Ericsson Pivots To The Cloud

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Roger Kay.

You might ask why an established company — with traditions going back to its founding by Lars Magnus Ericsson in 1876 and a solid business supplying telecommunications equipment to operators in nearly every country in the world — would want to enter the uncharted territory of cloud computing, where it must play the role of challenger against strong incumbents like Amazon, Microsoft MSFT -0.26%, and Google.

And you would be right in asking. Ericsson ’s pivot to cloud supplier isn’t entirely obvious. But events have conspired to push the company in that direction, and it’s taking a methodical approach to this new business direction, relying on its core values, engineering talent, and large store of intellectual property to see it through successfully…

One reason for this new direction is flat revenue growth. For the past several years, the company’s annual revenues have been hovering in the mid-$30 billion range. As the industry moves toward a vast number of new types of endpoints — things like smartphones and tablets, but also cars, homes, and a growing number of nodes on the Internet of Things — many of these devices are interacting with cloud services via apps. This is where the action is, and Ericsson wants in…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2014/09/29/ericsson-pivots-to-the-cloud/