Predictions 2013: Enterprise Telecom And Mobility Challenges And Opportunities

Three major trends are changing the focus of telecom and mobility sourcing: 1) mobile bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies; 2) video collaboration; and 3) the rise of social business. Although 2013 will be the year when mobile BYOD initiatives take large user organizations by storm, in most cases the BYOD efforts will take two years to achieve true cost savings. Telecom sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals need a strategy and a plan for educating business buyers about how BYOD will affect contracting for mobile management and services. Video collaboration will gain a firmer foothold in distributed enterprises with workforces that are increasingly mobile and international and that span multiple time zones. Video collaboration will become the medium of choice for a growing portion of internal virtual meetings and also potentially for ad hoc external virtual meetings with customers and partners, replacing many audioconferences. Finally, social business will evolve quickly during the next three years, alongside and increasingly embedded within mobility applications and video collaboration. This report looks at these three trends and their expected impact on telecoms and mobility sourcing during the next year.