Weinman: Biz, ecosystem are keys to cloud evolution

IDG News Service - These days, cloud computing may be the hottest topic in IT industry as many firms are planning to unleash cloud service or already starting to deploy cloud service.

In the coming years, "we may begin to see more in the way of business model, ecosystem, and pricing evolution," Joe Weinman, AT&T vice president of strategy and business development, said.

Weinman will deliver a keynote speech titled "Cloudonomics: How the Cloud Generates Value" at the 'Cloud & Data Center World 2010' conference, which is hosted by IDG Korea on April 7th and 8th at JW Marriott Hotel.

Before the conference, Weinman shared on the role of telcos and importance of business model and ecosystem in the era of cloud computing evolution, in an email interview with IDG Korea.

1. Please describe your role in AT&T.

I am responsible for strategy and business development, which entails evaluating macro-trends among large global enterprises, identifying new technology trends, qualifying new business relationships, and helping to communicate AT&T's global capabilities in the cloud computing space and the advantages of the cloud with our leading clients globally, including in Korea and elsewhere in the Asia/Pacific region.

2. Cloud Computing has been a controversial term, and now the term is set to be defined by many industry experts. What is your view of cloud computing?

Yes, there are a number of definitions. My definition is a simple acronym: a CLOUD is a Common, Location-independent, Online, Utility, on-Demand service. Commonality across multiple tenants is key to generation of economic value, because statistical multiplexing reduces total cost and investment.

Location-independence is expected: cloud services should be available ubiquitously, and the details of where the services are provided should not be a concern of the user. Online networks are key to making the cloud work. Utility, or usage-sensitive pricing, is essential to delivering value to clients compared to owned, dedicated--and often underutilized--capacity. And on-Demand is key to enhancing business agility. With this model in mind, electric utilities, rental car chains, and global hotel chains are all "CLOUDs". This approach can generate a clear and compelling customer value proposition as well as a fair business model for service providers.

3. What is telco's role in the cloud computing industry?

If by "telco" we mean a wireline and/or wireless voice and data carrier, then there are several key ways in which telcos are critically important to the cloud. First is the cloudbursting scenario, where peaks in demand "overflow" out of the enterprise data center and into the cloud computing service provider environment. When you look at the architectural requirements, optical transport networks and MPLS VPNs are key to enabling this scenario. Second is the content and application delivery scenario, where global transport facilities are needed to deliver content over a backbone network and/or VPN services. Third is security, where the network is the first line of defense in protecting enterprise and hybrid enterprise-cloud environments from DDoS attacks and spam and viruses. There, network-based firewalls, anti-DDoS, and related techniques are key. AT&T, however, provides a broader range of services that just access and transport, since we are also a cloud services provider spanning compute- and storage-as-a-service as well as a broad range of managed applications, including CRM, financials, messaging, unified communications, and middleware.