Cloud computing: One of the ways of future transformation

According to IDC, the global cloud computing market will grow by 17% per cent annually from 2013-2017, and in a fast-growing market like China, cloud Computing's average annual growth rate is as high as 26%. There is no doubt that cloud computing has become one of the fastest growing sectors in the global IT industry, which naturally attracts the attention of operators.

Recently, BT announced a series of new cloud services in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa region, including one Cloud Cisco, bt one Cloud Lync and BT Life Sciences research and development platform to support the expansion plans of customers in the region. With a close eye on cloud computing from 56 ago, and the subsequent release of IaaS services such as BT Connect and BT Cloud COMPUTE, and now extending to services such as SaaS and PAAs, BT's quest for cloud computing is deepening.

Cloud computing: One of the ways of future transformation

"Cloud computing is one of the core businesses of BT. Andrew Sgt, vice president of BT Global Services solutions, told reporters.

BT is one of the few operators in the world to insist on only fixed communications, as a well-established telecoms operator in Britain. While BT has built Wi-Fi networks across the UK and applied for 4G licences in the UK last year, its operations are still dominated by fixed networks, and wireless networks are only one part of its converged communications strategy.

Holding on to the path of fixed communications, BT has been actively looking for a transition, and in the IT service area to find a new way is BT's main transformation path, which British Telecom tried to the direction of security, service, call center and so on. In recent years, the goal of transformation has expanded to the cloud computing field.

"The change in the CIO's requirements has led us to adjust our business direction, and we've seen CIOs pay more attention to infrastructure, cloud computing, user experience, collaboration, liquidity, services, and innovation in recent years." Among them, cloud computing helps improve the sensitivity of the IT infrastructure, which is the focus of CIOs ' attention. "Andrew Sgt roughly estimated that about 65% of the CIOs they contacted think Cloud computing is a very important tool to help improve the efficiency of traditional IT facilities." For example, some CIOs think that for call centers, cloud computing abandons the physical way of building and lowers costs 30%~40%.

That's why Andrew Sgt's optimism about cloud computing over the next few years: from 2012 to 2016, the global cloud computing market will grow from $110 billion trillion to $210 billion trillion, and 50% of large companies in 2017 will use cloud computing, Cloud computing will reduce the company's total cost expenditure by 24%.

"Market demand has changed dramatically and IT systems need to keep up with the times to respond to these changes, so BT has taken the opportunity of cloud computing and launched a multi-level cloud computing service for its customers." Andrew Sgt said.

Not just IaaS, but SaaS.

BT's focus on cloud computing has started as early as 2009 and has a specific business launch. So what is the difference between the cloud computing business announced by BT and the previous one?

Andrew Sgt said the UK telecom's cloud computing consisted mainly of BT one Cloud Cisco, bt one Cloud Lync and BT Life Sciences research and development platform. BT one Cloud Cisco service is a global platform, with a complete unified communications function; BT One Cloud Lync is a fully hosted dedicated cloud service with corporate voice and video communication capabilities that enable standard online, instant messaging, and conferencing functions on a unified platform. Generally speaking, the above two services are the unified communication in cloud computing namely service business.

BT Life Sciences Research and Development service is the first in the world to achieve collaboration in the life sciences industry, improve production efficiency and design of the cloud services. This service is designed for organizations active in life sciences, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and related sectors, adheres to stringent safety, regulatory and compliance requirements, and meets the high computational power requirements of research and development through the adoption of the latest cloud computing technology, collaborative technology and integrated communications technology. The solution, based on the BT cloud computing platform and provided through the BT Data center, is now being implemented in the Singapore Institute of Genetics and is about to be launched in Japan.

In summary, BT is no longer a simple IaaS service, but a SaaS service based on IaaS. As we all know, cloud computing is divided into three types: IaaS, PAAs and SaaS. For operators with a large number of basic network facilities, the use of hardware resources through virtualization computing is one of the easiest routes to cloud computing; a PAAs based on IaaS tests the carrier's platform integration capabilities, and the top level of SaaS involves specific business operations, Market demand is fragmented and difficult to operate, so at the moment global operators are moving faster on IaaS and not much on SaaS.

However, with the increasing erosion of OTT to operators, operators are also becoming aware that in addition to doing a good job of pipeline, it is more important to do a good job on the pipeline business operations to enhance the intangible value of tangible assets, in the cloud computing sector, operators also need to proactively to the platform and service transformation, to avoid the pipeline of the plight of the recurrence.

This is exactly what carriers such as BT are extending cloud computing from IaaS to SaaS.

Important pieces in Asia-Pacific strategy

In terms of regional development, BT's announcement of new cloud services to the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa region was another step towards strengthening strategic deployments in the region following the decision to expand its investment in the region by the end of 2013.

As a global operator, overseas markets are an important part of BT's income. Among them, the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa in recent years the status of the rising.

According to Kevin Taylor, chairman of the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa region, BT Global Services, BT's order in the region increased by one-fold in the first half of fiscal year 2014/2015, while BT's revenue growth in the region surpassed twice times that of market growth in the first half, BT has bid for 10 projects in the region, 8 of which have won the bid. "BT is committed to building a healthier business in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and I am now on track to double the volume of business over the next three years." Kevin Taylor says.

It is not easy for any IT company or operator to achieve the goal of doubling the business within three years in a situation that is not very favorable. So could bt be able to achieve this goal? At the moment everything is still unknown, but to be sure, BT this time on the cloud computing this high-speed forward train.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)