The New Telco-Hyperscaler Relationship: Building and Partnering for Telco Cloud Success
Service providers will need to evolve their existing relationships with hyperscalers to employ a build-and-partner strategy.
To ensure both near-term objectives and long-term telco cloud success, service providers will need to evolve their existing relationships with hyperscalers to one that employs a dual strategy of build and partner: develop in-house cloud-native platforms, technologies and expertise while also developing balanced, symbiotic hyperscaler partnerships, explains Ben Baker, Sr. Director, SP & Cloud Marketing at Juniper Networks.
Service providers (SPs) have moved from dipping a toe into the shallow end to diving headfirst into the deep waters of telco cloud, a software-defined, highly resilient cloud infrastructure for agile service delivery as well as internal workloads. Some like Deutsche Telekom have had success while others tread water, or worse. Public cloud providers, or “hyperscalers,” like AWS, Microsoft and Google have come to the rescue with platforms and services designed specifically to support the needs of SPs.
Over the last decade, hyperscalers have developed and curated cloud technologies to successfully automate a global cloud ecosystem. Today, hyperscalers are working to extend their cloud platforms to the network edge, riding over the high bandwidth and low latency of 5G to deliver new services, enter new markets and generate new revenues. The challenge? Hyperscalers own little to no edge real estate, placing an extraordinary dependency on SP partnerships to achieve market success.
While most top-tier SPs have invested in cloud transformation, progress has been inconsistent. Moreover, only a few have achieved cloud proficiency to manage a highly scaled telco and edge cloud deployment. As a result, several high-profile SPs, particularly in North America, have entered partnerships with hyperscalers to hasten time to market with the data center, telco and edge cloud services for internal workloads and external services.
To level the playing field or even tip the scales in their favor, SPs must continue to learn, adapt and evolve their cloud capabilities to develop unique cloud solutions that leverage their own vast edge real estate. SPs need partnerships but solely relying on a hyperscaler cloud to achieve business agility without learning the tools of the trade is akin to swimming in deep waters without a life vest.
To grow market share, increase revenues and participate in the growing cloud economy, SPs must incorporate a dual strategy of build and partner: develop in-house cloud-native platforms, technologies and expertise to protect self-interests and maintain control while also developing balanced, symbiotic hyperscaler partnerships to achieve both near-term objectives and long-term success.
See More: Why Cloud Services Will Continue To Surge Amidst the Chip Shortage
Building for Success: The SP Telco Cloud Journey
5G and edge clouds are changing how network operators build and deploy networks. Traditional networks based on hardware-centric and service-specific solutions are evolving to an open, software-centric model. Using the same tools, models and methodologies as the hyperscalers, SPs can develop cloud muscle to seamlessly integrate with the public cloud ecosystem when needed, deliver integrated edge services and applications, and gain the knowledge and experience to determine whether public cloud partnerships are strategic or self-destructive. To realize this vision, SPs are evolving virtualized, function-led clouds to cloud-native platforms allowing customers and their internal networking and IT organizations to plug seamlessly into the cloud ecosystem of application developers and public cloud providers.
With an evolved, cloud-native architecture, SPs can realize actual workload and application portability to deliver flexibility, agility and improved economics in a fast-paced, dynamic and competitive market. However, the cloud-native transformation is an evolution that takes time and can raise several challenges along the way. To manage and mitigate these challenges, SPs must build secure telco and edge cloud platforms that protect customers, data and infrastructure, support existing and future cloud applications, use automation to simplify cloud operations at scale and standardize on methodologies and tools that foster and support multi-vendor collaboration, and hybrid and multi-cloud networks.
While building telco and edge clouds are imperative for SP success, a disruptive force is stirring the pot. Hyperscalers have developed telco services and expanded enterprise offerings, giving SPs pause as they develop or rethink their cloud strategies. Hyperscaler services offer SPs enticing relief from time to market pressures, but their new competitive telco and enterprise services have SPs reconsidering if hyperscalers are friend, foe, or somewhere in between.
Partnering For Success: The Evolving SP And Hyperscaler Partnership
As more operators announce hyperscaler partnerships, many remain cautious and protective of the telco workloads and services that are their bread and butter. The major concern? Are these partnerships symbiotic, or do they simply expand hyperscaler reach to consumers and enterprises at the expense of SP control and profit?
The sobering reality is that it is likely a combination of both, but SPs can strategically benefit from hyperscaler partnerships while protecting their long-term interests. By “building for success,” SPs will have the leverage and exit strategy to reduce risk while leaving the opportunity open to beneficial partnerships.
SPs can leverage these partnerships to their benefit by deploying a hybrid-multicloud, an ecosystem of SP private clouds and multiple public cloud services. By combining Kubernetes-native software-defined networking (SDN) approach, robust security and scalable overlay tunneling, SPs can build a cloud-neutral architecture that can locate workloads between and across the hybrid-multicloud, providing benefits such as:
-
- Optimization and balance of cost, performance, latency and data sovereignty requirements of customers and applications.
- Reduced risk of vendor lock-in.
- Increased service availability.
- Competitive leverage if contract terms become unfavorable.
While each public cloud requires upfront integration work and investment, hybrid-multiclouds give SPs the independence and leverage to mitigate these challenges. Beyond their proprietary outer wrappers, each hyperscaler cloud shares a common core of open, cloud-native technologies like containers, microservices, Kubernetes and a wealth of open-source projects that enhance capabilities and functionality.
By investing in their cloud-native telco and edge clouds, SPs gain the hands-on experience and knowledge to build a cloud-neutral fabric to plug seamlessly into the vast public cloud ecosystem with the independence and leverage to control services, costs and the bottom line.
Do you think the telco-hyperscaler partnership needs to evolve? Share with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!
