The idea is to accelerate the journey to cloud native in parallel with the Operating Disaggregated Networks (ODiN) project
The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) published the Cloud Native Manifesto: An Operator View. It provides key principles and requirements for cloud-native telecom that aims to accelerate the adoption of cloud native solutions in mobile networks.
It is intended to compliment NGMN’s Operating Disaggregated Networks (ODiN) project, which is designed to shape and develop processes to enable operators and vendors to manage the lifecycle of disaggregated networks efficiently.
“While the industry is embracing cloud native…it is clear that several issues remain, which will hamper the objective to achieve scale deployment – unless these are urgently, consistently and cohesively addressed through an industry wide effort,” said Mauro Costa, NGMN Board Member and Director of Network Cloud and Continuous Delivery at Telia Company.
“In particular…we need to ensure that solutions can be truly cloud native and multi-vendor and that we have the tools and processes in place to enable [them].” he added.
Sticking to principles
The NGMN Board believes it is necessary to apply the following cloud native principles to all layers of network infrastructure, applications and services. Note that the order of the list does not indicate priority:
• Decoupled infrastructure and application lifecycles over vertical monoliths
• ‘API first’ over manual provisioning of network resources
• Declarative and intent-based automation over imperative workflows
• GitOps principles – that is, everything as code, single point of truth, immutable source of trust – over traditional network operations practices
• Unified Kubernetes, or similar, resource consumption patterns over domain-specific resource controllers
• Unified Kubernetes, or similar, closed-loop reconciliation patterns over vendor-specific element management practices
• Interoperability by well-defined certification processes over vendor-specific optimisation.
Outstanding contributions
The ODiN project, led by Deutsche Telekom and co-led by Bell Canada and Smart/PLDT, working with the value chain at NGMN, will publish its next recommendations at MWC2024.
NGMN members who are called out for “significant contributions to the development of this publication” are Bell Canada, BT, Chunghwa Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Smart/PLDT, Telia, TELUS, Turkcell, and Vodafone.
The Cloud Native Manifesto can be downloaded here.