France Telecom Offering DaaS for SMBs
When
Tarkan Maner, President and CEO of Wyse, and Jeff McNaught CMO, stopped by our offices in Framingham to chat, they mentioned a very interesting deal the company recently completed with France Telecom. Citrix is also involved with its XenDesktop product.
Basically FT is going to provide desktop as a service using thin clients and targeting the SMB market (e.g. law firms and accounting firms with 100 or fewer employees). Maner also told us that Wyse has got something going with Google and the Aussie carrier Telstra on the consumer side but pointed out that activity here in the U.S. has been sluggish by comparison.
I've blogged before about telecoms getting into DaaS --- startups Desktone and Simtone are both players in this market. There are also forays into cloud computing by companies like AT&T. But here's the thing. Do you really want, say, Verizon or AT&T providing your raw compute at home? The answer is: It depends. It depends on who you are, what you need in terms of applications, cost (of course) and how well the telecom designs, markets, maintains and supports the service. And that's a lot of hurdles for a carrier to cross to get to a winning strategy.
Would you buy DaaS from a telecom or recommend that someone else do it? Better yet, the skeptic in me would love to hear from anyone who enthusiastically supports this business model. Post here or shoot me an e-mail.
Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/12/2009 at 12:49 PM