Can telcos do cloud?

Do big old telcos have the wherewithal to embrace and capitalise on the fast moving, dynamic world of The Cloud?

At its simplest level larger telcos are starting to offer infrastructure as a service. It’s a low margin game where scale counts for everything. Big telecoms companies can at least bundle it with connectivity to make it worthwhile, but is there a way to generate a higher yield cloud offering?

Telstra’s tie-in with Microsoft seems like a dangerous precedent. Will this be the first of many software as a service offerings from them? If so, what extra value are they really adding to the product? Is the increased margin enough to justify the increased expense in providing a whole new realm of customer support?

In this week’s podcast we look at whether telcos can make money from the cloud? Or are they just dreaming? We’ll hear from Ciena’s vice president, product and technical marketing Mike Adams – he says networks will become virtualised, just like data centres.

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