5G sits at the intersection of several hybrid trends
Hybrid is an interesting word. It pops a lot these days, whether we’re talking about fuel-efficient vehicles, designer pets, work trends, or enterprise data. The hybrid cloud is central to burgeoning opportunities and challenges for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and hyperscalers alike. And the hybrid work model is another area where 5G plays a central role.
Hybrid cloud demands are a result of increasingly enterprise need to more dynamically manage cloud workloads between different environments. Sometimes data needs to stay on-premise or in a nearby data center or colocation facility for security, or regulatory compliance. Sometimes data has to be in a public cloud, or on a managed cloud service.
The borders around enterprise data are increasingly porous. And as more business move data and operations to the cloud, this challenge will continue. Data will be on premise, in the public cloud, siloed away in a private cloud, or behind other layers of software-defined and physical network security.
Managing the flow of that data securely and effectively has created an emergent challenge to enterprise IT departments that will compound as these borders disappear. Hybrid cloud deployment strategies are increasingly common, and a broadening array of hybrid cloud solutions now answer that incipient business requirement.
Hybrid cloud deployments create operational challenges for operators. Orchestrating seamless handoff of data and services while still maintaining consistent quality is a daunting challenge without the appropriate frameworks in place.
“Telcos have to provide services wherever they need to run,” Craig Wilson, IBM’s vice president of Global Telecom Industry, told RCR Wireless. “On the shop floor, at the edge or in public clouds.”
Dish is using IBM’s automation and orchestration solutions for its greenfield 5G network, for example.
Hybrid work and 5G
Parallel to the emergence of the hybrid cloud as a dominant model for enterprises moving to the cloud is the rise of hybrid work. It’s a shift in labor dynamics accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pandemic life has forced employers and workers alike to re-examine their relationships and make some essential changes. “Hybrid work” has emerged as the model with the equilibrium that employers and labor are seeking: Some workers in the office part of the time. It may simply be a reaction to public health concerns: How do I keep my workers productive and business running through a long-term public health crisis?
Regardless, workers want the flexibility and appreciate the ability to work where they want, when they want. Even as enterprises that put employees safely at home during the pandemic are increasingly turning up the heat on their workers to come back to the office, there’s resistance.
Polls repeatedly indicate that companies that offer hybrid work environments can better attract qualified workers. At a time when skilled labor is at a premium and employees are searching for better home/life work balance, hybrid work isn’t just a perk — it’s an increasing baseline necessity for many businesses.
At the same time, most businesses don’t have a strategy for hybrid work, according to research conducted by AT&T, Dubber and Incisiv.
72% of the surveyed businesses still don’t have a detailed hybrid work strategy, and there is tension between what the companies want versus what their employees want: 86% believe their employees want hybrid work, but 64% says their executives prefer work to happen on-premise.
Businesses and customers were already turning to 5G in droves for its fast performance. The unprecedented changes imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this monumental labor shift.
Hybrid work, hybrid cloud: Managing those complexities also creates a burgeoning opportunity for hyperscalers and for network operators, according to Wilson.
Wilson sees telcos that are navigating this new landscape successfully as holistically adopting the agile principles that guide cloud computing, starting with the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) application lifecycle. What’s working in the customers IBM works with is a skunkworks approach to innovation, he said.
“That garage-style co-creation, the ‘prove it out’ model,” he said. Wilson said the ability to iterate quickly and pivot to changing needs is crucial for carriers. Carriers should look for business cases to test, and deploy.
“Start to prove it out. Deploy it at scale. That’s the model we’re seeing now.”
“The industry is proving out that a cloud-native approach can work. It does require a set of architectural principles and a strong commitment to making an ecosystem work,” he said.
The commitment to a viable ecosystem, said Wilson, will help to reduce the risk that all telcos share, especially for emerging cloud-native technologies like Open RAN and mobile edge computing (MEC).
“For telcos to deliver on that aspiration, they have to capture value in the deployment of 5G services. The threat of them being disintermediated is just as great, if not greater, than it was with 4G. So much about these new technologies is about cost optimization and scale,” he said.
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