Cloud-native telecom: benefits, challenges, and open source tools

Applications built in the cloud or through a cloud-native technology (i.e., decomposing applications into smaller sets of microservices, containerization, serverless architecture, and continuous integration and delivery pipelines that can be instantiated dynamically) have been the standard for most enterprises. This is not different in the telecommunications field. In fact, among the few cloud-native applications that communications service providers (CSP) are focusing on are 5G networks, as they leverage technology and modeling approaches such as network function containerization, service-oriented architecture, software-defined networking, network-as-a-service, cloudification, etc. Such modeling approaches created an opportunity for CSPs to transform their economics and make themselves more agile in creating new services and products [1].

Although CSPs can deploy services, software, and capabilities in a much more dynamic way and use their infrastructure much more efficiently with cloud-native services, there are a couple of challenges that CSPs face. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of cloud-native for CSPs, the challenges faced by CSPs, suggestions about how to mitigate such challenges, and examples of open source projects for cloud-native telecom applications.

Benefits of cloud-native for Communication Service Providers (CSPs)

Why should CSPs adopt cloud-native? First, cloud-native ensures a high degree of scalability in a way that CSPs are able to scale their resources up or down according to the application requirements. Having high scalability allows telecommunications companies to reduce their costs by not needing to maintain their resources.

Second, cloud-native helps CSPs quickly recover from infrastructure issues, cyber-attacks, unpredictable network latency, transient faults, etc. Furthermore, with cloud-native, telecom companies can deliver their services more quickly. This is because by using a microservices architecture, that allows the application to have multiple independent microservices, companies can have a faster release pace.

Cloud-native also helps to automate manual processes such as testing, deploying, orchestrating, and monitoring networks. This automation can be done by continuous integration, testing, and deployment. Consequently, companies can analyze their network performance and respond to issues in real-time, improving customer satisfaction.

Finally, there are so many available options for infrastructure management that telecom companies can avoid vendor lock-in. Thanks to open source and different cloud technologies, companies can adopt hybrid and/or multi-cloud infrastructures.

Challenges for Communication Service Providers (CSPs)

Although cloud-native has many benefits for CSPs, they also pose four main challenges. First, to benefit from the cloud-native, it is necessary to change the software development life cycle. It is possible the deployment architecture used by the enterprise on-premises is different than the one used in the cloud, which is automated.

Additionally, there are many scenarios in which applications cannot be moved directly to the cloud. In that case, telecom companies will need to create a new application that will use the cloud or port the application to the cloud. Usually, the main issues when creating a cloud-native application are cloud storage and encryption, integration with cloud backup services, load balancing across geographies, cloud security mechanisms across applications, and identity management across clouds [1].

Second, privacy and security might be an issue, especially for those using public clouds. Concerning privacy, in telecommunications, it is necessary to have data integrity, service availability, and data confidentiality. Concerning security, some concerns are related to the accidental release of protected data, user authentication, and access controls. The CSPs’ cloud provider must address all of them.

Third, it is hard to guarantee end-to-end latency. Finally, since the cloud vendor owns the hardware infrastructure, there is a problem with vendor lock-in and standardization. For example, if there is downtime or interruption in service due to a hardware problem, the telecom company must rely on the cloud vendor to fix the problem. Some companies have backed up their entire application data in another cloud to solve this problem.

2 ways to mitigate some of the challenges faced by CSPs

One way to mitigate such challenges is to have a multi-vendor CSP. In this configuration, telecom companies have more flexibility and freedom to customize the CSP cloud platform. Furthermore, CSPs need to implement cloud-native solutions such as containers, microservices, and serverless architectures to provide scalability and automation.

Open source for cloud-native telecom

Open source is the best way to go to help you to have a cloud-native telecom.

• The TARS project is a microservices framework that can help you to create microservices and benefit from the cloud advantages.
• The Nephio project is a Kubernetes-based cloud-native intent automation tool. It has common automation templates to simplify the deployment and management of multi-vendor cloud infrastructure and network functions across large-scale edge deployments.
• Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration tool for automating software deployment, scaling, and management.
• The NextArch Foundation is an open source foundation that targets heterogeneous infrastructure and multi-vendor cloud. To learn more about NextArch, check out this article.

About the author:

Isabella Ferreira is an Ambassador at TARS Foundation, a cloud-native open-source microservice foundation under the Linux Foundation.

References

[1] https://capgemini-engineering.com/us/en/insight/cloud-native-engineering/