Battle for Revenues and the Race to Virtualization Set To Intensify in 2015

Developments across virtualization, secure content and monetizing subscriber data will be top of the coming year’s agenda

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.– December 15, 2014 – As operator revenues continue to be squeezed through OTT applications, Openwave Mobility evaluates how developments in video and encrypted data optimization will come to the fore in 2015 – and provides insights into virtualization developments.

Generating new revenues through mobile video optimization

John Giere, President and CEO: “Mobile video soared again in 2014. Thanks to social media outlets such as Facebook allowing auto-play for adverts and the ubiquity of video as the default medium, mobile video optimization will remain at the fore. By re-deploying bandwidth saved, operators will use video optimization to not just reduce cost of ownership, but to generate new revenues.

Video optimization as a cloud proposition is now deployed by several operators. It will quickly become a popular deployment option. Operators will invest in private cloud infrastructure and leverage virtual resources for use cases such as roaming traffic optimization or cloudburst during one off events that drive peak traffic.”

Network virtualization increasingly on the agenda

Indranil Chatterjee, VP of Product, Sales and Marketing: “2014 saw NFV move from lab trials to field trials. In 2015 operators will take a more pro-active role to safe-guard it from becoming a vendor-silo’d technology. Applications will start with simple virtualization followed by integration with orchestration platforms for dynamic elasticity. The latter will still be in PoC stage as large domain vendors will enter an intense battle to establish their solution as the orchestration platform of choice. Operators will need to tread carefully to maintain freedom from vendor lock in.

We will see more applications transition to the private and in some cases public cloud – which will bring security and privacy issues to the fore. Migration of services from in-network to Cloud will be a major disruptor for operator staff for years to come. But there is significant first mover advantage for the operator who gets programmability and flexibility into their network planning”

Mobile operators take strategic action to avoid becoming dumb dark pipes

Indranil Chatterjee, VP of Product, Sales and Marketing: “In 2015 secure/encrypted traffic will continue to grow, and will account for 25-50% percent of all mobile data traffic with a larger percentage in developed versus emerging countries– putting mobile operators at risk of becoming dark pipes. As a result operators will begin to trial ways to effectively manage secure content, with special focus on video. Trials will mainly consist of trusted proxy models or intelligent layer four heuristics based approaches.”

Operators look to mining subscriber data to secure new revenues

John Giere, President and CEO: “In 2015 attention will focus on mining subscriber data. At the end of 2015 most subscriber data will still inevitably reside in deep silos within the operator network. The mobile operators that are leading in Subscriber Data Management will break out of just being data aggregation and federation. SDM will be used to expose data to trusted third parties and Identity Management will begin to gain momentum”.

About Openwave Mobility
Openwave Mobility enables operators to manage and monetize mobile data using the industry’s most scalable, Layer7 SDN/NFV platform. The company operates within the policy control and charging (PCC) space and delivers Policy Engagement with solutions that include Video Optimization to eliminate data congestion, and Mobile Data Charging and Analytics to increase ARPU through personalized data plans. These solutions are supplemented by Subscriber Data Management, providing a single consolidated store for policy and subscriber data, and Mobile Analytics, providing subscriber segmentation and Business Intelligence.
Openwave Mobility delivers over 40 billion transactions daily and over half a billion subscribers worldwide use data services powered by its solutions. The company’s global customer base consists of over 40 of the largest communication service providers including AT&T, Du, KDDI, Rogers, Sprint, Telus, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Telstra, Virgin Mobile & Vodafone. Openwave Mobility is owned by Marlin Equity Partners, a leading investment firm with over a billion dollars of capital under management that has publicly committed to building the company through expanded investment in R&D. The company has built a robust portfolio of Intellectual Property, which is growing month by month.

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