Cloud computing presents opportunities for telcos
Singaporeans already own more than one cellular phone per person, on an average. 3G usage here is also approaching 60 per cent, the third-highest penetration rate in Asia after Japan and South Korea.
Analysts said that with limited opportunity for expanding the user base, telcos in Singapore will have to look to other areas for revenue growth. One driver for future expansion may be in data services.
According to research house IDC Asia, 20 per cent of all desktops are set to be virtualised in 10 years. This means the data they use and the applications they run will all reside on Internet servers, instead of the PC or a local network.
Singapore telcos can capitalise on this shift toward so-called “cloud,” or Internet-based computing. Their data centres can play host to virtualised desktops.
Adrian Dominic Ho, principal for communications and services research at IDC Asia Pacific, said: “So telcos will be enhancing their cloud capabilities, delivering a lot of applications, delivering a lot of compute, as well as a lot of infrastructure over the cloud that is a big game changer for them.” To stay competitive, telcos will also have to collaborate more with local businesses.
If you are not yet familiar with cloud computing, I suggest that you read up on it. I will post the basics on my blog. It has been around for quite a while and was developed by a former executive from Salesforce.com. Marc Benioff of Saleforce.com once said to Larry Ellison of Oracle “We are the cloud people and because we are the cloud people we are peaceful people.”
Western Union invented cloud computing. The proof comes in the document, dated March 30, 1965 which outlines a Western Union executive’s ambitious plan to create “a nationwide information utility, which will enable subscribers to obtain, economically, efficiently, immediately, the required information flow to facilitate the conduct of business and other affairs.” In a nutshell Western Union invented cloud computing.
The idea of a “computing utility” was much discussed in the 1960s, but this document nonetheless provides a remarkably prescient outline of what we now call cloud computing. Some excerpts:
Over the past century or more there have evolved in this country a limited number of basic systems serving the general public – a group generally termed “public utilities.” These utilities serve, among others, such fields as transportation; communications (telegraph, telephone, cable, radio, the broadcast services, etc.); and the energy systems, distributing power.
What is now developing, very rapidly, is a critical need – as yet not fully perceived – for a new national information utility which can gather, store, process, program, retrieve and distribute on the broadest possible scale, to industry; to the press; to military and civilian government; to the professions; to department stores, banks, transportation companies and retailers; to educational institutions, hospitals and other organizations in the fields of public health, welfare and safety; and to the general public, virtually all of the collected useful intelligence available, through locally-, regionally- and nationally-linked systems of computers. Just as an electrical energy system distributes power, this new information utility will enable subscribers to obtain, economically, efficiently, and immediately, the required information flow to facilitate the conduct of business, personal and other affairs.
Modern computing in the age of the Internet is quite a strange, remarkable thing. As you sit hunched over your laptop at home watching a YouTube video or using a search engine, you’re actually plugging into the collective power of thousands of computers that serve all this information to you from far-away rooms distributed around the world. It’s almost like having a massive supercomputer at your beck and call, thanks to the Internet.
This phenomenon is what we typically refer to as cloud computing. We now read the news, listen to music, shop, watch TV shows and store our files on the web. Some of us live in cities in which nearly every museum, bank, and government office has a website. The end result? We spend less time in lines or on the phone, as these websites allow us to do things like pay bills and make reservations. The movement of many of our daily tasks online enables us to live more fully in the real world.
Cloud computing offers other benefits as well. Not too long ago, many of us worried about losing our documents, photos and files if something bad happened to our computers, like a virus or a hardware malfunction. Today, our data is migrating beyond the boundaries of our personal computers. Instead, we’re moving our data online into “the cloud”. If you upload your photos, store critical files online and use a web-based email service like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, an 18-wheel truck could run over your laptop and all your data would still safely reside on the web, accessible from any Internet-connected computer, anywhere in the world.