Telecoms companies have been slow movers when it comes to cloud services but Irish telco Eircom is looking to buck the trend. The company has agreed a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer public cloud services to customers in Ireland and across Europe.
The partnership builds on the strength of both companies: Eircom is the first telco to hook up with AWS in this way said Jason O'Conaill, head of cloud and datacentres at Eircom, but it's a move that makes sense. The telco can look after the needs of the customers while AWS provides the infrastructure. Eircom builds on the Direct Connect facility to AWS's Dublin data centre, resulting in very low latency.
"Telcos are looking to build the total cloud infrastructure themselves,” said O'Conaill, “but they then find it a lot harder than they expected. No telco is going to be able to scale to the same extent as AWS. They have three availability zones, meaning that the service is totally resilient.”
O'Conaill said Eircom's relationship with its existing customers would help overcome some of the suspicion that many had towards cloud. “There's been a reluctance to move to cloud,” said Enda Doyle, director of cloud services at Eircom, "just as there's been in the UK."
The telco is looking to expand its cloud service into the UK. “Cloud will be the first Eircom service to be offered outside of Ireland,” said Doyle. “Cost will be an important selling point for us, the AWS London data centre is 3c a gig, while Dublin is only 2c.”
The company wants to set up operations in the UK next year, with a sales office in London and a technical support set-up at a yet-to-be-decided location, said Doyle.
