Global online traffic has increased fivefold in the past five years thanks to the dizzying array of smartphones, tablets and laptops that now connect to the Internet in households and businesses.
Telecommunication companies and Internet service providers have watched this surge in online media consumption with caution. The demand has forced them to upgrade their infrastructure to meet customers’ voracious appetite for bandwidth, with little obvious benefits besides upgraded broadband subscriptions.
The Israeli firm, B.I.S. Advanced Software Systems, is pitching its cloud computing services to these telcos as a way for them to add value for fickle enterprise customers. By packaging the B.I.S Cloudius range of server applications to broadband subscribers, telcos hope to draw users away from using so-called ‘Over the Top’ (OTT) applications like Dropbox. Instead companies can create and manage their own file-sharing platform based on the Cloudius software.
B.I.S. has a history developing software that becomes widely used across the business sector. In 1987 it created a suite of applications for sharing data between PCs and servers, called NetPass, which was adopted by multinational corporations and government agencies.
“All our products are developed inside the company, and our latest suite for mobile devices was developed by CEO and General Manager, Dani Glazman. The telecom industry knows our company and we have some advantages over OTT services when it comes to security functionality,” says Eliran Sheraz, vice president of sales and marketing at B.I.S.
Another way B.I.S differentiates itself is through its “take your PC” concept for mobile devices. Users can use their tablet or smartphone to access all the files on their home computer and can even stream videos directly from the server. This connectivity between desktop and mobile device is becoming critical to many businesses as an increasing number of employees use their own devices in the workplace.
The major challenge according to Sheraz is keeping pace with the development of OTT services such as Dropbox, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and the Europe focused CloudMe.
“We need to engage with this market and take notice of the products valuable to the end user. We need to have a service established for the enterprise customers, based on the needs of large companies,” says Sheraz.
Over the next 18 months, the firm is looking to expand into the North American business to business market with its suite of applications for mobile devices. But with competition from established and well-funded incumbents, convincing enterprises customers to switch away from their favorite OTT services will be a tough challenge.