As Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of a major communications solutions provider, I am constantly identifying and investigating trends that indicate the direction of communications in our society. One trend that everyone planning for the future should understand is the generational shift in communications driven by the 18-29 demographic, known as GEN-Y.

This generation has always had cell phones. They’ve always had personal computers. They’ve been online since their teen years. They’ve grown up using digital media and Internet-based services. They have been brought up in a very inclusive way. They value diversity. They are very mobile-centric.

And they want to be cool. Always connected. They categorize things as Cool (relevant) vs. Uncool (outdated). Young is cool, old is uncool. TMZ is cool, “Entertainment Tonight” is uncool. Steven Colbert is cool, the network news shows are boring, artifacts of a pre-digital age that their grandparents watch. They tweet but don’t email. They text, but don’t return voice mail. They prefer asynchronous, group communications over real-time two-way phone calls. They document their lives on Facebook and Pinterest, while their parents made scrapbooks, wrote letters and made photo albums. They think “free,” is a birthright, and almost everything they need should be acquired without a fee.

With this in mind, it is not surprising that the communications patterns and expectations of GEN-Yers are totally different than prior generations. Baby Boomers in the workplace largely relied on voice calls. Gen-Xers were largely an email generation. GEN-Yers rely on social media, text messages and video. A landline at a physical location would tie them down. Television delivered on a set schedule to a fixed location works if you happen to be home, but watching the shows they want to see, when they want to see them, on their smartphone,  laptop, or tablet  is the preferred method of getting their shows. They have an expectation that their communications and entertainment preferences follow them wherever they are, regardless of their access.

Enterprises have historically been the innovative engine for advanced services that would eventually migrate to the consumer. Now, the GEN-Yer adopts a new technology or service and then brings it into the workplace. They are blurring the lines between work and personal time and devices. Increasingly, they use their personal devices, specifically smartphones and laptops, for work – and they use work networks for personal activities, primarily social media, texting, email, and shopping. Bring your own device (BYOD) is being driven by GEN-Yers who value technical freedom over IT policy.

And this trend is global. When Cisco studied the GEN-Yers last year ^[1], they noted that this generation is now moving from consumers to employees and noted the generational changes in preferences they bring with them.

• Desire for more flexibility on where, when, and how work gets done, with continuous movement from work to personal activities and back again throughout their working hours.
• Important to make and maintain connections with others, based on common interests and experiences.
• Interest in work that involves a variety of activities and interactions.
• Expectation that all relevant apps available in their private lives will be available to them in their work lives.

Some additional highlights from the Cisco report:

Personal Devices at Work:

• 40% of GEN-Yers agree that company policy prohibits the personal use of company-owned devices, yet 71% confess that they do it.
• 60% compulsively check for email, texts or social media updates.

The Social Media Effect:

• 87% have a Facebook account. 1 out of 10 always has it on.
• 41% provide a daily update. 20% provide several updates per day.
• 56% have a Twitter account and 21% tweet daily.

And they use their devices everywhere:

• 75% use their smartphone in bed.
• Nearly half use it at meals with their family and friends.
• A quarter use their smartphone while driving!

With so much associated revenue impacted by these changes^[2]and being driven by the individual consumer, it is important for our industry to increase our relevance to this generation. How do service providers and enterprises reach them?

We have to be Smart about our use of technology. We have to focus first on the end-user experience. Being relevant means being smart about providing services that integrate their work and personal lives wherever they are. It means being smart about integrating services into consumer electronic mobile devices, accessible everywhere. We need to focus on asynchronous communications models and leverage social media platforms to create new services. We need to provide world-class user interfaces and seamless integration with the Over The Top, Social Networking and content sharing world that is so important to GEN-Yer’s.

Service providers need to question long held assumptions around their services and be willing to tailor their services to the needs and preferences of their users. One size no longer fits all. This generation has proven that they are comfortable building their own “customized service” bundles, selecting from device ecosystems, access, services and content originating from multiple sources. Many of these services offer a “free” tier which is often advertising-subsidized.

A revolution is occurring right now in our industry and it is driven by customer change and technology innovation. At GENBAND, we are working with our customers to deploy Smart Networking solutions in this evolving world.

Adam Noble, CIO at GAF Materials in a recent interview^[3] said, “…people who are the most creative and open-minded are going to adopt the coolest technology, regardless of how old they are."

Many of the “cool” services with the broadest deployment have been created by innovators and disrupters, who otherwise might not be thought of as cool. Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Fanning, Sergei Brin, and Steve Wozniak to name a few have reached celebrity status. Their services have become so useful and widely adopted by GEN-Yer’s that they have become cool.  Building world-class, user-focused solutions and services is the key to relevancy for our industry. And being cool.

^[1]See Cisco GEN-Y Study, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns1176/business-of-it/Trends_in_IT_Gen_Y_Flexible_Collaborative_Workspace.html

^[2]Yankee Group; 2013 Mobility Predictions: Time To Place Your Bets, Dec. 2012. Apps on mobile devices are shifting service provider revenues for key services. Yankee Group reports that this is shifting Voice and SMS usage that is costing mobile providers $1B per month in revenue

^[3]CIOs Look Ahead: Millennials, Consumer Tech and the Future; http://www.cio.com/article/716369/CIOs_Look_Ahead_Millennials_Consumer_Tech_and_the_Future