A newsworthy insight that was highlighted in a survey of CEOs  unfortunately got little attention due to the recent holidays. The findings show that by a landslide, enterprises would prefer that a traditional carrier or hosted VAR provide their access to the cloud.

It was a survey of 100 CEOs (note you have to register to download survey report) conducted by a maker of call center software. The results clearly reveal the preferred cloud access providers for enterprises. Sixty-eight percent of the survey respondents favored the carrier/VAR option, while 19 percent would opt for a communications company and 13 percent a Software-as-a-Service provider.

As Susana Schwartz of Connected Planet pointed out, these results shouldn't come as a complete surprise, since so many larger enterprises have existing and successful managed services relationships with carriers. Expanding such a relationship is a logical and comfortable move for an enterprise, as opposed to opening up an entirely new relationship with another provider.

Among other carrier advantages that Ms. Schwartz pointed out were the carriers' experience at security, service level agreements, pricing and bundling services, and managing complex partner relationships.

We've made this point before here at Seamless Enterprise, but while the "cloud" is a puffy, amorphous concept, what enables it? Nothing but the network. And who is the best when it comes to providing the network? A telecom carrier.

Telcos enable enterprises to get to their apps and data, whether those are out in the cloud, or more down-to-earth in the data center or a remote site. The advantages a carrier brings to the table are dependability, scalability, service quality, superior performance, and more.

There really isn't any other source out there that can connect enterprises with the cloud and, most importantly, enable them to take maximum advantage of mobility.