Getting Down to Work with the Cloud
Terry McGuigan, Managing Director for the Telco Industry at Microsoft Communications Sector spoke at TelecomTV Resolutions’ live, European session on ‘Getting down to work with the Cloud’ at Management World alongside Thierry Zylberberg,France Telecom, Aileen Smith,TM Forum, John Gillam, BT Global Services and Joe Weinman,AT&T.
This second leg of the three regional debates (Asia, Europe and US) focused on the opportunities and benefits presented by the Cloud and a large focus of the debate was corporate paranoia as a barrier to entry to the Cloud, more favourably referred to as ‘gaining trust’ by the participants. Terry talked about our ‘all in’ approach to the Cloud and the reticence we have seen from some enterprises as they try to understand how to approach change and related issues, such as security and storage. We are seeing more and more enterprises overcome this paranoia and start adopting cloud based technologies – 13 of the top 20 global telecom firms are deploying Microsoft cloud services. One example that’s working well is Live Meeting.
On monetization, Terry discussed the standard value chain model we see in enterprises and our shared revenue approach with telco partners. The consumer expectation of free is addressed via business models, such as ad-funded, post/pre-paid and real-time rating and charging, although each presents its own challenges. Security in the Cloud was another hot topic and Terry commented on the various thresholds and degrees of risk. In terms of regulation, it’s a matter of the value any one provider is aiming to provide. The Cloud enables connectivity and different levels of security, performance, etc, are offered by the various providers.
Alvin Lim, Senior Regional Director, Hosting & Software Services, Asia, Microsoft, spoke during the first (Asia) leg of the debate alongside Andre Smit, Cisco Systems and Jaymi McManus, Telstra International. Alvin discussed how Microsoft is working with service providers to help them realise the real advantages of value-added services bundled with traditional voice, including lower churn and increased revenue.
Will the telco as we know it be lost if it doesn’t correctly approach Cloud as part of its business transformation? At Microsoft, we believe that telcos are in a unique position to capture and build on the value of network connectivity that is enabling great experiences (largely cloud-based services) across multiple devices and users. What do you think?