An Imperfect Storm

Last year after complaints by a European carrier that new services offered by Google were making it impossible to accurately predict traffic requirements which drive network expansion, I noted the need for Google and others to coordinate new product releases with service providers. This seems to still be a problem. Japanese service provider, NTT DoCoMo, suffered a signaling storm generated by an Android application. While I haven’t seen the specifics, I do know that having networks fail around the world as we are attempting to generate confidence in using cloud application is not good. Furthermore, Broadvox believes that the integration of mobile devices and applications is the next big thing in the evolution of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).

The DoCoMo outage affected 2.5 million subscribers and could have been avoided with proper planning.

As we add other streaming applications such as video conferencing and web-based collaboration, forecasting demand becomes a major issue for service providers. Broadvox and other UCaaS hosting companies can easily manage their own data centers and support growing customer demand. However, when large content providers release new capabilities that either have functionality that immediately change network traffic characteristics or generate dramatic increases in demand, no service provider is immune.

I suggested the use of NDAs and prior to notice to avoid these unnecessary service interruptions. Today, I offer the same suggestion. We must make ensure that key decision makers view cloud applications as reliable. It must be more than perception. It must be reality. With that we will all win.