“If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business.” – Marc Benioff, Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Salesforce.
In the mid to late 90s, tech visionaries such as Mark Benioff and Steve Jobs were taking their first steps into the cloud. As internet speeds gathered pace, milestones started to happen with launches of cloud-based companies such as Salesforce, AWS, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox and iCloud. The cloud is available anywhere, knocks out hardware costs and dramatically reduces the amount of IT resources required to run networks – and businesses are catching on in a big way.
Today, enterprises of all kinds are migrating from physical data centers to the cloud at a significant rate. It makes excellent business sense. The cloud allows a distributed architecture, access to greater security, network flexibility, redundancy, new services, fast time to market and all at a lower TCO. As Enterprises are beginning to migrate, the time is now for satellite to embrace the cloud as part of its converged infrastructure.
At ST Engineering iDirect, we are undertaking a move towards infrastructure virtualization and the cloud to ultimately allow our customers to scale faster without the need for additional cap-ex investments. In order to interoperate easily and to run in the cloud, satellite infrastructure needs to first be virtualized. Today we are taking the steps to virtualizing parts of our hub and NMS infrastructure so that we can offer cloud-based network deployments. And we are also embarking on partnerships with Cloud Service Providers (CSP) that will enable us to accelerate our time to market and ensure we have a proven validated solution for our customers.
We recently entered into such a partnership with Microsoft Azure Space to develop a virtualized modem that can be deployed on a Microsoft Azure HCI Stack based solution. Through this collaboration, we will leverage the Azure software radio tools to enable our satcom solutions through the Azure cloud platform. This represents a major milestone in our strategic direction that will lead to the virtualization and cloudification of our satcom platform. Importantly, this positions satellite as a mainstream access technology and opens up opportunities with customers that perhaps had never before considered satellite. Time to embrace cloud-based satcom services.
What do cloud-first services offer in terms of benefits to service providers that are planning their migration to the cloud? Read our whitepaper to find out!
Embracing the Cloud in Hybrid Networks is a comprehensive take on the reasons why businesses are migrating to the cloud, why satellite needs to move to the cloud and technology enablers that will make this happen. Download it today.
Get more insight from our Head of Enterprise, Jean Michel Rouylou in this recent Satellite and the Cloud C21 webinar, Why Hybrid Networks are Key for Satellite Connectivity.
And if you haven’t done so yet listen to our partner webinar where experts from ST Engineering iDirect, SES, and Marlink discuss how to enable a cloud-based infrastructure that is stronger and more agile.