Advising on the commercial impact of technology and
    market changes in telecoms, software and IT services

Keeping pace with a fast changing market

The optical networking market is undergoing rapid change, with packet data and video services creating significant opportunities, and competing technology options creating challenges for vendors. Maximizing revenues in this shifting environment requires a deep understanding of market share, trends, drivers, anticipated spending, and service provider requirements in specific market segments and geographies. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors' solutions and how they vary by region and by segment is an important input for successful sales, marketing, and product and business development planning. Knowing which of your competitors is gaining and losing market share, and why, is vital, as is an accurate sizing and timing of future market opportunities.

Seizing opportunities, mitigating threats

Ovum RHK's Optical Networks services set the standard for in-depth market research, assessing how spending is shifting and which vendors are gaining and losing market share, providing detailed forecasts, and analyzing service and network trends. Ovum RHK's Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks service provides complementary analysis that correlates to our Market Share and Forecast reports, giving you qualitative knowledge of market trends, technologies, and service provider requirements, with ratings of how well vendors are addressing these opportunities and needs. Ovum RHK's quantitative and qualitative optical research brings disparate pieces of information together to "connect the dots" and helps you understand market drivers, direction, and the competitive environment - essential information that helps you make the decisions needed to maximize opportunity and minimize risk.

Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks What vision does it provide?

Using the solid quantitative foundation provided by our Optical Networks advisory services, Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks provides detailed analysis of what equipment network operators in different regions have been buying and why. It also delves into the trends underlying shifts in market share, analyzes customer network directions and requirements, and highlights what network operators will want in the future, why, and when they will be ready to buy. In addition, Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks assesses how prepared vendors are to address current and emerging customer requirements from a solutions perspective, organizationally, and with their optical portfolios.

What the service delivers

Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks consists of two report elements. The first, Market Segment Profiles, identifies market trends and requirements, assessing the service provider requirements, technologies, and trends that drive the market today and will drive market opportunities in the future. These profiles provide a "deep dive" into the market using the same segmentation used in our Market Share and Forecast reports augmenting and complementing this research with a targeted analysis of the implications of market change for your business unit planning. The second key element of the service, Vendor Profiles, identifies how well vendors are addressing service provider requirements today at the corporate, solutions, and product level in each region, examining how their market share and market presence are trending and why, based on analysis of strategy, corporate resources, partnerships, tactical execution, solutions, and products. The Vendor Profiles also correlate vendor resources and capabilities to our forecast research, which provides a valuable key to vendors' likely future success. Our team of analysts has unmatched industry expertise in optical networking, as well as resources dedicated to each of the regional markets. They analyze data, identify trends, validate customer requirements, and give vendors the knowledge and information that lets them leverage their own expertise to address market opportunities and threats.

What makes Ovum RHK unique?

We are the only analyst firm that correlates its own quantitative market analysis with in-depth market, vendor, and product analysis to give clients a reasoned, neutral, and fact-based view of the competitive landscape by region, complete with recommendations on how vendors can best align their products with market requirements to maximize their own slice of the future market pie. Specifically:

• Market Segment Profiles are built on our foundation of over ten years of market share, forecast, and market trend research, which includes validation from our wide network of contacts with component suppliers, system vendors, and network operators.
• Vendor Profiles apply real market data and feedback to rank vendors on many dimensions, such as regional market presence, solutions breadth, strategy, relative market share by region, and portfolio strengths.

Key questions Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks answers

• What are the drivers behind customer spending and what are the most important trends driving the market?
• How are customers changing their network architectures, technology choices, and implementation plans?
• Which technology and networking trends will be important in the near future, when will new services be introduced or technologies gain prominence, and which will have the most influence on spending over time?
• What applications do competitors target with solutions, and how do their optical portfolios combine with their other resources to address these needs?
• Why have competitors gained or lost market position, and what about them provides a prognosis of their future competitiveness and impact on future market share?
• Which vendors are most likely to put together the strongest sales solution for a given region?
• Where are the strongest market opportunities today and in the future for specific vendors?

Where does Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks help?

Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks offers valuable market research and analysis that provides critical input into

• product line management and planning
• executive/strategic planning
• sales and sales training
• business development
• channel management and planning

Customized advice via analyst interaction

Analyst interaction is an integral part of Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks, ranging from questions or discussions with our specialist analysts via telephone and email to workshops, briefings, and strategy sessions. Analyst interaction provides you with customized research and advice when you need it, which can help you to understand complex issues and validate your plans for sustainable growth.

How can clients use analyst interaction?

Tap Ovum RHK analysts to

• get answers to specific SWOT analysis questions
• gain validation of product development prioritization
• seek feedback on product and solutions positioning
• assist in partner selection or M&A activities
• provide input for sales training and proposal formulation
• augment knowledge available to strategy and planning groups

How the Optical Networks services fit together

Vendor Strategies: Optical Networks complements our classic optical networking expertise. It builds on the research that has always fed our Optical Networks services to provide vendors with unparalleled insight into how market trends, directions, and competitive factors shape market share and impact the forecast.

Your next move ...
To find out more about Ovum's services contact us at your nearest office.