The industry is really only at the start of the journey to cloudification. Certainly there has been progress and many issues have now been settled but the most most complex and challenging aspects of the cloudification of transformed networks remain to be resolved. These include areas such a distributed edges, services being provided straight to the network edge (wherever that may be at any given time, near or far), the deployment of functions and apps across tens of thousands of end points and the movement of functions from a static to dynamic environment. 

For these reasons, says Gabrieli de Piazza, the resolutions to the pressing issues of automation and orchestration are central to the future success of a true telco cloud environment. That's why VMware is so deeply involved. VMware's presence in the spheres of automation and orchestration grew very quickly and the company now has upwards of 90 service providers leveraging VMware infrastructure. In addition, with cloud technology now increasingly adopted in the core network, it is now evolving and moving to the network edge.

VMware has its capabilities deep the roots of exactly what cloud means, how to build it, program it, automate and orchestrate it. Thus VMware's proposition and methodology, based on 20 years experience in virtualisation technology and services, is to examine every type of resource that is available and programmable. Thus the company is building a portfolio of capabilities including virtual network functions, virtual network functions management, modelling, design, onboarding, instantiation and life cycle management and generally taking a "Cloud First" approach in everything it does. That's why VMware looks at each and every source available and then catalogues them whilst being able to program effective functions on top.

Gabrieli Di Piazza says says that those players not taking a "Cloud First" approach run the risk of falling back into outmoded and outdated ways of thinking about telco networks. He adds that "Cloud First" requires a mindset based on how to build a cloud in a multi-vendor, multi domain environment and to do so from the cloud up. He points out that many non-cloud vendors are applying a top-down approach and neither fully appreciate nor understand what a cloud actually is.

VMware's orchestration strategy and "Cloud First" credo is centred on enabling the ability to collect, catalogue, inventory and program services across any type of cloud. It is the same for any type of virtualised infrastructure management, be that VMware open APIs, Open Stack APIs, edge, kubernetes of even public cloud APIs. The purpose being to enable services that can dynamically move across different clouds with all fundamentally connected with telemetry, assurance, placement and AI to drive capability.