Virtualization Means Cloud and Edge Computing, Abstracted IT

A half decade ago, many mobile operator executives might have named Google as their "greatest competitor," not other service providers. Competition from outside the industry, in other words, was a greater threat than competition from inside the industry. Product substitutes including over the top messaging, voice, video streaming, conferencing and so forth provide key examples.

The nature of the perceived threat is clear enough: OTT app providers can give away what you sell. These days, such product substitution, while still a challenge, is simply a part of the business environment.

Also, as enterprises and application suppliers shift to cloud computing, essentially virtualizing their information technology operations, telcos are doing the same thing.

One big change telecom operator core networks are making is virtualization: the functional separation of applications and software from hardware platforms. 

That allows use of commercial, off the shelf hardware, which provides capital investment and operating cost advantages and sometimes greater simplicity. Increasingly, it also is possible to abstract the hardware platforms as well, using cloud computing supplied by third parties. 

And, ironically enough, virtualization now means telcos can abstract core information technology processes, using cloud computing the same way enterprises do.

Since March 2020, Google Cloud has been developing a 5G strategy for mobile operator networks, aiming to sell Google Cloud computing as the fabric for virtualized 5G network operations. 

Google Cloud and Intel now have announced they have a platform for supporting virtual radio access networks or open RAN operations. 

 

You might think of this as one way edge computing is going to develop with 5G, or a way virtualized network processes will be supported, computationally. 

One might also see this as another example of telco or enterprise computing virtualization, open network standards and use of commercial off-the-shelf hardware, open source and abstracted functions using application programming interfaces. 

The collaboration uses Google Cloud's Anthos application platform and Intel cloud-native platforms and solutions, including Intel's cloud-native Open Network Edge Service Software (OpenNESS) deployment model. 

Google already had created mechanisms to support application operation at the edge, using Anthos.

Such abstraction of the computing functions supporting core networks illustrates the way telcos themselves will be potential customers of cloud computing service providers. 

But it also is, at the same time, part of the adoption of edge computing.