Clouds offer silver lining for all

IBM expanded further into the telecoms space on Thursday with the unveiling of a cloud services platform aimed at carriers and service providers. The offering encompasses hardware, software and services which would allow telcos to offer cloud computing to their own customers.

The highly scalable offering would allow the creation of tens of thousands of virtual machines as and when they were needed, allowing telcos to offer cloud computing on a pay as you go business model.

Operators clearly think there’s something in the cloud. In an unrelated announcement, Telecom Italia entered the cloud computing market with the aim of increasing its information technology revenues by seven or eight per cent annually, with an offering for its corporate and public sector. Telecom Italia is looking at the sharing of software and storage of information via the internet as a way of enabling its customers to save money on hardware and software.

Meanwhile, pan-European network operator Interoute said the demand for cloud services is fuelling its growth, with EBITDA for the first six months of 2010 rising 18 per cent year on year to €28m.

“Owning Europe’s largest private cloud has driven notable growth in Interoute’s enterprise business, as organisations look for a secure and trusted environment to place their business critical assets,” said Gareth Williams, Interoute’s CEO.