David Small Speaks at Mobile Future Forward

On Tuesday, September 10, Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ Chief Platform Officer, David Small, participated on a panel at the 4th Annual Mobile Future Forward Conference. This one-day event brings together a broad group of mobile industry executives and experts to discuss trends for growth, innovation and continued revenue generation. The goal is to help attendees understand where the industry is today – its opportunities and challenges – and discuss the vision for the industry’s future.

David participated on a panel titled: Operators and the Fourth Wave. Conference organizer and mobile industry consultant, Chetan Sharma, says the mobile industry’s fourth (revenue) wave is connected solutions. The industry’s previous three waves were voice, text and data. As revenue gains from each of these waves plateau, the industry needs to identify the next wave that will drive future profits. The panel included participants from AT&T, Telefonica and Tata Communications, along with Verizon, and sought to identify which connected solutions initiatives these companies were advancing and how they were gaining traction.

David focused much of his contributions to the panel on the machine-to-machine (M2M) and connected solutions Verizon Enterprise Solutions is delivering in the auto, healthcare and utilities verticals. His message was that while Verizon does, and will continue to, provide M2M connectivity the focus is on helping companies and organizations solve problems through connected solutions. These connected solutions are enabled by Verizon assets such as wireless connectivity, cloud and data centers, security, professional services and telematics.

In particular David highlighted the work Verizon does for Mercedes-Benz – powering their mbrace system. While there is revenue in the wireless connection that enables the in-car solution, the greater value to Verizon is in managing the service for the automaker. In essence, Verizon is “moving up the stack” from straight connectivity.

David talked about Verizon’s healthcare-enabled cloud and the company’s FDA-approved Converged Health Management Platform as just two examples of how Verizon is leveraging assets like wireless connectivity, cloud and security to deliver solutions for the healthcare industry. Additionally, the company is able to connect patients with healthcare providers for management of chronic diseases, providing remote monitoring and reporting of actions like vital statistics. These solutions impact thousands of lives each day and help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health care delivery.

Finally, David addressed Verizon’s work in delivering solutions to the utility industry leverage the company’s networks (wireless and global IP), cloud platform and M2M service. Working with a number of electric utilities, Verizon has teamed with solution providers to monitor and manage electrical consumption at consumers’ homes. These initiatives include working with large utilities to license services, made available through Verizon’s cloud, to smaller regional utilities. Also, utilities can work with consumers to cut output demands during peak times (like automatically raising residential thermostats of participating consumers on hot days to avoid brown-outs) in exchange for rebates on their bills.

The message is clear. The future for Verizon is in building on the company’s unique assets to deliver solutions to businesses and consumers that provide direct bottom-line benefits. Wireline and wireless connections may be part of these solutions, but the greater value to Verizon is in using all of our assets for connected solutions. This approach puts Verizon ahead of the Fourth Wave and continues to position the company for expansion and growth.