TORONTO — With more and more companies of all stripes shifting their data workloads to the Internet, the outlook for the cloud is sunnier than ever these days. Several key obstacles remain, however, before cloud-based services prevail in all sectors of the economy.
That was the consensus of a breakout session on “Performance Cloud” at the Canadian Telecom Summit here on Monday morning. Three of the four panelists exhorted telecom carriers, cable operators, wireless providers and other telecom service providers to start offering cloud-based services to commercial customers now, if they aren’t doing so already. But they also warned of potential pitfalls in entering the cloud services market as it rapidly evolves.
Chris Osika, global lead for Cisco Systems’ Internet Business Solutions Group, said most enterprises are using private cloud services today, “staying inside the four walls of their data centers.” Over the next couple of years, though, Cisco projects that the majority of commercial network services will switch to the public cloud because of its vastly greater capacity.
“The public cloud is where the real potential is,” he said. He suggested that service providers focus on helping small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) make the shift from private data centers to the public cloud through a phased-in hybrid approach.
Osika said he expects service providers to team up with software providers and ISPs to deliver software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to commercial customers, “completely upending” the current landscape for commercial services. He also expects the growing popularity of the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) approach to the workplace to be “a godsend to the cloud” as it drives the use of virtual desktops.
Linda Weaver, vice-president of product management for Telus Health Solutions (a hugely growing area of the telco), said many health care providers across Canada already use private clouds as well and, like other businesses, believes that they must shift to the public cloud over the next few years. Similar to other types of firms, she noted, doctors, medical offices and other health care providers need secure, reliable networks that enable them to manage all their data and accommodate all types of portable, Internet-enabled devices.
Michael Kedar, a principal in Mobilexhange Services, disagreed with the panel consensus for shifting services over the public cloud. Citing the need for more accurate electronic medical records and fewer medical errors, he called for the development of a dedicated wireless infrastructure for the health care industry to provide the most reliable and available network possible. He urged the federal government to set aside the spectrum for the dedicated network and the provinces to form public-private partnerships to develop them.
Kedar argued that many doctors, medical offices and other health care providers are not using smartphones and other Web-enabled devices now to transmit patient records and other sensitive medical information because of concerns about public network reliability and security. He also noted that in the U.S. the FCC just announced last week that it will set aside 40 MHz of spectrum for health providers.
“The requirements for a medical-grade network are much higher than for consumers and enterprises,” he said. “Our health care should not be in the hands of public network technicians.”
