The Symbiotic Cloud-5G Series: Brillio deploys fit-to-purpose modern cloud architecture to minimize network complexity

Symbiotic Cloud-5G Series

Globally telcos are facing rapid changes in business needs and quite obviously the pandemic has further compelled them to face newer changes. Thankfully, telcos these days are better prepared, as most critical operations happen conveniently over the cloud and are delivered at the edge. It is also clear that 5G, cloud, and edge computing are three inextricably linked technologies that significantly improve the performance of telecom applications and enable huge amounts of data to be processed in real-time.

Several organizations have built an entire end-to-end architecture comprising public, private, hybrid, and edge cloud applications to service CSPs.

The Symbiotic Cloud-5G Series will explore and feature global organizations that are involved in supporting the telcos with cloud architecture.

The fourth in this series features Brillio.

Brillio, the 2014-founded digital consulting and technology services company, has deep expertise in agile software engineering and the four digital superpowers that are now changing the world: mobile technology, the cloud, AI, and IoT.

Chander Damodaran, Chief Architect - Advanced Technology Group, Brillio, explains to Voice&Data on how cloud is relevant for today’s digitally transformed world that is affected by the pandemic and on how networks are becoming more resilient with cloud deployment.

Few excerpts:

V&D: Conserving resources is the new normal business mantra for the post COVID world. What is your take on cloud's role in conserving resources and the mantra to be frugal in business?

Chander Damodaran: Every CIO today is under pressure to cut down expenses and ensure business continuity. Enabling the increase in virtual collaboration, automation while supporting the increased focus on data, analytics and AI is forcing IT leaders to minimize complexity and consolidate their offerings. The industry sentiment echoes in IDC’s COVID-19 Impact on IT spending Survey, which states 64% of the organizations in India are expected to increase demand for cloud computing and about 56% for cloud software to support the new normal.

With a fit to purpose modern cloud-native architecture cost for data storage movements, architecture and maintenance can also be reduced.

This is an opportune moment to explore new initiatives natively on the cloud as it enables enterprises to leverage economies of virtualization including auto-provisioning and scaling, seamless upgrades, built-in high availability, common logging, metering, monitoring, and more.

With a fit to purpose modern cloud-native architecture cost for data storage movements, architecture and maintenance can also be reduced. These cost-saving features are significant in their merit. However, when they are integrated with the modern cloud platform, it can intensify the benefits multi-fold. The adoption of modern cloud technologies can drive consolidation and consistency across organizations. Customers are looking to modernize their architecture. Therefore, its paramount of importance that they streamline disparate traditional offerings for an integrated future.

Organizations are moving customer-facing functions of their businesses to the cloud. As customers balance public and private cloud infrastructure at a time of disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are witnessing increased preference for hybrid cloud solutions and pay-as-you-go models. Enterprises taking the measures to streamline, consolidate, and even transform their architecture to excel both in sustaining the short-term impact through immediate cost savings and in modernizing for an agile future.

Since the pandemic, various organizations are re-inventing themselves to operate as digital service providers as well as digital service enablers.

V&D: As India slowly plans for 5G in the coming years, the application of cloud services can be of great advantage to the telcos. How do you justify this?

Chander Damodaran: With the evolution of technology, we are more connected, better informed, and are equipped in the modern decade to steer the future of the digital economy towards an intelligent economy at a pace not imagined before. Since the pandemic, various organizations are re-inventing themselves to operate as digital service providers as well as digital service enablers.

5G technology will bring in major enhancements to the cloud computing in India. It will improve integration of technology innovation with its low to zero latency, making for seamless communications. Applications across industries – from healthcare to education, and even wearables, the cloud will be useful for non-device storage. Cloud with 5G connections will boost performance of the innovations. Cloud-based products and services are expected to become more efficient, reliable, and faster. These innovations will also accelerate cloud business investments in the country.

V&D: How are the three computing models cloud, edge, and hybrid relevant to the telecom industry ever since the pandemic struck the world?  

Chander Damodaran: Today we have more devices connected than humans and this is only increasing as the world adjusts to the new normal. The need for every telecom operator is focused on scaling and supporting the requirements securely and intelligently. Telecom operators are embracing open ecosystems to optimize and intelligently manage their network resources better through automation, AI, and cloud.

Going forward, operators will increasingly look to move their IT and network workloads into hybrid multi-cloud to effectively address enhanced pressures. This will reduce operational expenses and leverage automation capabilities in-built within the cloud platforms to scale and manage operations post-COVID.

V&D: How do these models individually and in combination offer significant benefits to the telecom network provider? 

Chander Damodaran: Speed and agility are defining the capabilities of telcos while impacting the consumer demand and expectations for digital services. With the excitement building amongst the techies the 5G revolution with the combination of cloud, edge and hybrid will help increase speed for cloud-based products & services, allow faster data analysis on any devices, speedy AI applications, rise in automation processes, and efficient communication with edge devices.

Businesses are now moving away from the regular rigid, centralized application-based network to cloud-native applications for a faster and efficient role to predict, sense and respond real time.

As remote work becomes widely normalized, consumers and businesses will demand richer, consistent, omnichannel digital experiences, with emphasis on self-service options and flexible pricing structures.

Customer care will also become digital-first, with chatbots, and AI-based solutions enhancing the effectiveness of field technicians. These models in combination will bring a behemothic level of business integration for the operators to remain cost-efficient and gain competitive advantages. Telcos need to be bold now and invest in technology to position themselves as strong players in the new landscape.

Anusha Ashwin - x-anushaa@cybermedia.co.in