JAA'S Analyst Blog - Current Posts

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Trust the Future - that’s Mavenir’s current tag line, and I really like it. This isn’t just any future they’re talking about - it’s mainly about 5G, but also Open RAN. 5G has yet to live up to the hype, especially in North America, but both carriers and wireless vendors seem all-in, including Mavenir.

While most see the future of wireless networks being 5G, Open RAN is an open question. Mavenir looks to be out in front with cloud-native Open RAN, and while the rationale is clear to them - and now to me - their competitors seem to like things the way they are, and mobile operators don’t seem ready for it - yet. Mavenir believes it’s just a matter of time, and if they’re right, they could own this space.

The mobile infrastructure space isn’t a core focus for me, but it’s adjacent to a lot of what I follow, and when thinking of VoIP, and possibly UCaaS and CCaaS, I’ve seen this movie before. Mavenir is a pretty healthy company, and a bit of an anomaly compared to the giants who dominate this market - namely Ericsson and Nokia.

This actually puts them in a great position to push the envelope and be disruptive, and that’s exactly the persona they’re projecting. Sure rings familiar to me, at least with the early days of VoIP, when the first wave of startups brought disruption, and posed a real threat to a well-entrenched status quo - that for the most part have come around to VoIP.

Given Mavenir’s global customer base, they have found plenty of mobile operators willing to adopt more open, more flexible and less costly infrastructure. Without naming names, they have 19 Open RAN deployments across 17 countries, and 4 trials going with Tier 1 carriers, one of which gave a full presentation as to what they’re doing with Open RAN.

Carriers have taken on a lot of debt to finance their 5G buildouts, and to counter that, they need innovation and new services to monetize these networks. Mavenir isn’t in the business of building applications, but with Open RAN - along with the rest of their extensive wireless network portfolio - they provide carriers with a nextgen platform to support programmability so they can develop their own apps instead of relying on third parties.

Just as important, BSS is another key piece of their cloud-based portfolio, as legacy BSS cannot really support these new services, and without a proper billing platform, carriers won’t be able to monetize these new 5G networks. Speaking of 5G, Mavenir did a great job outlining all kinds of use cases, and they have a pretty good handle on what carriers are missing to be successful with 5G.

I tend to view things through the lens of communications and collaboration technologies, and there wasn’t much talk about UCaaS or CCaaS. Instead, the use cases were framed around Industry 4.0 and Enterprise 2.0. These terms may sound generic, but Mavenir provided pretty good use cases and monetization scenarios for each. I’d need a separate post to illustrate all this, but in short, these use cases are in line with my Future of Work research, and I think they’re on the right track here, for sure.

That’s my high-level take for now, and to close out, here are some of my photos.

CEO/Pres. Pardeep Kohli, EVP Stefan Canteralli, Q&A session

Test equipment, anechoic chamber (very cool), OpenBeam radio demo

Event was held at the HALL Arts Hotel, in the center of Dallas’s arts district - my kinda place - high end for sure, but very artsy vibe, and after the sessions - when in Texas, you gotta look the part (hat tip, Carlos Aragon, no pun intended!)…

It’s been quite a week - or two, actually. Last week, I drove to - and back - from Florida for a much-needed family visit. A day after that, I was off to Dallas for Mavenir’s analyst day, then to San Francisco for Twilio’s SIGNAL conference. Both events were first-timers for me, and Mavenir was of particular interest since I’m not that strong on wireless, so this was a good way to get caught up.

That said, the event was pretty much under NDA, so I don’t have a narrative to share. There certainly is a good story here, especially to give carriers an alternative to the Tier 1 mobile vendors, and Mavenir is one of those “best kept secrets” kind of players. Over time, my learnings will come out in other ways, so for now, I just have some photos to share.

First, some pix from the event, both during the sessions and the demos. And then, there’s this fantastical “George” poster. Take a close look - “master of magic” - and deep in the heart of Texas - kinda has that travelling medicine show look, and it’s not a stretch to say that sometimes applies to tech companies selling complicated solutions that buyers don’t really understand. But no, not here at Mavenir, right? :-)

The event was held at the hotel - Zaza - and it’s one of the most eclectic hotels I’ve been to. Definitely gotta come back here for fun. All kinds of quirky sculptures, paintings, photos and knick knacks. Check out their shuttle vehicle - soooo Texas. And then, my friendly man at the front desk. This hotel has a cool, retro vibe - really - really slow elevators, and on the desks in our rooms - pencils (not pens), paper clips and staplers - when was the last time you saw or used those? And for the topper, he’s showing off their manual credit card imprinter, which they actually use. Millennials have probably never seen one of these analog relics, but hey, they still work - even if the broadband is slow!