Tag Archive for: Cloud Native

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NGMN publishes Cloud Native Manifesto

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Setting industry’s call to action to drive cloud native adoption


Frankfurt, Germany, 13 September 2023. Today, the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) published the “Cloud Native Manifesto: An Operator View”. This important publication provides key principles and requirements for Cloud Native Telecom from an operator’s point of view, and a clear view on the focus required by the industry in order to accelerate the adoption of cloud native solutions in mobile networks. “Cloud Native” refers to a way of designing and operating applications, network functions and services in an open and flexible environment with the intention to enable greater efficiency in operations and faster time to market for new services, thereby enabling operators to meet their customers’ needs. 

“Given the strategic impact of the move towards cloud native, the already experienced and foreseen implications in its adoption for operators, and the multiple options and paths provided by industry players, it is the belief of the NGMN Board that a clear position on cloud native is required,” said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “With this publication – written by the NGMN Board and invited operator experts – we provide that steering to the industry by outlining a clear set of prioritised calls to action, which, once addressed, will drive the migration at scale towards cloud native network workloads, for the benefit of the ecosystem and end-users”, he added. 

“Whilst the industry is embracing cloud native as a paradigm to boost efficiency and enhance flexibility for current and future networks, it is clear that several issues remain, which will hamper the objective to achieve scale deployment – unless these are urgently, consistently and cohesively addressed through an industry wide effort” said Mauro Costa, NGMN Board Member and Director of Network Cloud and Continuous Delivery at Telia Company. “In particular, together with the entire industry, we need to ensure that solutions can be truly cloud native and multi-vendor and that we have the tools and processes in place to enable these” he added. 

On the journey to highly flexible, sustainable, and resilient networks for the future, the NGMN Board believes in applying the following cloud native principles to all layers of network infrastructure, applications and services*: 

  1. Decoupled infrastructure and application lifecycles over vertical monoliths  
  2. ‘API first’ over manual provisioning of network resources  
  3. Declarative and intent-based automation over imperative workflows  
  4. GitOps** principles over traditional network operations practices 
  5. Unified Kubernetes (or the like) resource consumption patterns over domain-specific resource controllers 
  6. Unified Kubernetes (or the like) closed-loop reconciliation patterns over vendor-specific element management practices  
  7. Interoperability by well-defined certification processes over vendor-specific optimisation. 

Through its Operating Disaggregated Networks (ODiN) project, NGMN continues to shape and develop processes to enable the industry – operators and vendors – to efficiently manage the full lifecycle of disaggregated networks. The Cloud Native Manifesto will play an important role in advancing this work of NGMN to deliver a set of operating model blueprints for disaggregated networks. The ODiN project, led by Deutsche Telekom and co-led by Bell Canada and Smart/PLDT, working with the entire value chain at NGMN, will publish its next recommendations at MWC2024.   

“As an industry alliance, we focus on collaboration, to unlock the smartest opportunities and to solve the biggest challenges the industry faces”, said Anita Doehler, CEO NGMN Alliance. “With this manifesto, coupled with the work of our ODiN project, we are providing a solid foundation for the industry to move forward at pace with adopting this key technology”, she added. 

Special acknowledgements go to the following Operator Members, who made significant contributions to the development of this publication: Bell Canada, BT, Chunghwa Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Smart/PLDT, Telia, TELUS, Turkcell, Vodafone. 

The full Cloud Native Manifesto can be downloaded here

 

* Does not imply order of priority
 ** Everything as code, single point of truth, immutable source of trust

 

About NGMN Alliance 

The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN Alliance) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately, will satisfy end user demand and expectations. 

The vision of the NGMN Alliance is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable, and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.  

The NGMN Alliance seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants (NGMN Partners): Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). 

 NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours. 

 

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Cloud Native Manifesto

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On our journey to highly flexible, sustainable, and resilient networks for the future, we believe in applying the following cloud native principles to all layers of network infrastructure, applications, and services*:

1. Decoupled infrastructure and application lifecycles over vertical monoliths;

2. ‘API first’ over manual provisioning of network resources;

3. Declarative and intent-based automation over imperative workflows;

4. GitOps** principles over traditional network operations practices;

5. Unified Kubernetes (or the like) resource consumption patterns over domain-specific resource controllers;

6. Unified Kubernetes (or the like) closed-loop reconciliation patterns over vendorspecific element management practices; and

7. Interoperability by well-defined certification processes over vendor-specific optimisation.

We also believe that openness and compatibility principles need to be key drivers of future Telecom and network services implementations to ensure we leverage Cloud Native principles to encourage software – orchestration – and hardware disaggregation.

Building a cloud native architecture calls for a joint effort among telecom operators, suppliers, and partners. This is described in this document by stating a few principal requirements and by outlining the area of focus for this journey from an operator point of view.

* Does not imply order of priority

** Everything as code, single point of truth, immutable source of trust

 

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Cloud Native Telco Summit

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Cloud Native Telco Summit

Back for a fifth year, TelecomTV’s Cloud Native Telco Summit will host top cloud-native telco experts who will share their unique insights on how they are adopting new methodologies, practices and tools to underpin their increasingly cloud-oriented strategies.

The summit will highlight the reasons for cloud native and the resulting benefits to a telco, using the experiences of early adopters.

Register for free to join the conversation and engage with other experts during the live Q&A sessions.

You can shape the discussions by sending in your questions upfront!

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Experience on Cloud Native Adoption

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This document reports experience from the NGMN Partners on the adoption and the studies currently ongoing on Cloud Native. NGMN, at the beginning of 2021, released a White Paper providing an overall view on the Cloud Native evolution. That document is about a long journey that is still ongoing and foresees different steps to reach full maturity. The intention of this document is to highlight some of the areas that are on the spotlight now, and the steps that the Partners are currently doing in respect to that journey.

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TelecomTV ODiN Panel

Managing the Route to Disaggregation

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Disaggregation is a key topic for mobile network operators and the entire industry. For MNOs and their CTOs, one of the most burning questions is how to master the operation of disaggregated networks.

Therefore, one of our core projects of this strategic pillar is “Operating Disaggregated Networks” – ODiN. This pillar also embraces network automation as well as cloud native projects.

The objective of this project is to focus on the end-to-end operating model. The project ODiN will consider, amongst others, the following key aspects: processes, technology/tools and skill requirements. It will also provide guidance towards the industry players regarding roles and opportunities provided by disaggregation.

 

CTOs need to start preparing now for future-proof operating models that are built on:

  • Orchestration of powerful ecosystems of solution partners
  • Openness and flexibility to integrate new partners and technologies
  • Highly diverse set of skills and capabilities to drive innovation and efficiency

 

Why? Because disaggregating or breaking the network components into more parts and opening the interfaces will allow more companies, new and smaller ones, to develop solutions as well as hardware and software products. This will allow faster development cycles as more minds, teams and companies are working towards one goal – improving solutions, performance, making the network more efficient and ultimately improving customer experience. This implicates faster development and quicker time to market of new functions, features and products.

However, to master disaggregation, including to master most efficient and performant operation of disaggregated networks, requires the introduction of new processes, skills and tools, among other.

Collaborating in the pre-competitive environment, our ODiN project will generate valuable input for MNOs and the entire ecosystem to master that challenge and also support the selection of most fitting operating models,  related to MNO’s specific situation.

The NGMN projects will enable vendors to develop better and more efficient products. Operators will extremely benefit as technology will keep on getting better in a shorter span of time. In addition, disaggregation will also allow more and better customisation of products based on the specific needs of each operator.

For additional insights, please listen to three of our member project leads representing the regions of Americas, Asia and Europe and what they share on #DisaggregatedNetworks and #NetworkAutomation and their regional characteristics. Our „Operating Disaggregrated Networks” Panel Discussion with Carlos Fernandes (Deutsche Telekom), Lennart Olaivar (Smart/PLDT) and Sebastian Thalanany (UScellular) was streamed on Wednesday June 30th on TelecomTV. Please find the on demand recording here:

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Press and Industry Briefing 2021

NGMN Press And Industry Briefing

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During the last year, NGMN went through a significant transformation – jointly driven by our new Chairman of the Board Arash Ashouriha from Deutsche Telekom, our new CEO Anita Doehler, as well as by the entire NGMN Board.

Disaggregation, cloudification and virtualisation, amongst others lead to significant changes in the industry and the whole ecosystem requiring operators and the entire value chain to change in order to successfully manage these challenges. Hence, we felt a strong need to transform our strategy and focus topics.

We decided to build upon our strengths and remain operator driven with a focus on requirements level.

Together with the entire NGMN Board, we actively developed and approved our New Strategic Focus Topics, addressing the industries’ main challenges today and in the next years.

Alongside with projects supporting 5G’s full implementation, the focus of the NGMN Work Programme in 2021 and beyond is on three main equally important pillars with different time horizons:

 

1. Mastering the Route to Disaggregation with a focus on the End-to-End Operating Model

Disaggregation is a key topic for mobile network operators and the entire industry.

For MNOs and their CTOs, one of the most burning questions is how to master the operation of disaggregated networks.

Therefore, one of our core projects of this strategic pillar is “Operting Disaggregated Networks” – ODiN. This pillar also embraces network automation as well as cloud native projects.

 

2. Green Future Networks

Sustainability is a topic of general and global concern gaining increasing attention from many companies.

The “carbon handprint” or “enabling effect” provided by the ICT sector can efficiently contribute to lower the “carbon footprint” of a high impact industry. ICT represents 2% of the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions according to the ITU with mobile and fixed networks representing 24% out of the ICT emissions.

Our Green Future Networks project focuses on the identification and mitigation of environmental impacts generated by the network part of the ICT sector such as:

  • Sustainability Challenges, Initiatives in Mobile Networks and End-to-End Service Footprint
  • Network Equipment Eco-Design
  • Network Energy Efficiency and
  • Metering

 

3. 6G

NGMN has a proven track record in substantially paving the way for 4G’s and 5G’s success, its mass-market and end-user adaptation. We are determined to provide the same impact for 6G, in order to achieve harmonised global standards and to contribute to a healthy global ecosystem for the benefit of end-users.

As a global organisation representing the entire value chain, NGMN is set to take the lead in providing impactful guidance for global 6G activities responding to the needs of end users, societies, mobile network operators and the ecosystem as a whole.

We published the first 6G White Paper focusing on the 6G Drivers and Vision in April this year, in which NGMN Operators identify the key drivers for 6G and outline our vision for 6G and the future transition of networks enabling differentiated services with expanded market opportunities and novel experience. Furthermore, the paper outlines the key challenges to be considered in a journey towards 6G, and emphasises the need for a healthy and unified global ecosystem and for global standards.

This is the first of a series of deliverables that NGMN will publish within the next years. In the next steps, use cases and end-to-end system requirements will follow.

 

Our New Brand

In addition, we have introduced a new NGMN brand that builds upon and extends our new strategy.

The new NGMN is fresh and energetic, standing for the duopoly of our brand idea of unity and practicability. The dual colour scheme symbolises human touch (red) and technology (blue). We unite our human touch with technology! Our new logo contains several nice features, underpinning our new way of working. Curious to find out more?

 

Discover our transformation and access the TelecomTV recording of the „NGMN Press & Industry Briefing“ with the following NGMN Board member participants:

  • Arash Ashouriha (SVP Group Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom and Chairman of the NGMN Board)
  • Carlos Fernandes (VP Group Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom)
  • Anita Döhler (CEO, NGMN Alliance)
  • Yuhong Huang (Deputy General Manager China Mobile Research Institute, China Mobile)
  • Luke Ibbetson (Head of Group R&D, Vodafone)
  • Michael S. Irizarry (EVP and CTO Engineering and Information Technology, UScellular)
  • Emmanuel Lugagne Delpon (SVP Orange Labs Networks, Orange)
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For further information please download the NGMN Press & Industry Briefing presentation here.

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NGMN Cloud Native Enabling Future Telco Platforms Executive Summary v2.1

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This document provides an executive summary for the analysis of the transformation towards Cloud Native in the main network domains of the Telco infrastructure. The goal is to define a holistic view on the Cloud Native transformation framed in an Edge Hybrid Cloud scenario. This transformation is mainly perceived by the Telcos as an important driver for internal optimization, cost savings and to speed up vertical solution. From a broader perspective, it is also an enabler, for the Telcos, to join a wider ecosystem where Telcos, technology suppliers, developers and Hyperscale Cloud Providers work together leveraging on their own specific and unique assets. A full paper is also available.

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NGMN Deckblatt Cloud Native Future Telco Platformas 424x600

NGMN Cloud Native Enabling Future Telco Platforms v5.2

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This document focuses on specific technical areas that are considered relevant enablers for an Open Telco Platform. As a main pillar, the overall evolution toward Cloud Native is considered fundamental, with different needs and level of evolution in different network domains. To be part of a wider ecosystem, the Telco Platform must be open and programmable, so the exposure of the relevant Telco APIs is a key factor. Intelligence in the network plays an important role when it comes to support many Communication Services that have specific network requirements and that leverage on specific Telco assets. The scenario foresees different challenges and possible critical success factors are identified and discussed.

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The Linux Foundation and NGMN Collaborate on End-to-End 5G and Beyond

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Frankfurt, Germany, May 10, 2021: The Linux Foundation and the Next Generation Mobile Network Alliance (NGMN), today announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for formal collaboration regarding end-to-end 5G and beyond.

NGMN’s mission is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user, placing a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Sustainability and Green Future Networks, as well as on 6G and the continuous support of 5G’s full implementation.
This mission is complementary to the efforts of the Linux Foundation’s LF Networking and LF Edge umbrella projects, as well as others like LF Energy operating within the telecom, IoT, and networking spaces.

Creating and providing open, scalable building blocks for operators and service providers is critical to the industry adoption of 5G and beyond. Therefore, the collaboration between NGMN and the Linux Foundation will focus on end-to-end 5G architecture and beyond 5G. Specific areas of alignment may include sustainability, network automation and network autonomy based on Artificial Intelligence, security, edge cloud, virtualization, disaggregation, cloud native, and service-based architecture, to name a few.

“We very much look forward to a mutually inspiring and beneficial collaboration with The Linux Foundation. Open Source is gaining increasing relevance for the strategic topics of our Work Programmes such as Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks and 6G. We are delighted to partner with The Linux Foundation to jointly drive our mission for the benefit of the global ecosystem”, said Anita Doehler, CEO, NGMN Alliance.

“We are thrilled to be aligning with such an innovative, industry-leading organization,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “Integrating NGMN’s expertise across pivotal areas like Disaggregation, Green Future Networks, cloud native, automation, and early work on 6G into LF Networking’s 5G Super Blueprint initiative is a natural next step for the industry.”

The Linux Foundation’s vision of harmonizing open source software with open standards has been in effect for several years, including collaborations with ETSI, TMF, MEF, GSMA, the O-RAN Alliance, and more. NGMN also maintains longstanding co-operations with all of these organisations. The alignment between The Linux Foundation and NGMN represents the latest in a long-standing effort to integrate open source and open standards across the industry.