The Service Provider (SP) move to the Cloud
Global Service Providers (SP) including the Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 telcos, communication service providers (CSPs) & managed service providers (MSP) are struggling with the need to support diverse customers – business and industrial – for their managed services (including network services). The struggle is to deliver value-added applications with a high degree of agility, automation, and at a lower cost. It is clear that cloud technology is much more robust and agile than traditional (read legacy) SP networks and data center architecture.
Thus, from an infrastructure point of view – xSP’s need to turn their legacy data centers into a public cloud-like infrastructure – a key area they’re unable to execute on. Let’s take a look into the key business drivers that drive this cyclic nature of cloud infrastructure optimizations, and how xSPs are moving through the various stages of their journey.
Key SP Business Drivers in 2020
- Innovative Business – Provide relevant and innovative solutions for 5G-enabled Use Cases
- IoT
- ML/AI
- Remote Robotics
- Smart City
- Autonomous/Connected Cars
- Deliver mundane business services that span compute, storage, networking, and business applications to both internal and external deployments
- Maintain and manage these workloads seamlessly and scale as the business demands
- The ability for xSP’s to deliver their service offerings at the highest possible velocity, yet with the most reliable underlying infrastructure. Further, xSP’s will want to offer fully managed solutions higher up the stack, further lowering their TCO.
- Operational Expertise – Use cases around 5G networks will be highly automated & driving the convergence of various functions around networking and IT. That means new tools will be needed for network resource management and new talent. Operators will need engineers with native cloud programming and engineering skills, for example—skills that are currently in short supply in the industry. To lure that new talent, they will have to compete with the high tech giants and small startups whose reputations as fast-moving companies with more flexible work cultures—and in many cases better compensation—could seem more attractive.
- Constantly optimize both the time needed to ship applications faster as well as onboard new customers using a mix of on-premises infrastructure or public clouds, open-source or closed source software
- Another key challenge for Service Providers (SP) is to manage Cloud facing APIs while working with public clouds. SP’s are typically telcos and don’t come from a software engineering background and want a unified portal to consume cloud services or need integration of internal applications with public cloud provider APIs.
So What comes Next?
The single most powerful ingredient to a successful outcome is for SP cloud architects and IT executives to define and implement a best in class strategy around the adoption of cloud-native technologies. Designing such a strategy needs to balance several tricky factors, namely a) keeping the business running today while accelerating infrastructure modernization, b) satisfying developer demand for more productive technologies, c) meeting the CFO’s requirements for predictability and affordability. This journey is arguably the biggest challenge that enterprise SP business leaders, architects, and IT executives face.
The below illustration captures the key tech and human drivers in the provider market.
The next blog will discuss my vision in terms of the key technology trends as well as solutions that enabling SPs to achieve the above goals.
1 comment
Awesome blog, I enjoy reading these…. keep posting!