E. Jay Saunders who recently was in Barcelona, Spain presenting to European Telecommunications companies at the LTE World Summit on how they can become more profitable by embracing Cloud Computing, was last month in Miami, Florida at the Mobile VAS 2012 Conference, presenting to Latin America and Caribbean Telecommunications companies how Cloud Computing can be used as a service delivery platform to enhance and extend mobile Value Added Services (VAS).
Bill Reyes, Director of Global Business Development of the Intertek Group, a company which has been providing testing, inspecting, and certifying of products for the likes of Bose, ChevronTexaco, Ericsson, and Samsung for more than 127 years; stated that E. Jay’s presentation “…provided a solid insight on the effectiveness of Cloud Computing for delivering high quality streaming video to mobile devices as well as other value added services such as Location Based Service (LBS) with low latency and high data transfer speed. This is the very first time in my past three years at this forum that a speaker shared a proven model which validates the reliability of Cloud Computing when delivering dynamic, static, and streaming content to wireless subscribers.”
Speaking on the topic “How Will Cloud Services Affect Value Added Services Delivery in the Caribbean And Latin America (CALA)”, E. Jay gave a number of examples of mobile Value Added Services (VAS) that Cloud Computing is best suited, while pointing out those technical challenges that must be avoided to ensure a high customer experience level. E. Jay’s presentation touched on such areas as: a) mobile video/audio, where Cloud Computing have made it possible to enjoy such services as YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify on mobile devices; b) M-Health, where Cloud Computing and mobile smartphones are being used as tools to diagnose diseases; and c) Real Time Translation, where Cloud Computing is making it possible for 2 persons who speak different languages to have a phone conversation, with the smartphone translating between the languages in real-time.
According to E. Jay, “It is amazing the things that you can do with Cloud Computing. For example, the magic behind Apple’s digital personal assistant Siri is the way it utilizes artificial intelligence and Cloud Computing to communicate with and help out users of the new iPhone. Augmented reality is another cutting edge technology made possible by Cloud Computing. It allows a person to hold their mobile smartphones in front of an object and have the smartphone automatically recognize the object and pull additional information from the Cloud and overlay the data on top of the object.” Although a fan of Cloud Computing, E. Jay cautioned that service providers who want to utilize Cloud Computing to enhance their value added services must keep in mind that until smartphone users can get affordable and seamless data anytime and everywhere – including when roaming abroad – it is best to keep critical phone functions and applications localized to the handset.
Some of the other speakers at the conference were:
Jorge Palacio, President – AVANTEL COLOMBIA;
Celio Rosa, Communications VAS Business Development, Latin America – ORACLE;
Rodrigo Rivera, Marketing and Innovation Submanager – TELEFONICA MOVILES CHILE;
Inesa Klainman, Director of Marketing – COMVERSE;
Marcelo Castelo, Partner and Co-founder – F.BIZ AGENCY;
