DTWS: Evaluating the risk and reward of cloud native

As communication service providers (CSPs) migrate to the cloud they are evaluating which applications to move to a cloud-native environment. Executives at Telecom and Argentina and Telus shared their views in a panel discussion during the Digital Transformation World Series 'Taking stock: Where are you on your cloud journey and how to take the next step?' During the pandemic Telecom Argentina adopted a hybrid public-private multi-cloud strategy as the key enabler of its business evolution and DevOps, according to Mariángeles Krawec, Director, IT operation and Datacenter at Telecom Argentina, which is the country’s biggest operator. She stressed that the strategy was not about “lift and shift” but based on the business case. Krawec explained, “We made cloud native applications to gain the benefits of the cloud such as flexibility, scalability and time to market…using the public cloud for these types of services.” Moderator Ian Turkington, VP, Architecture and APIs, TM Forum, wondered how much operators’ move to the cloud has been lift and shift as opposed to cloud native? Sana Tariq, Principal Technology Architect, Cloud and Service Orchestration, TELUS, commented that operators have two kinds of applications – IT and network-centric, with IT being the more straightforward of the two to migrate to a cloud native environment. She said it is important to consider the technical characteristics of a network-centric cloud native application. Tariq said it should have “12 factors of compliance”. A high-level view is that the “application is lightweight, it’s agile, automation is built into the DNA of the application itself, not like a black box we [put] some wrapper around to lift and shift of large, monolithic applications and then try to automate them, which is extremely difficult.” Tariq added that the benefits outlined by Krawec all have their roots in being able to automate the application, control its characteristics and “to have complete visibility and control over various aspects and the microservices in the architecture. When that happens, the application behaves like cloud native”. She said, “We have just made it to containers for a lot of our telco and, and network-centric applications…and they are not truly cloud native today but it's a journey”. Matthew Halligan, CTO, Optiva, agreed saying, “One of the motivations we had internally to go to the cloud ... was to learn [and] see what doesn't work. We take theory into practice.” He acknowledged that there are tensions in the industry where many are finding it hard to move from providing “monolith solutions” when cloud native solutions “are all about low code, no code, no footprint, and really a developer-centric model.” Halligan stated, “You have to evolve your culture, you have to evolve a process and practices, and, and that was really a big motivation for us; adopting technology that makes our developers work more efficiently” and concludes: “Risks are only risks if you don't learn”. Watch the panel on Taking stock: Evaluating the cloud journey to date and charting the next steps here. Note: Registration to the Digital Transformation World Series is required to watch the recording. Not registered yet? There’s still time. Register here to get access to all the keynotes, panel discussions and master classes. Communication service providers can register for free.