The Hindu Business Line : Motive eyes digital home network management

Bangalore May 2 On a global average, every home has at least three `networked' devices. These include set-top boxes; PC peripherals; routers and residential gateways. By 2010, one billion such home networking devices will be shipped. Management of these will become vital, and tech support will become a household term. Providers of automated customer care software - which rely on remote management techniques, instead of sending service engineers over - are swarming into the country as the broadband subscriber base expands.

Scaling up

"Digital home network management is fast rising as a new market for us," said Mr Alfred Mockett, Chairman and CEO, Motive Inc, a US-based firm in this space. It plans to scale its operations in the country keeping pace with the budding industry. Currently, employing 80 at its centre in Bangalore, the company plans to ramp up to 100 by year-end. "This represents investment in India for us. Both developers and sales force personnel will be hired," Mr Mockett told Business Line.

Motive's Home Device Manager enables IPTV and VoIP providers to remotely activate, support and upgrade customer premise equipment. The user need not worry about technology obsolescence or call separate vendors when gadgets fail.

The provider, too, benefits from the reduced number of incoming tech support calls, said Mr Mockett.

Motive Inc has 30 per cent share of the global broadband remote service management market and has recently won a contract from an Indian broadband service provider. Motive's Total Broadband Care suite simplifies installation - with a click, you are up and connected to the WWW, said Mr Sathyanarayan Srinivasan, Managing Director, Motive Communications India. Internet service provider Bharti Tele-Ventures recently tied up with US-based SupportSoft for NetXpert, a similar automated customer care service.

NEW FRONTIER

The India centre contributes to the development of mobile device management, a "new frontier" for the company. Globally, the market opportunity for mobile service management is $700 million a year. Motive's mobile device management suite allows the operator to perform firmware upgrades, remote diagnostics and test, push content/feature (as advertising) and offer the `lock and wipe' service that allows the operator to lock a mobile or wipe all sensitive data off a stolen mobile on the subscriber's request. Operators keen on keeping up the ARPU (average revenue per user) will need to implement such software, said Mr Mockett.