I’ve been saying for years (see here and elsewhere) that Cloud Computing may well be the savior of telcos staring down the barrel of rapidly diminishing revenues. In the fact of a massive reduction in telco voice traffic, in favor of IP telephony, telcos are left holding a commoditized revenue stream amidst calls for yet more investment in core infrastructure – a wholly unpalatable situation. It’s no wonder then that you have acquisitions like the Verizon/Terremark deal announced last week. After all, telcos own the billing relationship – bolting more services on top of that is a no-brainer.

Today it’s the turn of Allstream, a business-focused communications provider that is a division of Manitoba Telecom Services. They’re announcing a deal that will see them offer Geminare’s (more on them here) Cloud Replication Services to heir customers. The product offers businesses auto-failover and redirection to a real-time, eplicated server environment in the cloud. It’s outsourced business continuity, offered as a commodity from  telco – nice!

It also leverages the existing nationwide IPfibre network- ensuring DR delays are kept to a minimum. A demo video of the service is embedded below – and more information is available on the Allstream site. The offering will be available to Allstream customers from next month.