A common theme in here is my prognosticating doom for traditional enterprises. If I look at which traditional sectors look the most ripe for disruption, it’s the compliance-heavy ones, often with a legacy of state ownership or control. Banks, airlines, telcos are top of my list of interesting and threatened sectors. Which is why it’s always interesting to see these traditional industries do something smart to enter the bastions of those offering something new. Often this turns out to be little more than spin, but sometimes their initiatives stick and help them to continue to prosper.
Telefónica, one of the world’s largest telecom providers, across 25 countries and some 314 million access points, is actively trying to innovate and “smarten the dumb pipes”. An example of this comes with the announcements today that the company is rolling out a broad Telefónica-branded solution to give enterprise customers a “trusted provider of cloud service” (yeah so OK, that “trusted” moniker sticks in ones throat a little bit, but telcos ARE traditionally a type of provider that has a deep relationship within enterprise.
Using CTERA’s advanced Active Directory GPO (Group Policy Object) and Single Sign On integration, Telefónica’s enterprise customers can effortlessly deliver end-point cloud backup and file sync & share services to hundreds or thousands of employees, with a single click.
All kind of bread and butter cloud storage stuff but take that “run of the mill” offering and badge it with a massive vendor like Telefónica and great things can happen. Of course there is a massive proviso here – it may be little more than vapor ware and a chance for the company to tick customers cloud check box. That’s be a shame, but something that we’ve seen many times before. It’s very much a case of watch this space but either way, for CTERA, it’s a great reference case to show to other prospects.
Thanks for covering this. I completely get your skepticism, and we certainly hope to see Telefonica succeed with this service, and are working together to ensure that it does, not just “ticking the box”.
I will, however, contend with your characterization of this offering as “run of the mill”. In fact I’d dare you to find a similar offering from other service providers (CTERA partners notwithstanding). Many service providers offer backup, but very few offer hybrid backup. Some offer sync & share (dropbox type solution) but very few with enterprise features like Active Directory integration, private encryption key management and source-based global de-duplication. Etc., etc. – the devil is in the details.