Ovum tips telcos to be big in the cloud

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 19 August 2010 15:19

IT Industry - Strategy

Ovum is tipping the major global telecommunications companies - such as AT&T, BT, Orange Business Services and Verizon Business - to become strong players in the cloud computing market.

These companies, it says: "Have made considerable progress in the arena in just over a year, and in terms of services, can now compete with established players from the IT industry'¦[They] have led a 'competitive march' from telecoms into cloud computing, and now have widely acknowledged credibility in the field."

Peter Hall, Ovum principal analyst and author of a new Ovum report on the subject, said: "The major telcos have a long heritage in providing managed data centre services and hosting and have combined this with their networking and security expertise to meet the needs of customers for cloud computing services.

"All of the players reviewed in the report see cloud computing as leveraging their core competencies. Orange has coined the term 'IT operator' to reflect its new role in IT services by analogy with its traditional role as a network operator."

He said: "We believe that the global and major regional telcos will become strong players across the full spectrum of cloud computing services including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)."

He said telcos that have not yet made a strategic move into cloud computing still have time to do so. "It's still early days'¦The market is still embryonic and many end users are still cautious about cloud computing. However, we expect to see interest pick up quite rapidly over the next two to three years, so the time is right for many telcos to be developing a strategy and roadmap for their entry to the market."

Telstra, which presently provides a range of applications for SMEs under its T-Suite brand, has flagged its intention of making a much bigger play in the cloud computing space.

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