Telcos can gain cloud-native smarts from their hyperscaler partners: Poll result

• We polled our in-person and online attendees during the recent DSP Leaders World Forum 2022 event
• Respondents were asked to identify the areas in which telcos need help from public cloud providers
• Getting to grips with cloud-native processes and managing workloads came out on top, but security hardly featured

Telcos should mostly seek help from their public cloud partners in the key areas of cloud-native processes and how best to manage workloads, according to the results of a poll conducted during the recent DSP Leaders World Forum 2022 event, which took place in Windsor, UK.

Network operators are brokering multiple partnerships with the hyperscaler giants – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure – with the aim of not only leveraging their platforms and co-developing applications and services but learning key skills that will help them as they transition towards more cloud-oriented processes and systems. And while many telcos have already taken important steps towards restructuring their teams and introducing new training and skills programmes, there’s a lot to learn.

So as part of the forum session entitled Clouds on the Horizon, our in-person and online attendees were asked: In which areas do telcos absolutely require help from public cloud providers?

Respondents could select as many of the options they deemed appropriate, and it was clear where they think the telcos need the most (and least) help.

Of those who voted, 53% believe telcos really need help with learning and implementing cloud-native processes (something they will all need to do as their networks evolve away from traditional communications infrastructures to become distributed, automated cloud-like platforms).

And, very much related to that, some 46% of respondents believe the telcos absolutely need help in figuring out how to scale and distribute workloads.

‘Analytics and observability’ was also identified as an area where the telcos could benefit from some hyperscaler help, while ‘developing AI-based operations’ and ‘edge and MEC deployments’ both attracted votes from 37% of respondents.

But some potential options garnered few votes: Only 17% of those who voted believe the telcos need help with hosting core network workloads, which is an interesting score given that 5G standalone core systems have been developed to run on cloud platforms – the thinking here appears to be that these core applications will run on private rather than public clouds.   

And, perhaps surprisingly, only 10% of voters think telcos could really use some help from the public cloud giants when it comes to improving their security.

The Clouds on the Horizon session featured senior speakers from Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, Orange, Red Hat and TelcoDR, who took to the forum stage to discuss key trends and developments related to the relationship between the telco and hyperscaler communities, while the session also included pre-recorded comments from the founder and VP of innovation at Cleura (formerly City Network). You can watch the session on-demand here.  

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV