providing control to unlocking the cloud opportunity by telesphere

7/29/2019 Providing Control to Unlocking the Cloud Opportunity by Telesphere

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS. SIMPLIFIED. ®

Providing control, security key to unlocking the cloud opportunityBy Sanjay SrinivaSan, TeleSphere CTO

july 17, 2012

By 2016, 40% o enterprises will require prospective cloud providers to submit proo o independent securitytesting beore they’ll sign up or service, Gartner predicts.

This priority is an opportunity or telcos, cable operators and unied communications (UC) service providersto dierentiate themselves in the increasingly crowded cloud market. Even when enterprises, governmentagencies and other organizations don’t require third-party verication, that doesn’t mean control and securityaren’t important enough to infuence their choice o cloud providers.

For example, many organizations believe that their computing or communications is more secure when itremains entirely in house, including a private cloud. But the reality is just the opposite: Enterprises oten have

network security implementations that become increasingly lax over time. Common vulnerabilities includeailing to change passwords on a regular basis and, oten because o tight budgets, not upgrading sotware orimplementing security patches in a timely manner.

By comparison, service providers can oer cloud services that have much more stringent policies and requentaudits. Cloud providers also are typically ar more diligent about upgrading their sotware and implementingsecurity patches. Just one highly publicized breach can be enough to damage a cloud provider’s brand, so theyhave a vested interest in protecting their customers’ data and services. Also, simply because they have so manycustomers in so many industries, cloud providers have ar more hands-on experience with a wide variety osecurity scenarios than a typical CIO, CSO or IT manager.

Service provider clouds generally also are better at balancing security and usability. The easiest way to securea private cloud is to lock it down. But that strategy can backre i employees get rustrated and look or waysto circumvent security just so they can get access rom wherever they are, including their home oce, hotelroom and airport lounge. The service provider architecture, on the other hand, has to be designed or a highlevel o security and access. The provider also is in a better position to establish points o presence whereverits customers are.

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There are at least nine other ways that service providers can oster a sense o control in existing and potentialcustomers:

1: Provide customers with Web portals, alarms and other tools that enable them to congure and monitortheir cloud services 24/7. Simply because its costs are spread across multiple customers, a cloud provider

requently can oer sophisticated tools that an enterprise might not be able to aord i it were buying themitsel.

2: Remind potential customers that the cloud provides inherent design and capability or disaster recovery andbusiness continuity. Their computing and communications resources are ar more resilient when they’redistributed across a service provider’s data centers versus residing entirely at the customer’s headquarters,where a single earthquake, tornado, terrorist attack or other disaster could put them out o business orhours, days or weeks.

One way to quantiy these benets is to ask the customer to estimate how much it would cost or it to buy allo the IT inrastructure and connectivity necessary to duplicate its existing acility so that it has an in-house

backup ready to go ollowing a disaster. The cloud provider also should ask the prospective customer whetherit’s comortable with the prospect o having all o that redundant inrastructure and connectivity lying allowmost o the time instead o generating revenue.

Many CIOs and IT managers already understand these benets. For example, in Enterprise ManagementAssociates’ survey o 159 enterprises with existing or planned cloud deployments, nearly hal cited disasterrecovery/business continuity planning as one o their top motivations.

3: Use standards-based platorms to overcome ears that their applications and data will be stranded on asingle cloud provider instead o being easily ported to another provider. In the case o cloud communicationsservices such as UC, there’s a similar concern about interoperability with other providers’ cloud-based

services.

4: Identiy and accommodate industry- and country-specic regulations and best practices such as PCI andHIPAA. It’s also likely that it’s more cost-eective or the cloud provider to keep up with and then implementall o the changing laws and best practices than it is or the customer to have its sta handle those tasks.

5: Welcome third-party audits, both or industry-specic compliance such as Statement on Auditing Standards(SAS) No. 70 (replaced by SSAE 16 in June 2011) and broader best practices such as ISO 27002.

6: Educate potential and existing customers about the challenge o technological obsolescence. CIOs, ITmanagers and other enterprise decision-makers will be aware o this challenge at a high level. That

awareness creates opportunities to point out detailed, low-level examples o how obsolescence underminestheir bottom line and operations, such as an elderly UC platorm that no longer is interoperable with other,newer UC systems. Then demonstrate how the cloud provides them with a cost-eective solution orovercoming those challenges, such as aordable access to the latest and greatest UC solutions.

7: Highlighting examples o how the service provider has taken the time to understand the nuances o eachcustomer’s business. This strategy also is one example o why service providers must retune their salesteams so they’re capable o selling complex cloud services, which are more o a solutions sale than atraditional telecom sale.





For example, the legal industry needs to be able to track billable hours or both inbound and outbound calls.Traditionally only outbound calls are tracked. However, a service provider that oers a way to track inboundcalls, too, and then integrate that inormation with the client’s oce processes would have a better chance atwinning that account.

8: Oer on-demand and on-the-spot demonstrations that highlight how cloud computing and cloud

communications can transorm the way that a potential customer does business. Those demos shouldinclude a mobile component because most organizations have a signicant and rapidly growing numbero employees, business partners and clients that need mobile access to cloud-based computing andcommunications. The CIO, IT manager or other enterprise decision-maker might understand the importanceo adding mobility to the cloud, but he or she will appreciate guidance through all o the options. The demosalso should compare the ballpark costs o those business enhancements when the customer bears thementirely in house versus using a cloud provider.

9: Oer a try-beore-buying program, which provides the enterprise with a low-cost, low-risk way to tryadditional eatures and services to see i they deliver the promised business benets. This strategy createssignicant upsale opportunities.

Cloud computing and cloud communications are a major opportunity or service providers. In 2010, enterpriseswere already spending $12.1 billion on cloud-based services, and they were on track to spend $35.6 billion by2015, says the research rm Analysys Mason. For service providers, grabbing a big share o that market beginswith creating a sense o trust with customers. That’s because although enterprises, government agencies andother organizations like how cloud enables them to reduce CapEx and OpEx, they’re unwilling to give up controland compliance to get those bottom-line benets.

As Telesphere CTO, Sanjay Srinivasan is responsible or all engineering and product development. He has morethan 15 years o expertise in data networks, voice services and hosted application services. For his completebio, visit www.telesphere.com/management_sanjay.html.



providing control to unlocking the cloud opportunity by telesphere

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