Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Movius CEO Ananth Siva (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Just to play devil’s advocate, there are plenty of businesses that are not on T Mobile. If you wanted to get to those businesses, working with those carriers would make perfect sense.

Ananth Siva: That’s how we approached this in the first place that might be the case. If you look at the client base that we have, some have already been quoted in the press. You probably have enough connections to ring a few of the Wall Street banks and if you ask them how they are solving the SEC problem today, they will tell you that they made one decision.

That decision is T Mobile multi-line. It could be sitting on AT&T or Verizon SIM. The cost carrier capability we have makes us unique. We have reimagined and created a lot of value for that client and that end user.

Sramana Mitra: What is the level of adoption and awareness for your kind of configuration within the enterprise?

Ananth Siva: The awareness is very high. The reason for that is we, together with T Mobile, we are marketing very heavily. You’ll see a lot of activity on all the various channels including social channels. Substantial dollars have been put in because we actually count as a voice ad. For a carrier, all the street looks for is gross ads to the caller. We are beginning to take a substantial share. There are over half a million SMBs. There are several thousand enterprise customers today.

Sramana Mitra: How many of T Mobile’s customers are on your system? Let’s say, take it to Fortune 500 or Global 2000. What percentage of that is using a solution like yours?

Ananth Siva: Let’s put it the other way. The T Mobile and Sprint merger happened. We’re launching in October with a big blast. In the meantime, we have over a thousand business and enterprise customers in the US alone. You’ll see that number grow rapidly. I started off this conversation not talking about the biggest of the big. I started off by talking about somebody very small in Los Gatos. We are now expecting very aspirational numbers in adoption across the spectrum. Many of them are in POCs. Some of them are in early trials. Some of them are in late-stage trials.

Sramana Mitra: How much of that thousand is in large enterprises versus small businesses?

Ananth Siva: We’ve got over 10 to 15 enterprises at scale. JP Morgan is one of them. They’ve deployed at scale.

Sramana Mitra: That answers my question on the level of adoption. 10 to 15 out of the Fortune 500 gives me a sense. It’s still early.

Ananth Siva: It’s early. The merger and the subsequent migration posed considerable challenges.

Sramana Mitra: What open problems do you see in the industry from your vantage point?

Ananth Siva: ESG is a very big factor right now. Everyone’s talking about it, but no one knows what to do about it. More and more devices are being deployed. It’s a very big contributor. Employees don’t want any more endpoints to carry around. Imagine you’re carrying a personal phone and a work phone. You’re carrying two generations of devices.

Why do you need to carry two devices to manage two personas. We see tremendous opportunity for consolidation to happen. In the last few years post the pandemic, it became more and more evident that interaction with a sense of purpose is key. Businesses are beginning to realize that they may have overpopulated employees with endpoints. We are trying to solve a critical problem that industries are facing – unnecessary CAPEX.

For that, it needs disruptive thinking. I’m very delighted that our partner, T Mobile, is equally on the journey with us. They recognize that enterprises can take the lead here. We are very pleased that the largest enterprises from multiple industries are starting pilots. Defense is also becoming an opportunity for us.

Sramana Mitra: The pandemic created this remote work trend. A lot of people working remotely have two computers. They work from home doing their own stuff and they use the work computer. That runs counter to what you’re saying.

Ananth Siva: Every device has a browser. You can have one browser with your LinkedIn persona. On the other side is the corporate persona. When the pandemic hit, companies panicked because many of them were not prepared. You could not have scripted this. What we learned though is people who are told for years that they cannot do their job remotely were suddenly asked to go home and do whatever they want. Many of them were given equipment that they didn’t probably didn’t need. Why would I need two of these when one of these with a separation will do?

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Movius CEO Ananth Siva
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