<p>For many in the telco industry, the concept of the telco cloud is no longer a question of "if," but a question of "when" it will become reality. That's because "telco cloud" is one of the most frequently mentioned terms in the industry today, creating widespread interest. Many operators are investigating its potential and concluding that telco cloud's benefits are too good to ignore.</p><p>The attractions of the telco cloud are similar to those in the IT environment, namely lower capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenditures (OPEX), and increased business agility.</p><p>The telco cloud cuts CAPEX through on-demand scalability and commoditization. It enables operators to shift application capacity to match service demand, as well as sharing capacity across and within sites. The use and consolidation of commodity hardware also reduces the required investment.</p><p>Meanwhile, automation and standardization will drive down OPEX. Operations and maintenance are simplified by using the same hardware and software platform for different network functions, while automated processes are run using cloud stacks, especially when deploying new network elements. For instance, in the core domain, an IMS network element in a cloud environment can be installed and commissioned in a couple of minutes.</p><p><a href="http://www.billingworld.com/articles/2014/01/reinventing-telco-for-the-cloud.aspx">Keep reading...</a></p>