To compete in Cloud services, telcos need to address nine new capabilities. If they can add these to their infrastructure and service offerings, they will be able to compete in Cloud-driven businesses.

Find below nine important capabilities telcos will need to have to compete and win going forward:

The Enterprise Personal Cloud is coming soon, and it is not what you think it is. The Personal Cloud has largely been marketed as a consumer storage cloud enabling different devices to share files such as music, photos, and video. But the Enterprise Personal Cloud needs to go further, because companies have special application and data sharing needs. The Enterprise Personal Cloud must include client virtualization to create a Cloud-based workspace incorporating data, settings, and access methods. This workspace can then replace the PC workstation as the locus of personal IT presence. This has important implications across hardware and software usage and deployment, in process handling, and for management and security.

We have argued in the past how the emerging Boundary Free Enterprise™ changes everything in the corporate data center. The Enterprise Personal Cloud is likely to become the key agent of that change. As the personal workspace moves to the Cloud, it becomes more accessible, more manageable, and more secure. It can be backed up, mirrored, moved, and easily provisioned with new software, new access settings, new licenses, and current links to current data. It is accessible on all devices, from anywhere, and never goes offline. It enables virtual work, and makes a new ecosystem based on multiple devices and multiple operating systems possible.

Intro: Saugatuck research clients concerned with the roles and influence of telcos should read this new Strategic Perspective by Bob Cohen. 1045MKT, What Hurdles will Telcos need to overcome to be Cloud Service Brokers?, 23Mar2012, identifies the main hurdles most telcos must to overcome if they want to become influential and relevant Cloud services providers to enterprises. It enumerates a number of regulatory, business model, and technological hurdles, including relationships with key technology partners/providers such as Cisco. In addition to considering these obstacles, the discussion explores what effect telcos as Cloud Service Brokers (CSBs), acting as brokers between Cloud service providers and enterprise end-users, or Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), selling Cloud services directly to enterprises, will have on Cloud markets, including effects on enterprise IT and business leaders.

If telcos only become CSBs and/or CSPs, they will control a large part of the marketplace. But if they perform well as CSPs and CSBs, they could begin to affect prices, competition, and future Cloud services development. The pricing impact would be due to the fact that if telcos served a large part of the enterprise, SMB and consumer market for Cloud services and applications, they would have substantial market power and could influence supply and prices.

Saugatuck CRS clients curious as to how telcos got to where they are with Cloud, and where they’re headed, would be interested in the latest Strategic Perspective from Bob Cohen.

Challenged by declining traditional revenue streams, telcos have sought to become important players in Cloud services. Initially, they focused on hosting services, often tied to putting applications used by large businesses in the Cloud. Next, they began to provide applications support through partnerships with Cloud service firms and companies they acquired. Finally, telcos have explored providing a broad range of Cloud applications, either by partnering with firms like Microsoft or creating an iTunes-like applications store. Some of these approaches vary by the markets telcos are trying to serve, by telco size and by the region being served. This Strategic Perspective identifies the main areas where telcos are providing Cloud services and where they may be active providers of Cloud services in the future.  

What is Happening?  Saugatuck SVP Bruce Guptill had the pleasure of participating in SIIA’s recent All About Mobile event in San Francisco Nov 15 2011, including chaired a panel on mobile payments and participating in sideline discussions and sessions.

By the end of the day, a developing picture emerged of poorly-understood, inadequately-supported technologies and services that have the ability to affect business and personal life beyond the scale and scope of any previous IT for decades to come.