Webscale competition increases among carrier cloud providers

Combined Cloud as a Service revenue for telecom operators in Technology Business Research Inc.’s (TBR) 2Q18 Carrier Cloud Benchmark rose 26.3% year-to-year in 2Q18 due to strategic acquisitions and alliances, investments in new data centers, and portfolio expansion in growth segments such as SaaS and hybrid cloud. All benchmarked companies sustained year-to-year Cloud as a Service revenue growth in 2Q18 as significant opportunity remains for carriers to target businesses seeking greater cost savings, scalability and efficiency by migrating traditional infrastructure and applications to the cloud.

Certain Asia- and Europe-based operators including China Telecom, Telefonica and Orange accelerated Cloud as a Service revenue growth in 2Q18 as the companies benefit from data sovereignty laws, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), requiring cloud data to be stored in local data centers, which is slowing the growth momentum of U.S.-based webscale providers in these regions. Pressure from U.S.-based webscale providers will continue to increase over the next five years in Asia and Europe, however, as they ramp up data center investments and partner with local data center providers to gain traction in these regions.

TBR’s Telecom Practice provides semiannual analysis of Cloud as a Service revenue in key segment splits and regions for the top global carrier cloud operators in its Carrier Cloud Benchmark. Operators covered include Bharti Airtel, British Telecom, CenturyLink, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Korea Telecom, NTT, Orange, Singtel, Telefonica and Vodafone.