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Choosing the right Kubernetes environment for dynamic, elastic scaling
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Cloud native computing is not new. Enterprise IT and web-scale cloud providers have been relying on container-based applications for many years, and they now start up billions of containers every week. The momentum behind cloud native among telecommunications service providers (SPs) and the solutions they deploy, however, has accelerated only in recent years.
Some of the first cloud native opportunities within SPs have come in the operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS), as these applications have been ripe for modernization to improve and deliver the best customer experience they can. When SPs have hundreds of applications for OSS and BSS that have grown independently and siloed along with separate services over the years, whether sourced or home-grown, most do not interoperate or share data with each other. Not only does this slow innovation for new revenue-generating services and enhancements, but it limits access to the subscriber data and network telemetry needed to synthesize more holistic views of customers and operations, creates inconsistent engagements with customers, and causes costly inefficiencies.
With cloud-native applications, SPs and their solution vendors are building microservices architectures to accelerate innovation. Choosing the right Kubernetes environment also enables dynamic, elastic scaling. This foundation then allows them to migrate to DevOps methodologies and automated CI/CD pipelines. All of these can help deliver shorter time to market and increased agility - key elements for improved customer experience.
Operationally, cloud-native OSS and BSS have advantages that translate to lower costs and better availability. Because containers use fewer resources than virtual machines and because they are faster to initiate and tear down, systems run more efficiently and costs are better optimized. These same characteristics provide better resiliency, as well, because new instances can be spun up in new locations rapidly when issues arise. The greater portability of cloud-native applications allows SPs to deploy truly hybrid cloud environments to address capacity needs or extend resiliency. Furthermore, containerization reduces maintenance costs by minimizing the scope of changes, fixes, and upgrades to software, reducing verification testing, and lowering the risks to the overall system affected.
Automation within a Kubernetes platform helps achieve operational simplicity for scaled-up and scaled-out operations across private, public and hybrid environments - essentially a "lights out" approach to cloud-native. Kubernetes Operators -- the Operator Framework is now a project under the stewardship of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation -- codify the operational knowledge, practices and principles required to run modern OSS and BSS workloads at cloud scale, making cloud-native infrastructure and applications easier to deploy, scale and maintain. More than 150 community Operators are now available now in the OperatorHub.io repository.
Built on the back of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform,
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leads the commercial Kubernetes market and provides a more secure, standards-compliant foundation for microservices-based OSS/BSS architecture. The solution protects not only the host environment, but also protects containers from each other. Red Hat also provides signed, certified container images as a means of further securing cloud-native environments.
provides solutions for OSS and BSS processes and systems that give service providers and their partners opportunities to transform their OSS and BSS at their own pace to a more modern architecture. It helps accelerate integration, consolidate systems, and establish a foundation for pervasive process automation, positioning providers to increase efficiency, improve customer experience, and create new revenue and business models.
Our SP customers have been deploying these technologies on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform in production across a diverse set of IT, network operations, video, and OSS/BSS application environments to modernize their businesses and accelerate time to revenue. Now customers are expanding OpenShift cloud-native architectures into their rapidly changing networking environments. At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019, Red Hat helped lead a team of partners from a number of open source communities to
a prototype end-to-end 5G cloud-native network, using open source infrastructure and components including Kubernetes. In addition, hardware acceleration support means that SPs can take advantage of containerized applications’ direct access to hardware, helping them get the most out of their investment. Red Hat has been a key contributor in the open source community for readying container infrastructure to meet the robust, secure, and operational management needs of deploying cloud-native networking applications for service providers. With those in place, containers, microservices, and cloud-native approaches can bring their compelling benefits to 5G rollouts and new edge use cases.
Red Hat is at the forefront of the industry for cloud-native infrastructure across industries. Service provider customers have partnered with us to harden these technologies to stand up to their demanding environments for flexibility, scale, security and resiliency. Today Red Hat is working within the open source community to bring the advances of Kubernetes orchestration to virtual machines and to simplify environments that will use both as networks evolve. Years of practical experience not only benefit customers but get poured back into the core open source projects with other community contributions to drive faster innovation for all. Red Hat Consulting can provide the expertise to build and move your plans forward and can help you transform your environment to cloud-native via the
residency program.
Learn more about Red Hat solutions for telecommunications service providers at
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Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenShift, and the Red Hat logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Red Hat is a silver sponsor of the Digital Transformation World Series. While we can’t meet physically, we’ve reimagined everything you know and love about Digital Transformation World and turned it into a six-week digital event. The Series will offer a varied and engaging content program that will enable our global membership to connect, learn and collaborate, supporting all time zones. Don’t miss out on the festival of collaboration! Register today. Note: Communication service providers: you can claim your free pass here.
