Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:15):
Hello and welcome to Extra Shot on Telecom TV and our final program for this year's Cloud Native Telco Summit. I'm Guy Daniels and it's time now to grab a brew and savour the key talking points from the online event. Now all of the panels, interviews, and live shows from last week's summit are now available to watch on demand and to guide you through some of the highlights of this, the sixth edition of our annual cloud native Telco summit. I'm joined by my colleague Ray Le Maistre, who will also reveal the final results of our viewer poll. Now, we opened the summit with a panel that looked at the essential components of a cloud native strategy, including the benefits and challenges of adopting a cloud native approach. Lots of interesting takeaways from this panel, but of course we had to start by addressing the perennial confusion between cloud and cloud native.

Joan Triay, Docomo Euro-Labs (01:22):
One of the aspects that I think it's quite challenging for the industry is indeed that it's very difficult to define it precisely, and I doubt that we will ever achieve that. One of the challenges here is that actually the word is becoming also kind of a marketing buzzword, so there are so many different opinionated perspective when we use the word cloud native.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:49):
Yep, he's right. The term cloud native does get somewhat abused either accidentally or deliberately, and I guess including the word cloud doesn't help matters though I think we'll have to live with this.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:02):
Yeah, for sure. This is going to be an ongoing issue across the broader industry for some years. There's certainly greater awareness in CTO and CIO offices at telcos and at the more software oriented vendors and integrators. But you are right. The word that everyone hears is cloud.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (02:23):
Yeah. Well, another interesting idea that came from this panel concerned the apparently inevitable six G, and here's what Deutsche Telekom had to say.

Kai Steuernagel, Deutsche Telekom (02:34):
At the moment, we are struggling with updating to new network generations. So in the mobile network we have updated from 4G to 5G, and now we are bringing in six G in 2030 and there might be 70 already in the mines and eight G and whatever, but these generation shifts are unnecessary if we are in the cloud actually. So it was necessary in two G and 3G and 4G because we bought in new appliances and different hardware, but now we can run it essentially on the same hardware or the lifecycle management of the hardware is independent of the network generation, and so when we have an iterative approach to update the service and features of the networks, then we can spare new technologies like six G and so on.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (03:31):
Well, that would be music to the ears of many telcos I'm sure. And something else Kai said during the panel, he asked the question, what will cloud native look like in 2030? Well, who knows because it's developing so fast, yet we have a pretty good idea what the first appearance of six G could look like in 2030. We've certainly got a list of candidate technologies and we know how long they take to commercialize and standardize. It's a stark comparison, isn't it, between dynamic Kubernetes and the somewhat less dynamic world of telecoms.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:04):
Yeah, I mean, in many ways the development of the cloud native telco is an antidote to the generational challenges faced by many operators. Resistance to what is being called six G is growing within the operator community and adopting the processes, platforms and applications that come with a cloud native approach is going to make it easier to adapt and evolve in a very different way to the 3G to 4G and 4G to 5G transitions that the operators have endured, as Kai mentioned, but the six G lobby. Well, that is a loud one right now.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:42):
Yes, it certainly is. Well, our summit also featured a panel on how telcos can identify new roles and develop key skills from reskilling and upskilling to leveraging partnerships and hiring new talent. The good news is that it may be becoming easier to attract new employees with cloud native skill sets.

Diego Lopez, Telefonica (05:07):
Right now the competition is much wider, much more complicated because people that have some of these skills are very much demanded by other sectors. And we have the problem that in the past telco has been perceived and something a little bit dull. I believe that this is changing somehow. We are managing to sell the idea that we are changing and this is good that we are going to be cool. Again,

Greg Dalle, F5 (05:37):
Most of the colleges or universities out there that do computer science programs have the skills being taught actually in those colleges. So it's easier to find a new grad with let's say Kubernetes expertise for example, than one with let's say SS seven or diameter. Right? So that's the good news is actually the skills are there.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:06):
Well, we've long pondered on how to get the best software graduates interested in boreal telecoms, and the answer could well be cloud native and Ray, this issue also featured in our poll, which we'll come onto later.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:20):
Yes, the poll results support Diego's viewpoint, and that's encouraging to see a shift in the perspective on hiring cloud native natives. If you'll pardon that expression.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:33):
Well pardon it this time, Ray. And related to this, Verizon reported on a very successful intern program recently with a lot of interest shown in software engineering. So that's another encouraging sign. Now we held a third panel discussion that looked at the growth of cloud native and its impact on telcos, and we also asked what challenges remain, and this brought us to perhaps one of the most contentious issues of this year's summit. The perceived lack of maturity of cloud-native software from vendors.

Partha Seetala, Rakuten Symphony (07:07):
There are a lot of vnfs that have been turned into CNFs and they're running in production without issues. Yes, there is more complexity in terms of how you manage them because you don't use the same sort of toolings that you would use to manage let's say CNFs, but it's all running and it's working well. So I would say that that's why I don't want to use the word lack of maturity. What I would say is that it is taking time for the older vendors to transform their architecture. It'll take time. And in my experience in the industry, I've seen that these kind of transformative things are slow transitions. You don't have a cutoff where let's say a big vendor will say, oh, you know what? I'm going to go on the cloud native way. I'm going to abandon this thing and restart my entire code base from the beginning. That is not going to happen. That's unrealistic.

Balaji Subramaniam, Blue Planet (07:53):
I would say rather than using the word maturity, I would say there is a lot more diversity in how these applications are thought about in a cognitive fashion. I see the lack of standardisation as more of a challenge than lack of maturity, I would say, and maybe one of the way we measure maturity is how these things can fit together.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:19):
So a couple of strong views there on software maturity, and we had a further discussion on this during one of our live shows, give vendors time to change and be aware that not all solutions are equal. Well, maturity certainly appears to be a rather sensitive term.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:36):
Yeah, well there's a reason for that, right? I mean, yeah, it takes a long time, but I mean how much time is needed? I understand the challenges. It's complicated for sure, but we're already a decade into the major telcos demanding accelerated CNF development by their vendor partners, and yet we're still here. This is why telecom still gets tarnished with that laggard brush, I think.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:03):
Yes, I think we will hear much more about this, which brings us very nicely to our poll. We wanted to know what you thought about cloud native, specifically the challenges that still remain for telcos and some of the key points we have already covered featured as answer choices. Ray, what did we learn from our viewer poll this year?

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:28):
Well, we asked the following question to our viewers, cloud native can deliver substantial benefits to telcos, but what are the main challenges to its adoption? And the results are fascinating as mentioned, and I think this is still a surprise, difficulties in recruiting or hiring talent while still highlighted as a challenge by 24% of our near 130 poll respondents is deemed to be the least challenging of all of our poll options by a long way. The flip side of that coin though is that there is still a substantial list of challenges that all attracted significant support with the top score going to maturity of cloud native software from vendors. Clearly our audience didn't have an issue with the term maturity, but note also that while challenges associated with attracting talent might be receding, there were a lot of votes for problems with organisational changes and retraining. So that skills issue is still a big deal as you'd expect.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (10:41):
Yeah, thanks very much for that, Ray. And the relative positions remain pretty much constant throughout the summit. So all in all, another strong poll. Well each day of the summit featured a live q and a show where our guests answered your questions. These are also now available to view on demand and one of the many interesting questions we received concern the apparent lack of support for so-called Day two operations, the post-deployment phase.

Joan Triay, Docomo Euro-Labs (11:10):
There is a little bit of too much focus on the day zero and day one, so solutions, proof of concepts, trying to see something that is being deployed and works, but this is not the end of the story. The operators, we are a lot more concerned actually on the day two and the long-term support

Sidd Chenumolu, VMware by Broadcom (11:33):
One has to make sure that they have a deep observability on what's happening when a day two operation happens, whether it's an upgrade, update, any changes to the network. It's quite important for an operator to know exactly how the changes are being implemented and how to roll them back if things are not working properly.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:53):
Well, we heard on the panel that cloud native doesn't really address most of day two issues and that a lot of these are focused on efficiency and in particular digital support system vendors came in for a bit of stick with calls for them to improve cloud native support. Well, I hope we hear more about day two operations in the coming year. Maybe we can add it to next year's summit. And we did try covering this last year, but I think we were just a little bit too early then. It just wasn't really the interest. It's amazing what 12 months can do.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (12:28):
Yeah, 12 months later and we're still struggling with day two. That sounds like a pitch for a new Danny Boyle movie to me.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (12:36):
Shot on iPhone. Of course, all of our summits form part of our year long DSP leaders coverage and we received a number of questions that were linked to our other summits. And on Wednesday's show we had one question that asked about the relationship, if any, between cloud native and APIs.

Greg Dalle, F5 (12:57):
I think they are somewhat independent, but you need to think about them at the same time because they both try to fulfil a common goal, which is to transform the network more in a platform compared to what we have today.

Ranny Haiby, The Linux Foundation (13:13):
As operators are thinking about implementation of these APIs and providing services to application developers, a lot of it is around the dynamic nature of services and features that are provided by the network to those applications. And those cannot be achieved by a high degree of automation and agility, which kind of translates one-to-one to choosing a cloud native approach that will enable all of that.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (13:45):
So you might not think they are related, but actually they are. And I'm sure there are many APIs that can be exposed regardless of how networks are architected, but telcos are going to need a cloud native-network to maximise the API potential, especially at scale and complete the move to a platform strategy. Ray APIs are very much in the news, aren't they? With recent announcements from Camara for example, and also the establishment of a commercial organisation for telco APIs.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (14:18):
Yeah, the noise and activity around network APIs is definitely growing guy. And while as you mentioned, APIs can be exposed and have been, no matter how the supporting architecture has been developed, we're once again looking at a jigsaw puzzle. All of the pieces exist and tell a part of the digital service provider story, but it's only once you're able to stitch them together that you start to see the full picture. I don't think any operator will be able to fully exploit their network API potential without cloud native or a next generation core platform. And that's just for starters. Now the telecom software vendors looking at developing digital support systems are so behind the curve that the telcos with enough in-house capabilities are developing their own. And that's bad news for the whole industry. I think. Look at me with the negative spin, but it's hard not to look at it like that, I think.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (15:41):
Just keeping it real Ray, just keeping it real well. Another question we received from the audience on Thursday's show concerned future cloud native trends that telco should be aware of and top of the list was web assembly or WASM. This promises to offer better resource efficiency compared to Kubernetes, which could help to further reduce operational costs. And it apparently also offers a more vendor neutral approach. Now the TM Forum has a web assembly canvas project as part of its open digital architecture work, which is certainly well worth checking out. Just when I thought I had a decent grasp of cloud native, I've now got to wrap my head around another software format. This is all like a new eighth circle of hell.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (16:30):
Well, guy, I'm still just getting to grips with Wassup. Never mind WASM.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (16:35):
It's never going to end, is it? Well, we also featured a number of interviews during the summit, two of Swisscom's cloud native development team. Kindly agreed to answer some of our most frequently asked viewer questions, one from Telcos wanting to know specific details about how to set up and run cloud native teams.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (16:59):
And we also spoke with Harmeen Mehta head of BT's digital unit about the approach to DevSecOps at the UK Telco. She talked about the way her team is thinking about security in general and the strategy for injecting security into the software development process. Her team is building security into the cloud native network architecture at the beginning of the process and not at the end. And she also discussed in general where BT is on its cloud native telco journey

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (17:33):
And the chair of the ETSI open source MANO initiative give us a deep dive into the world of containerised applications and CNF workloads. Are we now at a tipping point in the migration of VFS to CNFs and what does this for telcos? No spoilers. You'll have to watch the interview to find out. That was the sixth annual cloud native Telco summit. I wonder what next year will bring. We are back next month though for the AI Native Telco Summit. So register now on our website and please start sending in your questions

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (18:13):
And you can vote as well. The poll for that summit is now open. Cast your vote early so you don't miss out.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:22):
And don't forget to go and watch our cloud native programs. They are all there online on telecom tv. But from Ray and I, goodbye for now.