Most tier one telcos believe cloud computing is a rather natural business opportunity, at least in the infrastructure as a service segment of that business. Whether the opportunity is quite so natural in other segments might be debatable, but few doubt the logic of telcos operating large, mission critical server outsourcing facilities.
Still, the issue is how telcos can compete with Amazon and other large branded providers. And some might argue the issue of “trust” is key.
“Instant Servers” is a cloud-based infrastructure as a service offering that Telefonica hopes will allow it to offer a big branded alternative to other services such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud that offer virtual server services.
That a big global telco thinks cloud computing is a business opportunity is not new. But the move might also illustrate one other aspect of competing with Amazon. A big company, with a “trusted” brand might be helpful, and sometimes essential, for any would-be competitor to firms such as Amazon.
Some familiar with customer opinion surveys might counter that people do not “like” their telco suppliers so well. That is true. But the issue is “trust,” not “likability.” The point is that potential customers might trust a telco to engineer and operate a reliable, available service, even if those suppliers are not particularly well liked.