The operators surveyed have multiple reasons for moving operations to the cloud, but it is clear to them that cloud is the future.
The vast majority of respondents (78 per cent) are moving towards the cloud, and only 22 per cent expressed caution or uncertainty with respect to cloud migration.
Less than 3 per cent of respondents said their organisations are relying solely on public cloud partners, but that doesn’t mean operators aren’t leveraging the likes of AWS Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. 78 per cent said they are adopting a hybrid cloud or other cloud model.
Operators may choose to move select functions to public cloud, as in the case of Telefónica, which partnered with AWS and Mavenir to offer managed IoT services. By running Mavenir’s cloud native functions on AWS, Telefónica gains agility to rapidly introduce new features and provide its customers with a consistent experience anywhere in the world, reducing time to market compared to traditional manual deployments. Enterprise customers can leverage the AWS cloud to process and store data and connect to other cloud-based services.
In the survey, capacity expansion and redundancy were chosen by operators as the number one reason to leverage public cloud. Other reasons include upfront capital expenditures (CAPEX) savings, the ability to adopt cloud native technology in telco workloads, and the future promise of subscription, as-a-service models.
Private networks deployed by operators may also leverage the public cloud. After AWS announced plans to use CBRS spectrum to offer private 5G directly to US enterprise customers, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg told investors his company now has the option to participate if and when it chooses.
Verizon also has edge compute partnerships with the top three US hyperscale cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. While these do not involve migrating the operator’s network functions to a public cloud, they marry 5G with cloud-based services, and from the enterprise point of view, these joint offerings will begin to blur the line between telco networks and public clouds.
Meanwhile Dish is building its network in AWS from the start and will partner with AWS in the lucrative market for private 5G networks. And, Microsoft has taken over AT&T’s virtualised core and is now running it in Azure, with plans to market the technology to other operators.
For MNOs, the advantages of public cloud partnerships are not just technical, according to Mavenir’s Pankajakshan. He said cloud service providers have large enterprise customers and those relationships can provide another go-to-market path for operators.
