Taking the Next Step With the Telco Cloud
Tony Scarfo
EVP and General Manager, Cloud and Edge Business Unit
Communications are evolving at a dizzying pace, challenging service providers of all stripes to adopt the latest technologies and reshape their businesses for the new world. Telco Cloud, an area my team and I are deeply focused on, is one of the key components in making that transformation a success.
Cloud Native Networks
Adopting cloud native Telco Cloud technologies leads to a software-defined, highly resilient infrastructure that enables providers to add services more quickly, respond to changes in demand more nimbly, and manage their resources more efficiently via increased automation at the management layer.
Cloud native networks and network functions enable telcos to extend the geographic reach for their services and meet new service performance requirements such as low latency, a key component of tomorrow’s ultra-demanding 5G services. Telco Cloud also provides the new core and edge network capabilities that will enable mobile operators to build new 5G revenue streams.
Telco Cloud
Embracing Telco Cloud also enables providers to quickly and economically bring highly customized enterprise solutions to market by making it easy to co-create with enterprise partners using public cloud services’ anytime, anywhere, any device access.
All of these benefits, however, do not occur instantaneously, especially for existing networks --transforming mobile and fixed networks to cloud-native architectures and service delivery is a multi-step process. In addition to the network infrastructure, the network functions software used for service delivery and other operations must be updated and transformed in order to realize full web-scale, cloud-based services.
Ribbon’s Telco Cloud portfolio consists of an extensive set of network functions, operational tools, and capabilities for the delivery of existing and new services. These include session border controllers and policy control & routing, VoIP application server and call controllers, and media resource processing. The portfolio can be deployed on various cloud environments and infrastructure platforms.
We work with our service provider partners at all stages of the network transformation journey, delivering backward-compatible solutions that share common feature software and cost-efficient automated operations processes across both network-based appliances and virtualized services hosted in data centers. With Ribbon, our customers can optimally manage the transformation process, while offering secure voice communications, service assurance, network monitoring and fraud prevention.
Cloud-Native CI/CD
We offer cloud-native Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) practices, both internally for our hosted services offers, and to align with our customers’ practices and processes. Frequent software releases and tightly integrated continuous testing enhance speed to market, reduce deployment issues, and enable rapid problem resolution. Once a product or service is deployed, the customer’s operations and orchestration platforms fit into the CI/CD cycle with continuous monitoring and a feedback loop for planning.
Additionally, Ribbon Automation Framework (RAF) is a set of well-defined automation tools that are standardized across all Ribbon applications. RAF easily integrates into any automation environment such as CI/CD pipeline, Services Orchestrator or even script execution based on a single command.
Looking ahead with Telco Cloud
With the increasing number of 5G announcements and commitments being made, it is key that telecom providers keep up technologically to remain competitive and profitable. Ribbon’s Telco Cloud software and portfolio helps them do just that, easily and efficiently.
