Telcos' Foggy Cloud Future
I recently reported that employment in the telco space dropped significantly. This struck me as odd since the cloud and mobile apps are all the rage. Shouldn't telcos be hiring faster than a newly formed government agency?
I think I found the answer in a piece by Boris Renski in Virtualization Review. Renski argues that telcos will flop badly and fare poorly in providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
But shouldn't telco do just great, having ownership over which cloud data floats? No, says Renski. He argues that it doesn't matter if you own the network -- the real money is in how that network is used. Look at what new companies like Rackspace have done without that kind of incumbency. And don't forget that Amazon, not AT&T, is offering the insanely popular AWS. Telcos will play a role to be sure, but that will be more picking up the scraps like a remora.
What's your take? Explain yourself at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/17/2012 at 12:47 PM