Old myths about the VoIP in the Cloud
In the early days of Cloud computing, the Cloud and virtualization were hostile to anything involving media and real-time communications. This resulted in jitter and poor call quality, causing a general absence of interest from service providers due to the likelihood of highly dissatisfied customers. For example, Amazon AWS, a widely adopted system, was not built for real-time communications.
Today, however, we have Cloud-based real-time communication in technologies such as Alexa and Google Home. They are not perfect, but in time and with proper integration, Cloud-based VoIP could make its way into both the home and business sectors.
Current status of VoIP in the Cloud
ITSPs are now starting to use the Cloud (AWS, Azure, etc) in the developed world because POPs (Points Of Presence) are limited elsewhere (in third world countries). But this is changing fast, as improvements to infrastructure are more easily made to support such architecture. While the Cloud is not perfect for media and RTC handling and introduces anomalies, it is considered to be “just good enough,” so it is being adopted for VoIP implementation.
Over time, virtualization has evolved from software emulation to being “close to the metal”; this assists VoIP. The more the Cloud can move away from simple software emulation protocols, the better its potential for use as a viable VoIP platform. However, the technology is still imperfect, and for most consumers, “just good enough” is not the level of service they expect.