Build vs Buy: Do vendors meet the needs of cloud providers?

The cloud services market has grown rapidly, but some cloud providers say their vendors are unable to keep up with the service provider's needs.

Often, it is common to build and buy problems, and it is not a disgrace for many service providers, especially those who do their own research and development resources. Independent research and development of the technology is a constant innovation and different resources. But some providers say they are now forced to do more simple development within the enterprise, as vendors do not meet their demand for cloud hardware and software.

"If you can't develop a lot of intellectual property that builds, runs, and manages the cloud, you'll never be able to maintain a long-term competitive advantage, because it's simply that there are no commercial tools available to do that," said Jeff Deacon, chief cloud strategist at Miami Terremark, " Anyone who tries to tell you differently is not used in the business and tries to run in the public cloud. ”

Each year, telecoms operators are increasingly dissatisfied with the company's strategy of monetization, including products that support cloud services, saying he is Cimi's president. For several years, Nolle asked the telecom operators how well they supported them in this particular area, and they could choose to be satisfied, satisfied, neutral, less satisfied or dissatisfied.

"Five years ago, most of the respondents wandered on the level of neutrality, and what happened to them was so negative that they knew that May had completed all the research and only one of the 47 operators had chosen to be neutral," Nolle said. ”

Build VS Purchase: Technical considerations

Cloud providers prefer to build rather than buy, mainly due to vendor's technology and cost-dependent dependencies, according to Deacon, he is Carrier Cloud Forum service provider participant, telecommunications operator Cloud Forum (Carrier Cloud Forum) is a provider workshop unit for Interop 2012, held in New York.

With regard to software, the basic failure of some vendors is that they do not build partner-level cloud products, Deacon said, "commercial software has been disconnected from operators (OSS), BSS, and even hypervisor and hypervisor management tools, they are not expanding," he said. "They are designed for businesses, but they are sold to operators. ”

Douglas Smith, the chief information Security Officer and VP of the US IT system in NTT, does not complain about vendors, but acknowledges that operational support systems and business support systems products need to be updated to support cloud providers. In a discussion of BSS at the telecom operator Cloud Forum, Smith said he wanted vendors to be able to deal with the cloud with a more focused software-oriented architecture.

"The OSS systems we're using are designed and released 20-30 years ago, and they're doing well under that challenge," he said. But unfortunately, technology and markets have been moving forward, "Smith said," One of the keys is to reuse components, but also create these common components, and this flexibility in the past built system does not exist. They were built to solve yesterday's scene. ”

Big hardware vendors are not making better progress in cloud provider products, as operators say manufacturers seem more concerned with pleasing shareholders than by continuing to solve technical problems, Nolle said. Web makers, in particular, appear to be abandoning their focus on next-generation network technologies, such as software-defined networks (SDN), he adds.

"When the operator asked the manufacturer's cloud strategy, the manufacturer said, ' Yes, we're in the process, but how many boxes can my colleagues put in?" "Operators feel that manufacturers are so opportunistic to push their financial goals, and the financial goal is to let manufacturers forget that they are making concessions to them while meeting their goals," Nolle said. ”

Juniper NX recently announced two new carrier-level routers, added to its MX series, MX 210 and MX 220, boasting the ability to extend to tbps in a single rack. But Juniper stressed that MX210 and 220 were not a bigger box.

Both products contain a lot of software-based performance to support cloud services, says Wendy Cartee, vice president of Juniper Market. Routers support the MX virtual chassis of JUNOSV App engine and Juniper, which collaborate on service delivery, service creation, and network management. The router also supports the path computation Element, which is an automated flow engineering feature that can be used in Sdn.

"We believe that in addition to providing capacity and performance, it is also important to provide these software features," Cartee said, "which is why we have introduced these groundbreaking features, but at the same time providing only software services." ”

(editor: Heritage)