Before we begin, Happy New Year to all of you. I would like to begin this blogging year with some cloudy thoughts:
Our industry has been clouded. I think the cloud is the biggest buzz since the late 1990s where you were considered an innovative company just because you had a website. The older among you may remember.
With the cloud customers use services that are hosted in huge data centers over the internet, including voice services like PBX or IVR using the SIP protocol.
Many say this reduces carriers to mere bitpipes because all that’s left for them is sending data back and forth. I say, however, carriers can offer business voice services far better than all of those cloud providers. In fact, carriers have the better cloud. Let me explain:
Better because all clouds are not created equal. Depending on the underlying technology various clouds are suited for various purposes. Carriers have the best cloud for voice services. Obviously, voice and speech technology are their core business.
The reason for that is the carriers’ networks. These are highly elaborated and evolve constantly. They have the know-how to run services smoothly and can offer their customers five nine availability. Cloud providers, who offer voice services over SIP usually cannot, with them Quality of Service (QoS) will always be an issue. This will always be followed by the discussion whether it’s the carrier’s fault because data gets lost or is it the provider’s fault.
What carriers can sell as cloud services are network-based solutions based on next-generation intelligent networks. They make a service like IVR almost a part of the core network. At the same time, critical functions like databases are not publically accessible because they’re on a different network layer. This is a great argument for those who are afraid of security leaks in cloud applications.
The next reason is the unparalleled infrastructure carriers have when it comes to billing. They have all address and billing details of their customers because subscribers usually trust their operator with billing issues. This is something a company renting contact center seats or an IVR based in a carrier’s network benefits from. The company can be pretty sure to pay only for what they’ve ordered.
Then there are services only carriers can offer with their networks, like multi-country services or billing in multiple currencies.
In other cloud areas carriers may not be the suppliers of choice but when it comes to voice value-added services there’s no cloud like the carrier cloud. Shouldn’t operators emphasize their advantages over other providers stronger?
Tags: carrier, cloud, network, voice services
I would agree with saying that carriers can achieve an advantage in Infrastructure as a Service because they are used to infrastructure deployments and optimization. I have some doubts to believe that they can do SaaS as they have very little understanding of the software business at all. PaaS is niche for them.
However Amazon’s is a good example of a successful cloud player not being a carrier.
I agree “cloud” service is the lasted buzz word and obviously the big PTT’s have the strengthen of size to construct robust networks. However having worked for 3 “big ones” and with just about every large telco in USA, Europe and APA, I would observe that the “big guys” are still very inflexible and un-responsive. We are VNO using over 40 telcos and by way of example I can name at least 1 x US and 1 x Germany PTT that still expect people to fax in hardcopy signed change requests even though we are a wholesale account!.. Its crazy and so last century. We recently brought into service a “cloud” based IN platform with ACD and IVR functions, etc, and it’s been in live stress test since last summer using SIP and TDM access trucks without any issues. Interesting enough we delivered a pilot for one large airline using SIP and the call centre agents actually commented that voice QoS was actually better than their Avaya ACD on TDM lines… go figure!.