I have been presenting the idea that Telcos are the up and rising players in the data center industry for 4 months, and Verizon’s acquisition of Terremark worked out well to support my research of where the movement was going to occur. But, some doubt a company like Verizon can build clouds.

Here is an article that discusses changes Verizon is making that supports its cloud efforts.

Verizon Crashes Silos to Build Clouds

FEBRUARY 10, 2011 | Carol Wilson | Post a comment |

The organization behind Verizon Business 's rapid rollout of cloud-based services isn't typical of the large telecom operator. Instead, it's an autonomous development and organization team that cuts across the traditional silos of a telecom operator by including experts from multiple functions within Verizon, including network operations, IT, data center operations and more.

Light Reading refers to another article called Bridging the Chasm.

Bridging the Chasm: A Manifesto

JANUARY 19, 2011 | Ray Le Maistre | Comments (5) |

What are the biggest challenges facing traditional communications service providers today?

Well, they need to:

find new ways to grow revenues, by developing and successfully selling new services and products;

cut costs;

develop and offer new services to market quickly (so, MUCH quicker than they're capable of right now); and

come to terms with the fact they're no longer the only source of real-time, multimedia communications.

The point I have made is yes in general the Telcos are slow to move and solve the cloud business problems, but with the amount of Telcos going after the cloud a couple are going to get the right methods and others will follow.

Here are a few examples.

Some operators have already taken some of the first steps towards Bridging the Chasm. One such step is to put a single executive in charge of networks and IT -- in other words, to have a joint CTO/CIO. UK operator BT Group took this step in mid-2009 when its then CTO Matt Bross left the company and his responsibilities were handed on to the then CIO Al-Noor Ramji. These days, Clive Selley is the executive in BT's Bridging the Chasm hotseat.

One operator has even managed to bridge the chasm from day one, and never have disparate network and IT teams. Nucleus Connect, the operator that's running Singapore's next-generation national broadband network, has had a combined team from day one. The company, though, was only formed in the first half of 2009, so it avoided any legacy issues, and is relatively small. However, the management team had the foresight to build a single technology team, and it has paid off, according to CEO David Storrie, who says the networks and IT folk hired to work together at Nucleus Connect have been learning from each other and identifying new ways of doing things more efficiently.

Storrie's story (if you'll pardon the phrase) will be the exception, of course. For most operators, Bridging the Chasm will be a Herculean operational challenge, but one that, we believe, they will have to undertake in one form or another. Some may opt to outsource the running of all network and IT systems to a third party, though that would be a move equally fraught with difficulties.