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My friend: Hi Ibrahim, I have a question for you.
- Me: Please, go ahead.
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My friend: I was wondering what is meant by telco cloud?
- Me: Telco cloud is simply a software-defined, highly resilient cloud infrastructure that allows telecom companies to add services more quickly, respond faster to changes in demand, and centrally manage their resources more efficiently. Early telco clouds applied virtualization concepts from the datacenter into the network. With the advent of 5G, telco clouds are built upon newer technologies like containers, as well as hybrid cloud architectures. As they are deployed into telco clouds, containers and microservices will have to coexist with older virtualized network functions (VNFs)
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My friend: But what is the difference between telco cloud and enterprise cloud?
- Me: Actually, telecom operations have more stringent performance and quality of service requirements than enterprise operations, in addition to more compliance with geopolitical, government, and industry regulations. MNO networks need faster traffic management, more reliability, minimized jitter and lower latency than enterprise clouds, so clouds for telcos are built with special requirements in mind. For example, virtual radio access networks (vRAN) and open RAN require a real-time environment that extends out to the edge of the network and meets stringent throughput, latency, and resiliency requirements that are beyond the capabilities of the typical enterprise cloud.
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My friend: So, how can we deploy telco cloud, using private, public or hybrid cloud?
- Me: Usually, telco cloud is deployed using private cloud as it is more secure and can provide the latency and QoS requirements of telcos. However, it can also be used in hybrid architecture (which is a mix of private and public clouds) when we have telco applications that do not have critical real-time or low latency requirements as these applications can be deployed over public cloud and so we have some apps are on the private cloud and other apps on the public cloud. Public and hybrid cloud deployments can be ideal as they take advantage of scale on demand and pay per use capabilities. Public cloud is also a good fit for applications that perform well on standard CPUs and have no unique network dependencies, such as service assurance, billing, and charging. So, choosing the right architecture of telco cloud depends on your applications that you want to deploy inside the telco cloud and these apps’ requirements, also any compliance required at any level as well and of course the targeted security level.
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My friend: Thank you so much. You made it very clear.
- Me: You are most welcome.
LinkedIn: Ibrahim Sayed, PMP on LinkedIn: #5g #telcocloud #cloud #openran #oran | 36 comments