Cloud-Native to Revolutionize the Telecom Sector

Telecom Business Review | Thursday, November 24, 2022

Summary: CSPs have been using the cloud to transfer and manage business-critical and even mission-critical applications. However, CSPs are just beginning to integrate the cloud into their most valuable asset, the network.

FREMONT, CA: Native cloud computing is the key to unlocking 5G apps' full economic potential. Being the first to adopt the cloud means achieving unprecedented scale, interoperability, and efficiency. What is necessary for communications service providers to migrate their network topology to the cloud?

Cloud-native refers to the patterns of organizations, architectures, and technologies that consistently, reliably, and at scale take full advantage of the cloud's capabilities to support cloud-centric business models. ​

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Cloud-native is a collection of best practices observed at organizations such as Netflix, Twitter, Alibaba, Uber, and Facebook, among others. Continuous deployment, containers, and microservices are among the practices used to achieve the elastic scalability capabilities, speed of providing new functionality, and increasing automation required to accommodate an uncertain competitive landscape. Therefore, the objective is to be able to quickly and cost-effectively adjust. ​

Why Is Cloud Native So Essential?

Software is increasingly divorced from the hardware and deconstructed into smaller components, which has many advantages, including operational efficiency and quicker time to market for new services. This enables more rapid and automated upgrades, or CI/CD (continuous integration and deployment).

What Are Cloud-Native Applications?

A core principle of a cloud-native application (CNA) is to break software into smaller, more manageable chunks. Typically, this is achieved via a microservice architecture. This design pattern aims to organize an application as a collection of loosely coupled stateless and stateful underlying services. This idea is not novel. It has always been best practice to split code into more manageable chunks, whether they are called "microservices," "subroutines," "code modules," or "software components." What's different is that each component now has a well-defined scope and can be independently deployed, scaled, and upgraded in a CaaS context. In addition, microservices communicate via network-based interfaces that are well-defined and version-controlled.

Cloud-Native In Telecom

Cloud-native transformation for telcos

Numerous operators and manufacturers in the telecommunications industry are adopting cloud-native technology. Although they have been embraced by public cloud and IT players for some time, the telecoms industry faces unique obstacles. One is that applications must be able to operate on various infrastructures, as most service providers have customized settings.

The four primary areas affected by its implementation are:

Application development and design, technology and infrastructure, procedures and modes of operation, and management and orchestration.

These four elements exist with others. They all influence one another; thus, none of them should be neglected at any time. For instance, if applications, infrastructure, and orchestration all adhere to cloud-native design patterns, but the ways of working and organizational structure and model do not, the full potential of the cloud-native setup will not be realized.

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