We hear more about cloud services all the time, so it's no surprise we're hearing more about cloud VoIP (voice over IP) services. But exactly what these are and how they differ from "traditional" carrier VoIP seems open to question.
According to at least one analyst, the term "cloud VoIP" may be hype, at least in some cases. "I think they're just cloudwashing," Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. , told me in an email today. "You can host VoIP (mostly UC/UCC) in the cloud."
Nolle refers to unified communications (UC), the technique of merging a variety of communication forms -- voicemail, voice calling, email, etc. -- into a single interface. Unified communications and collaboration (UCC) adds calendaring, conferencing, instant messaging, and similar services that allow business users to interact.
UC and UCC services have been available for a long time from carriers of all stripes. But cloud providers say their services are more flexible, more secure, and easier to use, thanks to the deployment of virtualization and other cloud facilitators.
There may be some substance here. At least one startup, 2600hz, claims to offer faster, easier, and more functional software for cloud providers to use in provisioning VoIP services. The distinction is the services created with 2600hz's open-source platform are more scalable and easier for third parties to control, according to one industry source. "Instead of paying a penny or so per minute to a VoIP company, businesses that want to add voice calling over the web to their social network, their app or their role-playing game just deploy this software and take care of it themselves," wrote Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOM.
Competitors to 2600hz include Asterisk, which is also billed as a framework on which VoIP services can be created. But Asterisk, an open-source group, doesn't promote its platform for cloud use. Digium, a company that offers free Asterisk software along with its own VoIP products, also does not promote cloud services.
Claims for cloud VoIP remain similarly uneven among carriers and equipment suppliers. Mitel Networks Corp. , for example, claims VoIP cloud services. But the carrier NTT Data, which recently opened a cloud services division, does not support VoIP, despite the fact that its parent, NTT, is a world leader in VoIP.
Despite inconsistencies, there are signs that cloud-based VoIP will increasingly be a promoted service. According to the market research firm Infonetics, global revenue for VoIP services totaled almost $58 billion in 2011, up 16 percent from a year earlier. At the same time, the firm says that demand for cloud-based services caused revenue for private branch exchange and UC services to grow 33 percent in 2011.
Bottom line? Expect VoIP offerings to move in as clouds, even if the services are similar to what came before.
"The FreeBSD jail mechanism is an implementation of operating system-level virtualization that allows administrators to partition a FreeBSD-based computer system into several independent mini-systems called jails. This allows users to have their own operating environments within a remote system, as if it's their own." Link
This gives the user full administrator ("root") access on the remote service, like the Cloud VPS. And it keeps the full operating system locked down and secure for all users on the system. And a clean cut separation from the providers and the customer's environments in the cloud (or on the jail system on a dedicated machine).
Mary, the VPS (Virtual Private Server) offering is hosted through a cloud-based provider and we re-sell it through this provider. The data itself, running on a variety of platforms which include Asterisk/FreePBX and also FreeSWITCH and Fusion PBX are on a cloud-based provider's jail-system on FreeBSD OS and virtualized on the cloud. The VoIP telephone offering, just one of the offerings (not all of ours are cloud) is a hosted-solution on the VPS and just includes call forwarding and voicemail services accessible from the cloud provider. Most of our offerings are through dedicated servers, clustered, with redundancy located at various Point of Presence sites.
Ah, thanks for the heads up, nathanwosnack. Question: What makes your services "cloud" VoIP? (No names of firms mentioned here, naturally; I'm strictly looking for basic knowledge.)
Thanks, Mary! I know this all too well from a first-person perspective because I in fact, run a new VoIP start up that does offer true cloud services for businesses. When my company started up 2 months ago my partners and I were searching for reliable VoIP cloud providers, and ran into this exact issue time and time again. Buyer beware!
You make a good point, Nathanwosnack. Sometimes I think the term cloud should be abolished. Indeed, perhaps some IT professionals should demand that it not be used in any vendor pitches.
I wonder how many marketers would run for the hills? But it might help clarify and awful lot of things.
Thanks for the write up, Mary. There are a lot of VoIP providers out there who claim to be offering "cloud services" but really don't offer them. These carriers are using the Cloud buzzword but are failing to deliver on their claimed product. Some providers offer cloud-like services (Voicemail, Call forwarding) but don't use the term. One needs to do a little homework and asking the right technical questions before jumping into an agreement with a provider. Additionally, cloud isn't for everyone - there are lots of VoIP providers with dedicated servers who offer redundant services that add up to "cloud" in terms of call reliability - and sometimes more reliable for power/network uptime.
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