Industries are entering the digital era in which ICT infrastructure will play a crucial role in the digital economy. Driven by both services and technologies, telecom networks will drastically change in order to deliver new services.

May 10, 2021

5 Min Read
NetX2025 Provides Intelligent Connectivity to Multiple Clouds

Three trends are accelerating enterprise cloudification

Trend 1: Enterprise IT systems have increasing demands for multi-cloud connection
According to industry consulting reports, the cloudification of enterprise IT systems is driven by three factors. The first factor is services. To obtain the optimal cloud service experience and avoid vendor lock-in, 93% of enterprises choose to simultaneously deploy multiple clouds. The second factor is technology. According to the Gartner Hype Cycle, multi-cloud technology will mature in the next two years at the earliest. That's why some innovative and leading enterprises are choosing multi-cloud deployment to get a head start. The last factor is business. 73% of surveyed enterprises believe that multi-cloud deployment will bring better ROI in the implementation phase.

Trend 2: COVID-19 has greatly accelerated enterprise cloudification
According to a famous analyst at MWC Shanghai 2021, 80% of surveyed enterprises would be building cloud-based architectures and applications twice as fast as they had been before the pandemic. Singapore and China have done quite well in dealing with the pandemic. Applications such as Trace Together and Health Code have helped with everything from contact tracing, data processing, and case investigation, to patient management, helping the states effectively combat the pandemic. Due to the pandemic, healthcare, education, and government public services are moving to the cloud more quickly, ultimately driving the cloudification of enterprises.

Trend 3: From Internetization to digitization, enterprise core systems are moving to the cloud faster
The past 20 years witnessed the cloudification of Internet applications. Over the next five to ten years, industries will transform from Internet-based to digital. The core systems, organizational processes, and production means of traditional industries will speed up cloudification, helping enterprises improve production efficiency and user experience through digital means. In the Internetization phase, enterprises didn't expect much from networks beyond simple access to the Internet. This limited demand meant that the benefits that accrued to telecom carriers in this phase were also limited. In the digitization phase, however, enterprises will have much higher SLA requirements as their production systems and core systems move to the cloud. This places new requirements on cloud migration: on-demand multiple- cloud selection, experience guarantees, security and reliability, and agile services.

As cloud becomes the foundation of industry digitization, it will present unlimited possibilities for carrier cloud services

According to a third-party consulting report, industry digitization will bring huge market opportunities to the global ICT industry. It is estimated that by 2023, the global ICT market will grow to US$15 trillion, with a CAGR of up to 17.5%. Over the next five to ten years, cloud services will be a key way that telecom carriers can benefit from digitization, and cloud-network services will be the main source of carriers' new B2B growth.

Industry analysis reports and carriers' financial reports show that some leading global carriers, especially those in Europe and Asia-Pacific, have seen growth in cloud services in 2020. A common factor in their success is setting cloudification as the direction of their future development strategy.

One Chinese carrier fought its way into the ranks of the top cloud service providers in China within just three years of adopting a cloud transformation strategy. In 2020, the carrier achieved growth of 350% and generated a revenue of over US$1.4 billion from cloud services. Some carriers outside China also saw substantial growth in cloud services in 2020, thanks to their cloud-first strategy and cloud integration strategy.

From another perspective, carriers are in a position to support one-line access to multiple-cloud, whereas OTT service providers can only support multiple-line access to one-cloud. On-demand multi-cloud access is what users ultimately need, which means carriers' one-line multi-cloud access solution is better positioned to meet the requirements of cloud-network convergence in the future. Carriers also have other advantages, such as differentiated private-line access services, localized system integration capabilities, deterministic network experience, overlay-underlay synergy, and edge computing equipment rooms.

Clearly, carrier's cloud services have a promising future.

Building target networks that feature intelligent multi-cloud access to help enterprises move to the cloud easily

To develop cloud services, carriers must implement top-level designs and strategic plans for target networks. The key to the success of the cloud strategy will be building networks characterized by intelligent multi-cloud connection.

Enterprises have varied requirements. Intelligent multi-cloud connection can more appropriately help enterprises with multi-cloud deployment for their key applications, support systems, operation data, and real-time computing applications. For carriers, intelligent multi-cloud connection can help them transform from differentiated cloud access service providers to multi-cloud management service providers. Intelligent multi-cloud connection has two key requirements. The first is the multi-cloud infrastructure, for one-account cloud access and self-service subscription. The second is the multi-cloud converged network for differentiated enterprise access, end-to-end automation, one-hop cloud access, and multi-cloud aggregation.

Huawei is promoting two use cases for intelligent multi-cloud connection: intelligent WAN access and intelligent edge access. Intelligent WAN access relates to cloud applications to which data security and latency are not critical. Enterprises can access their own or third-party public cloud through carrier networks such as PON, IP, or OTN, and use WANs to access their cloud-based IT systems that support their operations. Intelligent edge access relates to cloud applications to which data security and latency are highly critical. Enterprises can connect their production goods (e.g., employees, vehicles, and devices) to private cloud, edge cloud, or even public cloud, so that their production data is cloud-based.

Cloudification and intelligent multi-cloud connection are crucial to digital industries. Perfect tactics can't make up for the lack of a strategy, and the best tactic today is to continue executing the strategy established yesterday. In the digital era, cloud and networks are converging, and within the next five to ten years, carriers must develop cloudification strategies to seize this opportunity for virtuous B2B business growth.

— Zhang Jun, Chief Network Consultant of Huawei Carrier BG

This content is sponsored by Huawei.

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd

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