Monetizing the Business Edge with Hosted Private Cloud

The last few years have seen major changes in enterprise networking, with the growth of MPLS virtual private networks (VPNs), and the rise in adoption of cloud services. A growing trend, which blends the two, is Hosted Cloud Services, delivered over MPLS VPNs from the service provider’s data center to the customer’s branch office locations. These services are facilitated and enhanced by Juniper’s combined routing and switching solutions as I discussed in my blog about the Junos Node Unifier.

Network Service Providers’ Opportunity with Cloud Services
NSPs are looking at new areas to boost revenue growth, and cloud computing is one of the key areas they are looking at. Based on research from STL Partner’s Telco 2.0 report, the Hosted Private Cloud market is expected to grow 34% annually to $6.5 billion by 2014. Since they already own the network, as well as the infrastructure around it including the billing and management systems, NSPs are in a good position to monetize the cloud opportunity. While the cloud services market is highly competitive, there is an opportunity for NSPs to differentiate their service offerings by leveraging their enterprise-grade VPN infrastructure to provide Hosted Private Cloud services with enhanced end-to-end security and service-level guarantees.

Public cloud services lack the SLA and QoS guarantee levels that enterprises have grown accustomed to with their VPN networks. Recent power outages associated with major public cloud service providers have impacted many popular sites and highlighted issues associated with reliance on public cloud services. As a result hosted private cloud services are emerging as a cost-effective and robust solution that offers quality and reliability for enterprise applications. Network service providers (NSPs) are embracing cloud services to grow new revenue streams and increase customer retention.