Digital services are big business for today's operators. The hype brought about by the digital services segment has prompted almost every operator to make inroads into at least one digital services vertical - with music streaming being a clear favourite among many. Partnerships between mobile operators and music streaming service providers including Spotify and Pandora have made many headlines in the past year. At the same time, most leading operators are moving very fast into other service verticals including mobile payments, mobile wallet service, cloud-based applications, mobile gaming, mobile advertising and a whole lot of other applications including cloud-based video editing service!
The transformation of mobile operators into digital services providers will soon enable subscribers to access a wide range of digital services via a single provider - in this case, the mobile operator. A single account established with the mobile operator will soon be providing access to music, movies, news, cloud storage, email account, cloud collaboration applications, smarthome services, connected car applications and a handful of other services most used in today's digital era. Just last week, Telstra, the largest operator in Australia, launched its own Apps Marketplace, further enriching the portfolio of digital services mobile subscribers can access to. According to Telstra, the Telstra Apps Marketplace provides its business customers with a one-stop shop to find, buy, and use today’s best business apps including Box and DocuSign.
Telstra in its statement said that Box is a cloud file sharing and collaboration app that makes it easy to securely share and access files and documents, whether it's the latest invoice for a customer, a project proposal, or an important pitch presentation while DocuSign enables businesses to quickly, easily and securely collect and transact information and electronically sign documents, on any compatible device. Both Box and DocuSign have received strategic investment from Telstra Ventures. Telstra aims to make this new marketplace the home to all Telstra's preferred business apps, providing various cloud-based services for its enterprise customers. In its statement, Telstra said that its current platform, the T-Suite Application launched in 2008 and which now has more than 400K users will be migrated to the Telstra Apps Marketplace early next year.
Will Irving, Telstra Business Group Managing Director
The Telstra Apps Marketplace is designed to deliver a simple online experience for our customers that will take the complexity out of choosing and managing apps from different vendors, so they can find the right apps for their business.
