Middle East Open for Business

France Telecom have recently announced its plans to acquire five telecom deals in North Africa and the Middle East and are hoping to complete some of these by the end of the summer. This revelation has led to the meeting of the leading names in telecoms at the NGT MENA summit.


France Telecom is set to spend as much $8.6 billion on MENA deals over the next 5 years as part of a ‘double revenue’ strategy to capitalize on emerging markets. This plan comes as a direct result of slowing revenue growth within European markets. Across the MENA region telecoms infrastructures are expanding and modernizing, greater liberalization and competition are positively impacting on the market. The NGT MENA committee (hosted by GDS International) is investing time to identify the critical roles of telecommunications in the economic development of the region. More technologically diverse services are becoming available to both businesses and consumers alike. Internet usage is on the rise and money spent in the right place now will pay dividends.

Key to discussions will be investment into IP based infrastructure to replace the traditional telephone systems, LTE / SAE will play a vital role in developing this further and for unifying service delivery in an all IP environment. But that won't happen overnight and Vodafone Qatar - Grahame Maher, CEO, Du - Osman Sultan, CEO, Etisalat - Azhar Zia-ur-Rehman, Group Director IT Governance, MTN Afghanistan - George Nassif, CIO are only to aware of this. The NGT MENA committee needs to plan and phase in their approach to unified, converged network architecture whilst preserving their investments in existing technologies and service levels.

“A seamless broadband future will require a seamless approach to networking architectures, eradicating complex silo oriented approaches and adopting a far more consistent approach. It is clear that an all IP/MPLS environment will be the ultimate answer, but how and where should wire line and mobile service providers begin to make that journey?” NGU Mena Committee representatives

Emerging markets last year accounted for about 3.3 billion Euros of sales at France Telecom alone and the rest of Europe now appears to have spotted the opportunity, if the right infrastructure is in place than it appears the Middle East will have a bright future ahead.

Smart Grids on the Verizon

The European Union recently announced concern that more than 55% of its energy still comes from outside of its jurisdiction. Therefore new legislations have been passed to force large utilities to promote to their customers a more frugal approach to energy usage, backed by massive investment in the renewable sector. The end goal is to reduce the energy reliance outside the EU.

Owing to this, leading energy experts of the NGU EU council (hosted by GDS International) have been summoned to construct a plan to cope with the transformation of the electric grid towards a networked infrastructure. However, this is fraught with several insecurities, as expert’s debate between a smart grid program and the inevitable modernization of existing infrastructure.

‘Verizon’ has been highlighted by the council as illuminating the energy industry, and will be prominent at the NGU EU Summit, in Vienna. Rilck Noel, Vice President (VP) and managing director (MD) of Verizon Business' global energy and utilities practice has been invited to give his thought leadership and will address conference participants on smart grid communications demonstrating Verizon’s leadership in delivering smart grid solutions to its customers.

"As the power industry employs more Internet protocol (IP)-based controls and machine-to-machine communications to monitor and control power generation, transmission and distribution, we can apply our communications expertise to help accelerate the adoption of smart grids" Said Rilck Noel.

The illustrious meeting also includes the respected Joao Torres Chief Executive Officer EDP Distribution and Michael Lewis Managing Director Europe for E-ON and is set to center on the collective role of advanced metering and smart grid technologies, their effect on consumers’ energy consumption, educating them on the importance of interconnectedness, interoperability, and feasibility of use.

“This meeting is essential for us to understand the implications of rolling out an intelligent grid system and help our customers to also understand the significance of smart grid deployment” states Kieran Barkley, the NGU council chair.

It’s no secret that the global energy and utility industry is experiencing extensive transformation. Smart grid conversion places enormous demands on all parts of the utility business. A unified approach across the industry will help aid this process as we look to a greener future.

Latin America Finds Growth

Latest reports from Brazil suggest that the economy’s growth is reaching sustainable levels in Latin America. Inflation is expected to end above centre of the government target, but despite this growth the market seems to be maintaining a sustainable pace and not overheating. The first Quarter of this year has seen the biggest economy growth since 1996 when the government implemented its current methodology. Growth is fantastic for the economy but fears among the consumer of increasing prices and security threats have lead to the meetings of some of the continents leading names in finance in Latin America.

The Growth seen has boosted the countries ranking within the global arena and has allowed there voice to be heard in negotiations over economic and financial reform. Over 50 leading executives from the finance industry including Banco Azteca - Juan Arevalo, CIO, Banco Santander Brazil - Claudio Prado, CIO, HSBC Mexico - Ignacio Vera, CIO, Standard Bank - Stuart Pallant, CIO for Americas, will be meeting at the FST LA summit to discuss how to maintain sustainable growth and how playing with the ‘big boys’ will affect the way they do business.

Europe, Asia and the U.S. still recovering from the global crash many economies across Latin America have rebounded. The demand for Latin America commodities such as Mexico’s oil, Chile’s copper and Brazils Iron Ore means that economists predict a period of sustained growth. On Tuesday Brazil revealed the biggest economy growth since 1996 when the government implemented its current methodology in the first quarter of this year of 9%. At last Latin America is having their voice heard and finding themselves with a greater persuasive power.

Where Latin America has differed from other countries is there debt management while enjoying the political and global positioning the have paid back $15.5 billion over the last 5 years and last year agreed to purchase $10 billion in IMF bonds to help it finance programmes. Latin America is now even offering advice to Europe suggesting that the continent adopts reform to enhance productivity and competitiveness.

Attendees to the latest FST LA summit will be discussing the latest in technology trends and investment opportunities to ensure continuous, but more importantly safe growth, it seems that governments and industry leaders have at last learnt the lessons from the economic crash. With the increased pressure that comes hand in hand with success within a global market it has become crucial for financial services to be implemented through efficient process networks. Business Process Management’s systems have become increasingly vital for business operations, driving profits and removing bottlenecks. The right systems and management programs will be key to continue the success that Latin America is beginning to see.

Tesla breaks through iron curtain

The story of how Tesla is bring the automotive world together in electric dreams


This week saw Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveal that the company plans to build a further three new models this year, in addition to the Model S sedan that is already in the pipeline. In the same week, MeetTheBoss.tv sits down with Tesla’s SVP Sales, Christiano Carlutti to talk about the reality of selling the electric dream.

At the heart of Tesla Motors is the belief that driving an electric car need not come at the expense of style, comfort or performance. “We want to bring the electric vehicles to a larger audience,” explains Carlutti in this exclusive interview. “We want to make it for affordable and I believe that this is our responsibility because the revolution has just started and it is our responsibility to bring it forward.”

To say Tesla, and Carlutti specifically, are on a mission to change people’s misconception about the electric car is something of an understatement. “What we promise is consistency with what we have,” says Carlutti. “It’s efficient, it’s effective, it gives great performance, and it’s reliable.”

The car revolution

Tesla’s outlook for the future of the car industry is centered on the very definition of the word “automobile”.

The word, which originated as a literal way to define a vehicle capable of moving under its own power – as opposed to, say, a horse and cart or a locomotive – today is used to illustrate a vehicle that often encompasses an internal combustion engine: something of a problem if you’re trying to market an automobile that runs on electricity.

Not for Tesla though, who say they’re still making automobiles but are simply looking to “change this definition one car at a time.” (Or – perhaps as Musk demonstrated this week – three cars at a time).

“The key factor here is to let the customer drive the car. It’s about the experience rather than the glamour or the image or any other thing you may communicate through the media,” explains Carlutti. “These things allow us to reach a much wider audience, but the real difference is made when a person drives the car: the physical experience. And therefore we try to organize all our marketing activities and communication around this, around making happen a customer experience [that is unmatched] elsewhere.”

Greenfingers

It seems that customers want to be a part of this automotive revolution as well, what with a focus from communities and manufacturers to redefine green initiatives and reconnect with our environments having become paramount to success. And, as the need for alternative and renewable sources of energy, the impact of our carbon footprints and the effect of greenhouse gases become an increasing presence in our lives, consumers are looking more seriously at the dynamism of environmentally friendly processes and products, which ultimately spells good news for the likes of Tesla.

“We have a real product, and right now we are the only company who really has a product like this, and this allows us to let a customer, a journalist, whoever, to drive the car. And once they drive the car, we find we don’t need to explain anything, because the experience is all there, and it’s overwhelming when they get out of the car and look at it and say, ‘I just didn’t think this was possible’.”


To see the interview in full, please go to MeetTheBoss.tv

Google vs. Yahoo

Why the search engine market needs a fuel-check

In the same week that Google reveals plans to launch a system that will allow publishers to charge for content, executive business channel MeetTheBoss.tv sits down with Yahoo’s Jeff Russakow, EVP of Customer Advocacy, to discuss consumer satisfaction and engagement - and how to monetize for the web.

According to reports revealed at the end of last week by Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google will later this year launch an integrated payment system that allows publishers to use a single infrastructure for web, mobile and tablet to monetise their content.

The news comes hot on the heels of moves by News Corporation to buy the 61 percent of BSkyB that it doesn’t already own, bringing the pay-TV operator completely into the fold: this, too, is matched by News International’s (News Corp’s main UK subsidiary) to place its newspapers behind paywalls and begin charging online users to access their pages.

As such, the paywall debate is raging. The battle for online market share is raging too.

‘Reach is not enough’

For Yahoo, which currently reaches 600 million users worldwide, current plans to develop mobile apps to reach the 1.5 billion-strong handset market suggests there is still potential to reach a huge audience: but, even with Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia offering 500 million new users to the market place in the next five years, reach just isn’t enough.

“The first thing [to remember] is the good-old fashioned advertising model that says the internet is still in its early days and there’s a lot more money to come over,” explains Russakow in the exclusive interview with MeetTheBoss.tv. “Somewhere between 10, 11, 12 percent of total advertising is spent on online advertising and yet somewhere between 30 and 35 percent of consumer minutes are now spent online every night.”

The issue is that online advertising is basically now rivaling television; and has long passed and blown out print media or radio in terms of where the consumers are spending their time. It’s a little like Mad Men – only on acid.

“Outside of that,” proffers Russakow, “there is no question that the historical ideas of monetization online and the advertising monetization model as the only model have clearly been turned upside down.”

Eyeballs and engagement

Russakow points to Google as a reference, sighting how the search engine giant currently has about 180 minutes per user, per month; accounting for $25 per user, per year. “If you look at Facebook” adds Russakow, “they’re almost twice that.” In fact, Facebook currently sees 280 minutes per user per month, however, they’re only making $1 per customer per year. That’s a 25 times difference.

“Part of it, I’m sure, is that Facebook will close that gap by focusing on monetization,” suggest Russakow. “But the historical idea that eyeballs and engagement equals monetization is clearly not true anymore. You've got search; you've got display; you have listings; you have social and more and more, as people are moving to mobile devices, we’re seeing subscription models; people moving to content, apps, loyalty programs. As a result a lot of the monetization models that have existed in media for a long time are now starting to come to bear fruit online.”

Less is more

That’s all well and good. In short, Facebook could be a killer if only it could monetize successfully – only it doesn’t. But what for Yahoo specifically: has Google got the search market all sown up?

Russakow, perhaps obviously, says not. Yahoo economics are simply, he explains to MeetTheBosstv’s Jonathan Spragg; and Russakow is aiming to delver more, with less.

Already in the throes of an impressive cultural overhaul, Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz has called Russakow a “transformational leader”. She says, “We need to do a better job of listening to Yahoo!’s users and advertisers and incorporating their feedback into our products and processes. In this critical role, Jeff will be instrumental in developing initiatives to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and he’ll ensure that we’re laser-focused on the needs of all our users and advertisers at every level of our company.”

Yahoo already has 600 million users - now with Microsoft as a partner, a colossal advertising budget and Russakow to boot: the market place could be shifting gear.

To see the interview in full, please go to MeetTheBoss.tv

Defining innovation: how Whirlpool transformed an industry

Environmental issues and the pressures for companies to “go green” are among the biggest facing businesses across the globe currently. For Whirlpool Corporation, this commitment is being matched by a push to ensure that every single electronic product in the company is smart grid compatible by 2015.

Behind this push is Bracken Darrell, the President of Whirlpool Europe – a wholly owned subsidiary of the Whirlpool Corporation. The move will allow energy companies to smartly measure the rate of each use of an electrical appliance, and while Whirlpool have been pushing for this from the early ‘90s, there is a now a revived effort with this new innovation so that the products being produced by Whirlpool will sit in line with these requirements.

Darrell, however, is no stranger to innovative thinking. In his previous role at Braun, Darrell was accredited with giving the company “their mojo back”, helping create a series of new and innovative products that not only helped to boost sales, but also played a critical role in helping the company to grow to what it is today.

In an exclusive and insightful interview with executive business channel MeetTheBoss.tv, Darrell demonstrates just why green issues are taking on such significance for modern businesses – and, beyond this, explains why innovation has to be at the heart of successful business leadership.

“If you grew up playing sports, you know the real competitors. You know that the people who have the biggest drive to win respect their competition. And we do that,” he says. “When they come out with something that’s terrific, we break it down. We tear it apart. We weigh the parts. We look at every innovation, we look at every feature, and we try and figure out how in the world did they get to market with that before we did and how can we do it better?”

Doing it better is definitely something Whirlpool measures itself against in everything it does. “All of us in leadership positions have to have the wherewithal to throw ourselves into everything we do as if it was a big turn around because change management is just what we do.”

So how are issues like company culture related to making innovation happen? And what advice would Darrell offer to those organizations looking to change the culture of their firm and stretch innovation?

“Well, at the risk of sounding boring,” jokes Darrell. “What most people want to hear is you know to put bean bags on the floor. Bring a pool table into the lobby. You know have a – everybody wear flip-flops to work day, and you’re going to get more innovation.”

Sounds a little too much like Facebook? “Well it might,” adds Darrell. “They definitely have a pretty good story. But I guarantee you, the companies that do that have the processes that drive, that attract, that drive innovation.”

So how does something like Darrell define innovative success? “We’re a growing business,” he notes, “We’re growing market share or improving our overall value creation as a business. We’re also creating higher engagement for employees, so when you put those three things together, you have the best definition of ‘are we winning in the innovation race’.”

To see the interview in full, please go to http://www.meettheboss.tv

BA fires Virgin into Space!

The word ‘innovation’ both inspires and defines companies. For the enterprising and entrepreneurial Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin brand, the reality of turning space travel into a genuine commercial commodity has now become the latest in a long line of innovative moves, a thing that some have said is just the next natural progression for the brand.

However, in an exclusive interview with executive business channel MeetTheBoss.tv, Virgin Galactic’s President Will Whitehorn explains just why innovation goes so much deeper than just being “the next step” in business.

“In the 1980s when I first started working in the world of brand development, business development, and the marketing of companies as opposed to marketing of individual products, the understanding of branding in Britain was pretty poor,” explains Whitehorn.

“So my reckoning came when looking at the Virgin brand that Richard had built. He’d managed to get this reputation for quality, value, money, innovation, and a sense of entrepreneurialism [….] and his approach when you’re building a brand was that you’ve got to think about what you’re building and how you build its reputation and, of course, by the time I’d really got going at Virgin, the reputation of Virgin Atlantic was already growing rapidly.”

History in the making

Two key points in Virgin’s history largely define Whitehorn’s career alongside Richard Branson. Often described as both a “lynchpin” to the business and “Richard Branson’s no.2” (something he is quick to dispute – “Richard doesn't have a right hand man, he's probably got about five or six right hand men and women and he's got about seven or eight left-hand men and women too”), Whitehorn’s presence at Virgin has always been felt.

The first of these issues came during British Airways’s (BA) dirty tricks campaign back in 1993, which saw BA attempting to monopolise the airline industry with BA employees poaching Virgin customers and tampering with confidential company files. Remembering that time, Whitehorn explains ‘the ludicrousness of the way they acted’. “They were involved in this operation to produce these reports on Virgin that were going to be circulated to city editors, it was called ‘Operation Barbara’ and they named it after Barbara Cartland, who wrote novels about virgins getting f*****.”

Whitehorn was instrumental to the fight back against BA at this time. “The sale of the Virgin record company was a psychological moment because that basically said, ‘We're here to stay. We're not going to let you do this.’ And I think that's when morale inside BA began to collapse, especially when they'd been paying for these reports to be done.”

The second issue was the Pendolino train crash in 2007, which saw Whitehorn and Virgin Train’s then-CEO Tony Collins joining Sir Richard Branson both at the bedsides of the injured passengers and at the crash site of the accident.

“There were a number of people saying we just shouldn’t be doing this, but I just didn’t agree. I said, ‘This is our moral duty,’ and Sir Richard agreed entirely. He said, ‘The thing is you've got to think what if it were my kids on that train, whether they'd been hurt or not, I'd have expected to see the boss of the company standing up to talk about it. I wouldn't expect there to be nobody available.’

“So when we went in front of the media, Sir Richard said, ‘If I was responsible for this, I will take full responsibility. I believe it seems to be some sort of points failure. That's what we know so far […] but really our thoughts today are with those who've been hurt […] I just would like to thank the driver, without whom more people would have been killed, for doing what he did so bravely and I'd also like to thank the train because we have designed something that's done what it should have done in these circumstances’.”

The final frontier?
Innovation isn’t just at the heart of the Virgin brand, it’s the thing that sparks inspiration, drives product and forges careers. “What we’re doing with Virgin Galactic is using interesting, modern aviation technologies, which we have taken into the space arena. Stephen Murphy, the CEO of Virgin Group, said as we took this project on, ‘I think you've got a really good market for this. I believe you will sell the tickets.’ And he's been proved right about that.

“The thing that worries him and other colleagues was could we get the technology to work? And of course it's the trust in the Virgin name, which leads people to be prepared to put down the deposits, which has really led people to stick with us. I mean, we've had an incredibly loyal team internally who have stuck with this project, who are doing this not just because we want to do it and because we believe it's really important for the industry.”

To see the interview in full, please go to www.meettheboss.tv