A few weeks ago at MWC19 in Barcelona, telecom software provider Optiva announced that its BSS-focused Optiva Revenue Management Suite is now available on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This move could influence how telecommunications operators approach use of the public cloud for core systems.
The term “telco cloud” has long been used in different ways and can be confusing. In the past it often meant operators selling cloud services themselves. Verizon, for example, launched its own cloud in October 2013, then scaled it back in 2016 and eventually sold parts of its hosting business to IBM. Today, however, the idea has shifted: major operators are migrating large numbers of business-critical applications to public cloud providers. Verizon, for example, plans to move more than 1,000 critical applications and systems to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Optiva’s partnership with Google Cloud focuses on that migration of core telco applications. As Shay Assaraf, Optiva’s chief marketing officer, explains, many operators have not yet started this journey. Public cloud can deliver significant value once concerns about security and performance are addressed, but educating the market remains essential.
“The industry has been talking about cloud for a long time, but there is a lot of misinformation—partial pictures of what cloud actually means,” Assaraf says. “When people say ‘cloud,’ some mean private cloud and assume it’s the same as public cloud. Others refer to a simple lift-and-shift to public cloud, or to moving only niche or self-service applications. That creates confusion about what a full cloud-native transformation can achieve.”
Optiva aims to deliver a clear message about the advantages of adopting a cloud-native architecture on public cloud through its Google Cloud relationship. The company previously made its Optiva Charging Engine available on Google Cloud Spanner and GCP, enabling telcos to handle database reads and writes synchronously—improving performance and lowering costs.
One practical example comes from a tier-2 mobile network operator in the Middle East. The operator had both its production environment and its disaster recovery (DR) facility in the same building, which left them exposed to significant risk. Faced with options to buy and deploy a new on-site DR, move to another physical site, or migrate to the public cloud, the operator chose the public cloud route and expected to realize nearly 80% in annual savings.
Helping operators take that first step is part of Optiva’s mission. CEO Danielle Royston often jokes that many companies still like to “hug their servers,” reluctant to relinquish direct control. Optiva encourages operators to cut that umbilical cord and change perceptions: migration can be done in phases, including starting with a cloud-native architecture on a private cloud and then moving to public cloud when appropriate.
Optiva selected Google Cloud over AWS after evaluating value across several dimensions—not only Cloud Spanner, but also security and Google’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) capabilities. “We reviewed mandatory requirements from our telecom customers and found they were extremely cautious about customer experience and latency,” says Assaraf. “Ultimately we found GCP best met those needs. Google’s network architecture tends to keep data on its own backbone, which can reduce costs and improve performance. With some other cloud vendors, data paths can traverse multiple networks, which may harm performance or raise costs.”
From Google Cloud’s perspective, there are multiple strengths that make it well-suited for telco workloads. Security leadership—highlighted in independent industry assessments—matters to operators. Cloud Spanner provides a hyper-scalable, globally consistent, real-time database, and Google’s expertise with containers and Kubernetes supports modern, cloud-native deployments.
Optiva emphasizes it is not changing its role in customers’ operations; instead, it seeks to help reduce total cost of ownership while delivering the required performance, agility and scalability. “We’re not trying to become a bigger burden for our customers,” Assaraf explains. “We want to lower TCO, and we can demonstrate and quantify those savings.”
That clear, demonstrable message—about security, performance, and cost-savings when moving core telco systems to a cloud-native public cloud environment—is what Optiva hopes will resonate with operators in the months ahead as more telcos evaluate and accelerate their cloud journeys.
Editor’s note: This article is in association with Optiva.