Musings and mutterings from the just-completed Mobile World Congress 2012 . . .

• Darned if this still isn’t the only place in the universe where there are waiting lines leading into the men’s rooms but not the ladies’ rooms . . . Obviously, the planners did not heed my carefully crafted suggestion for improvement made in the wake of the 2011 event.
• Barcelona did get the weather right this year, though – Each day was darned sunny and fairly warm . . . a decided contrast to the last two Februarys.
• The show was held two weeks later this year than in previous years, so no one had an excuse for being away on Valentine’s Day.  “Sorry, honey, but I ‘have’ to go to Barcelona this week . . .” didn’t work this time.
• All that aside, MWC continues to enhance its position as the largest, most important service provider-focused show of the year. 
• The projected attendance was 65,000, about 12% more than in 2011.  It will be a few days before the official figure is posted, but, judging from the traffic inside and outside the Fira de Barcelona all four days, the estimate seems reasonable.
• The most prominent theme this year was SP Wi-Fi/small cells . . . which just happened to align perfectly with Cisco’s key messaging and announcement.  Not to mention numerous customer-focused mentions this week and last.   Cisco focused “not only on what we make, but what we make possible.”
• Other consistent themes included monetization, optimization, reducing capex and opex, and cloud applications. 
• ARPU continues to stagnate . . . a real problem for operators.
• Another theme often heard is that service providers are more and more looking for advice from vendors.   There was a time when that was not true.  “They’re looking at the situation and saying, ‘We need some help figuring out what to do with all this stuff,” one analyst remarked.     Another added, “It’s VERY important for a vendor to be considered a trusted advisor.”  Hmmm – Does Cisco’s consulting arm – the Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) – ring a bell?
• Mobile World Congress has evolved – as it must – in its approximately 15 years of existence.   Real old-timers remember when it was small and very clubby.    Particularly in the last few years, it has changed and broadened as the concept of mobility has become more ubiquitous.  “Three years ago, it was more of a pure infrastructure show with the Huaweis, Ericssons of the world holding forth,” said one.  “Last year, companies like Samsung and Google got much of the attention.  This year, it’s WiFi and small cells.”
• “Four years ago here, a Hotspot was an oddity,” one analyst said.  “Now, it’s the norm.” 
• In a Cisco analyst/media event about small cells, Telstra CTO Dr. Hugh Bradlaw said, “It’s the network, stupid.  That’s what makes the cloud possible.”
• Machine-to-machine continues to grow in importance.   One analyst firm characterized it this way: “M2M = M3 . . . Make More Money”.
• Overheard while standing in line at the men’s room: “Operators are chasing the consumer too much and not realizing that a lot of SMBs and mid-market companies are dying for solutions that are right in their [the operators’] sweet spot.”

Tags: Cisco, Hotspot, mobile, Mobile_World_Congress, mobility, monetization, mwc, optimization, small_cells, SP, wifi

I had a great experience this past weekend at the NBA All-Star Weekend in Orlando, FL. The event included the NBA Tech Summit on Friday where a panel of industry leaders in sports, media and technology talked about current trends, what the future will look like and how customers are driving innovation through their use of technology. Not to mention the Slam Dunk Competition on Saturday and the Competitive All-Star Game on Sunday…maybe the most competitive ever! It’s not every day you see a dual between Dwayne Wade and Kobe Bryant that results in a broken nose.

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Tags: Cisco, Cisco Connected Stadium Wi-Fi, collaboration, mobile technology, mobility, nba, NBA All-Star

Yesterday was a whirlwind of activity for Cisco at Mobile World Congress 2012, and a big day for our smallest networking devices.

On the heels of the past week’s 4G/LTE announcements with Magyar Telekom, LG U+ , Vodafone Hungary, Telefonica Spain, and Bell Canada, yesterday we stood with business partners Orange, and Shaw to announce a new era in the evolution of the mobile Internet: the era of the small cell.

Cisco CEO  John Chambers declared “We are now entering the post-macrocell era, where small cells also will play a critical role in delivering the next-generation mobile Internet.”

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Tags: 4G, 4G LTE, Bell Canada, BT, Cisco, DT, john chambers, lg u+, magyar telekom, mobile internet, mobile video, mobility, mwc, Orange, PCCW, Service Provider, Shaw, smart, Telefonica Spain, True, V2oLTE, videoscape, vodafone hungary, wi-fi

Collaboration is indeed the business opportunity of the decade, promising to energize your organization while making more effective use of your precious assets.  My Cisco colleague Carl Wiese and I wrote a book called The Collaboration Imperative: Executive Strategies for Unlocking Your Organization’s True Potential to help organizations “operationalize” collaboration and capture these gains. Our goal wasn’t to write a “theory” book, but rather one that drills down into specific actions, with concrete examples of how to put collaboration to work in the real world.

As Carl noted in a previous post, effective collaboration is a function of aligning culture, process and technology.  But how do you do that?   Here is a one example from the book: Collaborative teams work best when they’re made up of people who communicate openly.

Collaboration technologies, especially video, make it easy to reach people across an organization and around the world.  Anyone who has traded their economy-class airline seat in favor of a Telepresence meeting knows the powerful benefits of collapsing space and time with an engaging video meeting.  However, as we cross departmental, cultural and time-zone boundaries, collaboration puts our personal communication skills to the test.

As we increasingly interact virtually, we work more and more with people we don’t know or have a long history with; they may actually work in a different company and teams may come and go in rapid succession.  Establishing rapport –- quickly –- is one of the most important aspects of successful collaboration, and it starts with communicating authentically.

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Tags: authentic, Carl Wiese Blog, Collaboration Imperative Blog, communication, mobility, Myers-Briggs, New Collaboration Experience, Ron Ricci Blog, social media, virtual

Mobile World Congress 2012 has finally arrived and we have picked up a lot of 3G and 4G/LTE momentum as we arrive in Spain!

Less than two week ago, Cisco announced our latest Mobile VNI forecast, and it seems like everyone is stopping to take notice of what the numbers say.

In the past week, five major customers announced their partnership with Cisco in deploying our Mobile Internet solutions:

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Tags: 4G, 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, DT, du, john chambers, lg u+, magyar telekom, mobile internet, mobile video, mobile world congress, mobility, mwc, Orange, Service Provider, Shaw, Telefonica Spain, V2oLTE, videoscape, vni, vodafone hungary