White Paper Abstract:
Enterprises of all sizes are increasingly embracing the Cloud-based service model because it provides them with self-service, on-demand access to a much richer range of services and applications at a lower cost than was traditionally available. While there are some short-term benefits for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions, over the longer term the market for providing a combination of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and related solutions, such as high performance computing, presents a much larger opportunity for CSPs. For example, IDC has stated that SaaS solutions alone will generate over $40B in revenue by 2014. By comparison, the current overall market for data center hardware and software is approximately $40B. IaaS solutions currently account for only a very small percentage of this market and that is not expected to change for the foreseeable future. Throughout this white paper, the combination of the SaaS and related solutions that are accessed over a CSP’s network will be referred to as network centric solution.