VanillaPlus - The road to telco cloud by Prestige Media

June / July 2015 Volume 17 Issue 3 ISSN 1745-1736

Exclusive interview with Razorsight’s CEO, Charlie Thomas PLUS: How cloud is liberating the telecoms industry from the constrained choices of five-year planned IT economies ■ Ericsson’s Pablo Martinez on why network functions virtualisation is a critical step on the journey towards telco cloud ■ Can telco cloud provide the flexible environment for CSPs to run their businesses efficiently and agilely? ■ Read the latest news, opinion, blogs and features at www.vanillaplus.com

INTERVIEW

Charlie Thomas: Some on-demand, burstable services will become the new norm

If your data flows through your fingers, so does your opportunity to participate in the cloud era

As communications service providers (CSPs) set out on the road to telco cloud, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re utilising virtualisation technologies that enable them to reset the economics of their infrastructure cost. Cost economy gains aside, the big strategic question remains how will they grow revenues and overcome significant changes to their business models in the face of increased competition, revenue compression and subscriber saturation. The answer resides in the vast volumes of data passing through CSP networks regarding customer location, activity, preferences and behaviour. Banding together and deriving insights from that data could put them in an enviable position to monetise the impending on-demand era of burstable consumption via the cloud. Charlie Thomas, the CEO of Razorsight, tells VanillaPlus that CSPs are well positioned â&#x20AC;&#x201C; if they think differently and move quickly. He suggests that making use of cloud app driven data, coupled with predictive analytics, would enable CSPs to proactively know what users want and when, and enable whole-hearted participation in the cloud ecosystem. Using their knowledge and their infrastructure could put CSPs at the heart of the market, rather than positioning them solely as broadband providers connecting users, app and content providers IN ASSOCIATION WITH RAZORSIGHT

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I think CSPs are in the best place of anyone in the entire ecosystem to use the data to deliver proactive, superior customer experiences

VanillaPlus: What do you see as the key cloud offerings that CSPs are moving towards offering? Charlie Thomas: They have already migrated to some offerings. They have some B2B offerings, especially in the data centre market, and enterprises are all moving to VoIP and hosted PBXs as well as looking to move their own IT infrastructure to the cloud – often provided by CSPs. Some have dabbled in apps by putting up app stores but I don’t think they’ve been very successful. They could be in a very good place to play in the security market. We now hear of security breaches and hacking that has jeopardised consumer and enterprise data. With mobility and cloud becoming ever more ubiquitous, I see security and protection, such as proactive fraud monitoring, being the sorts of applications that CSPs will be in a unique position to offer. The chief executives of CSPs are thinking beyond participating in cloud-based delivery toward providing turnkey services and solutions. For example, certain applications – such as healthcare and financial – require constant network quality so quality of service for delivery becomes extremely important with far greater consequences for failure. VP: What do CSPs need to be successful in offering cloud services?

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VP: To what extent are CSPs in a unique position to capture, collect, analyse and react in real-time to rapidly shifting consumer and business demands and desires? CT: I think CSPs are in the best place of anyone in the entire ecosystem to use the data to deliver proactive, superior customer experiences. They’ll be in a better position even than Google, although Google is now moving into some aspects of the network, and of course controls the operating system in the majority of mobile devices. CSP’s ownership of the network and access to the data that passes through networks, provides a substantial opportunity to benefit from being at the epicentre of all the data. They can use that data to understand consumption patterns and become much more proactive. They’re in a better position than anyone when it comes to location data. However, thus far, CSPs have yet to realize the value of this data. They have not demonstrated they can be innovative when it comes to creating exciting new applications and they tend to move in a me too or herd mentality. Telefónica was an early leader in looking at ways to monetise mobile data and all of the tier one CSPs have had teams all looking to do this for several years. That said, the innovation continues to

CT: Some on-demand burstable services will become the new norm. Hence, being in a position to manage those will require the ability to react very quickly. CSPs

are normally reactive to rapidly changing customer desires and behaviours so having the right set of analytical tools will become essential in order to proactively understand changing demands on their networks and the propensity for burstable demand emerging at specific times of day or in specific locations.

INTERVIEW

There is no question that, when it comes to the delivery model, CSPs will migrate to cloud and there is no question that they’ll deliver business applications to enterprises

come from application developers and OTT apps. The CSPs need to move beyond looking at only their subscribers as that relegates them to a closed ecosystem. They need an open systems approach that links with all other CSPs in order to deliver the ubiquity that users demand. For example, if Sprint offers data driven, targeted based ads to Audi, based only on the preferences of its 50 million subscribers, it’s missing 95% of the market. CSPs would benefit greatly by working collaboratively to deliver allencompassing insights based on the full ecosystem of users and data driven insights – powered by predictive analytics – across the full spectrum of networks. CSPs have been very closed and somewhat myopic. They would collectively benefit from a more open approach and across all infrastructure, not just their own. If they don’t, they risk the OTT providers continuing to outrun, outthink and outpace them. There is no question that, when it comes to the delivery model, CSPs will migrate to cloud and there is no question that they’ll deliver business applications to enterprises. That said, the true innovators will fully monetise their data to better serve the desires of the market. Imagine what Google or Facebook would do if they continue to evolve toward the communications services market. VP: Is this a chance for CSPs to finally move away from being network operators and redefine themselves and their role? CT: Yes. it really is an ideal time. I believe that this is one of those opportune moments for the telecoms industry. You can’t argue with the success CSPs have experienced, but they’re now at another one of those inflection points that poses both opportunity and risk. Growth has reached a plateau and price compression is accelerating. We’re seeing massive consolidation on a global basis to offset these trends and this is increasingly a scale business. CSP business models need to shift and shift quickly and those that do will be in a great position. It’s not enough to hang on to what they have for as long as they can. That approach will result in continued customer and market erosion.

www.razorsight.com

They can deliver valuable services to businesses and consumers and ultimately they have a great opportunity if they can create, innovate, design and develop solutions. The question remains whether they will rely primarily on network equipment vendors,

device manufacturers and OTT providers, or are they going to participate themselves and layer on value and monetise such? I believe they are in a great position to capitalise but it requires new thinking, new business models and using the data that today flows right through their fingers. VP: How does Razorsight complement and enable CSPs in the progression towards all things cloud? CT: We have a range of analytics solutions that are productised for the specific business needs that CSPs have. Our products address business challenges around the delivery of data insights. We provide executive insights which deliver key business and operational metrics in real-time that reflect network consumption and utilisation by both consumers and enterprises. When you look at the much broader and on-demand arena of cloud service delivery, for example increasing data capacity just for a big upload – something that is burstable in nature – it’s readily apparent that predictive insights into available capacity versus demand would be very valuable. The way Razorsight participates is multi-faceted. One way is by helping CSPs understand network consumption on a real-time basis. The most powerful products we have are predictive analytics, which we’ve deployed across tier one, two and three service providers as well as content and OTT providers. One example is our predictive product that helps CSPs proactively know by customer and market when they’re most likely to migrate from TDM to IP. Thus far, CSPs have been reactive with regard to visibility for this migration. IP offers greater bandwidth at a more economical price but the rapid shift is hurting the tier one CSPs who haven’t had the analytical tools to understand who is leaving or who is at risk of leaving. I see a similar parallel in the migration to all things cloud because, without proper analytics tools and insight to understand consumption, demand and customer sentiment, CSPs are likely to encounter many surprises – much like occurred with AT&T when it introduced the first iPhone. CSPs will benefit greatly by utilising predictive analytics to forecast likely demand and behaviour with a very high degree of accuracy as they accelerate along the path of all things cloud.

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TELCO CLOUD

CSPs wary of cloud as years of limited IT choices come to an end The cloud is liberating the telecoms industry from the horrors of Soviet style, five-year planned IT economies, but the struggle is just beginning writes Nick Booth

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. The modern state that telecoms operators have evolved into – communications service providers (CSPs) – is a perfect example of this phenomenon.

When the cloud ushered in a completely different way of working, it created both cultural changes and a wealth of business options so vast that they have yet to be fully explored. If cloud computing is an offering, many CSPs have yet to walk the full length of the counter, because they have so many choices to consider.

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Cloud computing offers all the exciting purchasing choices of the free market

The freedom to make small purchasing decisions with far more frequency, has liberated decision makers and made for a faster business culture where new projects get signed off more quickly. The elasticity of supply and demand is initially being used to helps CSPs face the universal challenges of managing costs while meeting the demands of their customers, says Guru Grewal, global head of Virtusa’s telecoms division. “Cloud creates elastic pay-per-use services like infrastructure as a service for lines of business to consume on demand,” says Grewal. At the same

Gone is the old fashioned Soviet style centrally planned IT economy, where committees would have to agonise over platform purchasing decisions, for systems that had to last at least five, often more, years. If an IT manager got it wrong, they’d be sent to career Siberia, amongst all the clunking grey boxes of proprietary hardware and remote silos of information.

Cloud computing offers all the exciting purchasing choices of the free market. Never mind five-year plans, with cloud computing you can rent five apps in five nations for five milliseconds each. Every component, from processing power to petabytes, can be rented in the cloud.

TELCO CLOUD

time, it helps them create new business by enabling CSPs to crunch masses of consumer data, work out what the customer wants and deliver those services over a newly created seamless omni channel of personalised customer experience.

Guru Grewal: Cloud creates elastic pay-per-use services like infrastructure as a service

Chris Halbard: CSPs can retake ownership of the user experience from their OTT rivals

In previous industrial eras, cloud would have been a machine for slicing and dicing resources and rebadging them. Infrastructure, office software and customer relationship management systems have all been virtualised. This changed the customer base too, Grewal says. The cloud gives small and medium enterprise (SME) clients access to powerful computing – not just for development but for hosting and product development. Now a small video player in the UK can work with a games developer in Poland and a social media expert in San Francisco. They retain the advantages of being an SME, such as rapid decision making and low overheads, and can match the weaponry of their bigger opponents. They can nip in and out of markets, make quick gains and then get out once the bigger beasts enter the competition. “In many ways cloud enables SMEs to out-innovate their competition and helps them punch above their weight,” says Grewal, “these days business applications are designed with the mobile cloud in mind.” The CSP’s business and operational support systems – the BSS and OSS – need to be equally fluent as the cloud market but, for continuity’s sake, many are still rooted in the past. The cloud and the attendant hyper automation of application development could help CSPs get these systems updated faster. Modern cloud-deployed

BSS/OSS functions should be managing, marketing and monetising the entire range of CSP activities, says Gerry Donohoe, Openet’s technical director The agility, faster time to market, breadth of service and lower liabilities will not be achieved without challenges, warns Donohoe. Unlike typical enterprises or hyper scale cloud players, CSPs face strict latency targets and fine-nines availability. “They need to be engineered into a telco cloud architecture in order to achieve carrier-grade [reliability and resilience],” says Donohoe. On a new front, cloud services could arm CSPs in the OTT wars with the makers of over the top videos, films, music and social media. “CSPs can retake ownership of the user experience from their OTT rivals by taking the enabling role in providing all cloud content to the subscribers,” says Chris Halbard, the executive vice president and president, international at Synchronoss Technologies. The key to this is establishing and securely curating a unique digital profile for each of their subscribers. Gathering that personal information means you can act as the subscribers’ identity in the cloud, says Halbard. By simplifying things for your subscribers, you will win their affections and loyalty in a way that customer relationship management systems never achieved. The cloud, in other words, sets subscribers free and, as a consequence, they will keep coming back. The tiny increments of cloud services could create the unobtainable magic quality – customer loyalty – in a way that big old fashioned, authoritarian systems of management could never match.

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EXPERT OPINION

NFV transforms passive CSP value chains into dynamic value constellations A critical step on the road to telco cloud is network functions virtualisation (NFV). Pablo Martinez explains how the technology is moving communications service providers (CSPs) to an agile environment that enables rapid new service introduction and improved operating margins The author, Pablo Martinez, is product marketing director of OSS at Ericsson

s every businessperson knows, there are two ways to make more money: increase revenues or decrease costs. Many words have been written about the new services and revenues that network functions virtualisation (NFV) will make possible, thanks to its elasticity and flexible support of new business models and ecosystems. However, very little is said about the second, perhaps more immediate, benefit of virtualisation – its ability to decrease service costs and improve operating margins. NFV enables the on-demand instantiation of functions in a format that is easier to load balance and scale up or down. It allows you to move functions dynamically across distributed hardware resources in the network, while maintaining service continuity and maintaining or even improving quality of service (QoS). With that kind of real-time fluidity, virtualisation can be exploited to morph a network automatically. Its functions can be executed on the nodes running at the lowest cost at any given time, to maximise operating margins. This is an aspect of NFV that is often overlooked.

This kind of consideration drives the business case for NFV. Even if you do not immediately use virtualised network functions (VNFs) to offer completely new services, you can use them to increase the profitability of any service, and without increasing prices.

Orchestrating better margins NFV is all about flexibility – making services and networks more responsive to customer needs with an infrastructure that is more elastic. But without the right kind of orchestration, this flexibility may still impair profitability. VNFs are automatically instantiated to run on specific hardware resources based on factors such as

NFV lets you factor in both technical and financial optimisation. You can dynamically calibrate the right level of operational flexibility into virtualised functions to reduce operational costs, improve operating margins and confidently implement more profitable business models – even for existing services. In turn, by maximising the financial value of services, you maximise business performance.

Figure 1: Financial value and operational flexibility lead to enhanced business performance through virtualisation

IN ASSOCIATION WITH ERICSSON 48

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Figure 2: The virtualised operational environment consists of a closed-loop system

resource utilisation, workload levels and service level agreements (SLAs). But to fully harness the benefits of virtualisation, a comprehensive type of NFV orchestration is needed – one that is able to consider all aspects of a virtualised function, including the fluctuating costs of running it on any given hardware resource at a specific time. This is the subject of the TM Forum catalyst project ‘Maximizing Profitability with NFV.’ It addresses the analytics and policies needed to dynamically determine orchestration decisions for well-rounded NFV instantiations. The mission of the project is to delineate an operational environment where VNFs are instantiated and dynamically adjusted according to policies that optimise both business value – minimal costs, maximum profitability – and customer experience. As shown in the following figure, this operational environment consists of a closed-loop system consisting of monitoring, mediation, analytics and policy-driven instantiation and restoral. The resulting NFV orchestration considers the technical and financial metrics that make up the cost, revenue and QoS aspects of service offerings. Orchestration is optimised against a wide range of financial and technical objectives, such as infrastructure operational costs, network performance and service level agreements (SLAs). Policies are structured accordingly. The goal is a level of business agility not previously possible, enabled by the inherent flexibility of NFV orchestration. This capability is critical. It is possible to assign functions in a way that maintains service quality but is economically inefficient at a given point in time. This can result in satisfied customers but an unsatisfactory or even negative operating margin on the provided service. Ideally, functions should run wherever operational costs are the lowest, as long as SLAs and other key criteria are also met. Some of this information is already monitored by data centres and other third parties and is accessible to CSPs. For instance, the cost of electricity can be monitored in data centre locations and network nodes and factored

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into cost calculations. Obviously, NFV orchestration will require a data analytics-enriched policy management capability, programmed with an algorithmic equation, to make the proper real-time determinations and maintain the specified operational cost thresholds. The complexities of NFV require tight coordination with a highly automated OSS/BSS. For this reason, NFV orchestration should be able to work with OSS/BSS product catalogues in the larger service orchestration framework. This ensures consistency across all functions, including planning, ordering, provisioning, configuration and activation.

NFV removes barriers between the financial and technical aspects of running networks

NFV as a source of operational efficiency NFV removes barriers between the financial and technical aspects of running networks. This enables a more cohesive business, where customer experience, services and the network are part of one orchestration – capable of optimising business value, such as operating margins, while coordinating resources, service quality and lifecycles. The elasticity of virtualisation expands existing value creation systems, transforming them from passive value chains into dynamic value constellations. These may make it possible to operate emerging digital service ecosystems at the lowest possible cost without compromising service quality. By dynamically moving VNFs in real time, even across service provider boundaries, you can comply with and more confidently guarantee SLAs while you also maximise operating margins – something not possible with only physical functions. New product development is widely seen as a source of greater profitability, but it is not the only source. Higher profits can also come from a more prosaic source: operational efficiency. This is achievable with NFV orchestration that allows combined business and financial objectives to play a more direct role in the daily operation of the underlying infrastructure. As a result, service providers will have more control over their reputations, branding and financial performance.

www.ericsson.com

V I R T U A L I S AT I O N

It’s cloud Jim, but not as we know it for CSPs The twin innovations of NFV and SDN will see communications service providers move away from hardware-defined networks to software defined, virtualised architectures. The move will take several or many years but the end game is telco cloud, a flexible agile environment in which CSPs run their businesses using cloud based software – even for OSS/BSS, writes George Malim

All CSP systems must now be engineered for fivenines – this is where a telecoms providers’ needs diverge from those of a typical enterprise customer

aking such systems as services from third parties has a series of benefits, among which speed of deployment and flexibility are key attractions but the end game of telco cloud seems a distant prospect. In addition, the downside for CSPs is a perceived loss of control and ownership of the software that supports their businesses. Put simply, CSPs have to look at cloud differently to other enterprises. “It’s cloud, Jim, but not as we know it,” says Justin Paul, the head of OSS marketing at Amdocs. “The term cloud in the network context is misleading because it makes assumptions that telco networks are synonymous with IT networks, when in reality they are very different. CSPs will certainly embrace network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN) to make their networks more IT cloud-like, particularly in terms of business agility and flexibility in which areas they do aspire to emulate the IT cloud, but in other areas telco-cloud will have its own unique identity.” For Gerry Donohoe, the technical director of Openet, it’s the traditional five-nines imperative that sets CSPs apart. “All CSP systems must now be engineered for five-nines – this is where a telecoms providers’ needs diverge from those of a typical enterprise customer,” he says. “Cloud-based SaaS offerings present a series of challenges for the CSP. One such challenge is a CSP’s need to provide low latency, high capacity links to public or hosted clouds. Another is the concern over data security, in particular personal data governed by increasingly strict data protection regulations.”

Others thinks CSPs will target specific systems and reap cloud benefits where they appear. “CSG has delivered cloud-based BSS as a service to CSPs for many years,” says Rob Morrison, director of product management, CSG International. “It enables them to re-focus on innovation, to better serve their customers and to do so faster to differentiate themselves from the competition. It can stop them being a software development house for day-to-day applications and processes.” Andy Stubley, the vice president of strategy at SysMech shares that view. “Some CSPs are already embracing cloud-based services, and some are hosting their own services in their own private clouds – the technology is proven, but the commercial and operating models are still in their infancy,” he says. Tom Griffin, the vice president of systems engineering for EMEA at SevOne, advocates caution and acknowledges there is mistrust of cloud propositions among CSPs. “For OSS/BSS systems there’s an inherent risk and mistrust from CSPs to deploy offpremise,” he says. “They will always be deployed

Dr Andy Tiller, the vice president of product marketing at AsiaInfo, thinks BSS is just too complex for public

cloud models. “We are not seeing a trend to BSS-asa-Service in the public cloud for CSPs because BSS is too complex for a lowest common denominator, one size fits all models to work,” he says. “However, we are seeing a trend to private cloud deployments of centralised systems within a large operator group. For example, we have helped China Mobile and China Unicom to standardise and centralise their BSS across their numerous operations in China, and we are in the process of helping Telenor develop a strategy to centralise and standardise BSS across multiple business units in Europe, using multi-tenancy.”

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Justin Paul: Telco cloud will have its own unique identity

Dr Andy Tiller: BSS-as-a-Service is too complex for one size fits all models to work

in-house even if the management and administration of them is outsourced.” There is, in effect, a SaaS line that CSPs won’t cross for some systems. “SaaS is most suited to solutions that can be commoditised, and anything the CSP considers as a differentiator will be difficult for a SaaS deployment model,” adds Donohoe. “Billing would certainly be considered as a differentiator by CSPs and typically involves significant customisation. Instead CSPs are looking to virtualisation technology to better suit their BSS needs. This is because it offers some of the benefits promised by SaaS including lower operating costs and faster deployment, whilst still providing control and ownership of the software and infrastructure.” There’s obvious value in passing on the integration, upgrade and management burden to a third party cloud service provider but CSPs are still cautious of the economics of shifting their previous system operation investments to a monthly, rental model. “CSG has found CSPs actually save money by moving to a service based model,” adds Morrison. “When entering into such partnerships with customers CSG delivers immediate cost savings to the business and continues to deliver value as we help CSPs transform their operations and architecture for the future.” Donohoe thinks a standard SaaS model isn’t going to work for all CSPs. “A typical SaaS consumption based model is less than ideal for CSPs that need predictable costs over longer time periods and a way to capitalise investments,” he explains. “However the elasticity required to handle things like intermittent peak activity or fail-fast innovation, are hampered by the traditional licence models. CSPs need a better

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way to balance the capex and opex cost. This is most likely to come in the form of licence flexibility for virtualised deployments than in the form of true SaaS.” In spite of their concerns, executives think at least some form of telco cloud will emerge, most like composing a hybrid situation. “A hybrid cloud and non-cloud situation will of course continue to exist, at least for the foreseeable future,” says Donohoe. “Yet the pace at which technologies such as NFV and SDN are progressing will increase the speed at which the telco cloud adoption becomes a reality. Proof of this comes as many CSPs start to merge and consolidate their network and IT groups, evolving to a common cloud-based architecture for both telecoms and IT domains.” Morrison warns of conflicting definitions. “This depends on how you define telco cloud,” he adds. “Outsourcing network infrastructure and operations to third parties as a service is already a reality, as it is for BSS. If you define telco cloud as only being NFV, then this vision is a long way off. Traditional infrastructure will be in place for many years to come.” Paul at Amdocs is convinced that telco cloud will become are reality. “It is not simply the adoption of IT cloud in the network domain, but a unique approach to implementation of cloud principles in a manner that addresses the core requirements of the robust and resilient CSP network,” he says. “While we are seeing the rapid adoption of software-defined networking and some very advanced NFV proof-of-concepts, hybrid networks will become the reality for the next five-toten years, with only the occasional greenfield CSP or early adopter breaking the trend.”

Rob Morrison: Telco cloud can stop CSPs being a software development house for day-to-day applications and processes

Tom Griffin: For OSS/BSS systems there’s an inherent risk and mistrust from CSPs to deploy off-premise

DIARY

Upcoming events

Cloud Latin America 1-2 September, 2015 Sao Paolo, Brazil Organiser: Informa latam.cloudworldseries.com

Super Mobility Week 9-11 September, 2015

Network Virtualisation Forum 15-17 September, 2015

Las Vegas, USA Organiser: CTIA www.ctiasupermobility2015.com

Madrid, Spain Organiser: Informa networkvirtualizationeurope.com

Telco Big Data Summit @ Super Mobility Week 9 September, 2015

LTE Voice Summit 2015 29-30 September, 2015 London, UK Organiser: Informa voice.lteconference.com

Las Vegas, USA Organiser: Informa usa.telcobigdata.com

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INSIGHT

CLOCKING OFF!

The cloud could make us all less pretentious Cloud computing could change meeting cultures and time wasting at the clients’ expense, writes Nick Booth

echnology always has unintended consequences, many of which are terrible but often they are brilliant. The cloud could unexpectedly change some horrible social attitudes.

Technology changes us in ways we don’t anticipate. Historians have identified the invention of glass, for example, as the catalyst for massive strides in the advance of civilisation. Letting light in on homes, pubs and work buildings allowed the population to see their way to create cleaner environments, which cut disease and gave them more hours in the day when they could function more usefully. By cutting death rates and raising productivity alone, glass had a fundamental role in fomenting the industrial revolution. Its other roles in the creation of machinery are too numerous to go into here but the point is that glass created changes in society that its inventors would have never dared to dream of. On the other hand another product of silicon, the computer, has had mixed effects on our culture. If – as some Latin scholars insist – education is about bringing out our qualities, then social media seems an awful side effect of the IT revolution. It seems to bring out our basest instincts and has inspired us to become a community of pugnacious trolls. Who could have predicted that something with a cute name like Twitter would be a modern Pandora’s box? Cloud computing is another technology whose name gives it lovely fluffy associations. This issue, we make the argument that this technology liberates CSPs from the tyranny of centralised, rigid, planned economies and gives them access to a vibrant, fast moving free market economy for IT resources. However, there is another consequence of the cloud which I’m far more excited about. I’m indebted to Mark Edwards, the CEO of billing company MDS, for pointing this out. The cloud could civilise the executive classes. When companies like MDS offer their services to clients, the model of delivery changes. Since they get paid on a pay per use model, that concentrates everyone’s minds. Since MDS doesn’t start earning money until the system is up and running, everyone is incentivised to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

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This has changed the dynamic of meetings completely. Once a gathering of telecoms executives was a place where it was important to be seen and heard. My experience of creating a channel study for a large British telecoms company indicates that everyone in a big corporation feels they must contribute something in every meeting – or risk corporate social death. The fact that these interventions multiply the complexity of the project is the least of their worries. So projects could take ten times longer and cost ten times as much, but it didn’t matter because somebody else was paying. A telecoms engineer – who didn’t know he was speaking to a journalist – once told me how he’d spent a day at a Harley Street clinic, playing solitaire on his laptop and listening in to patient phone calls. He was stringing out the job by looking busy. Fixing a PBX was the work of minutes, but he had to stay on the premises to justify the massive fee the client was going to be charged.

The author, Nick Booth, is a contributor to VanillaPlus and a technology journalist

Cloud computing has changed that social dynamic. Payment by results means that nobody wants to be the one who extends meetings longer than they need to. Anyone who wants to modify the project will need to be absolutely certain that they are contributing an improvement. Once, a development meeting was like a long leisurely lunch. Now they’re conducted with the urgency of half-time team talks – everyone is on their feet and the basic realities are discussed. The cloud has also changed the nature of applications. Some traditional office apps, for example, were offered in much more basic form once Microsoft began selling them on the cloud. We don’t need 95% of the stuff in most applications anyway. Whatever doesn’t add – according to the editing mantra – detracts. Now that there’s a mutual incentive, between clients and CSPs, to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible, everything is starting to change. Often the cloud provider will try and coach the client to keep things simple, which would never have happened in the days when fees were based on the amount of work that could be created. Some CSPs are changing faster than others. That telecoms engineer I met at the parents’ evening? Judging by his van, he’s still in a job. I wonder how long he’ll be playing solitaire though.

A telecoms engineer – who didn’t know he was speaking to a journalist – once told me how he’d spent a day at a Harley Street clinic, playing solitaire on his laptop and listening in to patient phone calls

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