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Abstract
In the past 18 months or so, they've seen a slow but steady shift in the attitudes of larger carriers toward offering value-added services, said Steve Crawford, VP of marketing for vendor Jamcracker, whose own history spans the many phases of the software as a service market. Certainly, the shift toward IP networks has a lot to do with such renewed focus, which essentially blends networks and apps into a single whole. Verizon Business, for instance, offers an array of managed services, including a new network access control offering that was made available this past summer. T-Systems, the systems integrator division of Deutsche Telekom, made its mark offering SAP enterprise resource planning software implementations in its homeland. It is now offering those SAP apps in a virtualized, on-demand environment, with about 10% of its SAP implementations now offered as cloud services. That utility mind-set is now permeating all the services T-Systems offers, from desktop management to other facets of hosting, said Greg Garrett, SVP of business development and strategy.