It is understandable that with its catchy, new, very marketable name, cloud computing may seem far removed from the evolutionary steps it has taken. There is still confusion over what the technology actually is and does — and doesn’t do. Whatever the definition, Joe Weinman, AT&T’s strategy guru for business services, says the cloud is a clear winner for carriers.
Weinman, strategy and business development vice president of AT&T Business Solutions, thinks the cloud is a perfect opportunity for operators to leverage their network assets, customer relationships and traditional services to create cloud services that are as compelling as they are differentiating.
Weinman will be delivering a keynote address at the upcoming Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo in Washington, D.C., June 9-11, where he will provide his perspective on the ways CSPs can leverage the industry fervor over the cloud. B/OSS sat down to talk to Weinman about it ahead of the show.
B/OSS: How do you define cloud and what is your company’s strategy?
Joe Weinman: I have the Weinman definition of C.L.O.U.D. as an acronym: common, location-independent, online, utility on demand. The common attribute has to do with the statistical multiplexing of multiple customers or applications into a common resource pool, which is a clear generator of economic value across many different industries. I have done extensive analysis both through simulation and abstract math into the assorted value drivers of cloud and one of them is usage-sensitive, on-demand pricing. It turns out that whenever there is variable demand with the correct attribute of variability, cloud computing generates clear economic value.
With that definition in mind, it’s not just the typical resources like servers or storage, but many different kinds of services fall under that, and by that I mean hotel chains and rental cars and mortgage lenders all using the same model for accessing resources based on time, quantity and quality of those resources. Our strategy is to offer a variety of industry-standard cloud capabilities, such as our synaptic storage as a service, synaptic compute as a service, synaptic hosting, dozens of traditional SaaS packages like e-mail, messaging, financial and e-business capabilities, but also to expand the portfolio to things like unified communications and collaboration applications.
B/OSS: In marketing cloud services, should the term cloud be kept out of it like DSL should have been?
JW: Consumers don’t really care if something is a cloud service. They just want the benefits and functionality. I would claim POTS, VoIP and even IPTV are all cloud services the way I described them, but all they know is that they are getting the service. For SMB users, there is probably a mix of buyers out there, some of whom are very technologically sophisticated and understand the cloud and what it can do. So regardless of what it is called and how it is marketed, there are compelling advantages that cloud capabilities offer.