Which Platform Should Telecoms Use to Deliver Edge-to-Cloud?
A frequent question asked by Telecoms and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) is which platform they should use to deliver their edge. How can they leverage the innovation of hyperscale cloud providers (GCP, Azure, AWS) alongside their secure access services edge (SASE) offerings? How do they apply their own pricing models, meter/chargeback for usage, and bill/invoice their customers? How can they deliver a whitelabelled portfolio of edge-to-cloud services with a consistent, normalized user experience and APIs?
Think about the aspects of delivery, operations, commercialization, and monetization that are involved in a platform that is built for service providers delivering cloud.
Demand and Supply of the Edge-to-Cloud Market
Developing and/or purchasing the right technology platform is key for enabling communication service providers (CSPs) success in commercializing cloud. Of even greater impact is understanding their enterprise customer’s journey to the cloud, and where they can provide differentiated value.
Enterprises are building software that needs edge computing. From video analytics and application optimization to location-based services and immersive experiences, enterprises know that their differentiated value will be derived from coding and evolving their application(s) to engage and empower their growing user base.
For service providers, they were leapfrogged in the early days of cloud computing by what we now refer to as hyperscale cloud providers (ie. AWS, Azure, GCP). At the time, location had not been as relevant to cloud, as it was explicitly abstracted away, which inspired the term, “cloud computing”. However, enterprise needs are evolving, and edge computing is becoming the first cloud model that incorporates the physical location of cloud-delivered services as part of its definition. This presents a unique opportunity for service providers to (re)enter the edge-to-cloud value chain, by leveraging their network edge to deliver a portfolio of as-a-service offerings.
Deliver the Edge-to-Cloud Spectrum
Source: Linux Foundation Edge (LFEdge.org)
Similar to how renowned restaurants serve dishes with a mix of hyperlocal, regional, and global ingredients, service providers are well-positioned to provide enterprises an integrated portfolio of edge, regional, and hyperscale cloud offerings. Not every target market is the same, which is why we’ve seen our service provider partners cater their cloud portfolio to fill unaddressed and under-addressed gaps within their target markets.
Over the past few years, we’ve empowered service providers to launch a variety of different offerings. For example, we enabled one of our Latin America service provider partners to be the first-to-market providing regional data sovereign cloud solutions; we’ve had one of our Canadian service provider partners capitalize on heavily regulated industry needs, by delivering dedicated on-premises edge deployments at healthcare facilities; and we’ve had two American service provider partners launch unique offerings into their market - one opting to partner and deliver managed hyperscale cloud services, and the other delivering their own integrated portfolio of edge computing services (ie. compute, CDN, WAF, Serverless, etc).
What is common across these service providers is their dedication and focus to providing differentiated value within the edge-to-cloud computing value chain, and their approach to step up and take ownership of their customer’s experience, delivering their portfolio via CloudMC.
Operations is a Great Differentiator
Coming from CloudOps, it’s not a surprise that we’d say “operations is a great differentiator”. Whether you’re launching a managed hyperscale cloud offering or operating your own edge services, there is clearly a need to invest in training and enablement to upskill your IT, Network Cloud, and Security teams for the cloud era.
Given how vast the cloud ecosystem is, there will always be capabilities that your team won’t have or won’t have enough of. This is why service providers must develop an ecosystem of partners in support of their market offerings. For example, while CloudOps generally avoids “lift-and-shift” mandates that are well suited for system integrator partners, we do support our service providers with our cloud native and DevOps skills, which we believe is key for enabling them to have long term operational success in the cloud and at the edge.
Commercialize The Cloud and Deliver Your Edge
One of the most significant challenges for service providers is around upskilling and preparing their sales engineering and account management workforce to address the edge-to-cloud market opportunity. Training your commercial teams is as important (if not more important), as it doesn’t matter how robust your portfolio of cloud offerings is, or how well your team can operate cloud, if your commercial team is unable to sell cloud.
Cloud is meant to be consumed as-a-service, it’s what enterprises expect given their experiences with AWS, Azure, and GCP.
It’s time to ditch the “call me for cloud” call-to-action on your website, and make the shift to the as-a-service economy. Telco edge-to-cloud platforms should provide capabilities to enable your organization to seamlessly onboard a customer (from a website lead, to a trial user, to a billable customer).
Enterprises are increasingly choosing to stop investing in on-premises infrastructure and make the move to the cloud, and not just one cloud, multi-cloud. As data volumes increase, companies will take increasingly sophisticated approaches towards managing their data, and edge computing will emerge as a key element of their hybrid cloud.
Monetize Your Portfolio as-a-Service
Assembling an edge-to-cloud portfolio requires an ecosystem of partners, but traditional telecom vendors aren’t known for their vendor-agnostic perspectives and willingness to cooperate with multiple vendors.
CloudOps is a vendor agnostic, but opinionated partner to service providers, dedicated to helping our partners navigate the cloud market. Our SaaS software platform, CloudMC, abstracts our service provider’s multiple vendors and provides an extensible, API-driven plugin-based architecture that allows them to extract usage, apply their own pricing model and charge back their customer base (in a consistent way across their vendor ecosystem).
CloudMC provides granular observability into how the end users are using the platform, providing useful insights for service providers around usage and projected revenue, and enabling a service provider’s sales and customer success teams to configure alert notifications (for example, a sales rep may want to know when one of his accounts is increasing/decreasing usage by +/- 10% in a single month), to ensure the service provider stays engaged with their customer base and focused relentlessly on their user experience.
Let’s Get Started on our Journey
Getting started can be difficult. Telecoms have put a lot of thought into their strategies around edge-to-cloud computing, but are struggling to commit to and start executing a clear plan of action. Most activity today comprises trials or proofs of concept, usually involving partnerships with hyperscale cloud providers, and sometimes including third-party vendors and application developers.
The time is now for service providers to take bold action and invest in their future. Whether your organization is just starting their edge-to-cloud journey, or your team is well underway and looking for a partner who can help you “git” there faster, let’s connect and explore how we can help you succeed in owning your destiny in the cloud.