Traditional telecom service providers have an advantage and expertise that comes from owning a network, but they also have to embrace IT services including the security and regulatory compliance aspects. While companies like Amazon may have excellent cloud services, they also have to be able to guarantee network access, end-to-end security, service level agreements (SLAs) and Quality of Service even though they don't own the network.
The need to provide seamless end-to-end cloud services that cross networking and IT expertise may lead providers to partner with one other in order to be more credible with enterprises rather than trying to do it all themselves. Each type of provider in the emerging cloud business has its own core competency, but no matter what, providing enterprise-class controls is an across-the-board requirement so customers have the right tools to monitor and manage resources in cloud environments.
According to Current Analysis Managed IT Services analyst Dustin Kehoe, enterprises will start moving to a cloud environment in clearly defined phases only where they can measure each step with hard metrics like return on investment (ROI), total cost of ownership (TCO), lower energy costs and increased utilization. Enterprises will probably take a cautious approach and move applications and infrastructure to the cloud in pieces. If cloud services have cost savings, providers need to be able to quantify savings for customers, not just go with a general one-third to one-half savings over in-house costs.
This article originally appeared on SearchTelecom.com