Advances in smartphones and the proliferation of 4G, fibre and Wi-Fi mean that consumers around the world are creating, interacting with and accumulating more content than ever.
From photos to videos to apps to music, consumers are steadily building up a huge library of content that their devices by themselves simply cannot handle. For businesses, meanwhile, bandwidth-hungry corporate apps are causing issues around security and latency. This explosion in content is the reason why more than 175MN subscribers worldwide currently use Synchronoss personal cloud services to back up, store and save more than 200 terabytes of data each day, says Chris Halbard, EVP & president, International at Synchronoss.
It’s this content explosion and greater interaction with the digital world –that is creating a need among consumers for a personal cloud solution that includes more than storage from a trusted supplier. It’s a need that their mobile operator is ideally placed to address.
Operators and cloud services
It’s no surprise then that O2 UK recently announced that it will be offering both pay its monthly and pay-as-you-go users 8GB of free cloud storage, or unlimited space for £5 a month. The O2 ‘Store & Share’ service promises existing Android or iOS device subscribers secure access to files, photos and media as well as the ability to backup and restore personal data if a device is lost, stolen or damaged.
O2 isn’t the only operator to recognise this opportunity. Synchronoss currently provides personal cloud technology to more than 75 operators worldwide – including AT&T, Verizon, BT, Vodafone, SingTel, Telefonica,Telstra in Australia and Reliance in India. But investing in cloud technology is about more than just storage, which is now a commodity. It’s about harnessing both cloud capabilities and operator attributes – including guaranteed connectivity, security, authentication, and network stability – so that consumers can lead a more connected life, and access and interact with content and services in new ways, across different devices and screens.
Winning back hearts and minds
A growing challenge for operators everywhere is the competition from OTT players for the “hearts and minds” of their subscribers. OTT players like Whatsapp, Google and Facebook are increasingly overshadowing operators’ relationships with their customers with direct services of their own, reducing the operator to a mere “dumb pipe”. Offering subscribers cloud services is a means for operators to reassert their authority in the telecoms value chain against their OTT rivals.
Operators have a number of key advantages against OTTs in proving cloud services – arguably the most important of which is their existing relationships as a trusted and a secure service provider. This places operators in the ideal position to drive both adoption and innovation, as trust and security become ever-more important to subscribers – whether business or consumer – and their number of “connected” devices grow.
Also, unlike OTTs, operator-branded cloud services are device and OS-agnostic – capable of supporting multiple and varied file formats and data types. They are able to offer carrier-grade scale and security for storing and accessing data and content, plus open APIs and an SDK-type environment for developers, content partners and other service providers to use in partnership with the telco.
Offering cloud services to subscribers is a necessary move for operators, as it allows them to reconnect with their subscribers and reclaim the end-user experience, in a way that builds customer loyalty and reduces the risk of churn.
Curating the digital profile
Operators can retake an even greater share of the user experience from their OTT rivals by positioning themselves in the pivotal “enabling” role for providing their subscribers with extra content and services via the cloud.
They can do so by establishing and securely curating a unique digital profile for each of their subscribers within the cloud. As a trusted provider, the operator can use the cloud as the secure hub to gather, store and analyse subscriber data – contacts, content, calendar, geo-location and even billing history – to create a unique personal digital profile, which follows the subscriber from device to device and from screen to screen.
But this is only the first step. For operators, the real value lies in the extra content and services they offer to subscribers via the cloud. Using the data contained in a subscriber’s digital profile, they can unlock new revenues through content and brand partnerships. And this is where the real value lies.
Where the real value lies
With this approach, the operator can establish the cloud as an effective, efficient and economically attractive channel for partners and developers to access large numbers of potential new customers and subscribers. The key to success for operators and partners alike is in emulating OTTs by quickly creating, rolling out and monetising new services and features to these users – and tearing them down equally quickly if they don’t work out.
The responsibility of operators in all of this is to firstly ensure subscribers are adopting cloud services thanks to a simple and straightforward end-user experience: and secondly to facilitate an easy-access, developer-friendly “sandbox” environment that will support multiple new services and features coming to market at different times
The cloud today isn’t about files and storage. It’s not even about devices. Instead, it’s the foundation for operators to expand their own ecosystem of features and services, through partnerships with content and media companies, other service providers and merchants. Only in this way will operators see real value and returns in offering cloud services to subscribers.
The author of this blog is Chris Halbard, EVP & president, International at Synchronoss.
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