“Don’t Cross the Streams”: The Good & Challenging in TV Streaming & Mobility Management

“Don’t Cross the Streams”: The Good & Challenging in TV Streaming & Mobility Management

Employee Blog Post- Jim Holt, EVP of Global Sales, OVATION

If you’re like me, you have just about had it trying to manage streaming subscriptions. On average, Americans spend three hours and nine minutes per day streaming digital media (Forbes and OnePoll Market Research) as digital media consumption has become an integral part of our daily lives.

Now back to me, let me provide a few examples of the struggle to manage these streaming services. I have been a Tour de France viewer for the last twenty-five years, and in the last three years alone I have had to follow different streaming services only to unsubscribe a month later to thwart the streaming spend abyss! And that’s just one specialty event.  Because then there’s the Olympics.  Then football season, Yellowstone, Ozarks and the news and so on.  You get the picture.

Over the course of any given year there are many programs our family collectively falls for and then clicks “subscribe.” And there are exceptions that exist beyond our impulsive decisions and go more in line as our household staples including Netflix and YouTubeTV,  we don’t even toggle those off and on.  I mean, hey, how else would I chuckle myself to sleep each night without Seinfeld?

Like managing streaming services, understanding all the plans, how they work, how the billing works, managing your usage to ensure you are getting your return on investment, so is the job of the IT analyst at an enterprise, managing their mobility program.

Having been in the mobility management industry since 2010, situations where additional oversight is needed arise all the time in small, medium, and large corporate mobility programs. I’m referring to situations like the nuances in terms of what services and features are included in telecom tools, how easy or hard is it to navigate the various platforms, what depth of reporting is available, are you able to customize anything and so on.

Furthermore, it’s critical to delineate the differences between purchasing software to run your telecom aka Software as a Solution (SaaS) and using a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to manage your telecom.  Walk with me here for a moment.

Similar to Netflix, you have overarching SaaS platforms for mobility management that solve systemic, repeatable challenges.  But even so, many corporate mobility programs experience one-off instances outside of steady state, requiring point solutions to solve complex and/or unique challenges.

That’s where managed services often come into play, allowing you to invest in solving singular challenges without purchasing a platform solution.  And the reality is that both forms are needed in the market just the same as Netflix/YouTubeTV are often complemented by unique streaming channels.  The mobility landscape is broad and the challenges diverse, so whether you have a SaaS or MSP, or even both, it’s important to keep your performance and efficiencies up and your spend low.

By the way, I was thrilled to see Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire pop-up on Netflix.  I’m excited to find a rainy weekend evening to watch with my wife and sons.  That’s a generational stream I am happy to see crossed.

Jim Holt is a seasoned wireless mobility professional and is the EVP of Global Sales for OVATION Wireless Management. OVATION has been solving unique wireless mobility challenges for over 20 years and provides full lifecycle management and Managed Mobility Services for businesses in the US and globally.