July 2007 - Posts

• KPN Telecom to Acquire Getronics -- Move Will Bolster IT services and SaaS offerings for SMBs

  Don't look now -- but another incumbent Telco is making a push to grow through IT Services and SaaS. Dutch telecom firm KPN is set to acquire IT services provider Getronics for €766m (£517m) in cash. The rumor is that KPN attempted to buy Getronics last year -- with no luck.  Speculation is that other suitors also contemplated a run at Getronics including rival telecom giant BT, and established system integrators including CSC, HP and IBM. In the end, KPN came back to the table because they (and other smart telecom carriers) seek to replicate the transformation that BT is currently undergoing by transforming itself into an fully integrated communications and software services firm rather than simply a traditional telecoms provider. According to KPN CEO Ad Scheepbouwer, the Getronics acquisition gives KPN a much needed IT management and application service capabilities at a time when "more and more companies are converging their telecoms and IT requirements, sourcing all services from a single end-to-end vendor.” According to this article in ComputerWorld UK both Getronics and KPN have a long list of large enterprise clients -- plus KPN has many small and medium sized business customers.  KPN hopes to extend the new services offering it obtains from Getronics to also service small to medium businesses who have limited or non-existent IT expertise. This continued trend of Telcos moving toward IT services and SaaS solutions for SMBs bodes well for young and innovative companies such SMBLive who partner closely with global telcos.  If you're not familiar -- take a look.  SMBLive delivers products and services which “fuse together” traditional telecom services with rapidly emerging Web 2.0 software services to help telcos strengthen the quality of their relationships with small business customers. Posted Monday, July 30, 2007 6:38 PM from Matt Howard | 0 Comments

• Web Conversations with Prospects

  One of the web conversations that is most important to any SMB (or large business for that matter) is the control and exchange of information with current and potential customers and prospects.  But before you can engage in that conversation, they have to find you.  And that's getting harder and harder to ensure.  With a million web pages being added to the Internet daily (okay...I made that number up, but I bet it's not far off), figuring out how your customers might find your needle in an infinite haystack is getting harder and harder. This is the reason so many people invest in paid search (read:  why Google employees drive Ferraris), but even more important to many SMBs than broad paid search is Local Search.  Here is a good article on how to make the most of Local Search:  http://www.imediaconnection.com/Newsletter/15841.asp A lot of the 10 tips are consistent with general best practices for SEO optimization (e.g. - be relevant) but I also think there is some good meat around recommendations like 'get local links'.  We all know how important links (or backlinks) are in general for SEO, and we also generally understand that the significance of the site linking to me determines how much weighting that link receives in evaluating my site for a potential search result.  The concept of local links not only adds to my general backlink count (not a bad thing), but I'm sure the Google Spiders and algorithms include (or are soon to include) extra special weighting for a local backlink when delivering results for local search.  So you might have a great backlink from www.food.com if you are a local eatery in Phoenix, but eventually a link or two from a neighborhood paper website (even with its small reach) could count for more.  It's like comparing Consumer Reports to Angie's List (www.angieslist.com).  I'll take the review on Angie's List again and again, and the search engines realize that. More and more, small business websites need to migrate to services that enable these local search results.  That's why products like BT Tradespace (www.bttradespace.com) that are built with the concepts of local communities, local search, ratings/referrals, etc. baked in may be the next form of how search starts.  As the results from a Yellow Pages search get closer to what I might expect from Google, or perhaps get better because of the local specificity, then maybe the war for eyeballs switches back to the big yellow book (except online). Posted Friday, July 27, 2007 3:23 PM from Andrew Brooks | 0 Comments

• Services -- NOT technology -- is the key to Telco Innovation

  BT announced earnings today for first quarter: Revenue for the period was £5 billion  Increase of 3% Profit before taxes was £658 million Increase of 3% Growth from BT Global Services was key contributor For additional perspective check out this article by ComputerWorld UK and this one by IT Pro Magazine. BT is clealry benefiting from its ambitious effort to reposition BT Wholesale as an IT and software-orientated company that offers managed services contracts, bundling IT and software, to its enterprise customers. Ben Verwaayen, BT Chairman stated again that BT "was keeping ahead of the game by delivering software driven services that will offer faster, more resilient and cost effective service to our customers." Industry analysts are also paying attention to the new BT.  Mike Cansfield, telecoms practice leader at analyst Ovum said "BT is clealry no longer a traditional telephony-only business".  He also said, "we've been critical of telcos in the past, including BT, for being far too technology-led.  Telco innovation is often seen in terms of technology rather than services provided to customers." Cansfield credited BT for launching a series of "service-led initiatives", such as BT Tradespace a social networking portal for SMEs, that demonstrate BT "now sees innovation as not just a new piece of technology".   Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 1:06 PM from Matt Howard | 0 Comments