For some time, telephone companies have had a business unit focused on providing services to companies that go far beyond connectivity and telephony.
These are proposals that are based on cloud computing (cloud computing) under three modalities:
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): allows to make available all types of applications and systems. For example, the line of Virtual Private Servers (SVP).- Platform as a service (PaaS): they are products to host, create, implement and scale websites or enterprise class databases in a matter of seconds.
- Solutions as a service (SaaS): they offer companies to manage their presence and positioning on the web and use office programs or other software.
According to a study by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean - and coinciding with several consultancies - the public cloud is the cloud computing model with the greatest presence in the region.
Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Chile are the countries with the highest percentage increase forecast for the coming years, doubling or even tripling the current consumption of these services.
Among the reasons, they stand out:
- Pressure from organizations to optimize operating costs and reduce investment.
- The exponential growth of data.
- Storage costs.
- The challenge of guaranteeing the backup of the records.
- The need to increase the capacity to analyze data to produce information that supports business processes.
But there are also other economic advantages: payment for use, rapid scalability and flexible contracts or, even, the absence of contracts.
For all this, the companies that turned to this market experienced a great growth and have a promising future.In fact, according to the report of 451 Research, "in 2019, around 60% of companies in Latin America will move to the cloud executing their IT operations outside their facilities".
These data are also supported by a study conducted by Telecom, which indicates that cloud tools are contracted by 28% of Argentine SMEs in all areas.
In addition, he points out that 35% of medium-sized companies, from 51 to 200 employees, use these services.The local proposals
In Argentina, the three telcos provide these benefits under the same slogan: helping businesses to implement their developments and projects in an agile, secure way and paying only for the resources they use. All three have their own data centers.
The Movistar proposal is called Open Cloud. Martín Pruzansky, B2B head of Telefónica de Argentina, tells IProUP that customers self-manage the platform through a web portal, with local currency billing per minute and volume discount, thus optimizing their IT budget by not investing in equipment.
The communications firms are not alone in the provision of these services, but they are allied with partners. Movistar does it with Huawei as a strategic partner, but also works with Microsoft and Amazon.
"In this way, we offer integration with these clouds." Being a multicloud provider is what allows us to adjust the solution to what customers really demand and not force them to adapt their requirements based on the offer we have, "explains Pruzansky.Claro has since 2013 with a business unit specially developed to provide cloud solutions to companies. Currently, it offers Office 365, web conferencing, data center, security and online backup solutions, among others.
This year he launched his "Public Cloud" service. It is a project of regional scope promoted by América Móvil that consists of a platform of virtual servers with the modality of payment per hour of use and without contracts.
Marcelo Guglielmucci, manager of Marketing and Commercial Planning of Claro, explains to IProUP that "this type of services was thought for the SMEs, but today the big companies are also choosing them because they privilege the cost savings of tasks that they used to do by themselves" .
"In addition, the myths linked to security and availability have been demolished, and we have users all over the country, as the barrier linked to connectivity problems has been overcome," remarks the executive.
On the other hand, it is an "export" service: from its hub in Argentina, Claro serves Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay.
According to the executive, the company projects a growth of this business unit of 100% compared to 2017 by the end of this year. By 2019 it expects to grow even more.
"This is due to several phenomena: the stage of evangelization on the benefits of the cloud has already passed, the firms that have not yet migrated will do so as a matter of advantage and, finally, because we are making strong progress with our program of partners launched in 2017 by which we adapt our cloud to the solutions of other companies to sell their products in a simpler and faster way, "adds Guglielmucci.
As an example, the manager mentions Tango. The management software firm offers its solutions through Claro.
Telecom is another of those that is betting on the segment, unifying its offer with the corporate services of Fibertel after the merger with Cablevisión.Sebastián Borghello, Manager of Corporate Product of Telecom Argentina, whose brands for the companies segment are FiberCorp, Personal and Telecom, explains to iProUP that the SaaS and IaaS modalities are the ones with the most number of clients, although the highest turnover was The IaaS and PasS solutions carry it, since they are projects for large companies.
With regard to prices, they may vary according to the requirements of each case. As a reference, the input values are $ 50 for mailbox and $ 400 for virtual servers.
In the case of Claro, the three modalities are quite even in terms of billing.
The firm publishes its amounts on its website and even offers an online quote to budget specific services. As an example, the mailbox costs $ 50.83.
Regarding the price variation, the three interviewees say that they make a mix between the evolution of the dollar price and local inflation.
This is because some licenses are sold in US currency, although customers always pay in Argentine pesos.Benefits of telcos
Operators have several advantages over other service providers in the cloud, for example, their networks offer adequate bandwidth, quality of service and end-to-end security, as well as commercial maturity that provides some stability and attention.
n the oiled customer. In addition, they have better operating processes and a very strong brand weight.
The sources of the companies consulted by iProUP agree on the reasons why choosing a telco can be more effective than hiring other providers, such as integrators.
"Today there is no company that does not need connectivity and we can also provide this service." When hiring a cloud and other services linked to the Internet and telephony, it is always better to talk with only one provider than with several. client and the unified after-sales service, "argues the Telecom executive.Given the maturity of this technology and the associated services, when buying the cloud proposals from the communications firms it is easy to see that they are all quite similar. So, how do you select the provider?
"You have to compare levels of stability and speed of the connection," suggests Borghello.
He adds: "It is a good idea to ask if the telco has experience in the industry, since it can offer a much higher added value because it has the expertise and know-how in that vertical, for which it will offer better advice."
Claro's executive points in the same line and, to conclude, clarifies: "We also have to stop a lot about how is the after-sales service, the customer service and the technical support level of each one".