Abstracting multi-vendor, multi-domain, multi-cloud complexity
By Shiv Putcha, Founder & Principal Analyst, Mandala Insights
April 12, 2023
Excerpt
While the Communication Service Provider (CoSP) community is building up Cloud expertise and container-based “cloud-native network functions” (CNFs), hybrid/multi-cloud and now edge deployments have compounded their headaches. There are no unifying models to help them work across silos and between layers, which constrains interoperability, end-to-end automation, and policy-based management. The industry is not going to break the knot by slowly untying it; they need an approach that swiftly cuts through all the complexity.
Telco cloud is not a product category, it is really a platform use-case. For the purposes of this paper, a telco cloud platform is a unified solution that addresses CoSP interoperability and automation pain points to facilitate the transformation to Digital Service Providers. The mission of a telco cloud platform is to enable a composable, catalog-driven, intent-based Telco.
The key to achieving the mission is abstraction. Instead of manually integrating CNFs on a static, one-off basis, a Telco cloud platform needs to include an abstraction that models OpenAPI and cloud provider API interfaces to support automation. A harmonized telco domain model would allow developers to declaratively compose services using standards, while the platform runtime automates the deployment on a target host and late-binds the elements as a background process. Abstraction for interoperability would eliminate tedious system integration work and accelerate service delivery.
EnterpriseWeb’s CloudNFV aligns closely with the requirements and mission of a telco cloud platform. It offers high-level abstractions and common tools across environments to support a composable, catalog-driven, intent-based telco. It should be particularly compelling to the telecom industry. The company’s focus on a cross-domain, cross-layer integration and automation will help telcos to abstract away the complexity and deliver true end-to-end services.
