Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: A Discussion with Rahul Patel, VP Product Marketing for Wireless Connectivity Combos, Broadcom (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Of all the goods that get moved around in warehouses or containers, what percentage of those are equipped with wireless tracking devices?

Rahul Patel: That depends on the industry. If you look at things being transported – containers being transported over the ocean, for example – they all have wireless falloff tracking. The tracking is tied to the value of a good. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: A Discussion with Rahul Patel, VP Product Marketing for Wireless Connectivity Combos, Broadcom (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It is not clear to me why I would want to control a washer or dryer remotely.

Rahul Patel: If you put your clothes in the dryer and leave your home, normally you won’t know if your clothes are dry until you come home. Maybe you need to turn another cycle on to dry your clothes. You are able to do both things remotely – you can get an assessment of whether your clothes are dry, and if you need to turn the cycle on again, you can do it. That adds to productivity. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: A Discussion with Rahul Patel, VP Product Marketing for Wireless Connectivity Combos, Broadcom (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You started with wearables, and this topic is very hot right now. Let´s talk about some of the analysis around wearables. Based on your current component shipments, where in the wearables segment is the maximum action?

Rahul Patel: Products are all going to get connected to the phones we all carry. That is the baseline theme for wearables. The maximum traction we are seeing from a product category point of view is in watches, fitness devices, and objects you would potentially have on your body that would make things better. It is not just for human beings, it is also for pets – there are variables for helping clear geo-fencing [and variables that determine interaction with a] certain restricted boundary. If a pet crossed that boundary, you would need to take action. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: A Discussion with Rahul Patel, VP Product Marketing for Wireless Connectivity Combos, Broadcom (Part 1)

Rahul Patel is the vice president of product marketing for wireless connectivity combos at Broadcom, where he has been working since 2002. He has a B. Tech. in electronics & communications engineering from the National Institute of Technology Warangal, an MS in computer science & engineering from Arizona State University, and an MBA in marketing & finance from Santa Clara University. He has more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor and telecommunications industries. In this interview he talks about the Internet of Things and wearables, how these ideas and products will affect our daily lives, and how Broadcom enables designers and developers to be creative without having technical expertise in networking.

Sramana Mitra: Rahul, let’s start with a bit of background on your part of the Broadcom business. What are you doing, and what are your assumptions?

Rahul Patel: First of all, thank you for inviting me to this discussion. I am part of Broadcom’s Mobile/Wireless group. The company is divided into three large groups: Mobile/Wireless, Broadband/Communications, and ING (Infrastructure and Networking). Within the Mobile/Wireless group, there is the wireless connectivity organization, which is the largest and fastest growing business within Broadcom. I am part of that team, and I manage marketing and outbound customer activities and support, ranging from applications engineering to marketing and business development for wireless connectivity. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Do you have any other thoughts on open problems?

Borge Hald: I think a lot of companies are used to a model where PR comes out of the marketing department or maybe specialists in their contact centers. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Move yourself up to a bird’s eye view of your industry segment and talk about what you are seeing, particularly about open problems you would like to see solved but have not been solved by Medallia.

Borge Hald: There are plenty of problems. I think this may be too abstract, but what is starting to happen in our space is that companies get a lot more signals about what is working and what is not working. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When you say “you can be notified and you can take action,” who is the “you?”

Borge Hald: Typically this involves a front line manager or employee. Let’s say you are the general manager of a hotel. Somebody writes something about you on TripAdvisor or Google+ Local. If it is complimentary, you might want to go back and thank that person for the compliment, and show you are engaged. If they say something that wasn’t good, the fact that you go back and talk to them, and do it in a genuine way, is going to be a testament to anybody who reads it and who thought badly about you. It will show that you care. In some ways you rescue that customer relationship, and at the same time you show to the world that you care about your customers. That is a typical use case for doing recovery work at Medallia. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I remember that you were bootstrapped for a long time.

Borge Hald: That is right. We were about 110 people and had $30 million in revenue when we finally decided to take the investments. >>>