Product Portfolio Strategy for the Hospitality sector.
In October 2011 my company decided to create a dedicated business unit for the hospitality market and nominated me as responsible of the unit.
It was not the first time that I found myself in a role in which I have to build a new business. So, I had from the beginning a clear idea of the necessary steps:
- define the strategy and share it with high management.
- define the product portfolio solution and share it with high management, technical support, marketing and sales.
- define the channel implementation and share it with high management, technical support, marketing and sales.
- implementation and then reporting of the go to market strategy.
As to product portfolio selection, this time I wanted to use also LinkedIn as a tool to indentify the best IP PBX for hospitality.  So, I opened a discussion on the LinkedIn Unified Communication Group and other two LinkedIn groups dedicated to Hospitality.
It was not the first time I opened a discussion on LinkedIn and I knew that their success it is hard to forecast. En effect, I had very few followers on the dedicated groups for hospitality but the discussion on the Unified Communication group went quite well. As it is an open group you can read it in details if you are interested in the subject.

IP PBX selection through Linkedin: the results.
Trough the contribution of the community expressed in the discussion and in private e-mails, I was able to build a quite complete list of good IP PBX candidates for my portfolio (tab 1)

tab 1 – potential list of IP PBX for hospitality

Based on the list of tab 1, I made a first selection based on these (very personal) criteria’s:
1) The vendor must have a strong experience in the hospitality sector with a dedicated solution for hospitality.
En effect, hospitality is a quite new sector for my Company so we need a partner that can help up in going to market in a quick and efficient way. Moreover, my Company is a value add distributor so with limited resources to develop or customize an IP PBX with specific features for hospitality.
2) The vendor must have a channel strategy for a value add distributor and, if possible, interest for the Benelux area.
3) The solution of the vendor must be open to work with a middleware software for the billing integration with the hotel PMS (I will cover this important topic in a future post).
Based on  this selection and following activity my Company closed a partnership with Selta.

Collateral effects of joining a LinkedIn Group.
I wanted to understand if this action had also positive effect on other aspect of mine (and my Company) web presence.
First of all, I wanted to see if opening a discussion on LinkedIn helped me to be more visible on this important web 2.0 platform. From  fig 1 it is clear that a (successful) discussion in LinkedIn increase the visibility of my profile in the platform itself.

Fig 1 – Profile Visibility Effect in opening a group discussion in Linkedin.

I wanted also to see if this initiative could have also effect on my personal blog. So I used Google Analytics to see the LinkedIn Traffics as a Referrals source.  From fig 2. it is still quite clear that there was a positive effect (at least in terms of visits).
 

Fig 2 – Google Analytics for Referrals traffic for my blog

Finally, I wanted do check if my initiative on LinkedIn had also a positive effect on the Web Site traffic of my company. Also in this case I used Google Analytics to see the referral traffic for that period of time. From Fig 3 it is quite clear that also in this case there was a positive effect in traffic coming from LinkedIn.

 Fig 3 – Google Analytics for Referral Traffic coming From Linkedin for my Company Web Site.

Conclusion.
LinkedIn helped me to find the right vendor for my Portfolio solution and increased my visibility and the visibility of my Company on the web.
And you, are you using LinkedIn as a tool to support your business developer activity?

The Quadrant I : the needs for a Cloud Service.
In this market segment the host wants  to offer a Wifi connection but he can’t phisically install many appliances and he would have not, anway,  qualified staff to maintain them. Typical examples:
- Camping. In this case it is necessary to offer Wifi (and sometimes VOIP) services to bungalows, campers and caravans.
- Simple Hotspot points that are widespread on the territory (ex. waiting room of professionals, small waiting rooms of  tyre shops, small train stations).
- Private Access Point for a chain of shops that are widespread on the territory. For example an Access Point used to bring connectivity in a solution of video advertising in a chain of drug stores.
From all these example it is clear that the ICT operator must offer a solution that:
1) must relay on appliances that can be easily installed;
2) must be monitored in remote;
3) in case of hardware failure, the replacement must be done by the host itself (usually with no ICT experience).

Engenius CloudTrax: the components.
The CloudTrax Solution is simple in its concept, easy to implement and  to monitor.  In case of a failure of an Access Point anybody can phisically replace the fault appliance as there is no need of local configuration.
The solution consists of an indoor EnGenius EAP3660-cc and one outdoor EnGenius EOC 2611p-cc. These APs support MESH technology and must be controlled and monitor through a cloud service.  We propose two pratical examples to explain this solution.

Example 1: how to set up an outdoor Wifi Mesh Networking.
We will place three outdoor AP’s  to cover the external perimeter of a temporary exposition organized in the “Tour and Taxis” area in Bruxelles.
After creating a master account (in this example we created Valadis belux office) we can create the networking schema for “Tour and Taxi”.  For this project we will have three AP’s  (so three nodes). The AP ‘ValadisNode’ is the node cabled to the Modem/router (so it is the Gateway). The other AP’s  will be linked to “ValadisNode’ in a mesh technology.

Insert the road adress of the area (like you would do in Google Map), click ‘Add/Edit Nodes’, insert a name of your Access Point and his Mac Adress. Drag it on the map and the game is done (Fig 1).

Fig 1 -  How to insert Access Points in the Cloud Trax Solution.

Notice that when the Mac Adress of an AP is linked in CloudTrax to a specific networking then it cannot be used any more for other Networking unless  it is  first delete from the networking itself.
Personally, I prefer to identify the outdoor AP spots in Google Earth and then report them in the CloudTrax Networking (Fig 2).  Google Earth allows infact to be much more precise and flexible (you can rotate the map, see the building in 3D, etc) and this can often avoid a phisical visit of the place.
To translate the Latidute and Longitude from Google Earth in Decimal notation for Google Map you can use
Convert Latitude / Longitude Between DMS And Decimal Formats.

Fig 2 – Using Google Earth to position the AP  in the CloudTrax Solution.

It’s time to phisical install the 3 AP”s  on the ground.  It is of course necessary to respect the Wifi Point to Point infrastucture best pratice.  Then:
- mount the 3 ap on their poles.
- connect the AP ‘ValadisNode’ (the Gateway) to the modem/router.
Notice that the AP ‘west entrance’ and ‘east entrance’ will connect by themselves by mesh to the Gateway. Afer some minutes, the Wifi Networking is up and running.
As the AP ‘West Entrance’ and the AP ‘East Entrance” are one hop distance from the Gateway, they have about half of the total connection speed of the Gateway (Fig 3). Users on mesh networks will lose half of their maximum speed for every hop they are away from a gateway. Therefore,  it is a best practice to place the gateway(s) in a central position and avoid more than 3 hops for each gateway.
It is also a best practice,  in a mesh configuration,  to avoid more than 5 AP or repeaters for a single gateway.

Fig 3 – How it looks a Mesh Networking in  the CloudTrax Solution.

On the Node Map, click on a node and  then select Neighbors:  all nodes must  have at least one (preferably two) connections with an RSSI of 17 or more (Fig 4). If not, you need to reposition your node closer to the others or in a better line through fewer walls (in case of indoor AP’s).  You may need to add new nodes.

Fig 4 – How to monitor a Mesh Networking in  the CloudTrax Solution.

CloudTrax allows to set up 2 SSID.  Let’s configure the public SSID.
We select CloudTrax as a captive portal. This allows us to use a Splash Page already supplied by this portal. We flag the “Block Pre-Authenticated Users” field as we we want to activate a paid service for the hot spot (Fig 5).

Fig 5 -  How to configure a Public  SSID in  the CloudTrax Solution.

Press the ‘Edit Splash Page’ to see the proposed pages by the portal.  As we are planning a paid service, you need a splash page that allows  to insert the login key. You can customise each page just using HTLM code (Fig 6)

Fig 6 – How it looks a splash page in the CloudTrax Solution.

When an user logs to the AP through the activation code, he will be redirect to the web page of the specific event of that day (in the example http://www.etudes-professions.be/). We flag the ‘required voucher’ in order to activate a paid service through a voucher containing an activation key (we will not use Pay Pall in this example – Fig 7)

Fig 7 – How to configure a splash page for using vouchers.

Select the tag ‘General’ to create the Voucher.  In this example we will print an initial batch of 100 vouchers for the reception. We will limit the band connection for each user to just allow a usage of Wifi phones or email (Fig 8). In this way we will have  a Wifi networking that can connect about 250 users at the same time to Internet.

Fig 8 – How to create Vouchers in the CloudTrax Solution.

Let’s configure the SSID2 to create a private Wifi Networking for managing 3 IP Camera’s. The IP Camera will be phisically  placed on the same pool of the AP  to allow users to communicate with the reception in case of need (we will exploit the motion detection feature of the IP Camera to start the communication).

Fig 9 – How to configure a Private  SSID in  the CloudTrax Solution.

Example 2: how to set up an indoor Wifi Mesh Networking.
We are going now to plan and install 3 indoor AP’s  for this exposition.
Let’s create a new networking and then load a map of the place (Jpeg, Gif or BMP). Notice that the map must not be bigger than  75KB  (Fig 10)

Fig 10 – How to import a map in the CloudTrax Solution

Like we did for the outdoor AP, we can press the button ‘Add/Edit Nodes” and create a new AP directly in the map (Fig 11)

Fig 11 – How to add AP in a private map in  the CloudTrax Solution.

The steps to configure a public networking are pratically the sames of Fig. 5.
Finally, we can use the SSID2 to connect the wired lan of the employees to the Wifi infrastructure (Fig 12) in order to allow them Wifi Mobility in the exposition field.

Fig 12 – How to connect a Wifi Networking to a private Lan in the CloudTrax Solution.

In the case of failure of an AP, just delete from the Cloud Trex map the relative node, create a new node (remember to note the Mac adresse before sending the product) and phisically replace the broken AP with the new one.

Are you using other cloud solutions for this hospitalty segment?

Technological scenario.
There are many variables to analyze in a hospitality project in order to select the best technological solution.  To simplify, we can concentrate on 4 technological quadrants (fig 1) composed by the combination of these 4 basic hospitality needs:
- 3Play.
In this case the host wants to offer Video (IPTV and/or OTT), VOIP and Broadband connexion in each room as a single service.
- Wifi.
In this case the host wants to offer a wifi broadband solution completely isolated by the television and phone service.
- PMS.
The host wants to bill all the services (including the internet broadband) through the Property Management Software (PMS).
- Ticket.
The host wants to bill the broadband service in a manual way, usually through a simple ticket.

Fig 1 – Hospitality technological Scenario

Technological solutions.
- Quadrant I.
A cloud solution allows managing a WiFi broadband coverage  together with the printing of a simple ticket for the customer.
As all cloud services, the channel can buy the service from a vendor (for example EnGenius-Cloudtrax - ) or to build the service itself  (see Quadrant IV).
-  Quadrant II.
In this case a hot spot appliance must be locally integrated with the other IP appliances for VOIP and IPTV/OTT.  (for example 4ipnet Wireless Hotspot - ).
- Quadrant III.
All services are linked to a specific room. They can be supplied on a copper DSL line and separeted by Virtual Lans.  The billing is linked to the room number.
All this simplifies the architecture scenario.  A Hospitality Service Gateway is usually the best solution (for example ZyXEL VSG-1200 - ).
- Quadrant IV.
In this scenario it is necessary to manage a complex Wifi connection with hot spot functionalities and billing through a PMS. The billing of the Wifi services is not linked to a specific room number. At the state of the art, the best solution is to connect the WIFI Hot Spot Controller to the PMS through a dedicated Middleware (for example 4ipnet Secure WLAN Controller - and the midleware of Eurofluxo).
The Hardware appliance used in this Quadrant has the same characteristics of the one used in quadrant I to supply the cloud service.  It is likely to conclude that  the actor that succeeds in Quadrant IV has also good chance to offer a cloud service in Quadrant I.

Channel Actors.
Still simplifying, , we can identify three main actors in the channel of hospitality (see fig 2):
- ISP.
They supply the broadband connection and usually have also experience in the IPTV, OTT  and VOIP. They usually have also a sound knowledge of Wifi technology.
- It resellers.
They have a good knowledge of WIFI technology and Networking infrastructure (including cable TV). They can also have good knowledge of analogical and IP phone.
- Billing providers.
They are the expert of  the implementation of the PMS of the hotel.

Fig 2 – Channel actors in Hospitality

What we are observing now, is an effort of the ISP and IT reseller to enter in the  Quadrant IV.  On the contrary, the  Billing providers are not so much interested to enter in the  infrastructure complexity of this Quadrant.  So, ISP and IT Resellers must establish a strategic alliance with Billing providers if they want to succeed in this scenario.

Whatever is the actor of the channel, it is his responsibility to inform the host that the police might came to him and asks specific information regarding the activity of his customers as required by the  Data Retention Directive.

Data Retention Directive.
(DIRECTIVE 2006/24/EC - on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks) was introduced in 2006 after the bomb attack in London as a measure against international terrorism.
In the case of commercial data retention, the data retained will usually be on transactions and web sites visited.
The adoption of this directive for each European Country is not at all homogeneous. Also for this reason, the Directive has been recently (May 2011) strongly criticized even by the European Data Protection Supervisor - .
However, this Directive must be closely monitored by any channel operator in the hospitality business and… he must be sure to offer a solution that can save a detailed log on a NAS.

Do you see other opportunities for the channel in the hospitality business?
___________________________________________________________

To know more:
- How to set up a Cloud Mesh Wifi Networking for Hospitality.

Home Network vs.  SBM Network.
The main difference between the two type of NAS is not only in the price (a Consumer NAS should be under 500 dollars) or just in technical features (a Consumer NAS must have a multimedia server function).
NAS means “Storage Attached to the Network” and it’s indeed in the different kind of Network where the channel must start to build his best practice.
The main target of a  SMB Network is to allow members of a team to share jobs and collaborate.  In this kind of network  the NAS must play a role of backup solution of Business Data and/or Storage Consolidation Solution (in physical or virtual environment).
The main target of a Consumer Network is to allow members of a family to share multimedia entertainment. In this kind of networking the NAS must play a role in the home media center, in the home music center, in the home photo center and as a download station.

Home Networking
The standard configuration of a Home Networking is built on a Wifi connection managed by a single AP.
The final target of this networking is to connect different multimedia devices to the Television of the living room and, of course, to Internet.
To reach this target, the channel must help the end user to break the limit of his standard configuration. This can be done in three ways:
- Add other AP in the house (WLAN).
- Exploiting the existing electrical cables (HomePlug)
- Exploiting the existing TV Coax Cables (HomePNA)

The role of the Nas in the home networking.
A Home NAS must play different roles in a Home Networking.
The most complex is that of Home Video Center (Fig 1).
The channel must be able to explain how to use the NAS to stream HD Movies to
the TV. A clear understanding of the DLNA protocol is necessary.

Fig 1 – NAS as Home Video Center

A second role that a Home NAS might play is that of Home Music Center (Fig 2).
The understanding of the DLNA protocol is important but it must be integrated with the knowledge of the UPnP protocol (the two protocols are connected but are not the same).

Fig 2 – Home Music Center

 The easiest role that a Home NAS might play (and for this probably also the first sales subject to use for the channel) is that of the Home Photo Center (Fig 3).

Fig 3 – Home Photo Center

It is worthwhile to mention that, as an auxiliary activity to all other roles, a Home NAS must be able to play a  Download Station function (Fig 4). Internet, at the end, it will be the most important source of Multimedia content (you don’t need to work with Cisco to figure it out, do you?).

 Fig 4 – Download Station Role

Conclusion.
In this post I wished to explain what the channel has to do in order to propose the Consumer NAS. This opens of course other questions: who is the competition, what are the margin, etc. I will try to answer in a dedicated, future post. Meantime, do you want to tell us what is your best practice to be a winner in the Consumer Nas Market?

Already three years ago experts in virtualization techniques saw the possibility to bring Storage High Availability at SMB level. 
Most of the ‘ingredients’ are already there:
- Virtualized environment for the servers
- iSCSI network
In order to avoid the cost of a SAN, it was anyway necessary to use a  complex  (and quite expensive) software. This limitation is now removed.
With less than 4000 euro (end user price list) is now possible to buy a NAS Solution that can manage, at hardware level, a replication process with an identical NAS.

Fig 1 – High Availability with Thecus NAS.

These are the reasons that would the Standby NAS to kick in:
1)  Active NAS off/dead
2) Active NAS heartbeat (LAN3) not available
3) Active NAS LAN1/2 not available
4) RAID on active NAS not available

From fig 1. it’s also quite clear that this High availability solution can work in just a physical server environment but it is commercially clear the importance of this solution in a virtualized environment, especially to reach Disaster Recovery policy with a “SMB’ budget.

As a channel operator, does this solutions interest you?

The basic questions for the end user.

This tool helps the inside sales to ask the correct basic questions to identify the right IP Camera and NVR.
Let’s select the Expert Mode and we will work on the tab Camera Installation Drawing (fig 1).
The first question is regarding the Field of View (FOV). The FOV is  the area size that the camera must cover. You have to specify the Height of the object, the Width of the object and (eventually) the eight of the object from the ground.
For example, let’s suppose that the end user wants to tape only the face (not the body)  of a person of min. 1,5 and max 2 meters height and  that is entering a  door of 1 meter width.
We will introduce these measures for the FOV.
Height: 2 meters
With:   1 meter
Height of Lower: 1,6

Now we have to ask  the max distance of the target (in the example the face of the person) from the camera. Let’s suppose that the end user can place the camera quite close to the door (ex. 2 meter).

fig 1 – jvsg Camera Installation Drawing tab

It’ s time to ask how high the camera can be placed.  In this example the end user wants to recognize the face of a person of max 2 meters that is entering in the door. So, the camera should not be higher than 2 meter (if you place the camera too high and the person wears a cap, you will not get the visage). Let’s suppose that we can place the camera at 1,8 M.

The selection of the IP Camera.
We have now all the necessary elements to select the correct IP Camera to propose.  Of course, it would be very useful to know the budget of the end user in order to narrow the selection of possible candidates.
A resolution of 640×480 (VGA) is sufficient for facial recognition. Of course higher is the definition, more details of the face of the person you have (in our example we will work with a High Definition format) .  
You need now to introduce the Sensor Format. The usual value of a megapixel camera -  is ¼.
We use the tool to determine the focal length of the camera we need for our purpose.  Try different value and see in the camera 3D view the different image you obtain.  The color you see in the camera installation draw is also very useful; red color means that the target can be identified. We can see (fig 2)  that we need a camera with a focal length of 3 mm.

fig 2 – select the right Ip Camera

The inside sales has now all the necessary elements to make an offer for the correct IP CAMERA.
There are some elements that the tool cannot suggest but still an inside sales should advise the end user to consider. One of this is the lighting (for example: the camera should be working during the night or not? When the door opens, it would be too much light on the back of the target? If yes, we should compensate with inside light and with a camera with a good WDR: Wide Dynamic Range ).  Other options of the camera (like Backlight Compensation ) are less effective.
Fortunately, no tool can replace a good training from the Product Manager (for me the most important function in the organization of a Distributor).

Storage and Networking needs.
The inside sales  might  be asked to give support regarding the necessary storage space in the NVR and the networking band that should be assured.  This tool allows to make the necessary questions and give the appropriate answers.
Let’s select the Network Band with & Disk Space.
We introduce the wished resolution (in our example High Definition), The compression (check the datasheet of the camera to see if it can assure that) – in our example H.264 – and the time that the camera will be in used (in the example we suppose that it will be in used during the working time).

fig 3 – Networking and Storage Calculation

We can use a standard FPS (frames per seconds) of 10
You can see that already with one camera we need more than 3GB of space.   To reduce this (expensive) storage space (and also networking band with), we could use a camera that support Intelligent Video Analysis (for example the camera transmits images only when the door is open).  An alternative would be to use the Intelligent Video Analysis in the NVR (so the NVR would register the image of the camera only when the door is open). This alternative would not save of course band with Network.
Anyway, the inside sales has now the necessary information to make an offer for the correct NVR (and eventually for the networking switch).

Do you think that the IP Video System Design Tool can help an inside sales of the B2B ICT channel?

The concept of tiered storage.
The concept of tiered storage is an economic concept, very well known at enterprise level but it can be applied nowadays to SMB realities.
It is based on the observation that different storage supports – Solid Disk, Sas and Sata Disk - have different cost. So, it makes sense to use the most expensive support for the data that have the highest business value.
An intuitive application of this concept is to have the book keeping data of the current and previous year on line in the SAS storage of your server and the previous 5 years on a NAS with Sata disks.
A tired storage brings not only economic advantages but it helps to minimize the technical problem of window backup and increase the performances of the server (as it has to manage a lower traffic of data).

Storage Protocols Tier.
This is a technical concept. The applications can use a block protocol or file system protocol.
Block Base protocol applications manage directly a physical sector of the hard disk.  Most database applications (ex. Outlook) are based on this protocol.
File System protocol applications manage instead a logical file and not a physical part of the Hard Disk. Typical applications are File/Printing servers, Video Image.
Traditionally, the NAS were File System protocol storage and they couldn’t be used for Block base applications.  The recent introduction of iSCSI technology in affordable NAS allows now more flexibility for SMB to implement a tiered storage based on the business value of the data, without any more technical limitation.
So, it is fundamental that an inside sales in the B2B  must be able to suggest the correct NAS for an SMB application based on the concept of Tired Storage and Protocol Tier (see fig. 1).

Fig 1. Nas for SMB Tiered Storage.

Tiered storage in virtualized environment.
With the introduction of entry server multi cores, virtualization it is now a necessary and common practice also for SMB.
THe Virtualization layer - makes less evident to understand if the NAS should use a Block or a Network protocol but the basic economic advantage of a Tired Storage doesn’t change.  As a consequence, the NAS solutions of Fig. 1 are available also in a virtualized environment.

Other scenarios  of NAS in SMB.
The tired storage is a general economic advantage that NAS brings to SMB.
There are other advantages that NAS can offer to SMB that are instead more related to specific task. It is possible to identify at least other 5 important scenarios:

1) NAS can be used to implement a disk to disk backup.

2) NAS allows also to bring Disaster Recovery solutions to SMB levels. You can easily replicate data from NAS to NAS.   You don’t need necessary to use even an expensive WAN; you can use an  USB stick or, why not,  you could make an agreement with another SMB close to you that can be reached by cable (fiber or copper) to place a NAS to them and vice versa. I am sure that your reseller will be more than happy to propose this service to your neighbour.

3) NAS is an economic solution to share data in a branch office. The local team can quickly access local data (and the Company can save expensive Wan band to be connected with the Main Office location).  The users can even use different client platforms (for example Microsoft and Linux).

4) The NAS for an SMB can minimize the investment for a web server or take that workload from an existing server.

5) Most of the NAS for SMB offer the possibility to easy download and install Linux Open Source Applications. In this way  the NAS can become a good solution to offer services that usually are supplied by more expensive general servers.

Have you other scenarios to suggest to a B2B inside sales?
_________________________________________________________
To know more:
NAS High Availability solutions for SMB
Consumer NAS Market: what is the best practice for the channel?
NAS shoot-out: 5 storage servers battle for business

IPTV e OTT: convergence toward the hybrid platform.

IPTV is traditional defined as Telco TV.
This definition well underline the 3 main characteristics of this platform:
1) The owner of the IP Network (usually the Telco operator) totally control the performance of the network. For this, it is necessary the presence of a STB and a strict control of the navigation menu of the end user.
2) The content is defined by the Telco operator. The content providers trust the Telco operators because he fully controls the IP Network and in this way he can guarantee the respect (and the payment) of the Copyright rights.
Traditionally the content can be viewed in a linear way and consist in a pre-defined numbers of TV Channels.
3) As the Telco operators controls the IP Network, he can optimize the MULTICAST transmission of the linear content.
In the post IPTV: what are the opportunities for the channel?  I tried to show how the Telco TV is evolving toward an interactive hybrid model.

Over the Top or Internet Video or Web TV. 

Traditionally, OTT identifies a TV transmission that is free available in Internet (for example You Tube) transmitted by Unicast without any control of the network operator (Telco).  The content is visible thanks to the use of a common web browser usually installed in a PC. For this reason OTT is also defined as PC-TV.

As there is no control of the IP network and of the end user browser, the quality of the OTT video cannot be defined in advance and it can vary in a random way.
In many nations (like in Belgium) where the Telco operator has a dominant position the OTT platform is the unique tool avalaible for the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to distribute a TV service (technically, the Telco operator stops the multicast signal of the ISP).

So, the fundamental question is: how the ISP can commercially exploit the OTT?
The answer is the same that for IPTV:
1) Offer services ‘Everything on Demand’. These kind of services are distributed in UNICAST mode (so the Telco Operator cannot interfere). These are paid services and they can anyway supplied with targeted advertisement.

2) Bring the unicast content on the TV screen. To control the living room TV means to be able to offer interactive services (local news, traffic news, etc) and by consequence local advertisement content.
Moreover, the control of the TV helps very much indeed the control of the home networking (fig. 1) and by consequence helps the cross selling of related appliances (ex. Nas, Wifi Access Point, IP Camera, etc) and related services (parental control, alarms, etc).
This implies necessarily a limitation of the web access possibility of the end user. For this reason this is defined Closed OTT.
3) Introduce an hybrid STB. This allows the ISP to exploit a TV linear content  (for example, in Italy,  the digital terrestrial TV) avoiding the obstruction of the Telco operator and of content vendors.
The content providers don’t like the OTT as the lack of the control of the IP Network can cause the lack of control of the content value (and consequently the Copyright violation).

fig 1 – Digital TV and Home Networking

The control of the living room TV is also the main target of the consumer electronics B2B channel.
There are many “boxes” that can compete to control the TV. Some of these “boxes”, for exemple media streamer with or without hard disk, can be supplied by both channels (fig.2).

fig 2 – the battle of the STB

The possibility of choice of the ISP to compete in the Home Video business.

From fig. 2 it’s evident that the ISP must face either the concurrence of the Telco either of the Consumer Electronics offer.
The essential tools that he can use to successfully compete are:
1) The choice of a Unicast platform that allows managing interactive content. This platform must also allow the future development of multicast services (available with the arrival of the FTTH) and and to encrypt the content (already present in the unicast content).
As illustrated in the post IPTV: what are the opportunities for the channel? It is not necessary that the ISP will engage himself in heavy initial investments.
2) He must be able to offer an Hybrid STB - – capables to operate in Unicast (OTT) as well in Multicast (IPTV) and, in the same time, capables to offer also the essential services of the “boxes” offered by the electronic consumer, included the possibility to play a media player role.

With these tools the ISP can exploit at best his value add:
a)      To exploit his knowledge of the local productive network in order to offer services of development/broadcast of interactive content (for example Web 2.0 content, local television, interactive advertisement, etc).
b)      To exploit his call center to help the end user to develop his home networking.

Does all this make sense to you?
_______________________________________________________
To know more:
What the hell is going on with TV?
The rise of HTTP-TV

A Cloud Road Map for the VAR.
From Quadrant I of Graphic 1 it’s clear that the first priority for the VAR and the Reseller – I believe the difference between the two types will blur up with the success of the Private Cloud Computing – is to build your right Private Cloud. What is the right Private Cloud?
First of all, the right Private Cloud must fit the current segment of the customer set of the VAR. We assumed (Axiom 1) that it will be a specialized private Cloud for SMB, one for Mid Market and one for Enterprise (I will be back, of course, on this important subject in future posts).
The right Private Cloud must also fit as much as possible the current ICT standard proposal of the VAR:
1) Server and Storage Virtualization
2) Networking Virtualization.
3) Security Policy
Of course, the VAR must establish an action plan where the gap between the features of the Private cloud and his current ICT environment is wider (very likely in point 2 and 3). This Is also the right moment to incorporate best practices from  the market.
You are not in rush:  this is a 10 years Road Map but you need to start now and identify the mile stones as soon as possible.

Once identified the right Private Cloud Model, the VAR needs to engage the right end user to share his Road Map and develop the winning reference. Who is the right end user? He is not necessary the current most important customer but the one that is more prone to the innovation (see Axiom 2).

The last step of this first 10 years Road Map  is to identify and implement the services of the public clouds that can bring value now to your On Premise IT infrastructure and in the future to your Private Cloud.  These services will be tailored of course for your end user target segment and very likely they will fit particular vertical sectors of their market. I am talking of course about the Hybrid Cloud that it is presents in all the Quadrants.

The first ten years will be a great time for the channel. A lot of new hardware and software will be sold to implement the Private Cloud. Then situation will be quite different in Quadrant  II. The VAR has to decide if to transform his Private Cloud in a Public Cloud or to be absorbed by a bigger group. There is of course plenty of time to come back to this quadrant.

A Cloud Road Map for the Distributor.
The presence of a distributor in the channel is justified if he can bring a value to the Var and to the Reseller that the Producer cannot do directly.   This basic rule will not be changed by the Cloud Computing.
The market forces made the distributor specializing in a volume or in a value add model.  Then, most of them followed the VAR and Resellers in their specialization regarding the business size of the end user.  Table 1 shows some examples of the actual structure of the distributors.

tab 1 – Examples of ICT distributors

In Quadrant I this scenario will not change drastically.  The Cloud Vendors have not the capacity to serve directly the Var to help him in building the right Private Cloud and they still need the help of the distributor.  More open is the scenario regarding Hybrid services: can the distributor offer these services (and make money on them, of course)? Yes if he can leverage the knowledge and the relationship he has with the Var to help him to build a more effective Hybrid Cloud. Of course, he must also be ready to be rewarded on a service base fee, the natural payment method of the Cloud.
Also for the distributor the next 10 years will be plenty of opportunities but then blood will flow.  With the affirmation of Public Cloud as dominant models the number of VAR will reduce and the Vendors will try to reach them directly. The distributor can of course decide to play an active role as supplier of Public Cloud Services to the VAR but this requires lots of investments that only few distributors can afford.  Of course, like it always happened in the past, the ICT innovations will bring on the market new solutions that will requires again the presence of distributors but on hopes you cannot build Road Maps (and Budgets).

Does this Cloud Road Map make sense to you?
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To know more:
Leaders in the Cloud
Cisco Partner Summit Report: Big Private Cloud Growth Ahead

Definition of Cloud Computing.
July 21, 2010 will be for me an important date.  We organized the first technical reseller certification for ZyXEL X6004 IP PBX (specifically conceived for SMB business) and one of the participants asked: what are the advantages and disadvantage of a local, physical IP PBX and a hosted one?
The date is important to me because, for the first time, a reseller that was paying a training course was seriously interested to understand the difference between premise solutions and hosted solutions.
For many ICT solutions that we distribute, I was preparing myself to answer the basic question: should we provide a local, traditional IT infrastructure or provide a hosted service, a service in the Cloud?
Let me introduce some basic terminology of the Cloud; feel free to jump to next paragraph if you are familiar with it.
I like the simple description of SMB group:  the Cloud Computing is a technology that allows everybody connected by Internet to obtain IT services (fig 1).

fig 1. – a simple definition of Cloud Computing

The Service  can be an infrastructure as a Service (ex. Rackspace, Savvis, Go Daddy), Platform as a Service (ex. VMware, Microsoft, Google Apps, Force.com)  or Software as a Service (ex Salesforce.com).  Of course, in the Services you can include also the VOIP.
As to the Deployment Models of these Services, literature defines:
Private cloud, Public cloud, Hybrid (Federated) Cloud .
I refer to the e-book of Dan Sullivan for a more articolate introduction to the Cloud Computing.

A Cloud Road Map for the End User.
To understand the impact of innovations on the channel you must understand first how the End User will adopt it. 
For Cloud Computing, I use a model based on two axioms and on three dimensions.

Axiom 1 - Cloud (and in general any IT innovation) cannot change the traditional end user pyramid segmentation.
The standard segmentation of the End User  business (fig 2) founds its roots outside ICT considerations and the ICT channel specialized itself in serving one of this segment.
In this moment the Cloud literature’s attention is focused  on the Enterprise Segment but in a more discrete (and local way) vendors and the channel are getting ready to offer a cloud solution service to the other segments.
In my Axiom, there will be specific Private, Hybrid and Public Clouds for the three different segments.

Fig 2 – end user pyramid segmentation.

Axiom 2 - Cloud (and in General any ICT innovation) cannot change the traditional adoption path model of the end user.
The standard adoption path model of the end user (fig 3) founds its roots outside ICT considerations. 
The channel learnt to segment his own customers on their adoption models and to leverage this knowledge to propose the right solution at the right moment.  This will happen also for Cloud solutions.

Fig 3 – the adoption path model of the end user.

Dimension 1- Speed and reliability of internet Connection.
The cloud computing depends heavily of the speed and the reliability of internet connection.  
Technologically, the full potential of this dimension can be reached only with the deployment of FTTH infrastructure. Nobody has a crystal ball but I think it would take at least 20 years before this process is complete.

Dimension 2 – Price/performance of the Cloud Service vs. a dedicated on premise infrastructure.
There will be always a negative gap performance between clouds and a dedicated premise infrastructure in terms of server, storage and networking performance.  You can include also Client performance if you want to use the VDI service.  On the other part, a cloud service offers a strong advantage in terms of cost of the service and this advantage is destined to growth in time.
So, like it happened many time in the history of ICT technology, it is fundamental to consider the ratio Price/performance of the Cloud Service vs. a dedicated on premise infrastructure. Also in this case there are no sure forecasts but in my opinion this ratio will get his highest point in 10 years.

Dimension 3- The Company Psychology.
While the two previous dimensions are mainly related to technology, this is dimension related to the psychology of the end user.  Technological argumentation can only play a marginal role.
The Company Psychology can be Wintel oriented or Web 2.0 oriented. I prefer to give some examples (fig. 4) instead of a definition (for sure you can add many other examples, especially if you have teen agers sons and daughters).
There is also an “older” end user psychology: the mainframe oriented. In many cases the people that belonged to this psychology were obliged to convert to the Wintel one but for sure they are much more close to Web 2.0 psychology.

Fig 4 – Examples of Company Psychology.

Are you still with me?  Graphic 1 visualizes the road map for the end user.  The two technological dimensions forms the X and Y lines.  So, we can identify 4 different technological quadrants.

Quadrant I represents the current situation.  The IT vendors are heavily engaged to supply solutions to deliver a cloud that technologically can assure performances close to the dedicate on premises infrastructure. Internet is still slow and not very reliable. Wan Optimization techniques  try to assure minimum services for public clouds.
Depending on his Psychology, the Company will privilege an IT investment in a private cloud or adopting istead the available (and growing) hybrid cloud services.

In Quadrant II the technological performance gap between Cloud and on premise IT is minimized. The internet is still a bottleneck for WAN connections but a lot of services that doesn’t requires intensive bandwidth are availables and have been adopted by the end users.  The Company that is Psychological oriented toward web 2.0 (always more, for the entrance of the new generation at the C level positions) will heavily move toward Public Clouds.  A minority of the Company will stay in private clouds but will integrate it with many Services available on the Cloud.

In Quadrant III, with 1 GB fiber available everywhere, the Public Cloud will be the dominant model. There will be still a niche market (Quadrant IV) for graphic applications that will be run on premises (but the data will be stocked in the clouds).

Grapich 1 – Cloud Road Map for the End User

What is your Cloud Road Map for the End User?

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To Know more:
A Cloud Road Map for the Channel
3 Vendors on the Relationship Between Cloud Computing and Virtualization
Cloud Computing Industry Radar