• Study reveals Netflix, Amazon blazed a trail with Web-scale that's now being followed by other media providers
• However, most service providers now have a very hard job keep up
• They're hampered by having to maintain a hybrid environment 

Amdocs has commissioned consultants Analysys Mason to see how leading ‘disruptors’ in the media and communications sectors are exploiting the technology to get ahead and stay ahead in their fields. From a series of interviews the researchers found that the likes of Netflix and Amazon have got themselves into powerful positions by adopting Web-scale technologies and cloud native software and approaches to build a significant lead in terms of service innovation and agility. It says a select group of communications and media providers are, in turn, rapidly following by adopting cloud-native technologies to meet the ‘digital experience benchmark’ set by the early digital disruptors.

However Analysys Mason maintains that “most service providers are moving slower, hindered by legacy technology, culture and processes, as well as the challenges of managing both legacy and cloud native systems in a hybrid, combined environment.”

It points out that while the move to cloud native systems is visible across the industry, mainstream adoption is unlikely before 2022 by which time the laggards will find it challenging to close the early leads established by the fast movers.

Agility is the main transformation driver. More than 82 per cent of the survey respondents said the move to cloud-native and DevOps adoption was driven by the need for greater business agility and innovation. Only 36 per cent said it was driven by the need for cost optimization.

Hybrid cloud infrastructure is expected to be mainstream by 2022: At present over 80 per cent of digital, BSS and OSS systems currently run on physical or virtualized data centers. However, by 2022, over 90 per cent of these systems will run on cloud infrastructure, of which, over 60 per cent will be on hybrid cloud.

Microservices are a key priority in cloud-native technology adoption roadmaps with  82 per cent either possessing or working on a roadmap to evolve their digital, BSS and OSS systems to be cloud-native, with 64 per cent saying that microservices architecture will be a requirement for new systems within two years.

And DevOps still has a long way to go: 46 per cent currently use DevOps in limited areas of their IT environment (primarily in digital domains), while 18 per cent have a plan in place to adopt DevOps within the next 1-2 years, 27 per cent are still evaluating transitioning to the methodology.

Managing a ‘hybrid’ IT environment is no simple matter: 91 per cent believe operating cloud-native and traditional applications side-by-side will be a critical challenge, often requiring them to re-skill their workforce and engage a third party.

“With early adopters such as Netflix, Amazon, Spotify already setting a high bar for agility and innovation, service providers who want to seize the advantage in today’s digital world need to view cloud technology, microservices architecture and DevOps adoption as ‘must-haves’ – and they need to move fast,” said Gary Miles, chief marketing officer at Amdocs.

“The problem is that transition to the cloud is being held back by the daunting nature of managing cloud-native systems together with traditional ones. At Amdocs  we’re already enabling service providers to overcome this coexistence complexity with our cloud-native digital solutions, managed operations and services.