Convergence=Google?

Last week, Management World Americas in Dallas was dominated by the changes that are underway in the industry.  Content Management, Device Management and Convergence all got top billing in the sessions and in the discussions over coffee.  Of course some people are thoroughly frustrated with the convergence word.  We hear it from investors and shareholders every day of the week, and while nobody knows what it means, it has become the Holy Grail of all telcos to somehow win the convergence war.  But this underlines the fundamental problem: key players and investors from the Telecom industry are increasingly confused as to where to invest their time, effort and money.  But it is telling that, while people are frustrated and confused, nobody is seriously dismissing convergence as a fundamental sea change in our industry.

The players who make up our emerging converged industry are many and diverse, and the one name that seems to come up more often than any other is Google.  In Telecom circles, the Boogey-man has been replaced with the Google-man.  This week we had telecom executives unable to sleep at night frightened by stories of the Google-man coming to snatch their businesses away.  And while the Boogey-man is only a story made up to frighten children, the Google-man is quite real.  

Last week Google announced the roll out of its long awaited and much-speculated wireless plans.  Called Android, it delivers open-source, advanced software and services that would allow handset makers to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year. Now this is a smart move!  The concept of Google developing a dedicated handset –as many people predicted was going to happen - would have been as insane as a Google PC!!  But being on every handset in the world opens the opportunity for a serious migration from billing-centric communications to advertising-centric communications.   

But it won’t stop there. Google is reported to be building the largest meshed-computing platform on the planet. According to Scott McNealy, around 15% of all the computer servers sold in the world last year were bought by Google, which is busy building massively powerful processing and storage facilities at key nodes worldwide.  And it is this initiative that could create the defacto industry Service Delivery Platform…………. by stealth!! 

So by all means, continue to look after business as usual, but keep a weather eye open for the impacts of content management, device management……and the Google-man!