Role of System Integrators in Telco Cloud

Leading Telecom service providers and equipment vendors have adopted Telco cloud as future roadmap and Telco architects are busy in defining NFV/SDN roadmap. Telco system integrators are struggling to find Business case in emerging Telco Cloud ecosystem.  

Recent consumer trends, are trigger point for Telco Cloud adaptation.

Mobility

1)      Mobility: It is observed that any application usage is increased by 5X when hosted on mobility platform as mobile app. The success of facebook and twitter are largely attributed on being mobile platform. Mobility gives anytime, anywhere experience, thus enhancing utilization of the app. LinkedIN is one of the most visited site in social media. Figure below shows the growth of linked users after 2008.  LinkedIN launched Mobile version of App in 2008. We can clear see the steep user growth after 2008.

Bidirectional Data Growth

1)      Bidirectional Data Growth: Most of wireless networks are designed based on assumption of  10:1 download to upload ratio.  But recent trends suggest that due to growth of symmetrical applications as voice over LTE(VoLTE), video calling, video gaming, Facebook video posts, Tweets,  bi-directional (UL&DL) traffic   is  rapidly increasing. As shown in figure below, VoLTE subscriber will reach around 2 billion by 2017. VoLTE & Video calling traffic are bi-directional means consumer required similar upload and download bandwidth.





These and other trends, as Internet of Things, will lead to tremendous growth in consumer traffic, and Telecom service provider need to scale their infrastructure to cater the growth. Due to limitations as datacenter footprint and power facilities, service provider cannot keep increasing existing Proprietary  equipment boxes designed in hierarchical manner. They need to scale big and scale rapidly than ever before.

Following cloud attributes help Telco providers  to  meet the  requirement of scaling big and scaling rapidly.

·        Resource Pooling

·        Elasticity

·        Rapid Service Delivery

·        Metering

·        Rapid provisioning

By converting each Telco application as virtual machine, controlled by cloud orchestrator,  we can derive following benefits:

1)      Application & hardware will scale independently.

2)      Applications Virtual Machines can be spawned easily, leading to rapid provisioning and rapid resource pooling.

Cloud architecture will un-trap telecom applications from proprietary box and resource pooling will save the Capex and Opex. As shown in figure below, core Router A has 70% CPU utilization while Router B has 20%. In current architecture, Telco service provider need to enhance capacity of  Router A required to by spending Capex. In cloud environment, both routers’ application will be deployed as virtual machine on commoditized hardware. Due to resource pooling ability of cloud, Resources will be shared among Router A & B without Capex spending.

NFV & SDN

NFV and SDN are key technologies to realize Telco cloud.

1) NFV: To virtualize tightly coupled telecom application and to host on cloud platform. In other words, to detach telecom  application from proprietary hardware and run on industry standard hardware, to get benefit of commoditization dvs.Telco Service providers can get large discounts from their server companies (HP,IBM,Dell), when they use same high-end servers to run their telecom applications, along with their existing IT applications due to economy of scale.

As per basic economics principle, when product gets commoditized, its price goes down e.g mobile costs went down, when many people started using it. Above mentioned router scenarios is perfect example of NFV benefits.

SDN, aka software defined network is concept, not architecture. The definition of SDN is depends on our perspective as shown in figure below:

For OSS-BSS team, SDN is automation framework, which will be placed among order/inventory/billing management systems at North bound and equipment NMS systems at south bound. So it will take command from Order management systems and translate it into low level machine instructions which network elements as router and switches can understand and thus enforce policies on network devices. By translating high level language into low level machine instructions, SDN will reduce manual work and automate the  provisioning process

For network engineer, SDN will be framework to manage their virtual Networking apps (virtual firewall, vNAT, vCE.etc). SDN will interface with cloud orchestrator as Openstack neutron at North bound and translate RESTapi calls (as creating firewall instance or defining NAT rules)into machine instructions, which layer 2 forwarders understands. Hence policy enforcement will be presented as service catalog in cloud.

System Integrator’s Confusion

·       What is role of system integrators in Telco cloud ecosystem !

·       How can we create space in Openstack based NFV/SDN environment!!

·       What we offer to Service provider who wants to migrate its telecom applications to cloud, managed by SDN platforms and orchestrated by Openstack services ??

Most of telco cloud initiatives are considering  to use Openstack as their cloud management platform for NFV/SDN applications. Openstack is open source framework, offers APIs for compute, storage, and networking services. Being open-source Openstack is easy to customize, cost-effective and no vendor lock-in. ( read http://www.lightreading.com/ethernet-ip/telecom-clouds-drift-toward-openstack/d/d-id/698311 )

Openstack code is reviewed using  CI/CD framework as shown in figure below. ( see http://www.confreaks.com/videos/3703-openstacksummitatl2014-continuous-integration-and-deployment-using-openstack )   

Even though Openstack source code for cloud services are available, it requires heavy customization for telecom service providers. Thus Telcos need  to build replica of open source CI/CD framework  tools as Code repository as Github, Code verification and review tools(Jenkins, Zuul, Gerrit) and management tools as Rally,  inside it's domain.

Telecom Service Provider's Concerns for Openstack adoption:

·        Oversee the rollout and maturation of CI/CD within the organization.

·        Own management of the CI/CD platform and tools.

·        Continuously review industry and peer AT&T group approaches, assess our effectiveness, and refine our approach as needed.

SI partner can play vital role in customizing Openstack source code using agile tools for code development and CI/CD tools for review and validation purposes.

 2) Openstack’s release cycle is frequent as shown in figure below and minor software patches are released around the year. Telecom Service provider requires to be very agile to keep up with latest Openstack Releases. Each Openstack release will require to upgrade code at each network, storage, compute and control servers, which will be in large numbers for telecom environment.

Backed by strong expertise in deploying Openstack, SI  can assist the Telco service providers  to keep the pace with Openstack releases to implement required cloud features.  

3) NFV/sDN opens the door for 3rd party developers. Currently core telecom applications(4G:MME,S/PGW, core routers, firewalls etc ) occupied by leading Telco vendors. Using Openstack APIs and SDN, SI as software vendor can develop own applications to measure Telecom NFV application performance.  This will give us new space to innovate, develop and grow in telecom.

Openstack based Telecom Cloud architecture will open door for SI partners to enter into new telecom space  and provide newer opportunities to compete and collaborate,  in currently closed Telecom ecosystem.  So rather than get confused,, get SI ppl prepare and plunge.. so many exciting opportunities are waiting !!