Assembling the ecosystem
Despite all the progress and interest, however, it's still unclear just what telecom operators will get out of cloud-based services (see "Carriers brace for cloud computing", previous page).
One of the top challenges telcos face in breaking into the cloud business is establishing the end-to-end ecosystem needed to truly support it, says Carrero.
"The telco not only has to be able to deliver the technology, but sell and support it," he says. "When an operator delivers a service, there's a value chain behind it - from the front end to contact centers, IVR and so on. If you're going to do, say, ERP as a service, someone has to be able to have a dialogue with that enterprise to see how the service delivering that software matches the business processes that they have, and you need particular expertise."
That doesn't mean telcos have to do everything themselves, but they do have to realize their limitations and partner wisely to assemble that ecosystem.
An even bigger challenge, however, is ensuring availability. Carriers with managed services portfolios are well versed in SLAs, but those usually revolve around technical things like bit rates and dropped packets. SLAs at the application level are much harder to guarantee, which means carriers have to be prepared to pick and choose which services get priority, says Harries.
"For example, what we see in the public clouds and SaaS for consumers is free services and best-effort, or you'll get a rock-bottom price on a virtual server and it's available most of the time but when it's not, well you get what you pay for," he says. "Or you can either guarantee that the data center will be there and your service will be running, but only specific apps that you have full control over will be always running."
This also requires telcos to provide realistic expectations to cloud customers, adds Carrero.
"It's better to use pragmatic comparisons of what you're doing today for that model of service vs another. 'Here's what I'm offering vs what you have.' If you want to offer 100% availability for everyone, it's doable - but it's more expensive."
A matter of trust
Still, that's a tall order when selling a service that ostensibly asks customers to trust you with their data. And trust is at the core of cloud-based services. The Sidekick scare demonstrated in no uncertain terms how that can go wrong. Sidekick customers trusted T-Mobile to keep their data safe, and T-Mobile trusted Danger to do just that.
Of course, the trust issue - like the cloud - is nothing new. As Bruce Schneier, CTO of BT Counterpane Systems, pointed out in an essay in June, the entire IT security chain is based on trusting every element from the chip maker and the OS vendor to the ISP to keep your computer and everything on it safe.