Comment/New section proposal - Cloud Native as Telco Transfomation Enabler

[mknair75]

I would like to check if a new section for cloud-native as telco transformation enabler makes sense. In the current form, the paper focuses more on the infrastructure aspects and how cloud-native techniques enable Telco in transformation is not captured well. Would like to know if the following text makes sense (draft)

Cloud-Native as Telco Transformation Enabler

As Telcos migrate from a communication service provider or connectivity service provider to a digital service provider, cloud-native principles and technologies add immense value to support this transformation. Digital services, which are bundled offerings that deliver value-added services for targetted vertical markets, can benefit from the agility that cloud-native technologies bring in to operations and business layer. This agility is enabled through the inherent capability of cloud-native platforms to offer dynamic provisioning, monitoring and elasticity of the platform, lightweight & easily replaceable microservices platform building blocks and best practices supported by CNCF. The agility offered by cloud-native technologies enables the Telco to launch products quickly thus reducing the time to market and revenue realization. For example, a SaaS application that requires video transcoding function at edge implemented as a lightweight microservice application can be deployed on-demand leveraging the cloud-native orchestration platform like Kubernetes or packaging solution like Helm chart without the overhead of infrastructure awareness or instrumentation to support elasticity. Combined with CI/CD techniques such acceleration function deployment can be replicated easily across multiple edge cloud locations through infrastructure as code capabilities offered by cloud-native technologies.

Adherence to cloud-native principles and adaptation of associated technologies also benefit Telcos in business and operations application integration which is one of the most complex and time-consuming aspect in the transformation journey. Cloud-native technologies offering the "as-a-service" paradigm enables operations automation, faster release cycles, regular product updates and support multiple stakeholders working in parallel. Telco operations which are traditionally process driven with many human touch points can benefit from the automation carried out leveraging declarative APIs and cloud-native microservices deployed using CNCF validated toolsets. This makes the integration more predictable, less time consuming and reduce overall total cost of ownership for the aggregate solution.

As many of the Telco business applications migrate to a Hybrid cloud consisting of public and private cloud infrastructure, it is essential to have infrastructure-independent abstractions created by platforms such as Kubernetes, seamless application connectivity enabled through service mesh and scalable monitoring through Prometheus. In the absence of such orchestration, management and runtime enablers, Telcos need to invest significant effort and capital to support such a hybrid cloud operational environment. Additionally such Business application functions deployed on cloud-native orchestration platform like Kubernetes, help to break the traditional management silos through the enablement of a services-based architecture. In such a services-based architecture the management, control & network functions deployed as microservices, interacting through declarative APIs & event-driven interfaces can support a distributed deployment that can scale elastically on-demand as per the business need of the Telco.