Two stories in the past week, to remind us that big telecoms incumbents have the customer relationships, the brand recognition, the data centres, the network and the ambition to offer cloud services.
These are normally aimed at their existing customers, particularly big enterprises with existing co-lo relationships to these telcos. They’re also, normally, aimed at the telco’s home market.
And so, Deutsche Telekom “wants to create a European rival to big U.S. cloud providers.” The bullish headline is hopefully CBR’s rather Deutsche Telekom’s. Because unless the company has more realistic ambitions, it may as well give up now.
And around the world, in Japan, NTT is riding on the back of OpenStack to ‘[expand] its cloud system globally.’ The Japanese are taking a more realistic attitude to their competition, with Motoo Tanaka, senior vice president of cloud services, telling The Register that “it is not conceivable for us just to compete with Amazon simply on public cloud.”
Indeed.
There is plenty of scope for differentiated and valuable cloud services from companies like Deutsche Telekom and NTT. They can offer services that Amazon cannot. They can even compete – in some areas – with offerings that Amazon does have. But going head to head, with an undifferentiated public cloud offering? That would be a little silly.
Hat tip to René Büst for the Deutsche Telekom story.
Image credit: Deutsche Telekom
(Cross-posted @ Paul Miller)
