A new story today in the New York times vividly illustrates the security risks we’ve been talking about in previous posts, as more and more devices and machines become internet connected. A scary detail broke that the hackers in the recent Target payment card breach gained access to the retailer’s records through its heating and cooling system. In other cases, hackers have used printers, thermostats and videoconferencing equipment.
Every IT and Telecom manager is facing their own set of needs regarding cost control, security measures, time saving tactics and asset management. Now it is up to TEM vendors to give them what they need.
We talk a lot about the Carrier Wars and how it is impacting the mobile market, as shrinking growth options drive vendors to invite creative ways to steal clients from one another. But the New York Times added an interesting angle in a recent article giving the federal government some credit for this cost-lowering, two-year-contract-busting, annoying-fee-eliminating fight. And they may have a point…
Telecom inventory management for enterprise has gone from a headache to a nightmare. With the rapid expansion of devices and technologies, IT and telecom managers need a proactive approach to overseeing fixed and wireless environments to control cost and reduce risk. Telecom expense management veteran Valicom will share best practices for handling telecom inventory in a new webinar Telecom & Wireless Inventory Management: What the Pros Know on Wednesday, May 14, 2014 at 10 a.m. CST.
Smart machines and M2M (machine to machine) traffic have been around for a while, but they are rapidly becoming ubiquitous. More and more devices are designed to collect, process and transmit data. Whether it is medical equipment or RFID tags on shipping containers, they need to be inventoried, secured, managed and expensed.
If you haven’t heard, Phone + Tablet = Phablet. This newest entry into the mobile device market is a mashup of ideas, designed to offer more screen space, while still providing the talk capabilities of a phone. Already big in global markets, it is hitting the US consumer hard.
Techradar wrote a great article on wearable tech and network security recently, leading off with the ridiculous new product from Sony -a “smartwig”. Supposedly such an item could be worn even if you have hair – as an extra – and be used to do things like change slides for a presentation with a waggle of the eyebrows, orient and guide the wearer via GPS, or transmit biometric data (heartbeat, blood pressure) from the wearer to medical staff.
The technology world is seeing a massive explosion of wearable new toys, all wirelessly connected. The floor at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was swimming with them – all racing to market to capture early tech adopters. Smartwatches and Google Glasses are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a veritable avalanche of gadgetry heading your way.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that the mobile carriers have been taking major pot shots at each other lately. ATT&T and T-Mobile especially, and between the nutty CEO antics and “mano a mano” marketing strategies, the tactics and analyst speculations fill industry news.
This is rapidly escalating into an antagonistic Privacy War pitting “Employer vs Employee”. When mobile security policies are perceived as leaning too far into personal space, it can lead to a withering of trust. For example, mobile devices can run apps that track usage as well as location – but when is that necessary, and is it even legal? Either way, you can bet that employees probably won’t like someone knowing where they are every second of every day.
BYOD: What is driving costs? In our previous post on TEM Trend One – BYOD Boom or Bust, we covered the issue of whether BYOD is helping with costs or not. It is worth discussing what is driving those costs higher, as it isn’t an easy answer. There are six main things companies are seeing…
Many firms just don’t have a good enough grasp of their current telecom environment to be able to determine if BYOD does them any good. It always comes back to “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. If you don’t know where you are now, how do you decide where to go?
Mobile carriers have long pushed back on law enforcement, and customer, requests to provide a “kill switch” on their devices. A kill switch can come in various forms, but is intended to disable phones when stolen, making them less attractive to thieves by eliminating their resale value. With mobile phone theft making up a high percentage, 30-40%, of all robberies in the US the problem is very real. But carriers have been accused of refusing to provide such a feature, due to the perception that they benefit from stolen phones in two ways. First, the previous owner now has to buy a new phone, often at sky high “out of contract” rates. And secondly, the stolen phone is often activated by the new owner, gaining the carrier a new customer.
Valicom’s telecom expense management (TEM) clients reported continued high satisfaction scores for the fourth quarter of 2013. Since 2000, we have been surveying clients to learn how satisfied they are in eight key areas: professionalism, overall expectation, communication, quality and accuracy, understanding client needs, responsiveness, meeting deadlines, and overall value. The combined client satisfaction scores for the 4th quarter, and the average for all of 2013, were 3.93 on a 4.0 scale.
Telecommunications management has undergone a radical evolution the past few years, and new security, privacy and pricing trends are making “business as usual” almost dangerous. After 23 years doing telecom expense management, Valicom has seen enough of the industry’s history to be very alert to trends and fads. To address these trends, and give a solid overview of where the industry stands and where it’s going, they recorded their webinar “Telecom Expense Management 2014: Trends & Best Practices” and it is now available to stream.
The Telecom Expense Management Industry Association (TEMIA), of which Valicom is a member, is the voice for telecom and mobile expense management providers in the US. In conjunction with member organizations, they just released a new report on best practices for organizations that are transitioning employees’ mobile devices. The report, titled “BlackBerry Concerns Dial up Bigger Issues for Enterprises”, is available online from the Valicom telecom management white paper library.
Firms are adding security measures to manage mobile at an unprecedented pace, but that may not be enough. Personal mobile devices are still considered that to their owners – “personal”. “My stuff, not your stuff.” So security policies designed to protect the company may be balked at by users, and users’ own sloppy personal habits – like storing passwords ON their devices, or not setting up PIN access – can also undermine the efforts.
The buzzword for the Consumer Electronics Show in 2014 appeared to be “wearables”. Vendors are racing to market with eyewear, monitors, watches and fitness-related devices that all chain to your smartphone. The reach has expanded to every imaginable corner of human activity. Companies touted wearable baby monitors, golf gloves, gaming devices, and pet-tracking collars to keep a digital eye on Fido. Wireless carriers must love this trend, as unless you’re within a wi-fi zone, all that delicious data comes out of your capped plan and has the potential to drive up usage, and profits. For a peek, check out this slide show.
At the widely watched Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, the latest volley in the ongoing wireless carrier battled was unleashed. T-Mobile, in a move that has been hinted at by CEO John Legere, has offered to pay customers’ penalty fee with other carriers if they make the jump to them. The early-termination fee rebate could go as high as $650.
With the lightning pace of technological advancement, and the spread of BYOD and mobile management challenges, the telecom expense management landscape keeps getting more complicated. Telecom managers, CFOs, COOs and CEOs all need to keep up, both on technology and on trends, to know what is coming down the road that might impact their business.
With many telecom managers wringing their hands over whether “to BYOD or not to BYOD”, others find they aren’t so ready to jump on the bandwagon. They prefer to get down to business by better managing their current wireless environment, both to control costs and to increase visibility. As the old adage says, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”