"There’s certainly an opportunity for in-country CSPs to upsell proprietary cloud services to their existing consumer or SME customers who may be taking their first steps towards the cloud, but if they want to focus on larger enterprises with more complex needs then partnership with an established cloud provider is essential," says Rawling. "If CSPs develop their own cloud services, they will not only build on existing levels of customer trust, they will also enhance their brand," says Synchronoss Technologies’ international president, Chris Halbard. CSPs also have a strong security story to match growing recognition that "encryption and strong key management are essential to illustrate control and compliance for high value information in the cloud," notes SafeNet security vice president, Jason Hart. "Service providers will need to partner with security companies to ensure encryption and key management solutions are integrated into their consolidations solutions. Customers want security, but also need it to be seamless and user friendly." So how might CSPs enable cloud? "They need to define their strategies early and commit to them," says Rawling, adding: "It's clear they must play a proactive role in the ecosystem or risk being marginalised." VanillaPlus
To avoid this, should CSPs confine themselves to partnerships? Not according to Halbard: "CSPs are in the unique position of being able to build the supporting cloud infrastructure themselves as well as being able to offer content and services,” he explains. “In the future hybrid environment in which clouds begin to link, CSPs need to position themselves as full partners, both providing and enabling cloud services." OpenCloud's Mark Windle notes the need to remain flexible: "In the cloud model, new services are deployed as software within a virtualised environment, which spans an array of standard servers,” he says. “This model enables network operators to launch new services on a small scale, at a low initial cost. As service up-take increases, the service can be scaled up simply and cost-effectively. Therefore, the reduction of the upfront investment that the cloud provides de-risks the business case. This allows CSPs to get on with adapting to their ever-changing environment rather than being burdened with high upfront investment costs."
Gordon Rawling: Cloud adoption provides a great opportunity for CSPs to become more than just legacy communications providers
The most likely way in which CSPs can provide cloud services will require that they: "Offer a clear differentiating service from that offered by the public cloud companies, such as through data security and QoS offerings, and secure that there is a demand for those in the segments where they are offered," says Vasen. 37