How have the technologies changed that consultants offer advice for in the last 10 years? This question was prompted by the "The State of the North American Telecommunications Consulting Market: 2010 And The Effectiveness of Vendor Consultant Liaison Programs" report issued by the Brookside Group.
The Brookside Group, LLC helps telecom industry vendors and network services/solution providers generate and increase new sales and new market opportunities through the influence of better informed industry consultants. The goal is to help vendors and consultants come together to develop new business development relationships.
I asked Michael Sawka. the President of Brookside, to provide the "2001 Telecom Consulting Market View" and "The State of the North American Telecommunications Consulting Market: 2011" reports so I could compare the technologies that were dominant in 2000 and 2010 as reported by U.S. and Canadian consultants.
The 2001 survey for the year 2000 covered 10 different technologies. The responses were divided between U.S. and Canadian consultants. The 2011 survey for the year 2010 covered a mostly different set of 10 technologies. The first table, "The 10 Technology Rankings by U.S. Consultants", combines the responses from the U.S. 2001 and 2010 surveys. The technologies are ranked in descending order with network services and unified communications ranked as the most often encountered by consultants.
The 10 Technology Rankings by U.S. Consultants
Notice that the 10 technologies do not correspond to each other except for mobile and wireless technologies. You might say that computer-telephone integration is part of the contact center technology. This disparity that has occurred over the last 10 years has required that the U.S. consultants and their clients have had to learn a number of new concepts. They have had to expand their vocabulary and have had to consider implementing technologies that did not really exist for implementation in 2000.
The second table, "The 10 Technology Rankings by Canadian Consultants", combines the responses from the Canadian 2001 and 2011 surveys. The technologies are ranked in descending order with network services and unified communications once again ranked as the most often encountered by consultants.
The 10 Technology Rankings by Canadian Consultants
This third table, “Telecom Consulting Growth Drivers: 2011-2012” demonstrates that the U.S. and Canadian consultants and clients share the same interests in the top four technologies. Starting with the fifth technology, the U.S. ranked cloud computing much higher than Canadian consultants. Canadian consultants ranked green technology ahead of their U.S. counterparts. The U.S. consultants were involved in virtual networks (VLAN) but the Canadians were not. Social networking made the list for the Canadian consultants but is not on the list for U.S. consultants.
Telecom Consulting Growth Drivers: 2011-2012
From "The State of the North American Telecommunications Consulting Market: 2010 And The Effectiveness of Vendor Consultant Liaison Programs"
Both U.S. and Canadian consultants expect their considerations and recommendations of cloud based and hosted services to increase substantially in 2011. U.S. cloud/hosted services recommendations are projected to increase from 13% in 2010 to 21% in 2011. Canadian cloud/hosted services recommendations are projected to increase from 7% in 2010 to 17% in 2011.
These tables demonstrate the significant shift in technologies in the last 10 years. The third table also shows that the U.S. and Canadian consultants do not agree on the 5th through 10th rankings of technologies. The U.S. and Canadian markets do have differences that affect not only the consultants but the manufacturers and service providers in each country.
