The cloud isn’t an if. It’s a when. And it will probably start like this: a few forward-thinking carriers will begin moving large portions of their network functions into the cloud and realize that the savings are almost shocking. Not the 2X magnitude CapEx savings we’ve seen from replacing physical servers with cloud-based servers, but a 10X magnitude CapEx+OpEx savings that will occur when carriers move network hardware, applications and a significant portion of operations into the cloud. And when that happens, the rush to the cloud will be deafening.
Right now, the migration to the cloud seems relatively restrained, almost quiet. 5G still feels far off in the future. (In reality, 5G’s arrival is imminent.) Meanwhile, carriers are looking to get more mileage out of their existing infrastructure, and replacing it with cloud servers isn’t a compelling narrative. The compulsion will come when early adopters start proving that the cloud is a game-changer. At that moment, carriers will need to move quickly or be left behind. If they don’t already have a cloud-ready network architecture in place, they can forget about coming in first, second or third place in the race to deliver 5G services. That may sound like a dire prediction, but it doesn’t have to be.
What Cloud Native Technologies Hold for Carriers
A cloud-native network architecture can be had today—without ripping and replacing current infrastructure and without waiting for 5G to realize a return on investment. We see this as a phased approach to 5G: start investing in cloud-native technologies capabilities, with examples like control and user plane separation (CUPS), containers, Kubernetes and cloud-native network functions (CNFs) today to run your existing network more efficiently, and seamlessly shift those capabilities into the cloud when you’re ready.
Benefits of Going Cloud-Native
There are several important benefits of using cloud-native technologies now.
- It delivers network agility by allowing carriers to quickly create and turn up new services, particularly private networks that will serve an increasing number of enterprises.
- It offers automation of operations, which can dramatically reduce costs and accelerate time to market.
- It provides network flexibility as carriers can deploy the same cloud-native architecture on their private infrastructure to serve millions of existing subscribers, for example, while spinning up new enterprise services in the cloud to avoid impacting those subscriber services.
This hybrid approach, by the way, is how we expect most carriers will consume the cloud initially. It’s critical as carriers pursue more enterprise opportunities and use cases that they continue to deliver the same or better levels of service to their existing subscriber base—it is, after all, where the bulk of their revenues come from today. Focusing on enterprise services in the cloud reduces risk and allows carriers to easily spin up new network slices for each enterprise customer. This may have been less of an issue in the past when carriers were managing private LTE networks for a handful of large customers, but it becomes unmanageable in a traditional network architecture when you have thousands of enterprise customers.
As you would expect, of course, the benefits of a cloud-native architecture are most apparent in the cloud. That’s especially true when the cloud-native architecture and the cloud architecture are managed by the same company, as they are today with Affirmed Networks and Microsoft Azure. Whether you deploy our cloud-native architecture in your own private network or in the public cloud, you’re getting the same code—tested and hardened in both environments—for a solution that is fully prepared for CI/CD environments from day one. No other company today can say that.
And, rest assured, day one is coming sooner than you think.