A $100 billion (€74 billion) market opportunity is emerging for mobile operators catering to enterprise customers, according to Exact Ventures.
In a research report, the market intelligence firm estimates that enterprises can save 35% a year by adopting operator-delivered managed and hosted services.
The opportunity is driven by key trends such as enterprise mobility and the accompanying need for BYOD policies and control, cloud computing, and the emergence of enterprise small cell systems that enable telecommunications services beyond coverage and capacity.
The findings show that enterprise customers can save over $160 billion in capex by adopting operator-delivered hosted and managed services for mobility, unified communications (UC), secure access to applications, device management and integration of cloud and telephony (PBX), as well as new context-aware and location-based services.
According to Exact Ventures, moving to enterprise mobility services provided by a mobile operator would save an enterprise the equivalent of $264 per user annually or 35% net saving compared to an equivalent capex investment.
“The business market is vital for mobile network operators (MNOs) and with enterprise IT teams under constant pressure to do more with smaller budgets and fewer resources, the opportunity for trusted mobility services is tremendous,” said Greg Collins, principal analyst at Exact Ventures.
“Small cell systems that go beyond coverage and capacity can open up new business models for MNOs while also helping enterprise customers save significantly on CAPEX and OPEX,” he added.
For this market, operators have the opportunity to offer to enterprise customers mobility services such as hosted UC, cloud-based web filtering, mobile device management, compliance services, Wi-Fi as a service, and context-aware or location-based services.
Exact Ventures’ study was sponsored by SpiderCloud, which provides of scalable small cell Enterprise Radio Access Network (E-RAN) systems to mobile operators.