Cloudifying everything...Telco

Cloud based computing and the 'As A Service' business models has been the buzz around the ICT industry. It is evident that IT companies are cloud basing their core products to be abreast in the trend, by taking the risk and challenges, and most importantly to be ahead in the competition and differentiating their product offering. To name a few are ; salesforce.com, broadsoft, webex, zimbra etc.

Cloud computing is defined as "A collection of IT enabled resources and capabilities that can be delivered over the Internet As A Service". So what role do Telco's play in cloud computing...

Telco's who have the first mover advantage in setting up there IP networks have invested in iDC, for their infrastructure hosting and also, upsell to customers as a hosted/co-located service for their business VPN customers. The Application Service Provider (ASP) business started from there albeit very slowly. At present the Telco is presented with Cloud/XaaS as a new business model which they could map onto there IDC infrastructure. One of the service providers who has made this move is Telstra, using the T-Suite platform to Aggregate/Deliver and Manage services to there customers using the SaaS model, which is delivered using a platform named Jamcracker. Telstra's T-Suite have the following business objectives ;

(1) Further monetize broadband investment through service differentiation

(2) Expand markets without expanding networks

(3) Expand business models for future earnings growth

SaaS is opined to be a superior business model, as the proponents argue, from cost to technology to scale. It delivers rapid time to deployment/value, Faster innovation cycles, highly scalable, reduced cost structure by leveraging a single platform..

In this competitive environment where the Telco's are faced with diminishing margins, and the the daunting task of protecting the customers in the face of high churn, is SaaS not the correct position for a Telco to be in for their core products and services.

Now let us look at the possibility of cloudifying the Telco operational process. From the perspective of an IP/NGN environment we could look at the network elements delivering the following attributes;

(1) Setting the QoE/QoS attributes pertaining to the service the customer requires

(2) Overall managing the resource requirements at the core, aggregation, access and service layer in terms of (a) Quality of Service Management (b) Number and Port management (c) Security Management (d) Signalling Management (e) Service Management

(3) Operational Support System and Billing Support System

(4) CPE management using protocols such as TR069 and DLNA

Imaging going to a web store (SaaS Marketplace) and purchasing an IPTV connection, and imagine the provisioning enablement cutting through all above four layers in order to give seamless service to the customer...and imagine the customer just needs to connect the STB/CPE to the port to seamlessly connect to the service and enjoy the service. Just as SaaS'ing the CRM/ERP this I say is SaaS'ing the Telco product offering.

What really portends well, is the ability to expose the Telco services (assuming all constraints are met), to a huger marketplace surpassing from a local presence to a global presence. This augurs well for the Telco industry. Is this is distinct possibility...