Taking It to the Cloud

It’s clear that cloud computing is on the fast track. It has attracted the attention of companies like Amazon and Google, who with their server farms saw this as a natural extension of the business. It has also attracted telecommunications service providers such as Verizon, BT, AT&T and others, principally because of their existing relationships with enterprise customers and experience with reliability and security.

Therefore, it is not surprising that during Interop, it is a major topic of discussion. Several comments are worth noting. According to Network Instruments, migration to cloud computing has increased 20 percent year over year with an ever growing number of companies planning to engage a cloud computing vendor or deploy an internal cloud application. The general benefits of cloud computing include CAPEX avoidance, OPEX reduction, insurance against technology obsolescence and improved application availability. However, it was somewhat surprising that a major issue with cloud computing was trouble shooting. Not on the part of the cloud computing provider but on the part of the contracting company.

According to the fifth annual study on cloud computing when there are issues with the cloud computing service the onus falls onto the IT organization of the buyer to prove the problem exists in the cloud. That will need to change as the variety of applications supported in the cloud increase and mission critical activity is threatened. It is important that the sophistication of the management tools be made available to both the service provider and the IT manager to quickly identify and solve issues.

Broadvox and Cypress Communications announced two cloud computing applications during the 2011 Partner Summit in Dallas. GO!VBX and GO!Services both offer managed solutions to reduce the responsibility of the IT in the monitoring and maintenance of the service. In fact, with GO!VBX Managed, we provide QoS from the router to the cloud. With our C4 IP product, we take responsibility for the service from the handset to the cloud. There is no pointing of fingers, there is only one responsible party, us.

I searched for a link to the Network Instruments study but, alas, I came up empty. If any of you find the actual study, send me an email dbyrd@broadvox.com and I’ll add it to this blog. In the meantime, this is the press release.

See you on Monday. I’ve got some grilling to do!