ucloud Offers Telecommunications Firms a Clear Path to Private Cloud A publication by:

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1 ucloud Offers Telecommunications Firms a Clear Path to Private Cloud A publication by:

2 Introduction Telecommunications firms large and small sell products that help their clients move data and applications into the cloud. But behind the scenes, telcos efforts to get their own technology cloud-borne have been fraught with disappointment. Setting up and managing private clouds takes too long and costs too much. Security isn t as airtight as necessary. Regulatory and legal compliance is a pain. Then there are the issues of vendor lock-in and getting different cloud types to play nice together. You know the drill. Now, however, there s ucloud. Connectloud s next-generation Cloud Management Platform provides an avenue for telecom carriers of all kinds to find the value they haven t yet seen from the cloud. Much like operating systems run the basic functions of personal computers, the ucloud software was built from the ground up to handle the jobs of deploying, managing and orchestrating cloud systems on servers, routers and similar hardware. What separates ucloud from other management platforms is the speed, ease and low cost with which telecom carriers can deploy and run clouds of any type. 2

3 Introduction (cont.) Need a cloud to handle a new handset offering? ucloud allows you to set it up in minutes instead of months. Want to consolidate billing and collections? Use ucloud to help get them under one, segregated umbrella. But ucloud also ensures safety and global regulatory compliance. How can we be so sure? Because our software never touches your data, the solution is natively compliant. That also cuts out the time-consuming process of testing that information for security before deploying it in the cloud. On top of that, ucloud provides encryption at multiple points in a cloud orchestration, providing yet another safety backstop. Connectloud s software can scale, allowing you to run as many data centers in as many countries as you require, all while keeping servers, routers and switches geographically close to users to keep latency low. And yet, ucloud provides the power to gain operational efficiency. One system administrator can monitor and control all your clouds from one location, putting simplicity into the system and reducing operating costs. The ucloud system also runs on any hardware, which means you don t have to switch out any pricey machines in the closet. Your capital investment continues to work for you. Interested? Then read on. What follows is a look at cloud-related issues that telecommunications carriers battle against and a deeper dive into how ucloud clears those obstacles. 3

4 The problem According to the analysts at Bain & Co., a fundamental challenge telcos face is choosing where and how to plunge into emerging markets while simultaneously optimizing their operations in existing businesses. That issue manifests itself in various ways. For example: The major telcos must cope with managing two trends: exploding growth in wireless demand and a precipitous concurrent drop in use of wired networks. Even as consumers gobble up mobile bandwidth because of video and popular new applications, the U.S. wireless industry is running out of spectrum through which to move it to and from customers. That, in turn, creates challenges in managing the technological improvements for handling wireless demand. Those improvements include putting wireless traffic onto Wi-Fi networks, deploying small cells and enhancing the backhaul portion of networks, according to Deloitte & Touche LLP. In short, technology changes for telcos faster than almost any other industry. While these dichotomies might sound onerous, the cloud should help deal with all of them. Telcos could set up individual private clouds to handle elements of their wireless networks, such as operations as small as groups of cell sites in a given geographic region, all the way up to applications as large as the voice portion of a landline network. Private clouds also could be tasked with handling specific devices on the network. But, to date, the flexibility to launch, monitor and maintain such arrangements has been missing from cloud platforms. Some simply can t scale to handle the jobs. Others might be industrial strength, but they are too big and clumsy to cost-effectively handle tasks for small and midsize telcos. 4

5 The problem (cont.) Telcos also have suffered for a lack of dev/test capacity. As a result, developers crank up their own space in the public cloud. While the intent of shadow IT projects might be good, those projects divert time and resources away from the core mission and they lie beyond the CIO s control. Perhaps more importantly, shadow IT can be a security threat, one of many that telcos already face. As Deloitte has pointed out, carriers in particular face a smorgasbord of security issues, ranging from the usual hacking and malware to new avenues through which evildoers access networks. One of them is the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) craze and another is machine-tomachine (M2M) communications. Hackers are busy exploiting every nook and cranny in the hunt for customer data. Look no further than the international headlines. Private cloud solutions alone might not fix all security issues, but they would be a good start. Storing key data and applications in a secure internal cloud environment is one avenue for keeping proprietary information away from the bad guys. But as is the case with flexibility and elasticity, security has to this point sometimes been problematic in the cloud a major reason why so many companies have shied away from it in the first place. Telcos can t take chances with security, in large part because of the heavy regulatory burden they operate under. Yearly audits by government agencies, standards bodies and corporate auditors place a premium on compliance, something that can be difficult to achieve even with legacy systems that aren t cloud-based. 5

6 The problem (cont.) And yet, telcos are under simultaneous pressure from their boards to lower capital and operating costs, both by reducing their hardware inventory and making better use of the machines they ve got. The cloud seemingly should help solve all of these problems: Flexibility, security, compliance, cost efficiency. But alas, Cloud Management Platforms and bolted-on solutions offered by legacy vendors simply haven t been up to the task to date. What has been needed is a cloud solution built from the ground up to serve the needs of large enterprises in telecommunications and other industries, whether their vision for cloud is to achieve: Increased Dev/Test Capabilities: On-demand test/dev capacity that speeds apps to market without the use of shadow IT. A Public-Cloud Lite : Instant access to increased production capacity without losing speed of service delivery similar to the elasticity available in the AWS public cloud, but in the safety and control of your own environment. Complete IT Transformation to Enable IT-as-a-Service Paradigm: True self-service cloud access across the organization in a way that fosters a wholesale realignment of IT with business units, other departments, partners and revenue goals of the organization. Connectloud s ucloud management platform was built specifically with all those things in mind, reducing expenses and headaches while keeping telcos in firm compliance with all the laws and regulations they face. True business value from private cloud computing is finally here. 6

7 The ucloud solution Speedy Deployment and Orchestration: Using ucloud, the time it takes to deploy and orchestrate clouds shrinks from six months or longer down to 30 to 45 days. Configurations can be cloned once the system is running to make for faster deployments with other clouds. Our technology also can deliver configuration reports on clouds you operate. Agility: Quickly set up and orchestrate clouds for unlimited different purposes, whether it s handling your wireline network, operating certain devices such as Android and Apple phones or managing specific cell sites. Bring billing and collections under one virtual roof for added efficiency. Operating Cost Savings: ucloud helps reduce operating costs. The ucloud platform allows one system administrator to deploy clouds via software-based tools that can handle tasks such as storage, databases, administration and operations. As the tenant administrator becomes an efficiency expert, costs fall. All told, small and mid-sized telecom companies can save anywhere from $10 million to $20 million annually with ucloud, while larger telcos can expect $40 million to $50 million in savings each year. Data Center Consolidation: The ucloud platform stretches what existing data centers can do, which means you don t need as many of them. That, in turn, allows for easier updating of legacy applications in the telco. The ease with which a telco can decide where to situate data and applications geographically means it s also easier to reduce latency issues for customers. 7

8 The ucloud solution (cont.) Audit Efficiency and Compliance: It s easy to set up modified clouds for government audits. Toeing the line on security regulations also is simplified. ucloud never touches your data, meaning you never risk non-compliance. Security: Connectloud works with any security arrangement and across far-flung operations. Tenant administrators can easily change security and encryption as often as they like. Control and Visibility: The ucloud platform offers dashboard reporting for senior executives and tenant administrators, including easy-to-read reports on the resources each cloud is consuming, changes to each cloud, audits of the changes that have taken place and ways to get the cloud set back up ( version control for the cloud) if there s a problem. Hardware agnostic: ucloud is hardware-agnostic. The servers and routers you have now will work. No need to buy fresh gear. 8

9 The ucloud solution (cont.) Flexibility: Set up and run private, hybrid or public clouds, scaling or shrinking them on the fly. Vendor lock-in is a thing of the past, since ucloud works with multiple cloud providers. ucloud is flexible enough to allow the usage of existing servers within your organization as well as the usage of servers offered by well-known public cloud providers in case of peak demands ( Cloud Bursting ). That means unparalleled flexibility to move data, applications and projects into the cloud. Some possible use cases: Telcos can build a cloud for customer surveys on product offerings, then execute development plans around those products in the same cloud or another. Different pricing and product plans can be stored and changed in the cloud. A cloud-based system could offer online technical support via customers computers. Advertisements for marketing campaigns could be hosted and sent through the cloud. Private clouds could be used to store and monitor responses to customer feedback. Private clouds could be used to form and store years worth of audit trails for customer billing. Big Data: The ucloud software can help scale computing capacity for large number-crunching projects, and then de-commission that capacity when the job is done. You pay only for the virtual machines you use and no more. 9

10 The ucloud solution (cont.) Subscription model: Telcos need not worry about vendor lock-in, because Connectloud licenses its software on a pay-as-you-go model. When you re done with your cloud needs, you can simply walk away rather than being locked into a long-term contract. Intuitive multitenancy: ucloud provides telcos with adjustable pools of resources and simplified tools that allow creation of secure, customized clouds to support any number of subtenants. That could mean departments within an organization or other companies entirely. Clients can be segregated within their pools, with each dataset safe and secure from all others. It also allows easy client billing or accounting for the resources each subtenant uses. Resources can be expanded or contracted on demand in only minutes, and they can all be controlled from a single point that is encrypted on multiple levels. 10

11 Conclusion In short, Connectloud is making private cloud adoption easy for telecommunications companies. Implementation goes from months to days. Flexibility, security, compliance and cost efficiency are all easier and faster to achieve. Executives and tenant administrators alike can get easy-to-read dashboard reports on the state of the clouds they oversee. And whether the private cloud you want to launch is limited test/dev, public-cloud lite or transformational for your organization, ucloud is just the right size for your needs and your budget. If all this sounds as revolutionary to you as we think it is, contact us to learn more and get a free demonstration. Contact us today for a free demo! Connectloud 1100 Jupiter Road, Suite #110 Plano, TX Phone: (888) sales@connectloud.com 11