Gearing up for the cloud

John C. Tanner
15 Mar 2011
00:00

Network is the key

Weinman emphasizes that this "hybridization" occurs over the network, "accentuating the value of key service provider assets."

In other words, the real value for carriers offering cloud services isn't so much the data center as the network connecting it.

"How do service providers add value? The answer is the infrastructure, because they own it," says Munshi. "Service providers are migrating from pure connectivity oriented services - VPNs, B2B connectivity, bandwidth - to a services model where they're not only offering bare-bones connectivity but also services on top of that. So they're going from being a courier to being a destination, with the destination being the provider data centers."

One reason the network is key to all this, says Brocade's director of global service provider marketing, Daniel Williams, is because "service providers can and need to provide end-to-end service-level enforcement from the data centers to the customer site," which means a smart pipe capable of functions such as traffic metering and policing, hierarchal QoS, performance management and connectivity/fault management.

Indeed, carriers actively making a data center/cloud play are already banking on network assets as a key part of their strategy.
"Telecom providers have a unique advantage because they own network capacity that's readily available to them, and they should be in a significant position to influence the way clouds develop in the future," says David Wirt, global head of managed services for Tata Communications.

"It's all about delivery of applications, content and putting that content and processing power strategically close to the eyeballs and carefully positioned in the network, which is why we think having data centers that sit on top of the network is a critical factor and a key differentiator for us," says Chris Wilson, senior VP at Pacnet.

"You can start by putting everything in one data center and covering the whole of Asia very efficiently with low latency, and as your applications and content grow you can move to multiple data centers and create a distributed architecture that's linked together. We can put dark fiber between these data centers and allow a customer to build a very efficient distributed architecture and grow to meet their requirements."

For Pacnet it's also an opportunity to integrate its data center assets with its network assets to create new bundled service packages, Wilson says. "For enterprises, Pacnet already offers all the connectivity services and now the data center services, and we'll be able to put a layer of managed infrastructure and other services on top of that and create a bundle for the enterprise customer which I think will be quite unique."

Pages

Follow Telecom Asia Sport!
Comments
No Comments Yet! Be the first to share what you think!
This website uses cookies
This provides customers with a personalized experience and increases the efficiency of visiting the site, allowing us to provide the most efficient service. By using the website and accepting the terms of the policy, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.