Following the economic turbulence of the “Great Recession,” Toyota felt the need to improve its revenue structures. These earnings are directly linked to advanced work performed by knowledge workers in areas such as research and development on new cars, production, and sales. Toyota also wanted to shorten its product time-to-market to maintain its competitive market lead. The firm turned to the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) to help Toyota determine where improvements could be made and how to implement them.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are leading the way to cloud services. In fact, SMBs represent two-thirds of the public cloud market, outpacing the growth of enterprise cloud adoption by about 10 points, according to a recent McKinsey report (“Outlook—Overcast and Bright: How the Cloud Is Transforming IT for SMEs,” McKinsey & Company, July 2011). Yet, many service providers (SPs) are wondering whether the rate of SMB cloud adoption makes it worthwhile to invest in cloud and managed services for SMBs. They are asking:
Is now the time to invest in SMB-focused services?
Earlier in my career, I helped Wall Street find cutting-edge solutions to the radical challenges posed by the first great wave of computerization. Today, the changes shaking the financial industry are no less extreme, as firms negotiate the combined forces of globalization and regulation, while adapting to next-level technology that is lightning-fast, hypermobile, and reaching for the cloud.
Several weeks ago, at the 8th Annual High Performance Computing Financial Markets Show and Conference in New York, I outlined Cisco’s vision for the Global Connected Marketplace and the transformational shift in the consumerization of IT that it portends.
Lower margins resulting from both the commoditization of transaction economics and the high cost of supporting IT-intensive infrastructures are putting tremendous pressure on financial-market companies. This is causing many firms to rethink their business models to create new revenue streams—and reduce costs—across traditional functions such as pre-trade analytics, risk management, and post-trade reconciliation. These functions are now seen as critical business processes that can be “shifted and lifted” into a cloud-enabled service delivery model.
Key enablers of success will include the development of new cloud operating models and strategic sourcing capabilities delivered via networked services. This will provide financial-market companies with greater business agility, and a path for effectively shedding capital-intensive assets from balance sheets for re-investment in new innovations and for producing positive company valuations.
In 97 countries around the world, there are now more mobile devices than people. No wonder mobile networks are clogged with massive amounts of new traffic! Mobile operators are struggling with how to provide the mobile broadband experience customers expect, in a cost-effective, scalable, and profitable manner. I believe that Wi-Fi, the “silent sleeper” of wireless access networks, may hold the answer.
The mobile industry is on the brink of a fundamental change. Just think of some recent key developments:
There has been massive growth in Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones, tablets, cameras, and game consoles—and nearly half of network traffic growth is Wi-Fi.
The number of Wi-Fi access points is also exploding, with more and more free public access.
At the same time, economic modeling by Cisco IBSG shows that mobile operators can reduce costs and improve customer experience by offloading mobile data to Wi-Fi networks. Read More »
