The Cloud Native Journey: Where Telcos Are and What’s Next – Part 1/3

The journey to cloud native IT and networks has been challenging for telcos, and many are still far from realizing its full benefits — flexibility, scalability, cost efficiency and agility. Unlike tech giants like AWS, Google and Apple, which built their cloud services free from legacy constraints, telcos are still transitioning to open-source software and developer-driven ecosystems.

While telcos have been undertaking the cloud native journey, traditional connectivity services have seen a decade of stagnant growth and 5G investments have yet to unlock their transformative potential. Beyond faster speeds, 5G’s true promise lies in network slicing, ultra-reliable low-latency communications and massive IoT — possibilities that require fully embracing cloud native architectures.

To drive growth and maximize 5G’s potential, telcos must accelerate their transformation, ensuring their 5G aligns with cloud native principles to unlock advanced networks and new revenue opportunities.

The Cloud Native Challenge

Applying established cloud native principles consistently in telecom networks is complex. The simple act of packaging an existing network function in a container doesn’t make it cloud native. Rather, true cloud nativeness requires a holistic adoption of best practices that will enable desired behaviors like scalability, resilience and agility. A comprehensive list of cloud native benefits has been outlined in the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance’s Cloud Native manifesto, which you can link to at the end of this article.

For telcos seeking to transform, the challenge lies in objectively evaluating vendors’ 5G network functions against cloud native criteria. Without clear evaluation criteria, these assessments can be subjective and inconsistent, potentially undermining the benefits of their investments.

Why This Matters Now

The urgency for telcos to accelerate their cloud native transformation stems from the growing demands on their networks. Consumer expectations are rising, enterprises are looking for innovative solutions and competitors, both traditional telcos and the newer, more dynamic field of hyperscalers, are ramping up their capabilities. The clock is ticking for telcos to prove their 5G investments can deliver meaningful returns — both in operational efficiencies and new revenue streams.

The Case for Cloud Native in 5G

The 3GPP 5G standards are designed to enable cloud native architectures, but the real benefits are in their practical applications:

• Dynamic Scalability: Network resources that are allocated on demand adapt to fluctuating workloads and reduce over-provisioning, unlocking the ability to provide guaranteed service levels for a wide range of use cases at the same time. This gives telcos the opportunity to create offers to automatically fill available capacity during periods of reduced load.
• Fault-Tolerant Resiliency: Automation and self-healing mechanisms enhance reliability, ensuring uninterrupted service and facilitating the telco goal of delivering guaranteed service levels.
• Cost Efficiency: By leveraging commodity hardware and cloud environments, telcos can reduce their reliance on proprietary systems and cut overhead costs.
• Accelerated Agility: Cloud native architectures enable faster rollouts of new services and updates, helping telcos stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.
• Infrastructure Agnostic Approach: Open standards promote interoperability, reducing vendor lock-in and maximizing the telco’s adaptability to both public and private cloud environments.

These cloud native capabilities are the foundation for realizing the full potential of 5G and supporting the diverse demands of new services. But how straightforward is this?

What Comes Next: A Community-Driven Solution

The good news — there are groups committed to easing the telco journey to cloud native by establishing objective evaluation criteria. The Linux Foundation’s Cloud Native Telecom Initiative (CNTi) is at the forefront of these efforts, developing vendor-neutral tools to assess software’s adherence to cloud native principles. By providing frameworks and benchmarks, CNTi empowers telcos to validate their network functions and maximize the benefits of their cloud native deployments.

This blog is the first in a three-part series exploring the telco journey toward cloud nativeness. In Part II, we’ll delve deeper into how telcos can assess their vendors’ solutions for true cloud native capabilities and discuss practical approaches to measuring, validating and ensuring cloud nativeness to secure ROI on 5G investments. Part III will spotlight CNTi’s work, highlighting how its tools and frameworks simplify the assessment process and pave the way for a more cloud native telecom industry.

The transformation to cloud native is a journey, not a destination, and the time to step on the accelerator is now. Stay tuned as we explore how telcos can take decisive steps to future-proof their networks and unlock the full potential of 5G.

Read more information about MATRIXX Software’s cloud native architecture.

Useful Links
NGNM’s Cloud Native Manifesto

Olivier Smith
As a member of the CTO Office at MATRIXX Software, Olivier is actively engaged in open-source communities in the Linux Foundation, where he helps advance and promote cloud native best practices for the telecom industry. He is a founding member of the Cloud Native Telecom Initiative (CNTi) and a Technical Steering Committee member.

About MATRIXX Software’s CTO Office
MATRIXX Software delivers a modern converged charging and digital monetization solution proven at scale. Global operators like Telefónica and Telstra, IoT providers like Tata Communications and network-as-a-service providers like DISH rely on the platform to overcome the limitations of traditional Business Support Systems. MATRIXX actively contributes to advancing industry standards and best practices for the next era of telecommunications through our leadership and engagement across 3GPP, TM Forum and the Linux Foundation.