With MWC Barcelona set to take place at the Fira Gran Via next week, Ariana Lynn, Principal Analyst at The Fast Mode spoke to Honoré LaBourdette, acting senior vice president of Global Telco and vice president of Telco Partner Ecosystem at Red Hat on the company's participation at the event.
Ariana: What are some of the key themes of this year's MWC?
Honoré: The official MWC themes do a good job of capturing the key areas being addressed by the industry right now, including 5G, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), industrial edge and sustainability. Red Hat’s focus will be on the business side of industry transformation – how to bring technologies to life in telco networks and in enterprises, including manufacturers and the industrial ecosystem, to improve operations and innovation and meet customer experience aspirations.
We are looking forward to having our vibrant ecosystem of partners and customers together in one place at MWC. It’s a valuable opportunity for learning, sharing and making progress on how we help service providers in two key areas – 1) to differentiate and monetize their network services and 2) to move their data and workloads between clouds as business needs dictate.
Our conversations at MWC will be focused on:
- Hyper-automation and AI: the building blocks for an intelligent autonomous infrastructure, and overcoming challenges to achieve this.
- Hybrid cloud and edge: the need for a consistent platform to enable scaling and movement of workloads from core to edge and between clouds.
- Open radio access networks (RAN): the next steps for O-cloud and automation to operationalize open RAN.
- Private 5G: a critical component of industrial sector transformation.
- Security: the importance of software supply chain scrutiny, a zero-trust approach and DevSecOps.
- Energy efficiency: tools and open source solutions that can address network sustainability while maintaining performance.
Come and talk to us in Hall 2, stand 2F30!
Ariana: What are some of the events that Red Hat has lined up? Any showcases?
Honoré: On our stand, we’re excited to showcase the capabilities of open source and how it can increase the speed of innovation, helping service providers become more efficient and deliver a better customer experience. We will have demo stations showing tangible proof points and solutions, organized around key technologies including AI, automation, 5G, and edge computing.
In addition to meeting partners, customers, press and analysts all week, we have a number of speaking engagements. I will be among the four Red Hatters presenting on stage at MWC 2024. I’ll be moderating a session on how telco cloud strategies are evolving, while my colleagues will cover energy efficiency, private 5G at the industrial edge and optical networking. Full details of these sessions are as follows:
- Go Cloud or Go Home! - discussing the evolution and urgency of telco cloud strategies, with Honoré LaBourdette, Acting Senior Vice President of Global Telco and Vice President of Telco Partner Ecosystem at Red Hat | Tues. 27 Feb: 11:00-11:45, Stage B
- 5G vs. Wi-Fi: What do we actually need for scalable, real private wireless? – Red Hat presenting with partners Minsait and Intel on delivering 5G for industry transformation, with Kelly Switt, Global Head of Intelligent Edge at Red Hat | Wednesday 28 Feb: 13:15-14:15, Stage A
- Prioritising Purpose Driven Networks - panel conversation on goals and actions for energy efficient, sustainable networks, with Rimma Iontel, Chief Architect, Telco, Media & Entertainment at Red Hat | Wed, 28 Feb: 14:45-15:45, Stage B
- Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) for the Evolution of Mobile Networks - with Chris Wright, IOWN Global Forum Board Member (Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Global Engineering, Red Hat, Inc. ) | Thu, 29 Feb: 10:00 - 11:30 CET, Partner Theatre 6
Ariana: What's the outlook for telecoms, specifically the mobile industry in the next 12 months?
Honoré: I’d like to break this out into five key areas of opportunity over the coming year and beyond.
Wrapping our arms around AI
As service providers look to operationalize AI in 2024, we’ll continue to see a focus on security, responsibility, scalability and reproducibility. AI can play a significant role in helping service providers navigate complexity and automate network lifecycles more efficiently. For example, when it comes to RAN, service providers can harness AI models for more dynamic control of frequencies, sectors, cells and base stations. AI can also help to simplify and streamline operations with real-time root cause analysis for reduced time to repair. However, we also need to address challenges around how we ensure accurate data collection, how we convert AI recommendations into real time actions and managing energy consumption.
Methodologies like Containerization and DevOps that have been used to make software more reliable will be key in operationalizing AI. These will be extended to MLOps to help manage AI workloads more efficiently and reliably.
Attention on systems security and risk management
Service providers are looking at gaining consistent security capabilities natively at every layer of their networks and IT, starting within the hardware, extending up through the platform software and to the applications. That is, a consistent, carrier-grade foundation that spans private and public cloud environments, with the use of cloud-native technology and methodologies. An increased focus on security must be balanced with maintaining agility and innovation. The industry needs to think about proactive cybersecurity and resilience that includes the software supply chain, and bring in automation for preparedness, response and recovery.
Embed sustainability
Achieving sustainability goals is a complex and layered problem, and one that requires an entire ecosystem to work together to reduce the telecommunication industry CO2 footprint. For the greatest impact, an energy efficiency strategy should be holistic across network domains, using advanced data analytics, AI and massive automation in a unified consistent way. Open platforms and open source projects are playing a big role in driving innovation and Red Hat is working with the open source community to define and build a sustainable architecture in a cloud-native environment. One element of this is project Kepler, or Kubernetes-based Efficient Power Level Exporter, which Red Hat co-founded with IBM Research. Kepler captures energy consumption metrics across a wide range of platforms to help system administrators and developers understand, optimize and plan power usage.
Partner for private 5G in industry
We can expect greater collaboration between telco and industrial ecosystems, with advances in private 5G networks and edge computing. Service providers are well positioned to help manufacturing and other industries to handle the large increase in machine-generated data. Private 5G networks can provide more reliable connectivity and support faster decision-making, real-time analytics, AI-enabled services and more. Video cameras, robotics, conveyor belts and other remote devices can connect to private 5G networks through edge applications and embedded AI/ML models can help in inferencing and making quick decisions. This requires an open and collaborative ecosystem approach to building, testing and innovating.
Demand for cloud flexibility will grow
Following a period of rapid cloud migrations, service providers have gained a nuanced understanding of the economics of operating across multiple clouds. This awareness, combined with evolving regulatory requirements and business strategies, prompts a reevaluation of what workloads to move to the cloud. The spotlight is on hybrid cloud strategies that give service providers control of their expanding public and private cloud resources and flexibility to move workloads where they are needed in accordance with regulations as well as financial, operational and business goals. From Red Hat’s perspective, we see the need for a horizontal, unified cloud platform to manage everything in a consistent way from core to edge to public cloud and back.
