It will also require telcos to rethink long-held assumptions in their usual business practices, he adds. These cover moving beyond bandwidth as a fixed quantity with a constant monthly recurring charge to bandwidth-on-demand integrated as part of an end-to-end cloud architecture, linked to an application-layer management control system.
Another issue is data security, which Wirt describes as "the No. 1 objection that people have to cloud services." Put simply, enterprises are being asked to entrust their apps and data to the cloud, and worries abound over what will happen to both should the company shut down, or experience a data breach.
However, says Wirt, fears over security risks will go down over time as cloud services see higher adoption but also because carriers that offer managed security services can integrate that capability into their cloud strategy.
"Because we provide managed security services, we have a visibility that most companies do not have, only my peer group does," says Wirt. "If you think of the way security is today, it starts when it hits the four walls of your premises, whether it's a firewall or the anti-virus software you put on a PC. As a network provider I can see from the originating source if someone is trying to promote a virus."