The German operator has extended its existing partnership with the public cloud provider.

Anne Morris, Contributing Editor, Light Reading

July 12, 2022

3 Min Read
Deutsche Telekom edges closer to Google Cloud

Deutsche Telekom appears to be increasingly leaning on Google Cloud for cloud-native support. The telco has just announced an expansion of its existing partnership with the US public cloud provider that takes in core network services and data analytics.

The two partners highlighted initial plans to trial standalone 5G services in Austria and launch pilots of remote packet gateway functions, based on the Google Cloud platform and Google Distributed Cloud Edge. Other projects will involve trials of network and customer experience analytics technology.

Indeed, it was probably only a matter of time before the German operator announced some sort of trial with Google Cloud that involved edge technologies. The hyperscaler acquired MobiledgeX from Deutsche Telekom and other shareholders in April, boosting its efforts to chase cloud computing business in the telecoms industry.

Figure 1: The two partners plan to trial standalone 5G services in Austria and launch pilots of remote packet gateway functions. (Source: Deutsche Telekom) The two partners plan to trial standalone 5G services in Austria and launch pilots of remote packet gateway functions.
(Source: Deutsche Telekom)

Deutsche Telekom unit T-Systems also integrates edge computing into public clouds such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and its own Open Telekom Cloud.

Maintaining sovereignty

The Germany-headquartered operator noted that it has been working with Google for many years. In autumn 2021, for example, T-Systems teamed up with Google Cloud to build and supply sovereign cloud services to the German public sector, enterprises, and healthcare firms.

The new joint offering was due to be available as of mid-2022 and aims to manage a set of sovereignty controls and measures, including encryption and identity management. In addition, T-Systems said it will exercise a control function over relevant parts of the German Google Cloud infrastructure.

It has always seemed somewhat ironic that European telcos have to rely on US big tech to launch sovereign cloud services. French peer Orange has established an independent cloud platform called Bleu that is designed to meet "enhanced data sovereignty" requirements in France and is based on Microsoft Azure.

T-Systems insists that its service offers full compliance with the requirements of German regulators, while retaining the public cloud functionality of a hyperscaler.

Want to know more? Sign up to get our dedicated newsletters direct to your inbox.

The operator is offering the sovereign cloud in two versions: the sovereign cloud platform, a Google Cloud platform monitored by T-Systems; and the sovereign private cloud which is based on Google Cloud technology and operated by T-Systems in a private data center. The latter offer is specifically oriented to clients with particularly sensitive workloads.

T-Systems also said both versions fulfill the core Gaia-X provisions for cloud sovereignty. The Gaia-X initiative aims to establish a federated data infrastructure built on European data privacy principles.

Related posts:

— Anne Morris, contributing editor, special to Light Reading

Read more about:

Europe

About the Author(s)

Anne Morris

Contributing Editor, Light Reading

Anne Morris is a freelance journalist, editor and translator. She has been working in the telecommunications sector since 1996, when she joined the London-based team of Communications Week International as copy editor. Over the years she held the editor position at Total Telecom Online and Total Tele-com Magazine, eventually leaving to go freelance in 2010. Now living in France, she writes for a number of titles and also provides research work for analyst companies.

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like