Traditionally, communication service providers (CSPs) have followed a waterfall approach to rolling out technology, characterized by lengthy design phases followed by project execution and eventual handover to operations teams.
This approach has served CSPs well due to the consistent nature of service requirements in the telecommunications industry. Unlike the software and IT industry, CSPs typically launch services with complete feature sets, and the concept of minimum viable product (MVP) hasn’t been widely embraced in the telco domain.
Consequently, CSPs have operated within a siloed structure with separate planning, deployment and operations teams that often lack regular communication and collaboration between them.
Initially, with the deployment of cloud and virtualization technologies, things remained unchanged. The primary difference was that instead of tightly integrated full-stack solutions, the infrastructure began to exhibit some level of decoupling from the telecommunications applications.
But things haven’t stayed that way.
In comes cloud-native technology
The introduction of cloud-native technology has allowed for the separation of applications from the infrastructure and the cloud stack. This has led to the disaggregation of large, monolithic telecom applications into independent microservices.
As a result, CSPs are now placing a strong emphasis on leveraging automation and investing in continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) toolchains. These investments are aimed at automating not only day 0 and day 1 operations but also ongoing maintenance and day 2 operations.
Introducing the agile way
Within the IT industry, the transition to the agile way of working has been brought upon with the concept of the MVP, which essentially takes a basic functional product to the market to take initial customer feedback and gradually evolve the product to a full and rich feature set.
This helps to adapt the product as per market requirements earlier thereby saving costs, efforts and risk, in the case that the product is not well received by the market. It also helps to bring in early revenue by taking the product to market early. Moreover, the agile methodology is much more adaptive to incorporate any change request than the waterfall approach.
For CSPs, the above catalysts are now coming into play more so than ever with the launch of advanced 5G services which necessitates the adaption to cloud-native agility.
Most CSPs are now starting to migrate from 5G non-standalone (NSA) to 5G standalone (SA) core, moving from a virtualized core network to a cloud-native core network.
Similarly, new 5G feature sets like slicing and network as code enable a vast pool of use cases, opening the network capabilities to the developer community. CSPs can benefit here by adapting and launching an MVP and evolving the network and services with a full feature set as per customer and developer community feedback.
The 5G core also brings in a service-based architecture (SBA) which is cloud-native by design and decouples cloud-native network function (CNF) and life-cycle management (LCM) from each other.
Managing this new complexity with DevOps
With the network itself becoming more complex, operating and managing the network will incur huge costs for the CSP which they can minimize with automation and AIOps. This is a major business case for adapting CI/CD and DevOps toolchains.
Continuing to operate within the traditional waterfall model in a cloud-native 5G environment may limit a CSP to exploit the full benefits of the 5G ecosystem. This approach can lead to constraints in service delivery and delayed customer feedback.
To embrace the advantages of a 5G cloud-native ecosystem, transitioning to a DevOps approach is essential. This transition requires a transformation in how CSPs organize and manage their operations and networks. It involves shifting from a siloed approach to a more unified and collaborative way of working.
Transitioning to a cloud-native and DevOps approach
The transition to cloud-native and a DevOps approach isn’t a walk in the park and will require organizational changes.
For the agile approach to work, there needs to be a shift in how teams collaborate. Instead of working in isolated silos, teams need to work together collaboratively, enabling continuous service delivery from development to operations. This approach also facilitates the flow of feedback from operations to development.
Similarly, organizations will need to introduce new technology and tools. Fortunately, this change is straightforward and is already in progress in most CSPs.
Traditional monolithic applications need to transform into microservices and align with cloud-native functions which provide operational agility and facilitate testing, resulting in quicker service launches and go-to-market while maintaining high service availability. Faster and automated service can be delivered with a true cloud-native platform integrated with open-source monitoring, observability tools, and CI/CD toolchain.
The most difficult change entails a change in mindset. The DevOps approach means collaboration and broken silos within the organization to enable a true cloud-native and agile way of working.
This transformation is not a quick fix; it's an ongoing journey, much like the DevOps infinity symbol. Organizations must consistently work towards improvement and collaborate to achieve the most effective way of delivering value to their customers.
To fully realize the true potential of the cloud, CSPs must initiate this journey now, instilling an agile culture and a way of working with their organizations to embrace a truly cloud native and agile approach.
