More and more companies find themselves in a situation where capital budgets and resource staffing are more constrained due to the current economy, and the cost and complexity of deploying and managing premise-based voice and UC (unified communications) solutions is difficult to manage and to finance.
Siemens Enterprise Communications, which has provided communication solutions to companies of all sizes for more than 150 years, is exploring new ways to new and easy-to-use communications applications to its customers. Driven by the need to constantly seek and deploy innovative technology and the current global economic downturn, the company has embarked on a road that might change the enterprise communication landscape in the near future. Says Fred Maurus, divisional manager of technology and marketing: “Siemens Enterprise Communications has partnered with Amazon in the USA to offer enterprise telephony and voice related applications via a hosted model utilising cloud computing as the core infrastructure.”
Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the 'cloud' that supports them. The majority of cloud computing infrastructure, as of 2009 [update], consists of reliable services delivered through data centres and built on servers with different levels of virtualisation technologies. The services are accessible anywhere that provides access to networking infrastructure. Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QOS) requirements of customers and typically offer service level agreements or SLAs.
Lately, several telephony companies have made similar announcements to host VOIP telephony such as Vonage, Comcast and Packet8, all generally targeting the SOHO market. Announcements related to virtualisation or cloud computing offerings have also been made by Skype and IBM for LotusLive Integration. Employees of companies using LotusLive will be able to use Skype for voice and video calls.
In a pilot project in the USA, Amazon and Siemens Enterprise Communications are offering consumers and enterprise customers voice and soon unified communication services. “The advantages for the users are massively scalable, highly available offer and secure Web services with a 'pay as you use' acquisition and deployment model. Each customer has its own 'virtualised' solution running in the cloud as software on a mobile or desktop. Added advantages include usage based licensing, no capital expenditure and no complex deployment management,” says Maurus.
Says Maurus: “Open standards are critical to the growth of cloud computing and open source software has provided the foundation for many cloud computing implementations. The open standards approach from Siemens Enterprise Communications embedded in the OpenScape Voice and OpenScape Unified Communications solution is ideally suited as platforms within a hosted cloud computing architecture. After successful completion of piloting voice communication as a hosted service, enterprises in South Africa will soon be able to benefit from this new approach.”
Operators and service providers are advised to consider this technology, as it would greatly benefit consumers and enterprise customers. Software as a service, cloud computing and unified communication applications will be the future of a cost-effective and intelligent communication scenario.
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