Vodafone gains services expertise

Vodafone acquisitions cement its position as a comms solution provider

Vodafone's evolution from a purely mobile company into a comms solutions provider picked up pace in November with the announcement of two acquisitions and a strategic partnership.

The company has agreed to buy Aspective, a consultancy and service provider that specialises in mobilising enterprise applications, and Isis Telecommunications Management, a provider of managed services to the business market. It has also signed an exclusive partnership deal with access provider Fiberlink.

Vodafone UK enterprise business unit director Kyle Whitehill said that the deals would help the company fulfil its Mobile Plus total communication provision strategy, which it announced in May. "The deals give us three things: access, services and applications," he added.

Ovum analyst Pauline Trotter said, "Enterprises, particularly large ones, have been critical of the mobile service providers' slowness in responding to their needs," although she added, "Vodafone has made more effort than most to address these concerns."

Trotter said enterprises are crying out for better cost management and billing tools, as well as help with "managing device fleets, mobilising data apps, and integrating mobile systems with internal systems and functions".

Whitehill said that Fiberlink's Extend360 mobility platform would let Vodafone offer secure remote access solutions.

"Imagine you're an IT manager of a large company with several hundred remote users all in different areas and with different travel requirements. This system provides the right connectivity at the right cost according to their travel patterns – Wi-Fi, 3G, broadband, any form of connectivity which makes the best financial sense," he said.
Fiberlink's European regional director John O'Malley said, "Our policy-driven software allows users to connect simply to a multitude of access types, but also we can lock them down and make sure they're compliant while mobile."

Whitehill said the acquisition of Aspective would let Vodafone offer CRM and salesforce apps over its mobile devices, while the Isis deal brought expertise in mobile fleet management and billing.