Cloud Plays: AT&T vs. Verizon
Hosted services are big business for carriers who are looking to diversify into new markets in order to maintain growth when their traditional lines of business are topping out. Both Verizon and AT&T made announcements this month regarding their cloud plays, and the market is definitely hot, as evidenced by the speed at which the CSPs are moving.
Verizon has decided to maintain the Terremark brand name and is rolling out an expanded set of cloud services just ten weeks after the $1.4 billion acquisition of Terremark. The widened service portfolio will offer scale and flexibility, enabling many different types of cloud services. Bob Toohey, President of Verizon Business, was quoted in GigaOm.com, saying “there is no one size fits all cloud solution. Many enterprises are looking for flexibility and movement between private, public and hybrid clouds.”
Similarly, AT&T launched its Content Delivery Network (CDN) last month, which promises to provide a platform for businesses to serve video and content from the cloud. The success of the platform is bolstered by recent research that shows customers are much more likely to make purchases when they can view product demonstration videos. In an official announcement, Sam Farraj, Assistant Vice President of AT&T Digital Media Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions explained the CDN value proposition: "Our CDN technology not only delivers videos and other attention grabbers at 'lightning like' speed, but it delivers them efficiently and at low cost.”
Social Networking
LinkedIn is the dominant social networking platform for the business world, and countless companies (including Pipeline) use Yammer for in-house collaboration, but it's impossible to let the news from the consumer side of social media slip by this month without mention.
MySpace, which once dominated social media, and perhaps spawned the widespread acceptance and use of the service, was sold for a paltry $35 million after years of struggling under the ownership of Newscorp. In an unlikely or apropos twist (depending on how you look at it), pop star and Hollywood actor Justin Timberlake partnered with Specific Media to buy MySpace. Newscorp paid nearly $600 million for the company just six years ago, which shows how fast the pendulum can swing in today's hyper economy.
MySpace was dethroned by Facebook, which has become the dominant consumer social networking website. This month a new challenger has arisen, a company that may just have the muscle and backbone to unseat Facebook: Google. The search giant has revealed Google+, a social layer that can transform all of Google into one monolithic social network. Google+ is poised to go head-to-head with Facebook and Twitter, and leverages Googles multitude of services while emphasizing better privacy and security. Google is also courting Hulu, so keep an eye on the Pipeline News Center this month to watch these stories unfold.
