How Big is the Cloud Computing Opportunity, for Telcos?

One frequently hears these days of high service provider interest in cloud computing as a potential driver of service provider revenue, and the thinking is not without merit. Likewise, one also hears that data centers and content delivery networks are logical opportunities that leverage what service providers already do. All that makes sense.

The hard part is figuring out how big the opportunity might be, what other opportunities might exist, and then making hard decisions about which initiatives to pursue. No organization can pursue an unlimited number of growth opportunities, in other words. So the issue is whether cloud computing offers enough revenue upside to be worth spending time and resources to chase the opportunity.

To be sure, if we are indeed moving to a next wave of computing architecture based fundamentally on cloud computing, then there will be much greater reliance on remote data and computing resources and bandwidth. That's the general notion.

The added “secret sauce” is that use of mobile and untethered devices will be an integral part of the architecture. And that has upside for mobile service providers as well. But is the revenue upside substantial enough for a tier-one service provider to chase, compared to all other potential growth alternatives?