Poll: Where Is The Main Opportunity For The Channel Cloud?

Before setting the scene for our current poll, let’s see whether ChannelBiz readers minded the gap in communications in the London Underground.

It appears that the majority of voters welcome Transport for London’s aims to have Wi-Fi and mobile phone services echoing through the tunnels and platforms of the Tube system.

Access all areas

In our poll, 56 percent of voters wanted wireless communications available everywhere because they viewed them as essential services in the always-connected world. However, just over a fifth of voters (21%) would be happy to pull the plug and restore a hole of calm in the blanket coverage.

Limiting the network availability to Wi-Fi only attracted 11 percent but another six percent would accept that if they could use their phone networks on the platforms. Keeping the tunnels as comms black holes did not attract much interest with four percent wanting wireless on platforms only and two percent happy with the current roll out of Wi-Fi-only in the station areas.

So, carry on screwing those access points to the walls, Boris.

Cloud sourcing

Now we turn our attention from the dark depths and scale the beanstalk to the golden geese in the cloud. How will service providers reap the benefits?

Few doubt that the cloud is here to stay but what role do services play in the channel? There are several options and distributors or resellers will find their own blend – but where is the money?

For larger operations it could be in turning extra capacity in their own data centre over to hosting – or perhaps some of the smaller players could grow by establishing a data centre for hosting.

Perhaps the choice between partnering with an established hosting service to offer infrastructure or even platform services is the way ahead.

Rather than bothering with hosting at all, it could be worth providing the plumbing as a value add to applications and software suite services already available.

Or is there enough mileage left in the box-shifting world – be that software licensing or hardware pedalling?

Have your say in the new poll:

[poll id=”6″]