Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hi, I am Tony Poulos and I am at DTW Ignite TM Forum's major event here in Copenhagen. Today I have with me to discuss cloud native and the future of telco cloud an esteemed panel. Firstly, Ayedime Amadi who is the senior manager, enterprise architecture and customer channels, group technology at MTN Group. Welcome. Also, we have Anita Dohler, who is the CEO of the NGMN Alliance. Welcome then Leo Ma, who's the VP of Cloud core network at Huawei. Welcome Leo. And last but certainly not least, Juan Carlos Garcia, who's a technology and innovations advisor. All of you. Thanks for being here today. Firstly, Juan Carlos, if I could start with you, I'd really want to hear what the definition is of cloud native. What is telco cloud native and where did it originate?

Juan Carlos Garcia, Independent (01:01):
Well, that is a very good question. So if we have to set a starting point, at least for the telco industry, it is 2012 with the initiative from ETSI for network function virtualization. It had the intention to bring all the benefits of the cloud technology into the telecom industry, and that keeps on being the objective of that initiative. Initially, at that time, there were no containers and probably all the virtualization was based on virtual machines. And for that reason, OpenStack and now opening for foundation was probably the main reference at that time. But things changed with the introduction of containers and Kubernetes that has made, probably provided now the pillars not for this telco cloud thing. Nevertheless, that was probably the seed or the origin, but was not enough for telco. So there needs to be a lot of additional work to adapt the cloud technology to the telcos. That is what makes the telco cloud native, and this means a lot of additional work and extensions to make it meet the requirements of the telecom industry. Okay. And here I must say that there is a lot of work now being done in Linux Foundation. For instance, a lot of initiatives like anate or Silva or Kamara, and also in a very recently launched initiative, the Cloud Native Telecom initiative on CNCF as well. So there is a lot of ongoing work on that topic.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (02:34):
And of the NGMN Alliance, what's your involvement with telco native cloud?

Anita Doehler, NGMN Alliance (02:39):
Yeah, so we end of last year our board of directors issued a so-called Cloud Native manifesto. So we are an operator driven alliance by embracing the entire value chain. So we also have vendors and research institutes and NGMN, but being operator driven, it was important to also issue to the industry what operators actually would like to have and expect from cloud native solutions. So we issued this cloud native manifesto where we established seven principles and where we now of course are continuing our work together with other organizations to hopefully make this a reality in the industry to achieve scalable and interoperable solutions.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (03:24):
Hey Ayedime, at the Mtn group, are you rolling out telco cloud native?

Ayedime Amadi, MTN Group (03:29):
Yes, we are rolling out telco cloud native. We've kicked off our cloud transformation program, so that has kicked off. It's something that has top of the mind presence with us. But one thing I would also want to say for CSPs and all operators, that rolling out cloud also requires some transformation internally, which is something that it's key. So you also need to look at your people, your operating model, your organizational structure, how is it structure to function in the cloud paradigm and also your talent. Those are other critical elements.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (04:06):
Leo, what do you think are the most important features of Telco cloud native?

Leo Ma, Huawei (04:11):
I think other panelists just mentioned as cognitive actually are needed from IT industry. But for me, because I'm in charge of the call network and also call network is the first network functionality to be virtualized in the teleco industry. So again, I think carrier-grade reliability, it's the number one, it's the cornerstone. Without stability solution, I think automation or other stuff is not so meaningful. So for me, I think resilience or stability is the number one importance and then it's how to automate and to reduce the opex of the whole call network stock. That's my point.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (04:57):
Carlos, what do you think are the important factors from your

Juan Carlos Garcia, Independent (04:59):
Viewpoint? Well, we have been working a lot on understanding these factors. In fact, there is an initiative in the edge cloud working group of the European Alliance for Industrial Data Edge and cloud looking specifically on what is the telco cloud requiring specifically from the rest of clouds. And in fact, next week there will be a paper that will be released by the European Commission looking about the challenge in the edge cloud for serving the telco cloud. And there we are capturing requirements that are some of them technology requirements, but there are many others managing the lifecycle of cloud native functions like layout set, no important, how can we manage all these distributed application ecosystem and even things going beyond on the life cycle of things moving around no infrastructure and applications. And we must say that the challenge is a technological one of course, but there are other challenges like the infrastructure that will have to provide this cloud that needs to be a pervasive one that needs to go from the edge to serve the, for instance, the access network function to the cloud to serve some core network functions as well. And on the other hand, we need to manage extra complexity that this layer is bringing no, the orchestration of all this is something that is also a strong requirement on this telco cloud solution. No orchestration and automation.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (06:33):
Ayedime from the MTN viewpoint, can you add, are there any features that you are particularly looking for out of telco cloud native?

Ayedime Amadi, MTN Group (06:40):
Yeah, so right now from a network transformation perspective, a lot of the network is still legacy. I'm looking forward to the situation where we have rolled out software defined networks and for virtualized all network functions because when it comes to cloud in the future is software. There's not going to be anything like network software or IT software. It's just going to become software. So that whole evolution of moving the telco side of services like your ran to open, ran your core network, your access network small towards cloud native, it's very critical to achieving that.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (07:30):
Anita, how important will standards be or are standards already in this area and who's going to be driving the standards?

Anita Doehler, NGMN Alliance (07:38):
Well, I don't really know who's driving the standards. I think it's more to achieve maybe de facto standards when it comes to cloud native. So I think we all agree that it should be API first is one of the principles we established. So to provide the developer community with standardized APIs, I think that's where standards will play an important role. And Kamara and GS are doing a great job there. But also other principles like in general achieving that are like Kubernetes or alike features for reconciliation, for consumption patterns, reconciliation, closed loop installation, moving decoupling life cycles, hardware life cycles from application life cycles. I mean all this should become a standard and what we need is portable solutions. So I think the main headache at the moment is that solutions are not really interoperable. And for this I think we need being a defacto standards open source standards. I'm meaning probably it'll not be a three DPP or I don't know, but there will be facto standards and I think that is what the industry is looking for so that the solutions can become truly compatible and interoperable. And last but not least, so we are currently discussing how meaningful certification certification schemes in the industry can be by achieving the most efficient way to assess solutions with regards to their cloud nativeness.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (09:28):
Well, Leo, you are helping operators roll out telco cloud native. Are they asking you for standards or are you just applying what you think are the standards at the time?

Leo Ma, Huawei (09:37):
I think for standard, I think I see still very important, although as I just mentioned, maybe it's not easy to in operable between different vendors, but without standards body it's even more difficult. So for me, I still for open stack era, I think ETSI played a very important role to unify the standard, although there are still a lot of variance, but it makes things already easier. So by moving forward to Kubernetes like container, we still believe ETSI should play important role to unify the standard and also to organize some maybe interoperability test and even certificate to make the life easier. As vendor, we don't want to be test our product on different platform and different environments. So for me, I still believe ETSI should play this role.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (10:37):
Juan Carlos add to that,

Juan Carlos Garcia, Independent (10:38):
Well, I basically agree with Anita on the point that the way standards are being made now in the telecom industry is changing a lot. So we are getting far from just the pure technical specification to a code first approach. And we developing open source communities by the collaboration of not just tele innovators, but also technology providers in a way that you can activate, innovate, innovation and move faster. And we see that this is bringing a lot of good results to the community. We see communities working on reference implementations for the hardware, trying to standardize and making compatible different hardware environments.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (11:42):
Well, how do you think cloud native or telco cloud native is going to evolve in the future, particularly in your operations at MTND? Do you have plans looking forward, what you might expect from it in the future?

Ayedime Amadi, MTN Group (11:53):
Yes, so we're already beginning to look at that in terms of making sure that we have our operations are autonomous. So there are a number of TM forum frameworks already beginning to leverage for that. But most importantly, we do also realize that transforming technology alone is not going to move the needle. You also need to look at the skills, you need to look at the people, you need to look at the culture of the organization towards this transformation because a lot of things are going to change even with people's way of work. So obviously you're going to leverage AI around that. So we're looking at all those other software elements of the transformation too to make sure that we can rip the maximum benefit of this

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (12:36):
With Anita, with six G around the corner, I'm presuming you are busy looking at the future and where Telco cloud native will fit?

Anita Doehler, NGMN Alliance (12:45):
Well, we do have those three pillars, NGMN identified as the current focus topics. It's how to master the route of desegregation their cloud. nativeness is of course part of it, network automation, but also operating the aggregated network. So I fully agree that of course the entire operating model needs to be changed. It's about skills technology and how the model as such looks like. Then the second big topic is sustainability, energy efficiency, probably also cloud native solutions will foster energy efficiency to be confirmed of course. And then the last point is of course, that we work on six G. So last but not least as next generation mobile networks and everything will build into six G. So the big question is how will six G look like? So we are currently moving into a very flexible architecture, software driven architecture, and there is a strong belief in the operator community that actually innovation will become more incremental and faster because we can do it not only by hardware upgrades, so hopefully avoiding very large hardware renewal cycles, but doing this through software to achieve business agility and sustainability.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (14:02):
Leah, can I ask you, how do telco operating models and culture need to change to make the most of the cloud evolution?

Leo Ma, Huawei (14:10):
I think for me as a vendor, we believe that first cloud native 1.0 is like carrier-grade. We should make it work, so guarantee the performance and also stability. And after that, I think most operators they are, and also as a vendor, we try to achieve the automation and I think that's one initiative of cloud native, but to be honest, today it's not so successful. But still we are going to do that. And the last one I think should be intelligence, how to make intelligent ONM, how to address the service agility and also the network stability. So it's a dilemma, but we should consider how to use automation and AI to address this dilemma.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (14:59):
Would you like to add that Juan Carlos? What do you think the evolution's going to be?

Juan Carlos Garcia, Independent (15:02):
Well, I also see part of what Leo has mentioned, but I also see an evolution of the telco cloud to become more pervasive, evolving to the edge, trying to embrace not just the core network functions, but also the access network functions. So then it'll become an edge. So cloud continue that will very likely will be hybrid and multi technology. So it will be a really complex environment with a lot of distributed computing infrastructure. And what I see is a lot of AI and automation on top that is able to support that complexity. And at Telco cloud that is on the other hand, also able to support ai, so prepare to execute the capabilities that telecom operators are expecting to have in the network, the inference and training and all this stuff.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (15:53):
Ayedime in my initial question there, I was talking about how the telco operation models and culture will need to change. Is that a big issue in an operator?

Ayedime Amadi, MTN Group (16:03):
Yes, it is a big issue. And the open digital architecture framework has done a fantastic job with creating the foundation for cloud native. What has been found is that the other softer elements that will make or ma the whole change management of that process has not yet been fully focused on. And I'm happy to say that TM Forum kicked off that initiative on the People and planets program, MTN, alongside other operators who are, we included a part of the TECO organizational design project. What we look at there is the people side of ODA. So ODA has clearly put in the platforms and the capabilities that you need and the frameworks to become a cloud native organization and obviously adopt the telco cloud. But the software elements, like I mentioned earlier on around the people, the talent, the culture, and the operating model is still something that is still work in progress.

(17:08):
We've created a maturity model that has six dimensions, organizational positioning, organizational development, talent and readiness, intelligent harmony and transformative environment. Those are the key foundations under the organizational people and the talent area. Each of those six dimensions have now been put into 36 factors that have been used to create a maturity model. So at the end of the day, as a telco or an aspiring teco, you know exactly where you are on the spectrum. Are you a level two, are you a level three? What are those clear interventions that you need to put in place to get to level three, to get to a level four or to get level five? So it's something that we're already looking at because we've seen that transformation of this scale will not only succeed if you look at the technology enablement, you also need to look at the other softer sides of the transformation to make sure that you achieve the outcomes that you want.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (18:06):
I'm going to ask each of you to answer this last question as briefly as you possibly can because we've gone quite a bit over time, but this is very important. In your view, which industry verticals would benefit the most from the telco cloud proposition? I'm going to start with Anita.

Anita Doehler, NGMN Alliance (18:25):
Thank you, Tony. Unfortunately, I cannot predict, I mean, I think the entire exercise is also to achieve this business agility to react on customer demand. And I personally like very much this method of working backwards. So we need to understand the customer and we need to understand what the client really wants and therefore I think there will be different industries benefiting. But unfortunately I cannot predict which exactly will benefit most.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (18:56):
I like your honesty, Juan Carlos, I think you'll have a go at this.

Juan Carlos Garcia, Independent (19:01):
Well, certain, very partly what Anita has said is extremely difficult to predict. It is clear that, for instance, the telco cloud will allow us or telecom operators to provide a private network, for instance, much easier, yes, will allow telecom operators also to deliver new features like slicing in a much easier way. So a network that you have on the cloud is more dynamic, programmable and automated. And I think complex features like slicing will be, and private networks will be very likely easier to deliver on a network is already on the cloud, and that is what we will see. Okay. Very nice.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (19:46):
Leo.

Leo Ma, Huawei (19:47):
I think, yeah, it's a very big question and very hard to short answer. Yeah, but I can share some experience. I think now in China we are using the tele cloud for slicing for power grid. Power grid company because it's wide area is very suitable for telco industry. And also they are requesting very high reliable network. So I think maybe this kind of industry is, maybe it's the potential one we can bring value. And another one is in manufacturing field they are requesting a high availability again. So I think from my personal experience, I think like power grid and also manufacturing,

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (20:31):
Excellent response. Certainly last and certainly not least.

Ayedime Amadi, MTN Group (20:36):
Yeah, and Leo is actually very correct. So 5G and six G and Telco cloud, they go hand in hand. So what we have seen so far in our environments that there are key vertical use cases that are perfect candidates for this, the likes of mining and manufacturing that you have said. And that is because as CSPs, we've made a lot of investments on connectivity. Obviously the traditional revenues from that are beginning to dwindle, and that's why we need to start looking at other options by rolling out solutions that these verticals can leverage on. So the verticals that will really, really benefit from the telco cloud are your verticals of manufacturing, agriculture, mining. We have a few mining use cases at MTN banking, FinTech. So MTN already has a FinTech business that is focused on that area. Healthcare, biotech, environmental. So when you look at the 17 SDGs, there are a lot of those, the problems around those SDGs that will be resolved by rollouts of these use cases of the telco cloud.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (21:48):
Thank you. Well, Ayedime, Anita, Leo and Juan Carlos, thank you very much. This is very fascinating conversation. We could go on for a long time, but thank you again. Thank you. Thank you.

All (22:00):
Thank you.