Deploy Mobility Services Faster, Cut Cost and Risk
Accelerate Deployment of 4G/5G Infrastructure – and Avoid the Hidden Costs
The race to 5G is on, with the market for 5G service provider-delivered services estimated to rise to $123B by 2025 (Source: Market and Markets, 2020). 5G, and indeed 4G virtualized technology, relies heavily on new cloud-based technologies that are very different from the “single box” physical appliances of the past. These new technologies promised more flexible service architectures. Many providers, however, are challenged with designing and operationalizing these complex solutions, with many hidden costs.
Recently, we announced a new cloud-based mobile packet core solution called Cloud Services Stack for Mobility, that can accelerate 4G and 5G mobile core rollouts, illustrated below.
Figure 1: Cisco Cloud Service Stack - Mobility
Learning from the Challenges
Since the ETSI NFVI model was defined, there has been a push by service providers to build their own infrastructure stacks. While a few have succeeded, we have observed that the majority of “custom stack” projects stall or, in some cases, even fail. Reasons for the struggles include spiraling integration costs, stack and component complexity, and operational challenges.
Learning from the Toughest
Over recent years, the Cisco Customer Experience (CX) team has been delivering major deployments – including the world’s largest virtualized network at T-Mobile (USA), and our most aggressive greenfield 5G-ready cloud platform at Rakuten (Japan). Add to this our most automated deployment at Vodafone Idea (India), and our 5G service experience in leading the world’s most ambitious rural 5G trial, 5G RuralFirst in the UK.
Cisco Cloud Services Stack for Mobility packages our product and deployment experience for today’s service providers to take advantage of, in their race to 5G.
Standardizing on Stack Components
In many past deployments, service providers have specified their own (unique) technology stacks. Our recommendation to them now is to standardize their Service Provider Private Cloud infrastructure (aka telco cloud), in order to leverage the industry’s economy of scale, and to free up investment to target growing 5G services opportunities.
The Cloud Services Stack for Mobility comprises our Mobile Core functions, the Cisco Virtual Infrastructure Manager (CVIM) that adds carrier-grade features to RedHat OpenStack, the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and Cisco Nexus data center networking fabric. The following table shows your checklist for deciding which components you need to procure, design-in and test.
Figure 2: Stack Components – Checklist
The Hidden Costs of Service Provider Private Cloud
What is less obvious with Service Provider Private Cloud, however, are the subsequent costs that providers need to budget for and absorb to realize their Service Provider Private Cloud – ranging from design costs to integration costs to security, performance and scale testing. In a custom stack scenario, the Service Provider needs to either resource these tasks (so called “Do It Yourself” or DIY), or fund a systems integrator to deliver these tasks. With Cloud Services Stack for Mobility, these activities have already been performed by Cisco – and are included in the overall solution cost, representing a significant savings to the service provider compared to a custom stack solution. This is illustrated in the figure below.
Figure 3: The Hidden Costs of Telco Cloud: What you need to "Do It Yourself" [DIY] in a Service Provider Private Cloud Custom Stack
Wrapping Up
Cloud Services Stack for Mobility is Cisco’s solution to the challenges of Telco Cloud design, test and operationalization. You can learn more about Cloud Services Stack for Mobility by contacting your nearest Cisco account team. For further information on the technical capabilities of this solution, please visit us at Cisco.com.