Cloud Control

by Wedge Greene & Trevor Hayes

While “Cloud Computing” is a hot, new marketing term, the cloud is an actual thing owned by a company providing a service. A Cloud is formed by spinning applications out into the network and letting them float as needed. The cloud is network virtualization of applications, and perhaps also of data. Cloud Computing is Internet-based, shared, service-oriented computing. Specific business features like SLAs are not merely attached, but embedded in the service architecture. The primary service value for the customer comes from being able to use an infrastructure that isn’t their own. Additional value is derived because the burdensome management of the service is done by someone else - it’s someone else’s business to make it work. Sounds like an evolution of outsourcing.

But maybe a qualitatively different outsourcing, that becomes a new thing. Cloud Computing holistically fuses many new technologies, systematic use of the network, and a change in business model. We see an opportunity for telecom in Cloud Computing. There is potential for advantage posed by Cloud Computing being network-based that our industry can leverage. But for the cloud to become a dominant telecom service product, it needs the architecture of the service ecosystem. This is another way that the world continues to become one big ball of network-resident software; at LTC, we call this future software/network: TeleGaia.