Dell to Become a Managed Service Provider

Dell plans to launch a managed services initiative aimed at allowing channel partners and Dell itself to remotely maintain and troubleshoot small business networks, servers and desktops. Two recent Dell acquisitions -- Everdream and Silverback Technologies -- will provide the foundation for Dell's SaaS push, says Joe Panettieri is Editorial Director of Nine Lives Media.

The managed services push is supposed to happen late in 2008 or early in 2009. Dell intends to become a Master Managed Service Provider (Master MSP), which means IT consulting firms will be able to leverage Dell's own network operation centers (NOCs) to manage customer networks.

When even hardware manufacturers become service providers, how long can service providers wait to become data specialists, to a greater or lesser degree?

Android Phone from T-Mobile: 4th Quarter

When you finally can buy an Android phone, it first will be available from T-Mobile, in all likelihood. T-Mobile is said to want a device to sell in the fourth quarter.

T-Mobile Offers $10 a Month VoIP

T-Mobile @ Home is a new nationally available over-the-top consumer VoIP service pricied at $10 a month. There isn't much of a catch, aside from the fact that the service only is available to T-Mobile wireless customers on plans costing $40 a month or more.

It isn't so much that T-Mobile wants to be in the over-the-top VoIP business. It is that it needs something jazzy to keep its mobile customers loyal. The company hopes $10 a month home phone service is that sort of thing.

The new service is different from the Hotspot @ Home offering T-Mobile also has been testing. That is a dual-mode mobile service that allows some mobile phone models to connect to an in-home Wi-Fi router.

The real effort here is to insulate T-Mobile from churn. After all, it can't offer the iPhone or 3G service yet.

Charter Backs Away From Targeted Ads

Nothing in the targeted ad business is easy. Witness Charter Communications, which has backed off a plan to insert advertisements onto user Web pages because of objections from privacy advocates.

There's always something waiting to disrupt an Internet or communications business plan.

Twitter gets Jeff Bezos Investment

Valleywag says Twitter, has received an investment from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos as well as Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital. Did I run over120 characters?

IT Seen as Boring

More than 60 percent of college graduates with degrees in areas other than information technology think a job in IT would be "boring," despite its good career prospects, according to the Career Development Organisation, and reported by ComputerWeekly.com.

Of course, other organizations have issues of that sort, even within the software and computer science graduate pool. If one is a bright, ambitious programmer, would such a person prefer to work at a company like Google or a device manufacturer or network equipment firm? I think we can figure that one out without taking a survey.

Virgin Mobile to Acquire Helio, Says Financial Times

Virgin Mobile USA will acquire Helio, the mobile phone operation controlled by SK Telecom and originally launched as a joint venture between SK Telecom and Earthlink. What both brands have in common is a positioning in the "hipper" segment of the youth market, as well as struggling businesses.

Virgin Mobile has more than five million prepaid customers. Helio had a bit fewer than 200,000 postpaid customers at the beginning of 2008.

Mobility, just like wired voice and data, is a scale game. What the industry is seeing is consolidation in just about every segment of the market, in large part to achieve scale. In the global international voice business, margins keep dropping, forcing carriers to sell lots more volume to make up for skinnier margins.

Over time, even the largest global carriers will find they either must bulk up or outsource those operations to carriers that can achieve huge scale.