Category Archives: Telco Cloud

Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, News & Analysis, Salesforce, SAP, T-Systems, Telco Cloud

Deutsche Telekom wants to double cloud revenues by 2018

Deutsche Telekom wants to bolster its cloud business

Deutsche Telekom wants to bolster its cloud business

Deutsche Telekom said this week aims to redouble efforts to beat out big IT incumbents in the increasingly lucrative cloud services segment. Through the telco’s IT-focused subsidiary it intends to double cloud revenues over the next three years.

The company said it wants to start generating upwards of two billion euros annually from cloud services by 2018, double what it says it currently pulls in.

“At Deutsche Telekom, we want to grow by more than 20 percent each year in the field of cloud platforms, and to become the leading provider for businesses in Europe,” said Ferri Abolhassan, head of the IT Division at T-Systems.

Last year revenues from cloud solutions, in particular private cloud services, increased double digits at the firm, Abolhassan explained. But with the battle for cloud revenue heating up with more traditional IT service providers and vendors the company needs to scale up its cloud activities both within and outside T-Systems.

“The market for services from the public cloud – infrastructure, platforms and applications – that can be accessed through the public Internet promises further growth. In conjunction with partners, Deutsche Telekom plans to pit itself more strongly against the Internet corporations Google and Amazon in future. To achieve this, the departments within Deutsche Telekom’s segments are now stepping up their cloud activities across the Group,” he said, adding that DT will also continue to try and differentiate on security.

Telco’s haven’t been the natural choice for enterprise IT professionals but over the past few years many like DT have stepped up their cloud strategies, a move which largely sees them both acquiring successful cloud incumbents and integrate them into their own operations – for instance Verizon’s acquisition of Terremark, or CenturyLink’s acquisition of Savvis – and using their existing commercial telecoms and managed services clients as direct channels.

Partnerships are also key in this segment and earlier this year DT announced a flurry of cloud-centric deals with Cisco, Huawei, SAP and Salesforce. That said, the move could be a sign DT will soon ramp up partnerships with other big cloud providers or ISVs – or head down the M&A route.

Channel, Cisco, InterCloud, Internet of Things, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud

Cisco beefs up Intercloud strategy

Cisco is bolstering its Intercloud programme by partnering with ISVs

Cisco is bolstering its Intercloud programme by partnering with ISVs

Cisco is bolstering its Intercloud strategy this week, announcing partnerships with 35 ISVs which the company said would help create and offer a wider range of cloud services based on Cisco infrastructure.

The company announced the impending launch of an Intercloud Marketplace that will be populated with apps certified to run on Intercloud infrastructure, due to go live in autumn this year.

Cisco said it is partnering with a range of commercial app and development companies including Apprenda, Active State and Docker to make their cloud developer environments work on the Intercloud platform.

The company is also partnering with big data solution providers including MapR, Hortonworks, Cloudera and the Apache Hadoop Community to offer hybrid cloud big data implementation support. Additionally, it said it would expose APIs to enable software-based control of networking and security, a move it claims will help developers create Internet of Things services more effectively.

Cisco’s Intercloud strategy has been somewhat of a slow burner, even by Cisco’s own estimates. The company has about 100 Intercloud customers and 65 partners globally, though last month Cisco chairman and chief executive John Chambers said the programme would pick up pace as it moved into “phase 2” of the Intercloud strategy, which is what the Marketplace is all about.

“The pieces that we were missing was how do you go into this new environment where each of these “public clouds in clouds” are separate? And you have to be on different vendors or different companies’ tech to have the ability to go into it. So what we’re looking at first is an architecture and it cements our relationships in service providers. And then it really comes through to how you monetise it over time,” he said at the time.

“This will just take time to monetize, but the effect we see indirectly is already huge when you talk about a Deutsche Telekom or a Telstra and our relationships with those.”

Akamai, Asia Pacific, China Unicom, Networks, News & Analysis, Noam Freedman, Telco Cloud, Vendor

Akamai, China Unicom strike cloud deal

China Unicom may be using the Akamai deal to bolster its appeal outside China

China Unicom may be using the Akamai deal to bolster its appeal outside China

China Unicom and Akamai have announced a partnership that will see the two companies integrate their cloud services and content delivery network, respectively.

The deal between China Unicom’s cloud division CU Cloud and Akamai will see the former offer the latter’s full portfolio of content delivery, web performance and security offerings, a move CU Cloud said will improve global access to its growing suite of cloud services.

Akamai’s turnkey CDN technology will also underpin global delivery of its cloud services, CU Cloud said.

“China Unicom is a major carrier in China, serving the global internet market,” said Noam Freedman, senior vice president of Akamai’s global networks division. “We’re excited to be partnering with CU cloud to tap into the fast-growing China cloud and CDN market. Akamai sees increased demand for delivering content to Chinese internet users from global customers. With this strategic partnership, we believe Akamai is best positioned to serve this growing need.”

China Unicom has for the past few years targeted cloud services fairly aggressively. In 2013 it was revealed the company was teaming up with a other incumbents including China Mobile and China Telecom on the construction of massive cloud computing datacentres, with total investment from all three operators topping $3bn.

It has also partnered with other local specialists like Huawei and Pacnet on cloud infrastructure and service development.

The latest move may be a sign that China Unicom has set its sights beyond the local market and wants to compete with other increasingly global cloud providers with roots in China – like Alibaba and Pacnet, which have also bolstered global access to their platforms in a bid to cater mainly to large Chinese multinationals.

Juan Manuel Moreno, Networks, News & Analysis, OpenStack, Telco Cloud, Telco Cloud Forum, Telefonica, Unica

Telefónica: Unifying cloud and comms can make us more efficient

Juan Manuel Moreno, global cloud director at Telefónica

Juan Manuel Moreno, global cloud director at Telefónica

Telefónica is working to roll out a wide range of internally and customer-focused cloud services on both its own UNICA and OpenStack platforms, but the company’s global cloud director Juan Manuel Moreno said the challenges of shifting such a large company aren’t purely technical.

Moreno, who was speaking at the Telco Cloud Forum in London Tuesday, said the company has been in the process of transforming its technology platforms and internal operations for some time.

It’s no secret telcos like Telefónica have in recent years worked to strengthen their cloud capabilities in a bid to broaden their service portfolios and battle dwindling voice and data revenues – and to regain ground lost to more nimble OTT players.

“We are reliant on the full ecosystem of providers of technology… using technology partners to build these new services. But it’s a challenge because these players are moving so quickly,” Moreno said. “One of the biggest challenges in this space is that everyone and everything is moving so quickly.”

Much of what the company has done externally was intricately linked with its efforts to virtualize core elements of its own networks, plans it originally set out in 2014, with the aim of virtualising 30 per cent of all new infrastructure by 2016. The company took many of those platforms to use as the foundation for their customer-facing cloud services.

“Unifying communications and cloud or IT is an opportunity to be more efficient, to discover more services, and of course to develop a broad portfolio of services,” he explained.

But he was fairly candid about the challenges involved with moving Telefónica, a large, global service provider with very heterogeneous technology platforms and business processes, over to a more automated, cloud-centric operational model and product portfolio.

He said overcoming the business process-related challenges would also be key if the company is to effectively capture more revenue from its traditional base as well as new segments (he said Telefónica sees SMBs as the largest commercial opportunity for the foreseeable future).

“In cloud the technology is available for everyone now… But we still have to transform internally in order to really strengthen our market position,” he added.

Brendon Riley, M&A, News & Analysis, Pacnet, Telco Cloud, telstra

Telstra, Pacnet finalise acquisition deal

Telstra is buying Pacnet to bolster its presence in the Asia Pacific cloud and managed services market

Telstra is buying Pacnet to bolster its presence in China’s cloud and managed services market

Telstra’s acquisition of Pacnet has now come to fruition, with the Australian telco today announcing it has completed the purchase of the cloud, managed services and datacentre provider. As reported by Telecoms.com in December, the valuation of the deal came in at $697m.

When initially announced, the deal came with the stipulation of agreement from regulatory bodies, as well as Pacnet financier approval. According to Telstra, all necessary approvals and agreements have now been confirmed, and the firm can now begin the full acquisition of Pacnet.

All that remains, it claims, is full regulatory approval in the United States, which it reckons is expected in due course and will not impact operations or the agreed purchase price.

Speaking on the acquisition, Telstra’s Global Enterprise and Services chief executive Brendon Riley said the integration of Pacnet will see its brand gradually retired, but that the Chinese market remains a big focus for the joint-venture.

“The addition of Pacnet’s staff, intrastructure, technology and expertise will position Telstra as a leading provider of services to multinational and large companies in Asia,” he said. “The completed acquisition will double Telstra’s customers in Asia, and greatly increase our network reach and data centre capabilities across the region. This includes the addition of the largest privately owned intra-Asia cable network, 29 data centres and the ability to further grow our China operations through existing joint venture.”

Riley concluded with a nod towards the Pacnet Enabled Network (PEN), an elastic and on-demand network based on SDN architecture, pioneered by Pacnet. PEN was one of the first live SDN-based networks launched globally.

“The acquisition provides us greater specialisation and scale, including the delivery of enhanced services, such as software-defined networking and opens up significant incremental opportunities for our business,” he said.

Bill Fathers, Datacentre, Duncan Bennet, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud, telstra, VMware

VMware, Telstra bring virtualisation giant’s public cloud to Australia

Telstra and VMware are bringing the virtualisation incumbent's public cloud service to Australia

Telstra and VMware are bringing the virtualisation incumbent’s public cloud service to Australia

VMware announced it is partnering with Telstra to bring its vCloud Air service to Australia.

VMware said the initial VMware vCloud Air deployment in Australia is hosted out of an unspecified Telstra datacentre.

“We continue to see growing client adoption and interest as we build out VMware vCloud Air with our newest service location in Australia,” said Bill Fathers, executive vice president and general manager, Cloud Services Business Unit, VMware.

“VMware’s new Australia service location enables local IT teams, developers and lines of business to create and build their hybrid cloud environments on an agile and resilient IT platform that supports rapid innovation and business transformation,” Fathers said.

Last July VMware made a massive push into the Asia Pacific region, inking deals with SoftBank in Japan and China Telecom in China to bring its public cloud service to the area. But the company said it was adding an Australian location in a bid to appeal to users that have strict data residency requirements.

Duncan Bennet, ‎vice president and managing director, VMware A/NZ added: “Australian businesses will have the ability to seamlessly extend applications into the cloud without any additional configuration, and will have peace of mind, knowing this IT infrastructure will provide a level of reliability and business continuity comparable to in-house IT. It means businesses can quickly respond to changing business conditions, and scale IT up and down as required without disruption to the overall business.”

Telstra has over the past couple of years inked a number of partnerships with large enterprise IT incumbents to strengthen its position in the cloud segment. It was one of the first companies to sign up to Cisco’s Intercloud programme last year, and earlier this month announced a partnership with IBM that will see the Australian telco offer direct network access to SoftLayer cloud infrastructure to local customers.

Chua Sock Koong, M&A, News & Analysis, Robert McCullen, Singtel, Telco Cloud, Trustwave

Singtel buys Trustwave in managed security play

Singtel has acquired Trustwave, a cloud and managed security services provider

Singtel has acquired Trustwave, a cloud and managed security services provider

Singtel is to acquire IT security firm Trustwave in a move that will see the latter operate as the cybersecurity division of the Singaporean telecoms incumbent.

The deal will see Singtel acquire a 98 per cent stake in the American security services firm, which has an $850m equity value. Singtel said it paid around $810m for the company.

Following the acquisition more than 1,200 Trustwave employees will join Singtel to form a standalone cybersecurity services business unit.

Trustwave said it had three million business subscribers pre-acquisition and five security operations centres (in the US and Poland).

In canned remarks Trustwave chairman, chief executive and president Robert McCullen said: “This strategic partnership creates an unparalleled opportunity to combine Singtel’s robust information and communications solutions with Trustwave’s industry-leading security technologies and managed services platform to deliver cutting-edge solutions that will enhance our customer experience.”

“Singtel is the perfect partner for us as we continue to help businesses fight cybercrime, protect data and reduce security risk, and the Trustwave team is thrilled to become a part of such a prestigious and innovative organization,” McCullen said.

Singtel said the move will allow it to build a stronger presence in the American and European cloud services markets as it combines its existing enterprise IT assets it already leverages in the Asia Pacific region.

Chua Sock Koong, Singtel Group chief executive said: “We aspire to be a global player in cyber security.  We have established a strong security business in the region, both organically and through strategic partnerships with global technology leaders.”

“Our extensive customer reach and strong suite of ICT services, together with Trustwave’s deep cyber security capabilities, will create a powerful combination and allow Singtel to capture global opportunities in the cyber security space,” Koong said.

The acquisition will see Singtel move into an area that seems to be constantly on the up – cyberattacks like DDoS and man-in-the-middle attacks are becoming more frequent and cheaper to procure on the black market according to nearly every report out there, and other IT-focused telcos (i.e. Verizon) making moves to broaden their enterprise services to include cloud security and managed security services. According to Gartner the managed security industry is estimated to generate approximately $24bn by 2018, up almost 75 per cent from $14bn in 2014.

Bonny Joy, Christopher Dodge, News & Analysis, Operator, telco, Telco Cloud

Cloud storage bundles improve stickiness but not revenues – research

Cloud storage helps operators retain customers, not necessarily generate revenue

Cloud storage helps operators retain customers, not necessarily generate revenue

Research undertaken by analyst firm Strategy Analytics has concluded that pre-installed mobile cloud storage bundles, such as Dropbox, have become table stakes for device vendors and are perceived more as a prerequisite than a value-add, reports Telecoms.com.

SA pooled the resources of three analysts covering mobile content, user experience and app tracking to come to the conclusion that premium storage bundles have already become ‘me too’ propositions that confer little product differentiation. Having said that they also conclude they can still be effective for both device vendors and operators when it comes to customer loyalty.

Christopher Dodge, Associate Director of SA’s Wireless Media Labs, said: “Our research suggests that consumers are agnostic to who the service provider is, but at the same time they place significant emphasis on the trustworthiness of the service, which in turn creates an opportunity for device OEMs and operators in becoming the trusted provider of the service, through pre-installing the application on the device with free storage.”

Nitesh Patel, Director of the Wireless Media Strategies Service, said: “For operators, the focus with cloud storage service should be on indirect monetization – this means rather than relying on cloud as a premium service, they should manage it effectively for reducing customer churn.”

Bonny Joy, Chief of SA’s Consumer Telemetry Platforms said: “ OEM partnerships with cloud storage providers are being received favorably by the end users. The AppOptix based on over one million application sessions in the US found that Dropbox on Samsung devices realize a traffc of 12.8 MB  per day, the highest among  major OEM brands.”

Fellow analyst firm CCS Insight has also published some research today, but focusing on the UK consumer communications services market. CCS is forecasting that by 2020, 79% of UK households will have signed up to a multiplay service bundle, a 60% increase on the current level. Furthermore the number of households buying a bundle of at least four comms services is expected to increase by over 400%.

Paolo Pescatore, Director of Multiplay and Media at CCS Insight, reckons this means premium content will become even more valuable and that industry consolidation is set to continue. “With a furious battle for customers raging, we expect the amounts paid for exclusive content deals on movies, sports and TV shows to continue to skyrocket. Sports will be a major weapon in every provider’s arsenal for many years to come,” he said.

“Our surveys reveal that consumers find it more convenient and better value to buy broadband, mobile, TV and land-line access from one company, so established providers that can offer all these services are in a strong position. Once multiplay packages are the norm, it’ll be the exclusive content on offer that’ll set providers apart. It’s little wonder we’re seeing a frenzy of acquisitions as leading players scramble to secure assets.”

Ajay Chitkara, AWS, Bharti Airtel, Bikram singh Bedi, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud

Bharti Airtel joins AWS Partner Network service to bolster cloud connectivity

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS' cloud

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS’ cloud

Bharti Airtel has joined Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Partner Network in a move that will see the Indian telco offer private network services for enterprise customers using the AWS cloud.

Airtel said the move would help enterprise customers across the globe leverage AWS Direct Connect to establish a dedicated network connection between customers’ premises and Amazon’s datacentres globally, and potentially reduce network costs and offer more consistent network performance.

AWS Direct Connect allows enterprise customers to establish a dedicated network connection between their network and any AWS Direct Connect locations using 802.1q VLANs.

“Today, we are seeing more and more organizations embrace the benefits of hybrid network architectures and on-premise environments across the globe. In line with this market adoption, we are excited to strengthen Airtel’s cloud services portfolio by adding AWS to our growing list of cloud services providers,” said Ajay Chitkara, chief executive officer – global business, Bharti Airtel.

“We are confident that this will help our global customers truly leverage the benefits of cloud, and further Airtel’s long-term commitment towards delivering the best technological capabilities for its customers,” Chitkara added.

In canned remarks, Bikram singh Bedi, head of Amazon Web Services India said: “We are excited to be working with Airtel to bring the security and reliability of AWS Direct Connect to Amazon Web Services customers across India. By utilizing AWS Direct Connect, AWS customers are able to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience, helping Indian businesses of all sizes to rapidly expand their organisations.”

A number of large telcos have partnered with AWS in a bid to bolster their appeal to their own enterprise customers, and attract large multinational firms – which tend to have a strong interest in harmonising their IT estates globally.

Ajay Chitkara, AWS, Bharti Airtel, Bikram singh Bedi, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud

Bharti Airtel joins AWS Partner Network service to bolster cloud connectivity

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS' cloud

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS’ cloud

Bharti Airtel has joined Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Partner Network in a move that will see the Indian telco offer private network services for enterprise customers using the AWS cloud.

Airtel said the move would help enterprise customers across the globe leverage AWS Direct Connect to establish a dedicated network connection between customers’ premises and Amazon’s datacentres globally, and potentially reduce network costs and offer more consistent network performance.

AWS Direct Connect allows enterprise customers to establish a dedicated network connection between their network and any AWS Direct Connect locations using 802.1q VLANs.

“Today, we are seeing more and more organizations embrace the benefits of hybrid network architectures and on-premise environments across the globe. In line with this market adoption, we are excited to strengthen Airtel’s cloud services portfolio by adding AWS to our growing list of cloud services providers,” said Ajay Chitkara, chief executive officer – global business, Bharti Airtel.

“We are confident that this will help our global customers truly leverage the benefits of cloud, and further Airtel’s long-term commitment towards delivering the best technological capabilities for its customers,” Chitkara added.

In canned remarks, Bikram singh Bedi, head of Amazon Web Services India said: “We are excited to be working with Airtel to bring the security and reliability of AWS Direct Connect to Amazon Web Services customers across India. By utilizing AWS Direct Connect, AWS customers are able to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience, helping Indian businesses of all sizes to rapidly expand their organisations.”

A number of large telcos have partnered with AWS in a bid to bolster their appeal to their own enterprise customers, and attract large multinational firms – which tend to have a strong interest in harmonising their IT estates globally.