Episode 19: An Edgy Conversation Not About The Edge Living on the Edge

Inside LIving on the Edge episode 19, Jason and Dan discuss reality.
Links:
Google: Four ways CSPs can harness data, automation, and AI to create business value — According to a new study by Analysys Mason, telecommunications data volumes are growing worldwide at 20% CAGR, and network data traffic is expected to reach 13 zettabytes by 2025. To stay relevant as the industry evolves, communications service providers (CSPs) need to manage and monetize their data more effectively to:
- Deliver new user experiences and B2B2X services, with the “X” being customers and entities in previously untapped industries, and unlock new revenue streams.
- Transform operations by harnessing data, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) to drive new efficiencies, improved network performance, and decreased CAPEX/OPEX across the organization.

Here are four key data management and analytics challenges CSPs face, and how cloud solutions can help.
1. Reimagining the user experience means CSPs need to solve for near-real-time data analytics challenges.
2. Driving CSP operational efficiencies requires streamlining fragmented and complex sets of tools.
3. Leveraging cloud and automation can help CSPs reduce cost and overhead as data volumes continue to rise.Google: Five do’s and don’ts CSPs should know about going cloud-native — Do: Leverage cloud-native approaches to simplify networks
Don’t: Just take legacy operational processes with you to the cloud
Do: Recognize that operators will continue to own and control their networks
Do: Build scale and simplicity into your data platform to unlock a whole world of use cases
Don’t: Fall into the habit of architecting separate infrastructure for virtualized and containerized workloadsEdge spending on track to hit $176 billion this year — In geographic terms, IDC said the US is expected to be the biggest spender at $76.5 billion this year. By comparison, Western Europe and China are expected to spend $30.6 billion and $20.8 billion respectively.

As for use cases, these vary according to whether you are an enterprise or an edge services provider. IDC reckons the two biggest use cases for edge services providers in 2022 will be content delivery networks and virtual network functions. Combined, these two use cases are predicted to generate $26 billion of the $38 billion of expected service provider spending on edge this year.

When it comes to enterprise use cases, the discrete and process manufacturing sectors are expected to spend a combined $33 billion on edge in 2022. Retail and professional services will spend more than $10 billion.

“Edge computing continues to gain momentum as digital-first organisations seek to innovate outside of the data centre,” said Dave McCarthy, research vice president, cloud and edge infrastructure services, IDC. “The diverse needs of edge deployments have created a tremendous market opportunity for technology suppliers as they bring new solutions to market, increasingly through partnerships and alliances.”

BT is one such company hoping to capitalise on the opportunity to help those so-called digital-first organisations. The telco has established a new division within its enterprise arm called ‘Division X’. It has been tasked with scaling up and commercialising BT’s 5G private networking, IoT and edge computing solutions.Oracle Sparks Cloud Contrasts in Telecom Market — “Oracle Cloud for Telcos redefines the market,” he claimed. “In addition to our public cloud regions, we offer entire cloud stacks — inclusive of hardware, scaling, refresh, patches, and upgrades — in an opex model.”

The company also claims the cloud control plane resides with network operators in the public or private scenario, and all data and metadata stays within the carrier’s environment.

“We expect a mix of deployments, depending on locality to a public cloud region, level of cloud adoption, as well as the customer’s compl