Telcos will need to work on supporting and selling cloud services if they are to take advantage of their strong position in the current cloud market, according to a report this week from analyst Ovum.
The report suggests that telcos should consider partnering with recognised IT services companies in order to "maximise their potential impact on the market".
In the report, Ovum analyst Mark Giles notes that telcos’ existing assets are an advantage in the provision of cloud services, citing communication networks, data centres, operations and business support systems as well as existing customer relationships as particularly beneficial. He went on to highlight which areas telcos would need to work on.
"Aside from a perceived lack of brand identity in the supply of IT services, obstacles such as bringing internal network and IT teams together, enabling sales teams, and ensuring that OSS and BSS systems can deliver on cloud’s on-demand nature, must be overcome," Giles said.
"The pace of innovation required for cloud services is very different from traditional network services and requires telcos to drastically reduce their time to market. While this is a challenge for the back office, it also raises questions as to how telcos price and monitor the profitability of these services."
Giles noted that, as well as improving telco’s cloud branding, partnering with known IT services brands could expand sales channels for a teclo’s cloud offering.
