Leveraging the Service Provider Network to Create Differentiation in the Cloud
Cloud services are rapidly changing how business users store and access information, resources and applications, so it's no wonder that it has become a major inspiration for service providers crafting the next generation of business services.
The size and potential of the market has become a rallying point for all kinds of service providers-both traditional facilities-based network operators and Internet-based public cloud service providers. It has already become a crowded marketplace teeming with competitive choices between different types of providers, and in many cases, the Internet-based companies were the first movers in this emerging market.
That poses a challenge to any network operator now entering the game: How can you make yourself stand out from the rest of the cloud crowd?
You can start by pointing out that not all clouds are created equal. The public cloud services sector to this point is best characterized as a market defined by those early Internet-based offerings. Public Internet-based clouds in most cases are not carrier-grade clouds. They fail to provide meaningful service guarantees, application-appropriate latency, dedicated access and carrier-grade network security, among other features. These shortcomings make the public Internet-based cloud an unsafe place for a corporate enterprise's most mission-critical applications.
"It is highly unlikely that any Internet-based cloud provider will be able to offer a complete, end-to-end SLA," said David Frattura, senior director of strategy, cloud solutions, at Alcatel-Lucent. "They do not own the network that connects the enterprise to the cloud. Without this end-to-end control, their options are limited, and for the enterprise, it will be challenging to have a service they can feel comfortable placing their mission-critical systems in. An enterprise can leverage Internet-based public cloud services for general need, but what if they want to leverage a public cloud to deploy more complex, mission-critical systems? Traditional service providers have an opportunity here to leverage their own network infrastructures to differentiate and add value."
Camille Mendler, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, echoed that sentiment, saying, "Some telcos offer a public Internet cloud, too, but it's in their ability a private VPN-supported cloud that those service providers should have assets allowing them to deliver a greater level of service and surety. It needs to be end-to-end. They need to practice what they preach about their ability to manage end-to-end."
Service quality, application latency, dedicated connectivity and security are all areas where the intelligent network of the facilities-based service provider can most make a difference. Service providers can leverage their existing infrastructures to take ownership of service guarantees; can manage bandwidth to offer more capacity for the most latency-sensitive applications; provide direct access over their own networks to the cloud; and protect enterprise cloud transactions with carrier-grade network security.
Moreover, in offering cloud services, facilities-based service providers can emphasize the strong bonds they already have forged with many enterprise customers, giving them a single-source option they already trust for outsourcing their IT resources and applications to the cloud. If the customer already buys VPN services from the service provider, for example, the provider can enable simpler service procurement for the customer by letting them join the new cloud capabilities to the VPN services they are already consuming.
"The ability to join the data center piece and the connectivity piece is important in making service providers trusted enterprise cloud partners," said Caroline Chappell, analyst at large at Heavy Reading .
However, the advantages the intelligent service provider network can support go beyond service provisioning and portfolio breadth. Though the cloud services market is still in a fairly early phase in its evolution, the sector already has witnessed a handful of large-scale cloud outages, mostly involving the Internet's public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Google, the Playstation Network, Microsoft Windows Live and others.
"These disruptions have created confusion and concern among customers. A recent IDC study of key inhibitors to broader enterprise cloud services adoption found the issue of top concern to be availability. Internet-based cloud service providers have their own methods of determining the source of a service outage, but because their data centers operate on the networks of other network operators, their customers can sometimes be left out of the loop as a round of finger-pointing ensues between the network operator and the Internet-based cloud provider," Frattura said.
"If you're a CIO, you want one neck to wring when things go wrong," he added.
"This idea of having one throat to choke becomes very important when you have an enterprise with multiple applications on multiple clouds and SLAs on each one," Chappell added. "The enterprise wants one company to handle those SLAs."
If the cloud service provider operates its own intelligent network, it not only owns the responsibility for what happens on the network, but also has tools to actively monitor bandwidth and application trends, and potentially predict and resolve trouble spots before they actually cause any trouble. Chappell added, "Some of the outages have had to do with control plane issues, and that's something telcos inherently understand and monitor. It's part of their DNA that they can leverage in the cloud market."
"Intelligent networks can recognize the characteristics of applications being downloaded in order to manage them properly," Frattura added.
In a crowded market, enterprise customers have many cloud options to consider, but the intelligent service provider network is clearly differentiated from the rest.
