Moving to the Cloud
So, it’s time to start thinking about it.
You know you need to, but you have been avoiding it. It seems complex, the security issues are concerning, plus you like having control, right? Besides, can it really be better to run your interconnect voice management system in the cloud?
Well, the answer is yes. Let’s face it, the cloud isn’t coming, the cloud is here. Look at AWS, Azure, Google, and everyone else offering the cloud infrastructure to run applications. Look at NFV and virtualized servers. The costs for cloud infrastructure keep declining, that is, the cost for the hardware, the IP Bandwidth, the power and co-lo space, and the man power associated to run the cloud infrastructure on a per CPU, per MB, per instance basis, however you want to measure it. It is indisputable and irrefutable, which is why GCS has been offering cloud based infrastructure for more than 6 years.
When we started offering it back in 2010, it was still a little too pricey for us to run it on Amazon or Azure or Google or the other dozens or hundreds of companies offering infrastructure. So, we built our own, and have become experts at running interconnect voice solutions in the cloud. That’s why going forward we are centralizing our value proposition on our iPaaS solution. Our iPaaS solution is our Interconnect Platform as-a-Service Solution. It eliminates cap-ex, it eliminates infrastructure costs, and it eliminates the burden (aka costs) of deploying, maintaining, and managing the infrastructure.
For example, on GCS’ hosted platform we run more than 700M minutes per month. On a per minute basis, our cost to run our infrastructure (sans staff) is approximately $0.00005 per minute. That is a really small number. It’s so small we can use scientific notation to write it: 5 X 10 (to the –5).
And we have plenty of room to scale our business on the existing infrastructure, which means that cost will only go down as we win more and more cloud based customers.
The cost to infrastructure isn’t the hardware, isn’t the IP, isn’t the power, isn’t the co-lo: it’s the people. Salaries go up, benefit costs go up, training costs go up…infrastructure costs go down, but the cost of the people running it, goes up. So, the final calculus from cost is clear…you simply can’t beat the cloud.
But then why do carriers still choose to run their infrastructure? It’s the old FUD factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt). They are afraid of the possibilities of something screwing up. They want to have as much control and leverage over the outcome as they can and they think that requires them to run the infrastructure and own it. But don’t let FUD scare you away from the benefits of cloud. Sure, there is some reduction in control of the outcome when you outsource to someone’s cloud, but the benefits of outsourcing to someone’s cloud clearly outweighs the advantages. It’s not even close. Again, our cost on a per minute basis of our cloud is currently 5 x 10 to the minus 5. What’s yours?