Exclusive Interview with Goran Car, Head of Strategic Business Unit and CTO, ComCloud in Combis #telcocloud

We interviewed our speaker Goran Car, Head of Strategic Business Unit and CTO ComCloud in Combis, on trends and development which are shaping Cloud market today and tomorrow.

THE INTERVIEW

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What is the latest telco cloud project you are working on? Please tell us more about it.

Our Cloud solution ComCloud is a telco oriented, comprehensive and modular Cloud solution which provides facilities for automated provision of Cloud services and infrastructure management via self-service portals.

We are in the process of finishing a project for HT Eronet in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one incumbent telecom within EU. Both are Public Cloud projects with Marketplace and SSO enablers and basic IaaS services. In coming months it will be extended with additional services and different SaaS offerings.

Within the projects we tried to give the most that Cloud can give, taking into account customer wishes, of course.

For more information visit my lecture ‘Where Have All the Marketplaces Gone’. I will talk about best practice examples, guidelines and ideas how to utilize marketplace, as the most common centerpiece of Cloud selling strategies, in the best, most appealing and market-specific way, how to utilize marketplace in geographically-bound markets and how to make successful go-to-market strategy and maximize potential of Cloud services.

What telcos need to work on to provide best-in-class cloud?

We believe that user experience is crucial. Customer must be provided with best-in-class experience. Consumer is conditio sine qua non.

Consumerization is a very well-known trend, but it must be taken to next level in providing (business) Cloud services. Seamless integration of Marketplace and services, responsive web, subject-action relationship instead of classic action-subject web are all crucial elements for providing modern Cloud services. Technology is available to everybody, so what we feel will drive future Cloud business are experience and bundled offers.

We were thinking about trends and we have developed a solution which offers extensive customer experience, enabling service providers to efficiently distribute their Cloud services, and users to effectively self-manage them. Customers are thus able to manage their resources more promptly and thoroughly in order to adapt expenses to their actual needs. At the same time, the system provides service providers with an opportunity to expand into new markets more easily, removing all physical barriers which prevented them to do so until now.

What do you think is going to be the next big ‘thing’ in the telco cloud market?

I believe that there will be greater way of interworking, both between different Cloud services and customer’s internal IT. Moreover, customers will have the possibility to move between services more easily and configure more than one service together in greater solution.

For instance, we are experimenting with setting up virtual network service, being able to connect different services by usage of self-service portal.  It is important to constantly think of the needs of end users and to think innovatively.

What is your favorite book or film about the future of technologies?

It might not be so much about future of technology, but I really like Brian Green’s “The Elegant Universe”. It sets a theory, that when and if proved and detailed, it can open a completely new view on building things and technology that was once considered impossible.

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Goran Car will held a lecture ‘Where Have All the Marketplaces Gone’ on Wednesday, 29th of April, at 12:40 in Ballroom, Radisson Blu Portman, London.

Speaker Spotlight: 5 Minutes with Goran Car #TelcoCloud

Interview: Combis

Public Cloud on Geographically-bound Markets

We have an exciting list of speakers and one of them is Goran Car, Head of Division and CTO ComCloud in Combis, a Citrix Cloud Advisor.

What are the benefits of Combis Cloud solution?

ComCloud has been developed with the help of T-HT, a Deutsche Telekom group member, we could say – from an operator for an operator. We have developed a Cloud solution specifically targeted at geographically-bound markets, offering Public Cloud solutions developed on economy of scope premises with all necessary business, technical and marketing knowledge. To succeed, we had to satisfy a whole set of requirements: technical, sales, marketing and business one.

Cost must be optimized due to lower number of potential users while full set of features and unique customer experience must be offered for a service to be competitive and successful. On top of that, a full set of “telecom-grade” integration requirements was set including real-time billing and CRM integration, Single-Sign-On customer access to all Cloud services and much more.

Taking into account operator’s budget constraints and short time to market goals, we build public cloud services that can be cheaper than those from big cloud players, and with more features than offered by other solutions and with excellent, one-stop-shop user experience, all integrated into telecom OSS/BSS.

Who are the intended users of Combis ComCloud solution?

Our solution is focused on the needs of the telecom operators.  Throughout the last few years, telecom operators are changing the focus of their business strategies to IT services and products.  Today, it’s about Cloud.

On big markets like USA you can compete and fight global Cloud players on more or less the same ground, with the same competitive weapons, but when deploying on geographically-bound markets, finding a right business case and solution for Cloud services can be a challenge.

ComCloud, as a Cloud Delivery Platform, offers all needed integration interfaces and support for business processes while keeping the cost down. As overall solution, it also includes standardized and optimized architecture for underlying infrastructure and it can scale up and down, per customer wishes.

How do you manage to respond to all the challenges of geographically-bound market?

As a one-stop-shop for all Cloud services within telecom, we use economies of scope, incorporated into design, and offer large number of services at more affordable price thus making ComCloud suitable solution for geographically-bound markets.  It took a lot of optimization, design and architecture innovation in order to reduce costs and make an affordable solution with the best possible features.

Other important characteristic of ComCloud solution is its modularity and our ability to adjust and design solution in accordance to the customers’ specific needs, including Cloud enablers and the special features for the end users.

We offered wholesale or white label possibilities to broaden market and further improve business case. Toward customer, services like Virtual Private Servers and Virtual Datacenter are offered as business packages via easy to use self-service portals. All actions from user registration, service buying and activation are done through a single, easy–to–use portals, offering enhanced user experience. ComCloud offers integration of other cloud services like SaaS offerings, making ComCloud real one-stop-shop for all Cloud services that one telecom can offer.

What was the reaction of telecom operators to your solution and where have you implemented your pilot projects?

Combis designed a solution to be modular and to be extendable like Lego bricks. And not just on services level but also on Cloud enablers level like SSO and Marketplace.

Flexibility and ability to build Cloud solution either by top-down or bottom-up principle are some of the most important characteristics we are able to provide to our customers. This, as well as commercial flexibility in terms of different CAPEX and OPEX models is of great importance to our customers.

Hrvatski Telekom, a member of Deutsche Telekom group is one of our publicly announced customers. We have multiple case studies published with HT, including ones from NetApp, Citrix and Microsoft.

For more information visit my lecture ‘Business Case for Deploying Public Cloud on Geographically-bound Markets’ on 29th of April at Garmisch-Partenkirchen conference room at 15:45.