Mindset shift
KVH's Warley summed up the required mindset nicely: "You can't predict the future when you have an entire generation of people growing up thinking of the internet in an entirely different way... We need to create an environment where they can flourish. We have to think about how to enable and empower the really smart people with the next big idea."
Luckily, there are signs that carriers understand this much - witness this issue's roundtable discussion concerning carrier perspectives on cloud-based services for examples. However, the same discussion also reveals the external challenges they face, including regulatory compliance in Asia's heterogeneous marketplace and, crucially, convincing their own enterprise customers to trust the cloud.
Interestingly, some operators are taking a lead in that area as well. In February, five service providers - Hutchison Global Communications, VADS (owned by Telekom Malaysia), LG CNS, AAPT and Telstra - teamed with Oracle and PricewaterhouseCoopers to form a regional "cloud alliance" that aims to eradicate the uncertainty of the cloud's value proposition (and mitigate regulatory compliance issues) by implementing a best practices business framework for cloud service providers.
Will it work? Who knows? The Asia Pacific Cloud Alliance has its work cut out for it, as does any carrier gearing up for the cloud-based future. But the telecom industry has to start somewhere, and it has to start now.
MORE COVERAGE OF CLOUD COMPUTING, OTT