Informa: Enhanced Carrier Ethernet Can Boost Cloud Service Usage

CEN Feature (Sep 20 2011) Cloud

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   Service providers have some great opportunities for Carrier Ethernet in the cloud services market, as we discussed with Informa analyst Camille Mendler last week. But those opportunities could be even greater if service providers would make some key enhancements to their Carrier Ethernet offerings, Mendler says.

   Moving forward, Mendler expects enterprises to become increasingly demanding about their cloud service needs. In the future, she envisions a world where “connectivity will match the nature of the cloud, which is on-demand.”

   Considering that the whole purpose of cloud services is to make storage and computing resources available as needed, it won’t be long before enterprise users begin to question why they have to wait to have additional bandwidth turned up to reach the cloud and why they have to pay for bandwidth they may not be using, Mendler predicts.

   Service providers “haven’t made the liquidity of the connection match the liquidity of the cloud,” said Mendler. “It’s the dirty little problem telcos aren’t talking about and one they need to address.”

   Once service providers begin to address this problem, Mendler said, they would recognize that Carrier Ethernet is the logical choice to meet enterprise customer requirements for bandwidth that can flex up and down. The question, she said, will be whether an individual carrier’s operations support system is up to the task.

   “Ethernet has overcome many management issues,” Mendler noted.

   The closest Mendler has seen any service provider come to bandwidth liquidity is Singtel. “Within an hour of customers ordering more compute power, Singtel can flex the connection up or down to match,” she said.

   Carriers that take the steps necessary to support on-demand Ethernet bandwidth will be rewarded, Mendler predicts. “When a technology innovation increases the efficiency by which a resource is used, it increases the rate of consumption rather than decreasing it,” she said.

   Mendler likens the situation to what occurred when the steam engine was introduced. The stream engine used coal more efficiently than previous engine designs, but instead of decreasing coal consumption, overall consumption actually increased. “People learned to use coal in new and different ways,” Mendler said.

   There’s actually a name for this phenomenon, Mendler explained. It’s called the Jevons Paradox and she believes it would apply to Carrier Ethernet cloud connectivity if service providers were to make the appropriate enhancements. To put it more simply, she said, “If you make something easy to consume, people will consume it more.”

    

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