Discussing Cloud Trends

Telesphere provides hosted voice services, using technology powered by Broadsoft. Their CTO, Sanjay Srinivasan, has recently shared five key cloud trends to watch in 2012.

1) Wider adoption. Many enterprises, government agencies and other organizations already use the cloud. Their success stories are increasing awareness of the cloud’s bottom-line benefits, spurring further adoption in 2012 and beyond. Just as important, this adoption is growing across all organization sizes.

2) Cloud’s wireless tether. By some estimates, 70 percent of cloud users will get access via wireless by 2015. That's no surprise, considering how enterprises are increasingly equipping their employees with tablets and smartphones, which have the processing power, displays and broadband connectivity necessary to provide a good user experience with cloud services on the go – including those with real time needs such as Voice and Video.

3) Death of the deskphone. Cloud services are yet another nail in the deskphone’s coffin because they enable tablets and smartphones to integrate seamlessly with PBXs. That migration eliminates the CapEx of the deskphones themselves and their OpEx. Just as important, that integration can be over Wi-Fi – in the office, the employee’s home office or a hotel room – saving additional money than if all calls were over cellular.

4) Video gets democratized. The price of videoconferencing and video calling endpoints keeps falling, but the steep cost of network infrastructure such as bridges is still holding back many enterprise implementations, particularly among SMEs. That problem has spawned a growing number of cloud-based services designed to make video affordable enough that enterprises can provide it to rank-and-file employees instead of just executives.

5) Continued consolidation. You've probably noticed the spate of M&A activity among data center operators over the past year, including telcos and cable operators using those acquisitions so they can offer a wide range of cloud services. Expect more consolidation in 2012 as data center operators and service providers scale up to meet demand.

This list seems pretty good to me, but I am not certain about #3. Death of the deskphone. I can see both sides.

The softphone, which can reside on desktop computers, tablets, and even smartphones themselves can be more intuitive than a desktop phone. I tire of people warning me that they might lose me when they perform a transfer – but in all honesty, it isn’t particularly intuitive. Desktop phones represent an additional device, an additional price, and require an additional cable. I get why Sanjay comes to this conclusion. But there are lots of reasons why he might be wrong.

Phones are simple – and there is a place for simplicity. The Kindle is a great example of simple – a single-purpose device that is inexpensive and intuitive to operate.

In the "Sex in the City" movie, there is a scene where Carrie needs to call her groom when she learns he isn’t coming to the wedding. She’s very upset and asks for a phone – someone hands her an iPhone and she’s just too exasperated to deal with it demanding a normal phone instead. There is some truth to that scene. She wanted a simple dial pad, not an operating system requiring swipes and presses to get to a dial pad.

There are very few differences between a game console, television DVR, and cable box. Some more sophisticated software could easily create an all-in-one device, yet they remain separate. There is a simplistic beauty in keeping the game console a game console, and even though many can actually play a disc, most end up right next to a DVD player.

Phones are simple and familiar. They don’t require a login. They are socially acceptable to share (unlike headsets). They are not that expensive and tend to last at least five years with little to no maintenance. They don’t require a headset, but do support them. They are easy to operate in an emergency. They can be used for paging and intercom.

What are your thoughts on the future of phones – or any of the five trend predictions?  

2 Responses to "Discussing Cloud Trends" - Add Yours

Hyoun Park 3/31/2012 2:24:08 PM

Agree with you on #3 that it's a complex issue. Because most companies have not adopted enterprise mobility solutions, like device and app management, the mobile device is not as safe or manageable as a comparable desktop device. Also, on-premise telephony solutions are now being asked to last longer than ever before, making an immediate switch to the cloud more difficult from a pure economics perspective where the CFO is pushing infrastructure investments more than the CIO. So, the real challenge is in having a comprehensive strategy that allows organizations to bridge the gap from on-premise to virtualized to hosted to fully mobile-cloud without any on-premise CapEx. I really like what Mitel, ShoreTel, Siemens, and Avaya are all doing in their own separate ways on this front, but each are missing some piece of the puzzle in having a fully rationalized go-to-market to providing a complete and future-proof solution.

The voice to video progression feels similar to the voice to web conferencing progression that we saw a decade ago, where web was seen as maybe a 3x premium on voice but only about 10% of traffic ended up moving to the web. As long as video is similarly seen as that premium and specialized form of communications, I think the market will move in a healthy direction. And given current adoption, there is still an absolutely huge greenfield opportunity to provide B2B, mobile, on-demand and inter-form factor video as long as the vendors can keep up with end-user demands.

Scott Wharton 4/7/2012 7:11:31 PM

Interesting to see a company that completely makes their money selling phones and derived service saying that their end is near. Not sure I buy it either but sure it controversial.