In the 1990s, the hot suffix was .com. Today it’s aaS.

As most Connected Planet readers know, the most common variations are CaaS for Communications as a Service, IaaS for Infrastructure as a Service and SaaS for Software as a Service. But new permutations seem to come along almost every week—and just when it seems like there’s no application, hardware or business process left to move to the cloud, someone comes up with a new idea, often accompanied by a new letter (or two) to put in front of the aaS suffix.
I thought I would take this opportunity to round up some of the more interesting cloud-based offerings that have come to my attention in the last month or two, involving everything from enterprise communications to the service provider back office.

Dial tone in the cloud

vCom Solutions has trademarked the acronym TMaaS for Telecom Management as a Service. The company is betting that in the future, businesses will not buy communications services directly from a telco but instead will rely on a company like vCom. The company describes TMaaS as “a combination of aggregate buying power, streamlined processes and software tools backed by experienced support teams.” vCom claims it has saved business customers as much as 30% by buying their telecom services through vCom using the TMaaS platform. 

Cloud-based acceleration

Internap claims its XIP offering, which it calls “acceleration as a service,” can increase the speed of Internet communications by a factor of four. Interestingly, some of Internap’s customers are providers of cloud-based applications--including Jolokia Networks and Concurrent--that want to improve network performance for their customers. XIP is a TCP acceleration technology that complements Internap’s route-optimized network connectivity and does not require hardware, Internap says.

At least one company—Virtela—offers a similar acceleration service. And Ericsson and Akamai have partnered on an acceleration service specifically targeting mobile applications.

Single sign on as a differentiator 

Cloud.com offers what it calls “virtualized data center as a service,” which sounds basically like an Infrastructure as a Service offering. But the company seems to be differentiating its offering in several ways. For example, it recently inked a deal with Symplified, which calls itself a “cloud security company,” to provide single sign-on capability. As enterprises adopt more and more cloud services this is one of those details that can impact the ease of use of cloud-based solutions.

Mobility expense management

Corporate bean counters have become increasingly aware of the complexity of managing employee wireless bills, particularly when multiple service providers and pricing plan options are involved. Visage Mobile, provider of the MobilityCentral mobile management SaaS offering, recently claimed it has been able to save thousands of dollars over an 18-month period for its 600-employee customer Webcore Builiders.

LocaLoop offers NOC as a service

It’s often said that telecom is about scale, which creates a lot of challenges for small communications service providers such as rural Internet service providers and wireless network operators. LocaLoop has come up with a cloud-based network operations center and business management offering for small communications service providers that seems like it could be a great way to address the scalability issue.

Also targeting smaller network operators is Transverse, which offers a cloud-based billing and revenue management solution.

( originally published by Connected Planet.com http://connectedplanetonline.com/business_services/news/No-end-to-cloud-service-creativity-0411/)

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