Migrating Telco Workloads to the Public Cloud: Key Issues and Considerations

Gareth Price-Jones
Jan 29
4 min read

Updated: Mar 27

As telecommunications companies face increasing demand for innovative services and operational efficiencies, migrating workloads to the public cloud presents a compelling opportunity. However, this transition involves a complex set of challenges and considerations that telcos must address to ensure a successful migration. Below, we explore the critical issues and key factors to consider when moving telco workloads to the public cloud.

1. Security and Compliance

Data Security: Telcos handle vast amounts of sensitive customer data. Ensuring robust security measures to protect this data from breaches and unauthorized access is paramount.

Regulatory Compliance: Different regions have varying regulatory requirements for data storage and processing. Telcos must ensure their cloud solutions comply with these regulations to avoid legal complications (e.g. Sovereignty, GDPR etc).

2. Network Latency and Performance

Low Latency Requirements: Telecom services often require ultra-low latency for real-time communication and high-performance applications. Ensuring the public cloud can meet these requirements is crucial, this may require hybrid cloud for certain services.

Bandwidth Management: Efficiently managing bandwidth to accommodate fluctuating demand and prevent network congestion is essential for maintaining service quality.

Throughput performance: Telco applications that need to support high throughput services e.g. mobile broadband will need to ensure the public cloud supports acceleration techniques such as SR-IOV and DPDK.

Hidden restrictions: Telco networks have some specific requirements such as large number of route prefixes (e.g. IPX roaming) and appliances that need to support potentially millions of connections (e.g. Firewalls, gateways, CG-NAT) that may not be supported by networking fabric in some public cloud solutions.

Additionally AS numbers and IP addresses that are owned by the Telco may not be easily re-useable.

Traditional redundancy mechanisms such as floating IP addresses for VNF's that do not support cloud native redundancy mechanisms may also be problematic.

3. Integration with Existing Infrastructure

Legacy Systems: Many telcos operate legacy systems that may not be easily compatible with cloud environments and may not support the ability to scale based on demand. Developing strategies for seamless integration or phased migration is critical.

Hybrid Cloud Solutions: Implementing hybrid cloud solutions can enable telcos to leverage the benefits of both on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure, ensuring a smoother transition. This is particularly true for access network functions such as O-RAN / AI-RAN, but also to address the performance and networking charges raised in other parts of this article.

Migrating IT (BSS/OSS): If the regulatory and security demands can be met these applications can be a good target for initial migration and can benefit from cloud based PaaS services such as Data Lakes, AI/ML and Analytics.

Network Functions: ETSI's network function virtualization (NFV) has enabled network functions to benefit from virtualized cloud based environment (VNFs) and the migration to cloud native based network functions (CNFs) and service based architecture can ensure they benefit from scaling within the cloud CaaS and PaaS services such as DevOps for agility. But it is important to make sure your vendors are fully aligned.

4. Cost Management

Initial Investment: The upfront costs of migrating to the cloud can be substantial, including connectivity setup, landing zone creation, and workforce training.

Ongoing Operational Costs: Continuously managing cloud service fees, maintenance, and updates requires meticulous financial planning and cost optimization strategies.

Networking charges: These tend to be high for any data that egresses the public cloud, whilst this may be small for control plane applications, user plane for appliances (e.g. UPF/SAE-GW-U) that both send and receive data can quickly escalate costs and needs planning. Again this may drive a hybrid approach to cloud deployments.

5. Scalability and Flexibility

On-Demand Scalability: The public cloud offers the ability to scale resources up or down based on demand. Telcos must ensure their applications and services can leverage this flexibility to respond to market changes effectively.

Future-Proofing: Choosing cloud solutions that can adapt to future technological advancements and changing business needs is essential for long-term success.

6. Vendor Management

Vendor Selection: Selecting the right cloud service provider is a critical decision. Telcos should evaluate vendors based on their reliability, performance, security measures, and support services.

Service-Level Agreements (SLAs): Establishing clear SLAs with cloud providers ensures that performance, availability, and support expectations are met.

Application vendor: Whilst virtualization and the move to cloud native applications in network functions (VNFs/CNFs), as noted earlier is an enabler, vendors that are verified on the public cloud you choose need to be a key selection criteria.

7. Organizational Readiness

Skill Development: Ensuring the workforce is adequately trained to manage and operate cloud environments is vital for a successful migration.

Change Management: Implementing effective change management strategies helps in addressing resistance and ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud.

Conclusion

Migrating telco workloads to the public cloud offers significant benefits, including enhanced scalability, flexibility, and innovation. However, the journey involves navigating a myriad of challenges related to security, performance, integration, cost management, and organizational readiness. By carefully planning and addressing these issues, telcos can leverage the full potential of public cloud solutions to drive growth and operational efficiency.

Having read about the advantages and now the issues and challenges, read our next blog that talks to overcoming these issues and challenges and how Brightpath Consulting can help.

Author Gareth Price-Jones