Mining for Gold in the Carrier Cloud

By Jesse Cryderman

Over the next ten years, communications service providers (CSPs) will lose up to 50 percent of their traditional revenue stream. For a tier 1 provider, that might mean $1 billion. So the billion-dollar-question is, what businesses are big enough to generate this kind of income?

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Cloud 101: The Cloud Defined

By Jesse Cryderman

Everyone is talking about cloud-delivered services and cloud computing these days. In fact, the term "cloud" has become so popular, that you're just as likely to hear it used by your mother to describe where she keeps her e-books, as you are to hear it used by a meteorologist on the morning weather report. But, as Robert Plant sang in the Led Zeppelin classic "Dazed and Confused," "Lots of people talk and few of them know."

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Safe and Sound: Cloud Security and Reliability

By Tim Young

The thing about hype is that, sooner or later, it's time to put-up or shut-up. That time, it seems, has come for the cloud.

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The Birth of BSSaaS

By Scott St. John

"Cloud" is probably best defined as what it is not. Cloud is not rigid, cumbersome, inflexible, high-maintenance, or particularly difficult to implement. In fact, cloud may be the antithesis of what most people think of when they think of traditional BSS. Cloud is the future. Cloud is the dawn of things to come; the new foundry for innovation.

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Next Exit: Cloud CHR Builds the Fast Lane to Cloud Computing

By Jesse Cryderman

Ask any "man on the street" how many phone companies he can name, and you'll probably end up with a list that you can count on one hand. But as anyone working in telecommunications knows, that's hardly representative. Still, how many smaller communications service providers (CSPs) are operating in the United States?

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Data Storage in the Cloud: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control?

By Becky Bracken

When South Park's Kyle Broflovsky unknowingly agrees as part of his iTunes terms and conditions to be sewn up into a human centipede, it's funny precisely because very few people actually take the time to understand what they are agreeing to when they thoughtlessly click that little box. The completely NSFW, gross-out gag colorfully illustrates the importance of knowing what you're agreeing to, and that is certainly the case when you store data in the cloud.

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ITaaS: The Evolving Role of IT for CSPs

By Becky Bracken

Cost compression is the name of the game.

Increasingly IT department heads are being drawn into solving fundamental business issues and focusing on areas of innovation. Rather than just deployment and maintenance, IT needs to support and enable innovation across all business centers. Technology is shifting from a business tool, to a fundamental business enabler. As a result, IT resources are becoming increasingly valuable and finite.

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Newswatch - February 2012

By Don Fujiwara

Cloud Wars

Cloud. Used to be, you'd say the word and call to mind those fluffy, white goobers scudding lazily across a clear spring sky. No longer nature's Rorschach test in the sky, now "cloud" is a buzzword. Now, instead of cotton balls floating by, it's about greenbacks flowing down some carrier's new revenue stream. Now, it seems one unintended—and unforeseen—consequence of the Patriot Act could result in those greenbacks wafting over Europe's way.

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Letter from the Editor

By Tim Young

"Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!
Don't hang around, baby, two's a crowd."
- The Rolling Stones

If you ever needed proof that Mick Jagger was not a communications service provider CEO, you'll find it in those lyrics. It seems that every CSP wants you to consider getting onto their cloud, and there's ample evidence to suggest that enterprises and consumers are taking them up on that offer.

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