DTW (Digital Transformation World)
DTWS: Deutsche Telekom's Alex Choi draws an escape route for the migration dilemma
Deutsche Telekom’s Alex Choi sees open source and Open APIs as key to the cloud native, 5G future for communications service providers.
DTWS: Deutsche Telekom's Alex Choi draws an escape route for the migration dilemma
How do telecom operators get from where they are to where they need to be? This was the big question posed to industry leaders during a TM Forum Digital Transformation World Series session on October 21 called 'IT resilience and the migration dilemma'. The assortment of speakers from both telcos and vendors discussed the challenges communications service providers (CSPs) face in migrating to the cloud. Deutsche Telekom’s Alex Choi, Senior Vice President of Research and Technology Innovation, pointed the way but urged fellow operators to finish some foundational work in operations first. The session, sponsored by Nexign, falls under TM Forum's theme of Cloud Native IT & Agility and is available to watch on-demand, now. Choi said that while telcos’ virtualization journey is underway, key operations functions remain siloed and virtualization has not been extended to the radio access network (RAN). Furthermore, the industry lacks a consistent unified platform across all domains and consequently misses out on end-to-end solutions that could automate network management and operations.
“With the old way of building networks, we will struggle to optimize production, and we will not have the operational agility nor service velocity to spin up and scale services on demand – nor [be able] to truly expose and monetize network capabilities to third parties,” he said. “We really need to break down the silos and the boundaries between fixed and mobile, access and core, software and hardware, and adopt a more agile software approach.”
Choi said Deutsche Telekom’s goal is to transform its infrastructure to a new open, distributed, cloud-based – and eventually cloud native – architecture, with a simpler, intelligent, automated production model to better enable the delivery of 5G services that can solve enterprises’ real challenges. Accomplishing this will require the following:
- Cloudification – making virtual network functions fully cloud native
- Disaggregation – opening access to network functions through Open RAN
- Orchestration – automating orchestration across network and service domains
- Open APIs – exposing network capabilities to innovators and other third parties and develop a partner ecosystem
The role for open source
With 5G, it will be necessary to manage service quality end to end. “The importance of automation and orchestration will only increase as multiple entities have to be managed,” Choi explained. “We believe that open source will play a critical role here.” Deutsche Telekom is collaborating on the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) with other operators and vendors to develop a 5G orchestrator that will include AI, machine learning and closed loop monitors to improve the efficiency of network operations. Choi said that part of what is lacking is a common understanding of what it means to be cloud native. He believes that for CSPs being cloud native will require both network and IT clouds, in other words a cloud native network system.
Reasons to change
The transition to a cloud native 5G core network promises to introduce a new agile operating model, Choi said, adding that modernizing core network infrastructure will lead to: He believes CSPs have good reasons to deploy a new 5G core network and move to Standalone 5G: network slicing, real-time applications, fixed and mobile convergence, and ultra-reliable low latency communications (uRLLC). To get there, Deutsche Telekom is leveraging 3GPP’s service-based architecture, which specifies a functional architecture and standardized interfaces and deploys the 5G cloud core on a software-defined cloud native infrastructure. This core implementation would use microservices, containers, centralized orchestration, continuous integration/continuous development open APIs such as the TM Forum Open APIs and GPRS Tunneling Protocol. As operators take this journey, hyperscale cloud providers will not be sitting still. They already dominate the device platform, virtual connectivity in the upper layer protocols and global scale public cloud, Choi noted. Telcos, on the other hand, control the SIM card, which is valuable as a customer touchpoint, and of course, connectivity infrastructure. Cloud providers are also eyeing the edge, where CSPs see opportunity. Choi said that the biggest control points operators need to start leveraging are:
- Greater automation, even fully automated deployment, for faster time to market
- Coordinated orchestration to manage the complexity of multi-cloud, multi-vendor workloads across core and RAN transport
- New policy-driven scaling and resiliency models for demand-driven network growth
- Automation for detection and correction as well as automated software upgrades
- The 5G core in order to enable new use cases like network slicing and control user-plane separation
- Monetize differentiated quality of service and multi-channel virtual networks
- Expose network capabilities through APIs to enable capabilities like network as a service for enterprises and other service providers
- Distribute telco edge cloud locations closer to B2B customers
APIs are key
It is important for operators to take an API-first approach, according to Choi.
“Network APIs are key to monetization,” he said. “Today, we can think about APIs as a platform-based capability that creates new use cases, whereby the telco industry or third parties can create and offer the services and experiences on top. This is particularly true for edge cloud – APIs will be key to unlocking the potential of edge cloud to create a new greenfield data marketplace.”
Choi ended by saying the CSP community needs to create an open, global, telco edge cloud that federates across operators and cloud stacks. “If operators can create this, then eventually edge applications and devices will work universally,” he said “With cloud native 5G the whole infrastructure becomes a service-native infrastructure built around one foundational cloud native 5G core.” You can watch the full session on-demand now. Watch the rest of Digital Transformation World Series content live and on-demand now too! Not registered for DTWS yet? There’s still time. Join 12,000 of your peers online through November 12. CSPs receive complimentary passes. Sign up here.