Friday, December 26, 2008

Pushing the IVVR market

The main challenge in pushing the IVVR solutions and services is to penetrate a market which is already dominated by high speed mobile internet portals and applications. Ugunduzi was created by IVVR professional, Idan Gafni, with the goal of penetrating the mobile content and mobile services market with IVVR technology.
So what are the attributes of IVVR that make it a valid and even a superior option to deliver on-demand, media-rich, services?! Every UMTS (GSM 3G) enabled device is capable of easily run an IVVR service and deliver interactive mobile video content using Video IVR. In mobile internet services, a data plan is a necessary prerequisite while IVVR is inherently supported in every plan in a 3G (UMTS) network. In addition, IVVR provides interactivity level that WAP portals just can’t provide. Billing can be done by revenue sharing with the mobile operator on the air time generated by the service, by launching the service on a premium line, or by sending reverse billing SMS per action, per content item, or per time spent in the service / portal. Basically, IVVR provides a dynamic environment that encourages media companies and content owners to deliver mobile services with a clear business model, good interactivity attributes, and a great device support.
The old paradigm in IVVR solutions was to provide telco-grade infrastructure to the mobile operator and let it develop services, manage the services, and get services companies and content owners to launch services on the IVVR application server. This approach caused in most cases a "deadlock" in the business flow. The IVVR platform is an enabler and there is no justification to deploy it (and no ROI) unless it hosts active "off-the-shelf" or tailor-made services. Mobile carriers in most markets evolved to play the integration and operation role and not the innovation and development role in the mobile services ecosystem. Ugunduzi’s IVVR solution is a hosted service and therefore we own the platforms and develop the services for our clients thus we avoid the business deadlock and enable our clients to focus on their strengths like content and marketing.
Ugunduzi offers its services to mobile operators, as an outsourced service, and also to content providers and service providers. We enable the launch of services in niche markets and encourage a long tail economy where companies can launch their services even if they cannot afford the costs of the IVVR platforms. In our view, the mobile content and mobile services market should be more accessible to media companies. We allow entities that have the need and the desire to deploy mobile services to extend their reach and to launch services in a short time frame. In this ecosystem, every company remains in its natural habitat; companies can focus on their service/content and their customers while we take care of the technological and operational part of the service. Hosted IVVR which is Ugunduzi’s main offering to its clients provides them an operator independent solution and an immediate clear go-to-market strategy.
The key element to solving the deadlocked business flow in IVVR was to isolate such factors as IVVR platform purchasing and IVVR services development while moving the center of the business chain from the operator to an independent services oriented company. This is what Ugunduzi believes should solve the problem with launching IVVR services in most markets. The direct connection to the end-user and the cross-carrier IVVR solution enables TV channels, health care organizations, banks, internet portals, and more, to create and customize their own IVVR service with maximum device compatibility and rich experience. This is how we push the IVVR market forward.
For more details please refer to our website at www.ugunduzi.com and contact us using the contact page.