software, music player, etc. Amazing amount of features in such a device. I cannot wait to get one in our office next week.

One thing that I think the industry should pay more attention to is the "connected" part of devices. I just entered a competition in which I claim that more and more households have more and more IP"ised" devices in the home, but none of these talk to each other. For example, I have been "evangalising" already for a numebr of years the strenghth of having Presence on your TV, so that you can see who of your buddies are also watching the same show and start communicating. This makes the "old" broadcasted media into an entire new multi-party content machine. Why not watch TV on your mobile device, then you see your friend is watching it as well and you start chatting about the TV show, then you send some personalised content, and when you get home, your phone knows it is in the home and switches to the TV screen where you continue to use your phone as the input device, and show images of yourself when Ridge tells Brooke that he feel in love with a Dunkey who gave birth to his father's child....That expression on your face just has to be shared, and there is no reason why this cannot be done (as both my TV and my phone speak IP).

As a "final throught", as Mr. Springer used to say before his guests started to undress or hit other people, multimedia computers are becoming more and more powerful with much more features. This is great. But what I want, is that they start talking to the other "multimedia2 computers I have at home, to create the best interactive, easy user experience, utilising the best possible input and output (such as TV screens; hey, TV just looks better on a 42 inch screen than on your phone) whereever you are.

OH, AND PLEASE COMMENT. IF YOU GOT TO THIS BLOG, YOU GOT HERE FOR A REASON SO YOU BETTER LEAVE YOUR OPINION :-)

The search for the "killer app" and the promised land of SIP: the only 3 reasons for IMS


Many people in the inustry frequently ask " what is the killer app". They have obvisouly not understood the indutry very well, or have made a quantum leap from 1999 to 2006. There is no such thing anymore as the Killer App. That died with the stockmarket of 2001....

So what should we look for then on top of IMS, someone asked. Well, the main benefit of IMS, as many people would forget, is the cost savings it has for the carriers. Of course after you paid for the new infrastructure, that is. The simple reason, old telecom equipment is expensive, people are expensive, software and hardware is expensive, and you need different infra for mobile and for fixed operations. IMS should tackle these problems and lower CAPEX and OPEX. The cost saving factor is often forgotten. One of the more advanced operators have recognised this, and are actually reporting on their expected ROI and the status of their IP network implementation progress.

Another most important reason why to go for IMS, is in the underlying technology: SIP. Looking at the roots of SIP, it is meant as a session protocol. You start a session, you do whatever in that. This is a great facilitator, especially for Mobile operators, to increase traffic. From our user studies it is clearly stated that users dislike current silos of applications on their mobile phones. When you are in a call, you cannot easily send an SMS, or when you are writing a message, you need to decide whether it is going to be SMS or MMS (WHY on earth did anyone think it is a good idea to ask the user to choose a technology first, and then start writing a message. I'd like to meet that person, and tell him he killed the MMS business). So the bottom line, the easier you make it for end users, the more they will make communicate, the more operators will profit. This of course does mean you better make darn sure the services are easy to use (and as we have seen in my previous blogs, this hasn't had the highest attention even though it should have)

The third most important reason for IMS is of course the fact that both mobile and fixed speak the same language. Again, the more end points you can have, the more traffic you will have, the more operators will profit. SMS was a small business until operators started to interconnect. Think about what will happen if users will start to communicate more, from more devices wherever they are, to more people that are on fixed, mobile, or other connected devices. An extra bonus is that you can now have your brand on all consumer's devices and "own" their desktops.

Then there are a lot of other reasons for IMS that I've heard but the bottom line is: they are not important. Being able to quickly launch new services is one of them. It has never been the technological difficulties to quickly launch new services. It has been the size of the organisation, the bureaucracy, the unwillingness to change the hugely profitable voice minutes and SMS.

Bottom line for IMS: cost savings, increase in traffic as (if done well) as communication is easier, increase in traffic as there are more end points to communicate with (if deployed properly across all devices). It's that simple!

Monday morning chicken and egg

It's monday morning just before 7 AM, the sun is just coming up when I am reading my work emails. One email from an analyst in which he tells me: "it's really difficult to write a report on IMS end user services". Shouldn't this be the easiest thing to do? The reality is that in fact, it's probably easier to write about server-server interfaces and signalling compression than it is on end user services, as the first two topics have been well documented and thought of by the industry, but the latter not. AMAZING.

Since we are "client" experts, each time we discuss with larger infrastructure vendors, 2 out of 3 times we start with getting a list of questions in an email regarding our clients. Most often, the last question is, "oh, by the way, what does your client actually do?".

Obviously, a successful IP communications user experience needs both excellent clients as well as working infrastruture. Each time we "preach" our focus on user experience and how the whole industry should first look at the end user, and then on the technology behind it we get the same remarks "it's a chicken and egg problem on which one is needed first". I don't care if the chicken or the egg was first, I just want every individual and the whole industry as a whole to first think more about what end users really want rather than specifying server-server interfaces. The chicken and egg problem for me is in this case solved.

Bumpy ride

I am on the fast Ferry back from a meeting in Estonia (and it's extremely bumpy so I cannot use my PC) and writing this from my mobile phone. It occured to me that today, in less than 9 hours, I used 4 devices and 5 different wireless technologies to Communicate. WOW! 5 years ago this would have been out of the question. You could ask why did I use all of these instead of just one. Good question. But the fact is, I, and with me millions of other people, are not stuck on one square meter, and we need to move. This means different technologies (wifi, 3G, SMS, GSM) are used, but also different devices. As mentioned, it's way too bumpy on this boat to write with a PC. But the need to communicate is strong anytime anyplace.

Obviously, I'm a big fan of our (Movial's) cross-platform clients for work reasons, but taking on the hat of a real end-user, today has been solid proof that it pays off to have access to the same services independent of devices, access technology, or place. The fact is, people move, and have different communication needs during this, so you better make sure everything works on all devices seamlessly, and if it looks and feels the same on each device, the better. I'm a believer...

Mobile Finland

Just before I go to work, here a short joke I told the guy sitting next to me on the plane back from VON to prove Finnish people are very "mobile".


An American, Mexican and Finnish archeologists meet at a convention and discuss their recent findings. The Mexican proudly says: "we were digging 100...200...300 meters deep when we found something amazing: copper lines". "This must mean the Inca's already had a communication infrastructure". The American responds: "that's nothing! we were digging at a depth of 500 meter (1500 feet I guess he would say) and found remains of a high-tech glassfiber network, proving that our ancestors must have had fast communication networks". The Finn gets up and says: "well, we have been digging extremely deep and every time we have not found anything". "Based on there is nothing us that we can conclude than that we have that a highly sophisticated wireless system was in use early on in Finnish society":-)

Boston VON 2006

It's just before 6 AM as my daughter decided it's time to wake up and play at 5, but this gives me some time to write before going to work.

We went to Boston for VON 2006. As usual, VON is a good show, but more of a vendor show as customers and users are missing (judging from some of the vendor's staff and their presentations, they were ertainly not users of their own products). It was the biggest VON ever, now with a focus on Video as well. It looked very promising when Jeff Pulver and a VP from AOL discussed their view on "where we are heading". I especially liked the fact that both of them did not spend much time on VoIP, rather, it was more a combination of basic Communication such as VoIP, integrated with Content such as blogs, etc.

This is something I truly believe in. From our mobile and fixed carriers, we also get this request to move away from just providing basic Communication to an integrated client that is easy to use and serves communication as well as "digesting" content and information. This of course has a big challenge in terms of putting these clients on small mobile devices (as users want the same services on any device they own), but tis is where we come in.

However, looking back at VON, I think it was still too much talking about "PC-based communication", rather than focussing on convergence of services and devices. Again, I am a big promoter of having the same services on each device, with the same user experience. I own a multitude of devices: windows media center, xbox 360, tv, Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, Nokia 6630, DVD player, laptop etc and I am running our clients on a number of these devices, giving me the flexibility to communicate wherever I happen to be witht he same ease of use.

One demo did intrigue me at VON: video mail from and to mobile, PC, fixed Video phone and set-top box (talking about true convergence of services). Other than that I think most of the companies should go back to my previous point, and see what the users want. I asked one vendor of IP Communication server products a simple question: what end services does your server provide. I got an extremely vague answer which proved my point once again.

As one of the first general posts regarding my personal opinions on IP Communications, perhaps it is good to start in general terms regarding the IT industry. For this reason, I go back to my Master's Thesis (feels like ages ago) in which I layed down a framework for the differences in services as part of the "whole product" during the technology adoption life cycle (the well-known bell-shaped curve). While writing the thesis, I "google'd" a picture that I still use in many of my presentations, and I believe every company should look at before starting R&D or bring a new technology product on the market. It strikes me how companies can put immature technologies, and market these as products to the market. Judging from the picture on the right, this is doomed to fail.

Technology for the sake of technology is as useful as....well....nothing. Whereas we Europeans love technology for th sake of technology, and are willing to accept trying 5 times to make a product work, Americans have the opposite. While sitting in a plane to the US the other day, I was reading this in-flight infamous Sky Mall magzine (for those of you who don't know it's a pretty thick magazine in which you can buy the strangest things such as a ramp for your dog so it can get in the car easily, or a personal dry cleaning system that takes about 100 square feeet of space). However, what strikes me is that, even though there is a lot of technology products in that magazine, they start (and also market this) with what really matter "THE USER AND HIS NEED".

I can write books full of examples but I think this does not have to be explained. In Europe I get offered "ADSL with a 2 MB connection", while in the USA, I get offered "fast email, downloads and no more waiting for streaming video".

I think the world would be a better place if every company and individual looks at the picture above before diving into creating somethign new. "It's the user that matters and his need, stupid"....

I'm sitting here at home on a Saturday night babysitting my beautiful daughter Laura. I just had a 16 hour-flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt to Helsinki, and for some reason I am still awake.

I also had a chance to review old click (bbcworld.com/click), which is one of the best shows to keep up with the IT industry. One of the key points in one of the episodes was how IT is changing edutcation.

One of the main questions was how young is too young to start introducing a baby or small child to IT. My personal opinion is: the younger the better. It is anyway inevitable that IT will be come more improtant for the next generation, is it has been for us. This kinda fits somewhat with Moore's law, that as processing power becomes cheaper, as well as broadband, more and more traditional services are going to be distributed over the Internet, to a variety of devices. Therefore, I'd say the younger someone starts to learn about IT (and in 2/3 generations other high-tech topics such as nano technology) the better as it will give them an advantage in the rest of their lives.

For example, above a picture of our Laura at 4 months old using Movial's Connect PC client for VoIP, Presence, IM and Video Telephony. Don't think she knew what she was doing, but at least she gets used to a keyboard :-)

Hi everyone, this is the first blog on a hopefully lively blog site regarding my personal experience while traveling (mostly for work), but also regarding my personal opinions on the IP Communications industry. The latter is something I definitely have clear opinions on as I have been working as Managing Director of Movial Applications Inc (www.movial.fi) and have been seeing both carriers, device manufacturers, and IMS/IP Communications infrastructure vendors, and most of these forget about one thing: the user and the end user experience.

Anyway, I just got back from a business trip to the States, and the picture above shows a Linux phone, with, in my opinion, an excellent and clean user interface. It's good to see Linux in low/mid end handsets.