After many years of playing the underdog in the enterprise telecommunications arena, cable service providers are now on equal footing with traditional telecommunications companies when it comes to business telecom services. As cloud computing and distributed networking sit poised to become the next indispensable business technology, smart acquisitions of specialist companies seem likely to propel cablecos in general, and Time Warner Cable in particular, to the front of the pack where they might just dominate the business communications landscape in the near future.

1. Cablecos and the Cloud
Although cable companies' entry into enterprise-grade services initially was, at times,
characterized by tentative testings of the water and the occasional misstep, the growth curve that
expanded into the business telecommunications arena is now long behind them. Having enacted
a number of deliberate strategies for penetrating the enterprise market, cablecos now find
themselves with an enviable foothold in the business services space—and with no small amount
of momentum behind them as they look to expand further.
Taking Care of Business
The initial push by cablecos into business services began in earnest several years ago, when
cablecos began offering competitive Internet services such as broadband. After earning consumer
trust by providing consistent, reliable, and competitive service, cable providers began using
bundled services as a way to add value for those customers who switched over from traditional
telco providers. As cablecos became surer of their footing, they added more and newer
technologies to their rosters. The most recent example of this is the widespread addition of fiber-
based Internet, Metro Ethernet, and advanced voice services, which have given cablecos the
ability to tailor a selection of services that meets the specific needs of larger customer
opportunities.
This strategy of developing new technologies outside of their traditional offerings and, in
particular, the smart way in which it has been done, has put cablecos on equal footing with
incumbent telcos as the industry enters the next great phase of business telecommunications—
cloud computing. Cablecos' deliberate strategy also has given them the momentum they need to
pull ahead and grow in the enterprise communication space going forward.
Doing It the Smart Way
For a perfect example of a cableco entering a new customer segment in a smart and well-
thought-out way, one needs to look no further than Time Warner Cable’s acquisition of NaviSite,
which has allowed the cableco to jump-start its capabilities in cloud computing in dramatic
fashion.
Cable companies have always been in the cloud computing business, of course. Cable television
is really nothing more than providing shared data over a distributed network, which is the very
definition of cloud computing. The cloud-based needs of home and business consumers who
want to watch television, and the needs of enterprises who want to share scalable amounts of
real-time data across multiple locations are very different, however. Time Warner Cable
recognized this difference, and, rather than reconfiguring their entire system in an attempt to
reinvent the wheel, the company acquired an acknowledged leader in the field of business cloud
provisioning and management—NaviSite.
NaviSite is a worldwide provider of enterprise-class, cloud-enabled hosted and managed services
through their own data centers including: Cloud Hosting/Server Virtualization, Desktop-as-a-
Service, Managed applications, and Dedicated Hosting Solutions.

2. Cloud computing is still a new enough technology in the enterprise sector that many service
providers continue to scramble to find their way. The growing trend of acquiring cloud-specialist
companies—rather than developing their own cloud capabilities in-house—indicates that
cablecos, at least, know where they’re going. Their track record over the last handful of years is
also a strong indicator that not only will cablecos get to the cloud first, they’ll get to the cloud
best.
If you'd like to learn more about partnering with Time Warner Cable Business Class,
please visit us at business.twc.com/partner.