Telcos Must Act Now to Capture SaaS Cloud Computing Business, Report Finds

SaaS is a large opportunity for telcos, but they must act quickly in order to ensure they do not miss out on this market, says Light Reading's Services Software Insider

NEW YORK, Dec. 8 -- Telcos now have a large opportunity to aggregate software as a service (SaaS) applications so that enterprises can go one-stop-shopping for all their SaaS needs, but competition from independent software vendors (ISVs) and other cloud computing providers will force telcos to act quickly or risk losing out on this emerging sector altogether, according to the latest report from Light Reading's Services Software Insider (www.lightreading.com/servsoftware), a paid research service of TechWeb's Light Reading (www.lightreading.com).

The Race for SaaS: Do Telcos Have Their Heads in the Right Clouds? examines the different SaaS strategies open to network operators and the competition they face from ISVs and other cloud providers. It analyzes the trade-offs telcos must make between getting to market quickly using a third-party SaaS aggregation and delivery platform and creating value-added differentiation by building their own platform. It also evaluates the advantages of augmenting an SaaS offer with a platform as a service (PaaS) and even business process as a service (BPaaS), and analyzes the telco SaaS propositions from 11 leading technology suppliers.

For a list of companies analyzed in this report, http://img.lightreading.com/ssi/pdf/ssi1209companies.pdf

"There is growing telco interest in launching an SaaS proposition, and several companies are launching SaaS aggregation platforms, with or without a complementary PaaS capability," says Caroline Chappell, research analyst with Light Reading's Services Software Insider and author of the report. "The majority of telcos are still evaluating the role they can play in the emerging SaaS market and how SaaS fits into a broader cloud computing context."

Telcos that build their own platforms will control their own cloud destinies, but that strategy will take longer to get to market, Chappell notes. "On the other hand, telcos undergoing operations/business support system (OSS/BSS) transformation and service delivery platform (SDP) implementations are well placed to extend these programs to support SaaS," she says. "In the spirit of the cloud, telcos looking to provide cloud services should investigate whether they can use cloud-based versions of transformational technologies."

Other key findings of The Race for SaaS: Do Telcos Have Their Heads in the Right Clouds? include:

* The majority of telcos are evaluating their role in the SaaS market, and innovative approaches are appearing from some operators.
* SaaS vendors urgently need to clarify their propositions and their relevance to telcos.
* Operators must ensure that their SaaS aggregation platforms are open and interoperable with ISV SaaS clouds as different interests jostle for position in the emerging SaaS value chain.
* Telcos need to decide whether to extend SaaS with PaaS and even business processes as a service to differentiate their SaaS ecosystems.
* In the future, telcos may build their SaaS platforms from cloud-based elements such as IBM's proposed SDP in the cloud.

The Race for SaaS: Do Telcos Have Their Heads in the Right Clouds? is available as part of an annual single-user subscription (six issues) to Light Reading's Services Software Insider, priced at $1,295. Individual reports are available for $900 (single-user license).

To subscribe, or for more information, please visit: www.lightreading.com/servsoftware. For more information on all of Light Reading's Insider services, please visit www.lightreading.com/research.

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