Turmoil in the TEM World

The Voice Report (Vol. 32, No. 12)
Hank Levine and Justin Castillo

The big news in TEM is the changes in the industry, including (and especially) among the leaders. Not to mention the products and how users pay for them or don’t.

By way of background, consider that in 2010 Gartner’s top 4 TEM providers were Tangoe, Rivermine, Symphony, and Vodafone. The next 4 (inferior in “vision” but equal in “ability to execute”) were IBM, Accenture, Invoice Insight and Profitline. Compare the rankings published by AOTMP, which also rates TEM providers, but solely on customer feedback. In 2010, the only one of the Gartner top 8 listed above that also ranked high in AOTMP’s top 25 was Invoice Insight. Tangoe, Rivermine, and Profitline made the AOTMP top 25 but were close to the bottom. IBM, Accenture, and Vodafone didn’t make AOTMP’s list.

A couple of months before those rankings came out in the fall of 2010 Vodafone acquired QuickComm and TNT, which fueled its appearance in a prime spot in Gartner’s magic quadrant. In the six months after the ratings came out, Emptoris acquired Rivermine, which itself had earlier acquired MBG and its substantial book of large enterprise customer business. Tangoe acquired the TEM businesses of Telwares and HCL (formerly Control Point Solutions) and firmed up its plans to go public, in part (it has intimated) to cash out some investors and fund further acquisitions. And last but hardly least, ten days ago Invoice Insight rebranded itself as Xigo and announced a new business model for wireless management — the fastest growing part of the business — that involves providing some basic management features for free and somewhat more robust services for a nominal price. Whether or not Xigo and its new product suite succeed, they will likely upend that segment of TEM.

What to make of this…

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