2015 review and 2016 predictions

As is now customary, I try to grade what I was predicting for 2015 and see what panned out and what didn't. I'll share as well what I see for 2016.

Content providers, creators, aggregators:

"They will need to simultaneously maximize monetization options by segmenting their user base into new price plans and find a way to unlock value in the mobile market.While many OTT, particularly social networks and radio/ audio streaming have collaborated and signed deals with mobile network operators, we are seeing also a tendency to increasingly encrypt and obfuscate online services to avoid network operators meddling in content delivery." 

On that front, I think that both predictions held true. I was envisioning encryption to jump from 10 to 30% of overall data traffic and I got that wrong, at least in many mature markets, where Netflix is big in mobile, we see upwards of 50% of traffic being encrypted. I still claim some prediction here, with one of my first post indicating the encryption trend 2 years before it started in earnest.

The prediction about segmentation from pricing as OTT services mature has been also largely fulfilled, with YouTube's 4th attempt, by my count, to launch a paid service. Additionally, the trend about content aggregators investing in original content rights acquisition is accelerating with Amazon gearing up for movie theaters and Netflix outspending traditional providers such as BBC with a combined investment by both company estimated in the 9$Bn range. Soon, we are talking real money.

In 2016, we will see an acceleration of traditional digital services that were originally launched for fixed line internet transitioning to predominantly mobile or mobile only plays. Right now, 47% of Facebook users are exclusively through  mobile and account for 78% of the company's revenue. More than 50% of YouTube views are on mobile devices and the corresponding revenue growth is over 100% year on year. 49% of Netflix' 18 to 34 years old demographics watches the service on mobile devices. We have seen signs with Twitter's vine,  and Periscope as well as Spotify , MTV and Facebook that the battlefield will be on video services.

Network operators: Wholesaler or value providers?
The operators in 2016 are still as confused, as a community as in 2015. They perceive threats from each other, which causes many acquisitions, from OTTs, which causes in equal measure many partnership and ill-advised service launches and from regulatory bodies, which causes lawyers to fatten up at the net neutrality / privacy buffet.

"we will see both more cooperation and more competition, with integrated offering (OTT could go full MVNO soon) and encrypted, obfuscated traffic on the rise". 

We spoke about encryption, the OTT going full MVNO was somewhat fulfilled by Google's disappointing project Fi launch. On the cooperation front, we have seen a flurry of announcements, mostly centered around sponsored data or zero rated subscription services from Verizon, AT&T.

"We will probably also see the first lawsuits from OTT to carriers with respect to traffic mediation, optimization and management. " 

I got that half right. No lawsuit from content providers but heavy fines from regulators on operators who throttle, cap or prioritize content (Sprint, AT&T, ...).

As for digital service providers, network operators are gearing themselves to compete on video services with services such as mobile TV /LTE broadcast (AT&T, EE, Telekom Slovenje, Vodafone), events streaming (China Telecom, ), sponsored data / zero rated subscription services (Verizon, T-mobile Binge On, Sprint, AT&T, Telefonica, ...).

"Some operators will seek to actively manage and mediate the traffic transiting through their networks and will implement HTTPS / SPDY proxy to decrypt and optimize encrypted traffic, wherever legislation is more supple."

I got that dead wrong. Despite interest and trials, operators are not ready to go into open battle with OTT just yet. Decrypting encrypted traffic is certainly illegal in many countries
or at the very least hostile and seems to be only expected from government agencies...

Mobile Networks Technology

"CAPEX will be on the rise overall with heterogeneous networks and LTE roll-out taking the lion share of investments. LTE networks will show signs of weakness in term of peak traffic handling mainly due to video and audio streaming and some networks will accelerate LTE-A investments or aggressively curb traffic through data caps, throttles and onerous pricing strategies."

Check and check.

"SDN will continue its progress as a back-office and lab technology in mobile networks but its incapacity to provide reliable, secure, scalable and manageable network capability will prevent it to make a strong commercial debut in wireless networks. 2018 is the likeliest time frame."

I maintain the view that SDN is still too immature for mass deployment in mobile networks, although we have seen encouraging trials moving from lab to commercial, we are still a long way from a business case and technology maturity standpoint before we see a mobile network core or RAN running exclusively or mostly on SDN.

"NFV will show strong progress and first commercial deployments in wireless networks, but in vertical, proprietary fashion, with legacy functions (DPI, EPC, IMS...) translated in a virtualized environment in a mono vendor approach. "

We have seen many examples of that this year with various levels of industry and standard support from Connectem, Affirmed Networks, Ericsson, Cisco and Huawei.

"Orchestration and integration with SDN will be the key investments in the standardization community. The timeframe for mass market interoperable multi vendor commercial deployment is likely 2020."

Orchestration, MANO has certainly driven many initiatives (Telefonica OpenMANO) and acquisitions (Ciena acquired Cyan, for example) and remains the key challenge in 2016 and beyond. SDN NFV will not take off unless there is a programmatic framework to link customer facing services to internal services, to functions, to virtual resources to hardware resources in a multi-vendor fashion. I still maintain 2020 as the probable target for this.

In 2016, the new bit of technology I will investigate is Mobile Edge Computing, the capacity to deploy COTS in the radio network, unlocking virtualized services to be positioned at the network's edge, enabling IoT, automotive, Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality services that require minimal latency to access content even faster.

In conclusion, 2016 shows more than ever signs that the house of cards is about to collapse. Data traffic is increasing fast, video is now dominating every networks and it is just starting. With 4K and then 8k around the corner, without talking about virtual or augmented reality, many of the players in the value chain understand that video is going the next few years' battlefield in mobile, OTT and cloud services. This is why we are seeing so much concentration and pivot strategies in the field. 
What is new is the fact that if mobile was an ongoing concern or barely on the radar for many so-called OTT, it has now emerged as the predominant if not exclusive market segment in revenue. 
This means that more pressure will rain on network operators to offer bandwidth and speed. My reports and workshops show that mobile advertising is not growing fast enough in comparison to the subscribers eyeball moving to mobile screens. This is mostly due to the fact that video services in mobile networks are a pretty low quality service, which will get worse as more subscribers transition to LTE. The key to unlock the value chain will be collaboration between operators and OTT and that will only happen if/when a profitable business model and apportioning of costs is worked out.

At last, my prediction about selfie kills seem to unfortunately have been fulfilled with selfies now killing more people than shark attacks. Inevitably, we have to conclude that in 2016, commercial drones and hoverboards will kill more people than selfies...

That's all folks, see you at MWC next month.

Citrix selling Bytemobile

In a press release dated July 28, Citrix Systems has announced that it will collaborate with Elliott Management, an activist investment firm who has amassed 7.1% of the company's common stock and has been advocating for strategic changes in Citrix' product portfolio and operations.

Elliott had announced their plans to actively be involved in Citrix' strategy in a letter to their board on June 11. The letter laid out a plan for Citrix' stock growth and investor value creation including executive and operational changes, as well as spin off or sale of business units, including ByteMobile, acquired for $435m in 2012.
Citrix has announced that they have retained financial advisors for the sale of ByteMobile.

Concurrent with the announcement that Citrix will collaborate with Elliott and give them a board seat, Citrix' CEO has announced his retirement effective as soon as a replacement is found.

Thoughts on Flash Networks' acquisition of Mobixell

This is it. The news hit the press officially today and officiously yesterday through Azi Ronen's blog. Flash Networks has acquired Mobixell Networks. The newly formed company will command a leading market share in deployment in the video optimization segment.

This acquisition is the latest in a long series (see Marlin/Openwave, Opera/Skyfire, Citrix/ByteMobile and Allot/Ortiva...) and there are certainly more to come. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, it will not come as a surprise to you to see further concentration in that space.

Historically speaking, the companies in this segment have been under-capitalized to go after the market opportunity. Start-ups and reboots have been the rule rather than the exception and only recently did medium to large size companies such as Citrix, Allot, NSN, Huawei and Cisco entered the market. Inevitably, an increase in competition, together with a quasi full penetration of tier 1 has led to a price attrition.

Mobixell has been one of the proponent of the price war and while the strategy to acquire market share at any cost has served its purpose, since it has put them in the second place in term of installed base, It has been punishing on their bottom line. The company might have experienced some "investor fatigue" that has led to the historical CEO and CTO, both co-founders leaving the company earlier this year.
As disclosed to my clients, the change of direction would coincide with a strategy change, with an emphasis on profitability, but the company was already committed to a growing customer base that would require more capital to serve efficiently.

The new entity will have  a critical mass of customers in this space and a dominant market share in term of deployments, but not in revenue, as Citrix/ByteMobile still dominates most of the high-margin tier 1 mature operator groups.
No doubt this is not the endgame for Flash Networks and that more consolidations are to be expected in the near future.

Flash Networks' success will now require a large product management undertaking, to digest Mobixell , make the necessary choices between a product base almost entirely redundant and cajole both companies' customers with a roadmap that will be worth waiting for while the products align.

As mentioned previously, between policy management, optimization, charging, signalling management and DPI, there are too many vendors and too many functions with large overlap. Video is no doubt an important element of the equation as it now dominates data traffic but it is a relatively misunderstood technology that requires specialized and costly R&D investment. With so many under capitalized start ups, it is easier to acquire the technology than to develop it in-house. Particularly if you consider that it takes 40-55m$ and 7 years to bring a product to market. Many companies have under-estimated the skill set necessary to operate in video and an acquisition is also the best vehicle to acquire experienced engineers and patents. Full in-depth analysis of the market and the vendors' strategy can be found in the mobile video optimization report and workshops.

{Core Analysis} advises Opera on Skyfire's acquisition

{Core Analysis} is pleased to announce that it acted as the exclusive technical advisor to Opera Software in its acquisition of Skyfire Labs.

Mountain View, California,  Oslo, Norway and Montreal, Canada — February 15, 2013

The acquisition price includes a mix of cash and stock, with an upfront consideration of US$50 million (including US$8 million of cash on the Skyfire balance sheet) and performance based earn-out payments over three years, including US$26 million in cash held in escrow and funded upfront, that can bring the total deal size to $155 million.

The Opera acquisition of Skyfire is expected to close before March 15, 2013.

Skyfire, headquartered in Mountain View, California,allows mobile operators to leverage cloud computing to optimize virtually any video and other multimedia on crowded cell towers, including 3G and 4G LTE networks. Rocket Optimizer on average provides mobile networks a 60 percent boost in capacity by reducing the size of video and other multimedia content as needed to fit the available bandwidth. 

Skyfire currently counts three large U.S. mobile operators as customers for its Rocket Optimizer and Skyfire Horizon solutions, and is in trials with ten other operators around the world.

“Opera and Skyfire are a natural fit,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “Both companies have evolved far beyond their browser roots. Skyfire adds capabilities to our portfolio around video, app optimization, smartphones and tablets, and strength in North America. With video expected to consume over two-thirds of global mobile bandwidth by 2015, and as time spent on Android and iOS apps explodes, we are excited to extend Opera’s solutions for operators.”

“Opera practically invented cloud compression to improve mobile user experience, and the team at Skyfire is proud to join forces and advance cloud solutions together,” said Jeffrey Glueck, CEO of Skyfire. “Opera’s over 100 carrier relationships, global sales team, and delivery organization can accelerate the global commercialization of Skyfire’s technology. Opera´s Mediaworks advertising unit with AdMarvel, Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising will strengthen Skyfire Horizon by offering mobile operators a complete turnkey solution including ad optimization, ad sales, and rich analytics. The synergies across all the product lines for both companies are tremendous.”

“The market opportunity for video/media optimization solutions geared towards operators and consumers is significant. After a thorough evaluation of this market, we strongly believe Skyfire is the clear leader for the future in this space”, said Erik Harrell, CFO/CSO of Opera.

This transaction is a proof of {Core Analysis}' market leading strategic and technological know-how in video OTT, mobile video and video optimization M&A.

For More information, please contact Patrick Lopez.

Patrick Lopez
CEO
{Core Analysis}
patrick.lopez@coreanalysis.ca

Allot continues its spending spree

After the acquisition of Ortiva Wireless, announced in April for $15-$17m, Allot announces today the acquisition of Oversi networks for $16m in cash with a conditional, performance related extra $5m.

Oversi Networks is a provider of transparent caching solutions for OTT and P2P traffic. Specifically, Oversi has been developing a purpose-built video cache, one of the first of its kind.

Many vendors in the space have caches that have been built on open source general-purpose web caches, originally to manage offline video optimization scenarios (for those not able to transcode mp4, flv/f4v containers in real time). As the long tail of video content unfolds, social media and virality create snowballing effects on some video content and a generic web cache shows limitations when it comes to efficiently cache video.

The benefits of a hierarchical, video specific cache then becomes clear. Since video nowadays come in many formats, containers, across many protocols and since content providers repost the same video with different attributes, titles, URLs, duration...etc, it is quite inefficient to cache video only based on metadata recognition. Some level of media inspection is necessary to ascertain what the video is and whether it really corresponds to the metadata.

All in all, another smart acquisition by Allot. On the paper, it certainly strengthens the company position, with technologies compatible and complementary with their legacy portfolio and the recent Ortiva's acquisition. It will be interesting to see how Allot's product portfolio evolves over time and how the different product lines start to synergize.

Citrix takes a Byte out of the Video Optimization market

Bytemobile, the leader of the video optimization segment with over 50% market share  has been acquired by Citrix Systems. The companies had announced a strategic partnership in February 2012, where Bytemobile product offering was declared Citrix-ready, a move to enable Bytemobile video optimization to avail of the enhanced scaling and emerging cloud computing deployments in this market segment.


The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.


After Allot's acquisition of Ortiva and Openwave's exit to Marlin Equity Partners, this is the third exit in that market segment in a short period of time, signalling a strong consolidation trend, as major players such as Cisco, Alcatel Lucent, Huawei, Ericsson, F5, Tellabs and others have started positioning themselves through their own offering, reselling or OEM agreements. Notably, this is possibly the first exit that is not an asset or technology sale.


One week before the video optimization forum, which I will be chairing in Brussels, this announcement promises much activity for network vendors looking at sharpening their video delivery portfolio. More to come on this shortly.

Allot acquires Ortiva Wireless

You probably by now all know to whom I was referring to in my last post, when I was mentioning rumors of video optimization vendors getting closer to policy vendors. Allot announced this morning the acquisition of Ortiva Wireless for an undisclosed amount. 


This is the 4th consolidation in this space in 24months, after Ripcode was acquired by RGBNetworks, Dilithium's assets were sold to OnMobile in 2010 and Openwave products division was acquired by Marlin Equity partners earlier this year. Additionally, in related spaces, Avaya acquired Radvision and RealNetworks licensed its codec to Intel in 2012.

I had first heard that Ortiva was in advanced discussions with Allot on March 31st. At that point, Ortiva having allegedly lost future business with Sprint to Bytemobile was in a dire situation, as far as future revenue prospects where considered. Furthermore, one of its main investors, Intel does not appear on the last two financing bridges filed with the SEC. Allot, who had been rumored to have looked at many vendors in the space over the last 18 months, was the number one contender for a possible acquisition. Neither company wanted to offer comments at that stage, even when last week, the rumor became public in Israel and was commented on Azi Ronen's blog here. 


Beyond the purely opportunistic approach of this acquisition, it makes a lot of sense for Allot to have tried and integrate video optimization functions in its portfolio. Bytemobile has strong announced ties with Openet and last week, at the Policy control and real time charging conference 2012, the core of many discussions revolved around how to monetize the tide of OTT video traffic.


I was appalled to hear that, when asked about the best way to price for video, a panel composed of Reliance India, Vodafone Spain and Telefonica Czech, was mostly concerned about congestion and looking at pricing based on time of day. This is a defensive, cost-containment strategy that is sure to backfire. Many vendors who have been selling cost reduction as the main rationale for video optimization have backpedaled in the last few months. As it happens, many operators found out that in peak periods, managing aggressively the size of the feeds to reduce costs is not working. They see that a reduction in 20 to 30% of the size of the individual feeds does not mean less cost, but 20 to 30% more users accessing the same capacity at the same time. Which leads in many cases to no additional  revenue since they have not found a way to monetize OTT traffic and no cost reduction, since the network is still not able to meet the demand.


It is of course, one of many possibilities, but what strikes me, is that the industry has not yet agreed on what is the best way to measure video. Capacity (Megabytes), definition (HD or standard), duration, recentness, rights value or speed (Megabit per second) are some of the metrics that can be used for video charging, but in absence of a single accepted metric throughout the industry, many operators are hitting a wall. How is the industry supposed to monetize a traffic that it is not able to measure properly ? How can prices be shared and accepted by all the actors of the value chain if they measure the value of a video differently?
Costs for content owners and aggregators are measured in rights, geographies, storage, version control... Costs for CDNs are measured in geographies, point of presence, capacity... Costs for mobile carriers are measured in capacity, speed, duration, time of day, geography...


This is a  conundrum this industry will need to solve. If the mobile network operators want to "monetize" OTT video traffic, they first need to understand what measures can be used across other mobile networks horizontally and vertically with the other players of the value chain. Only then, an intelligent discussion on value and price can be derived. In the meantime, OTT vendors will continue selling (and in most cases giving) video content on mobile networks, increasing costs with no means for a viable business model.

Intel gets Real: Intel Buys $120m Codec Patents From RealNetworks

"RealNetworks, Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK) today announced that it has signed an agreement to sell a significant number of its patents and its next generation video codecs software to Intel Corporation for a purchase price of $120 millions. Under terms of the sale, RealNetworks retains certain rights to continue to use the patents in current and future products.

"Selling these patents to Intel unlocks some of the substantial and unrealized value of RealNetworks assets," said Thomas Nielsen, RealNetworks President and CEO. "It represents an extraordinary opportunity for us to generate additional capital to boost investments in new businesses and markets while still protecting our existing business.

"RealNetworks is pleased Intel has agreed to acquire our next generation video codec software and team," said Nielsen. "Intel has a strong reputation as a technology innovator, and we believe they are well positioned to build on the development work and investment we've made in this area."

"As the technology industry evolves towards an experience-centric model, users are demanding more media and graphics capabilities in their computing devices.  The acquisition of these foundational media patents, additional patents and video codec software expands Intel's diverse and extensive portfolio of intellectual property," said Renée James, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group.  "We believe this agreement enhances our ability to continue to offer richer experiences and innovative solutions to end users across a wide spectrum of devices, including through Ultrabook devices, smartphones and digital media."

In addition to the sale of the patents and next-generation video codec software, RealNetworks and Intel signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on future support and development of the next-generation video codec software and related products.

"We look forward to working with Intel to support the development of the next-generation video codec software and to expanding our relationship into new products and markets," said Nielsen.

RealNetworks does not anticipate that the sale of the approximately 190 patents and 170 patent applications and next generation video codec software will have any material impact on its businesses. RealNetworks businesses include a wide variety of SaaS products and services provided to global carriers, RealPlayer, the Helix streaming media platform, GameHouse online and social games, SuperPass and other media products and services sold both directly to consumers and through partners."

Another strong message and movement in the video encoding space. Video intellectual property as we have seen here is becoming increasingly strategic

Openwave for sale, Sandvine's buyback, Comverse's Spin-off

Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: OPWV): 
Openwave announced today that their board of directors has decided to "pursue strategic alternatives"  for the company's mediation and messaging products business.
While this is hardly a surprise, if you have followed the saga over the last year (here, here, here, here and here) it is till sad to see one of the great companies who shaped the mobile internet divest their assets. The company is not completely up for sale, only the product business is, while the board and management team are trying to monetize further their patent portfolio through licensing deals, such as the one with Microsoft, that brought $m18 last quarter.
For a full list of potential acquirer of Openwave assets, don't hesitate to contact me through linked in or my email, at the top right of this page.




Sandvine Corporation (TSX:SVC) (AIM:SAND):
On the heels of reporting their Q4 and fiscal 2011 results ( Q411:$20.6 million revenue GAAP net loss of 3.6 million (non-GAAP¹ loss of $2.8 million); fiscal 2011 revenue $89.3 million and GAAP net loss 5.8 million (non-GAAP¹: $2.2 million loss)) and 44 new customers, announced that its Board of Directors has approved the adoption of an open market stock buyback program for the purchase of up to approximately 12 million common shares ("Shares") over a one-year period.


 Comverse Technology(CMVT)
Comverse technology is the holding structure behind Comverse and Verint. It has announced that it will distribute the share of its wholly owned subsidiary Comverse to their shareholders on a prorata basis. The move is an effort to create a more tax efficient structure and unlock some of the value. The investors welcomed the news with disappointment as the were hoping for a full buyout through M&A.

Allot to acquire Flash Networks for $110 /$120 M?

This is the latest rumor from Globe. Allot, who has raised almost $80M a month ago and was rumored to be acquired by F5, then to discuss acquisition of Mobixell or PeerApp last year, has a $500M market cap. Flash Networks has raised over $61M.

The resulting company could be booking about $120M in sales and be profitable.

Allot, in a briefing with Jonathon Gordon, Director of Marketing, two weeks ago was noting: " Our policies focus more and more on revenue generation. With over 100 charging plans surveyed in our latest report, we see more and more demand for bundle plans for social networks and video. We can already discriminate traffic that is embedded, for instance, we can see that a user is watching a video within a facebook browsing session, but we cannot recognize and analyse the video in term of format, bit rate, etc...Premium video specific policies raise a lot of interest these days."

No doubt, the acquisition of an optimization vendor like Flash Networks can solve that problem, by creating a harmonious policy and charging function that actually manages video, which accounts for over half of 2011 mobile traffic globally.

As discussed here and here, video optimization becomes an attractive target for telco vendors who want to extend beyond DPI and policy. Since video is such a specialized skill, it is likely that growth in this area will not be organic. It is likely that the browsing gateway / DPI / PCRF / Optimization segments will collapse over the next 2 years, as they are atomized markets, with small, technology-driven under-capitalized companies and medium -to-large mature companies looking to increase market share or grow the top line.