Personal Cloud and the Agile Operator Opportunity

Operators must be seen to ‘own’ the personal cloud

An operator’s ability to capitalize on personal cloud depends on its ability to partner with a specialized, experienced and reliable white label partner with deep domain expertise. A white label cloud platform delivers the agility of pure-play software firms and securely deploys cloud services into the operator’s trusted network. With a white label personal cloud service, the operator’s IT staff are able to concentrate on working with the  cloud partner on accelerating features of the personal cloud platform rather than the operational aspects of another large storage, compute and network infrastructure for the deployed cloud. 

An additional benefit of leveraging an existing partner’s services is the cost multiplier benefit that the provider is able to offer on the deployed infrastructure, especially if the operator chooses to deploy in a multi-tenant or shared hardware infrastructure environment.  The IT operational staff required for a multi-petabyte installation is actually quite large due to the needs of continual maintenance, patching and hardware end-of-life upgrades.  Using an existing cloud partner enables the operator access to world-class talent in the personal cloud space as well as reduces the number of required, dedicated SMEs for every aspect of the platform; such as Network, Reliability, Storage, Compute, Virtualization, Reporting Engineers and DBAs. This allows operators to be more agile and responsive to the market’s needs and use the cloud to deploy services that are more timely, relevant and competitive.

Example -- A Real-World Case Study:  Tier 1 CSP partnered with Synchronoss

Just a few years ago, smartphone subscribers had gigabytes of valuable personal data stranded on their phones. Keeping this content secure and transferable became a major priority for them. There was no simple way to move their content effortlessly to the cloud, much less from device to device. As a result, many subscribers that upgraded their device found the process of transferring data to be cumbersome because solutions at the time couldn’t handle all the various data classes or move data across platforms. The transfer, even when performed in-store by a trained service representative, was time-consuming for sales people and inconvenient for customers. Operators had to find a way to simply, securely backup and transfer content across devices.

To do this, the operator required an experienced partner with best-in-class solutions and worked on a set of criteria for a personal cloud solution that would address these customer needs including:

• Comprehensive Functionality: The ability to backup multiple classes of data, synchronize this content across all connected devices, and restore it on a new device
• Ease of Use:  Single user-friendly application
• Multiple Devices and Platforms: Platform and device-agnostic to maximize subscriber choice
• Reliable and Private: Delivering world-class reliability and shielded from potential Internet abuse to ensure the security of subscribers’ data
• Scalable: Able to handle dramatic spikes in volume as well exponential growth over time

The results of the rollout were better than anticipated. The rapid uptake of the personal cloud led the company to unprecedented levels of cloud adoption and a noticeably favorable impact on churn; between 10-25%. As a result of this success:

• Pre-loaded App—Top handset makers integrated the personal cloud app into their new smartphones which, in turn, drove subscriber uptake to record levels; resulting in up to 80 percent of subscribers using the latest devices to store data in the cloud
• Improved Customer Loyalty—Had a definitive impact on customer loyalty with personal cloud subscribers significantly more likely to stay with operators than subscribers that were not using the app; as well as compared to customers at competitors that didn’t offer cloud
• Increased Adoption of Multi-Device Plans—Drove higher revenue from these premium subscriptions
• Easy, Self-Service Transfers—This app turned out to be so easy and simple to use that customers could do it themselves and for customers who want to complete the transfer in the store it takes an associate a matter of seconds, saving significant OPEX; dramatically increasing efficiency and increasing device adoption

The collaboration was so successful the two firms are working on developing the next generation of the solution; exploring ways to help customers use their content in new ways to drive deeper customer engagement via the cloud to create services that delight subscribers, and continue to drive revenue while enhancing loyalty.

The partnership of the operator with a comprehensive, scalable white label Personal Cloud solution allows for a lower cost, faster to market alternative to in-house development. A trusted partner such as Synchronoss provides the carrier with a branded cloud solution that will extend subscriber relationships to new lines of service on additional devices. This will ultimately pave the way for faster, higher quality mobile and multi-device services and provide access to new sources of revenue as the cloud continues to become an essential extension of the smart connected device.