CloudBand is the foundation for a new class of 'carrier cloud' services that will enable communications service providers to bring the benefits of the cloud to their own networks and business operations, and put them in an ideal position to offer a new range of high-performance cloud services to enterprises and consumers.
The public cloud model has transformed how we access applications and use computing power and data storage. Applications and data can now be accessed on-demand from data centres through the Internet. Some services, however, are dependent on levels of quality and performance that the public cloud is not able to provide.
Recent Alcatel-Lucent research that surveyed nearly 3 500 enterprise IT decision makers has found that their biggest concern by far about the cloud is performance, followed by security. CloudBand helps address these concerns by drawing on the unique strengths of communications service providers to create a new level of 'business class' cloud services that are delivered using secure, reliable, high-performance communications networks. This new level of service offers lower latency, better control of bandwidth and the ability to provide a guaranteed quality of service, all of which are necessary to meet the stringent performance demands of consumers and enterprises.
CloudBand is comprised of the CloudBand Management System, which delivers orchestration and optimisation of services between the communications network and the cloud, and the CloudBand Node, which provides the computing, storage and networking hardware and associated software to host a wide range of cloud services. CloudBand will be available for deployment in the first half of 2012.
