Cloud Infrastructure for 5G

Cloud infrastructure architecture makes it possible for various applications, for example telecom, operations supports systems, business support systems and IoT, to share infrastructure resources for their needs. The infrastructure resources consist of compute, network and storage and the capacity is dynamically allocated to meet applications’ needs.

Using a cloud infrastructure architecture reduces time to market for new services and makes it easier to manage them with shorter lifespan. It will, for instance, allow new services to be launched quickly to test the market demand, and if the services don’t fly, they can be phased out just as easily. Common and centralized management of the cloud infrastructure will also play a critical role in enabling new advanced services and increase operational efficiency.

The cloud infrastructure architecture is delivered to the users in various “as a service” models, for example Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Containers as a Service (CaaS). Infrastructure as a Service has been the most common way of using cloud infrastructure architecture to deploy applications, while Containers as a Services, optimized for cloud native applications will be more common going forward when 5G is becoming universal. Platform as a Service is focusing on developers and their needs for designing new applications efficiently.

A foundational concept in cloud infrastructure is virtualization, which decouples hardware (compute, network and storage resources) from the applications and creates a pool of the infrastructure resources which are shared by the applications. Virtualization software is used to achieve this resource pooling. In the telecom world, network functions virtualization, or NFV, is the process to transform the operator network into a virtualized or cloud-based infrastructure.

In the past, communication service providers (CSPs) have deployed systems where only one or a few applications use dedicated infrastructure resources. These systems (physical network functions) are still broadly used but being replaced over time with cloud-based solutions. The virtualization journey is now continuing with the introduction of cloud native technology. This development makes it possible to deploy cloud native applications on so called bare metal infrastructure using containers. Cloud native technology further simplifies operations and reduces lead times for new applications. It is expected that cloud native infrastructure will co-exist with NFV infrastructure for a long time.