Q&A with Optiva’s Shay Assaraf: Scale for success with the public cloud

Sponsored by: Optiva

The global pandemic has increased the adoption of public cloud by communications service providers (CSPs) around the world, and it appears this will continue for the foreseeable future. Why so? And what guidance is there for organizations that know little of the public cloud or are hesitant to adopt it? We sat down with Shay Assaraf, Chief Marketing Officer at cloud OSS/BSS vendor Optiva. He shared his views on this sudden uptake, the capabilities and benefits and his experienced insights on how CSPs can plan their paths to the public cloud.

During the pandemic, we’ve seen a shift in thinking around the value of public cloud and the benefits of adopting it. What have the primary triggers been for this? Broadly, I believe the pandemic impacted our mindsets and changed the way we live our lives. For example, I’m used to working remotely, but most vendors and CSPs were office based and not quite able to grasp or believe that remote collaboration could work. Now, people tell me, "Wow, we see there's so much value in it. There's so much more I can do, and I can be more productive and effective.” Businesses are replacing large physical events with virtual events, having sessions with sales prospects, delivering changes, and advancing their product roadmaps — all remotely.

In parallel, before COVID-19, especially in developed areas, businesses thought they could plan for any incident and control the environment in which their applications operate. Then, the pandemic hit, and everyone realized that there are situations you simply cannot plan for. Disaster was something that many organizations feared, but no one ever really thought it could happen. Disaster is now taking a broader definition with events like the global pandemic and long lockdown times forcing people to work remotely. That has also impacted CSPs’ operations personnel. The pandemic made everyone realize that you need a resilient solution to be effective in situations you have not yet envisioned.

Now, the industry’s mindset has expanded. It realizes that as a result of the pandemic, there is a better way to manage and operate core enterprise applications — a way that is more modernized and resilient. And in doing so, its efforts and focus can be increased on its customers’ needs and experience. So, in challenging days like these, CSPs can better help their customers instead of struggling to manage data centers and infrastructure. What are the specific capabilities of the public cloud that can help with this? Before the pandemic, network traffic was generally predictable. Now, CSPs need the capability to scale their services to support remote working and changing communications habits. If a company tried to scale by themselves, they’d call procurement for more resources, check what servers they needed to buy, purchase them and wait a few months for them to be delivered (or a few weeks if it’s super-fast). Then, they’d need to deploy them, test them, connect them, etc. With something as sudden as the COVID-19 lockdown, this process is inadequate. With its almost unlimited resources, the public cloud can generate more capacity easily and automatically or with a click of a button. And when the capacity surge ends, companies can easily scale down and pay less when they don’t use the resources any further. Also, CSPs know all too well the pressures of keeping their data centres running effectively, and this is even more challenging during a pandemic. People need to physically manage these centres, which is a logistical nightmare with lockdown and social distancing. Those involved include database security, administrators, engineers, maintenance and those carrying out monitoring, checks and maintenance. There’s also the challenge of keeping data applications running without failures, and CSPs need the ability to quickly and easily heal any issues. When you're operating on the public cloud, instead, you get a managed infrastructure and managed data centres that give you the peace of mind that someone is handling it all.

The secret sauce of the public cloud is that it’s not as dependent on human resources. Instead, public cloud vendors have invested millions in automation tools and practices. CSPs cannot match this; their business is their customers, IT, BSS and their monetization schemes. They cannot — and actually should not — invest the same amount of attention, focus and capital into building and automating their data centres.

On a more macro level, how do you see the industry as a whole moving forward with public cloud? As CSPs move beyond a focus on the core telecom connectivity services, aiming to provide a wider experience to their customers, they will need to enhance their services with partner offerings, such as e-commerce partners and over-the-top (OTT) providers, and integrate with services from adjacent industries. They will also need to increase focus on improving customer experience with AI and ML models. These services reside and are sometimes available only on the public cloud. Moving into the public cloud helps CSPs gain access to these complementary services and standardize how they integrate with data lakes and different partners. This saves time and effort better spent growing their businesses. These strong partnerships mean access to further innovation and business opportunities. This is the disruptive way CSPs can reinvent themselves to deliver much more value beyond just connectivity. Despite the benefits of public cloud, a lot of firms remain hesitant. Why do you think that is? There are many explanations. There are fears of technologies that are not traditional and are new to the industry. There is a fear of not achieving the same performance levels when moving applications into what is considered a “faraway cloud” that is perceived out of their control. Also, there are concerns over whether the data will be secure when moved to the public cloud and whether CSPs can ensure their end customers' privacy. Lastly, many wonder whether the cost of using the public cloud is justifiable and whether it delivers on the promise of efficiency and reduced cost compared to on premise

To all of that, we say to our customers — get educated. Research your concerns and ensure you get to the bottom of these issues. Optiva can help you with your questions. We can run performance tests, for example, to demonstrate how to maintain the same level of service and performance. We can show the joint security measures implemented by Optiva and the public cloud vendor, and we can explain how you will save significantly on your TCO. We even invite you to a customized, bespoke total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis, and we will prove how much you can save by moving your BSS to the public cloud.

But, in the end, it's the unspoken hesitations that drive any reluctance — the fear of change, losing control and the unknown. Many simply prefer to stick with what they know and are familiar with. To that, we say the only way to really reinvent yourself to compete in this digital era is to meet evolving consumer expectations and maintain a lead in the game to ensure you change, even if it's hard. For firms that embrace the public cloud, do you have any advice on how to make the best out of it, beyond utilizing the additional capabilities we discussed earlier? These companies should make sure they are fully educated on the capabilities of public cloud (hint: it is not just the compute power) and the right way of utilizing those capabilities (second hint: cloud-native re-architecture). Ask around and check with vendors, other partners and TM Forum to ensure you have the right evaluation process in place. Then, you need to plan your journey to the public cloud. While some CSPs have announced a public cloud-only strategy, this is not necessarily the right solution for all CSPs. Not everyone needs to move all OSS/BSS applications to the public cloud, and the timeline can also vary from operator to operator.

You don't need to jump straight in. If CSPs have hesitations, we advise they start small and grow their use as they become more comfortable. Some ways to start small include: A new brand: Some operators are launching a second BSS stack for a new, all-digital brand that they've built for a specific user segment. Using the private cloud: Stay on their own premises but start to experiment with cloud technologies. 5G and IoT: Some operators feel they lack certain capabilities, such as managing big hierarchies, massive IoT or value-based charging in their business support systems when using 3G and 4G, so they launch a parallel stack for 5G only.

Whatever journey you take, our advice is to start as soon as possible. These practices offer significant benefits but getting to a state of leveraging them to the fullest takes time. And unfortunately, time is not something we have too much of.

Whatever journey you take, our advice is to start as soon as possible. These practices offer significant benefits but getting to a state of leveraging them to the fullest takes time. And unfortunately, time is not something we have too much of. Optiva's Business Value team can help. Send us an email or visit our website to learn more