Telco cloud energy optimization for a sustainable future

The opinions expressed within this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of TM Forum.

With the recent acceleration of global warming and other environmental deteriorations, the question of sustainability has become a central topic for our global society. This has been amplified by the recent geostrategic events, supply chain disruptions and the resulting inflation of energy prices around the world.

In 2015, the UN introduced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) initiative with a focus on environmental sustainability and climate action associated with ambitious targets for 2030.

Coincidentally, the business community introduced the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles to promote a long-term sustainable approach to conducting business. Many companies are now reporting on ESG KPIs including their total carbon footprint which measures their carbon emissions and are setting target dates to achieve carbon neutrality and net zero. At the same time, all industries are investing heavily in new solutions to reduce carbon footprint, ranging from electrification to renewable energy and smart consumption.

The telco sector is not alien to all of this. The global telecommunications industry produced 2.6% of the total world carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2020, more than the airline industry! According to GSMA, energy consumption accounted for 15 to 40% of Telco’s operating expenditures in 2021, which has certainly risen by now. In addition, data centers around the world account for nearly 2% of total CO2 emissions and represent a large financial burden on telcos and enterprises as well.

As a result, Communication Service Providers (CSPs), NEPs, data center operators and large enterprises are all actively looking at ways to reduce their energy consumption through energy-efficient technology, renewable energy sources, and improved operational efficiency. Among the many different solutions, we are focusing on two:

Digital transformation and use of public cloud

According to Bain and Co., 40% cost reduction can be achieved by migrating data workloads into the public cloud. That is why MYCOM OSI was one of the very first Service Assurance providers to provide 100% SaaS offering from the public cloud. To date, we have helped some of the largest CSPs across Europe and APAC to migrate their Service Assurance workloads into the public cloud, thus achieving significant energy savings.

But in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, telcos are embracing cloud-based technologies to enhance their operations. However, this digital transformation comes with significant energy consumption. To address this challenge, telcos can leverage energy optimization strategies within their cloud infrastructure, driving sustainability and cost-effectiveness.

Intelligent dynamic power optimization

The use of advanced analytics coupled with automation can be a very powerful tool to optimize the behavior of network and data center IT infrastructure and reduce their energy consumption. Large data centers contain tens of thousands of servers and IT equipment that are often underutilized and waste energy. Identifying those servers and devising the right optimization approaches and automation routines to reduce their power consumption can yield massive savings.

However, in the context of Telco Clouds in particular, special attention must be given to maintain network performance and service levels when optimizing the power consumption. This is much easier said than done and requires complex real time correlation between network and service performance and the underlying IT infrastructure and its energy consumption.

To address this complex yet very promising area, MYCOM OSI and Intel initiated an exciting partnership in 2022 to provide an intelligent solution to boost Telco Cloud Energy efficiency. This very promising solution can provide up to 40% energy saving in Telco Cloud data centers without compromising the network performance or Service Levels.