The role for telcos in cloud computing

Over the last two years, cloud computing has grabbed the attention of the IT industry because of its potential to offer a new model for the provision of computing and applications to enterprises. More recently, leading global telcos have developed and launched their own cloud computing services, including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), as they plan to compete head-on with solutions from leading players in the IT industry.

We believe that major telcos have an important part to play in promoting the awareness and understanding of cloud computing, and bringing enterprise-grade cloud computing solutions to a broader base of users. Telcos also have a unique opportunity to position cloud computing as an extension of their managed networking solutions (such as MPLS-based VPNs), by offering ‘on-net’ cloud computing capabilities backed up by end-to-end service-level agreements (SLAs).

In spite of the industry buzz around cloud computing, Ovum research indicates that it is not currently high on the CIO/IT manager agenda, and telcos are not seen as preferred providers of cloud computing by IT decision-makers. However, we believe that early market entry by leading telcos will give them the opportunity to establish awareness and credibility before the cloud computing market steps up a gear to a higher adoption phase.