New Kids On The Block

You maybe remember the “New Kids on the Block” is an award-winning American pop group that enjoyed success in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a boy band. The boy bands in late1980s literally changed the music landscape as the new kids on the block in the cloud computing would. These new kids on the bloack are Google, Skype, YouTube, and Facebook.



Makers of telecom white-label carrier grade systems or software component that is extremely reliable, well tested and proven in its capabilities are also on the defensive. Traditionally they have made billions by selling their programs, often demanding hefty sums to install them and then charging an annual maintenance fee for upgrades and technical support. But this highly lucrative business model has come under increasing pressure, says Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For one, he says, software vendors will have to find new ways to charge for their wares: in the cloud, tying licensing fees to the number of users, for instance, will be difficult, since services will mostly be consumed by other machines. More importantly, the corporate world has become less and less willing to buy software for large sums of money, so software firms listed on America’s stockmarkets now make most of their profits from maintenance and other services.



Unfortunately still some of telecom software companies with experience from the good old days are not up to date about what is happing in the new era of cloud computing and still emphasizing on managing their company product development and sales in the same old fashion. This will not work as the new kids on the block are offering branded services that can connect and work together and help customers move their computing and service offering to the consumers around. This is music to the ears of big operators and their CTOs.