Why does Google seem to have momentum in carrier edge computing relationships? This piece in Light Reading highlights a general if low-key set of successes Google has enjoyed in the network operator space. If anything, their momentum in the space seems to be building. Why are they doing so well, so suddenly?
First-off, there’s nothing sudden about it. A series of operators asked me to feel Google out for partnership well over a decade ago, but at the time Google’s management wasn’t interested. The reason they had provisionally picked Google was interesting, though.
First, Google wasn’t Amazon, who operators almost universally feared. This was the primary reason why Google was preferred a decade ago. Because Amazon was (and is) the leading provider of public cloud services, operators saw them as being the most likely long-term competitor with regard to any cloud plans operators might develop. Microsoft has been seen mostly as a provider of enterprise cloud services, though today it’s clear that Microsoft has broader aspirations. Google was the clear choice, if somewhat by default.
The second point (more applicable today than in years past) is that Google is seen as having the most experience in areas where operator interest is high. Google’s cloud network is the world’s largest SDN application. Google developed Kubernetes and Istio, both of which are now seen as critical pieces of the cloud-native world. Google’s content delivery processes, linked to its YouTube services family, are also one of the best examples of edge computing currently deployed.
These two early plusses for Google have increased in credibility today, and this gain has collided with some new factors, some on the side of the network operators and some on Google’s front.
The first new-ish development is Google’s willingness to consider a partnership with operators. My sources say that arose in earnest about five years ago, and it was due in part to a recognition that operators had a natural advantage in edge computing—they had real estate at the edge. More recently (in the last year) Google was aware that other cloud providers were showing interest in hosting carrier cloud applications, which could have given a competitor an unassailable lead in the cloud space.
From the operators’ side, the big change is the realization that they don’t have a clue as to how to proceed with carrier cloud deployment. The vendors they trust, the network equipment vendors they know, don’t have a clue either. The vendors who do understand the mission (Red Hat, VMware, and so forth) don’t understand the carriers, and the carriers have little or no experience. In addition, since the operators have no internal cloud software expertise, they’re in no position to assess any solutions. Outsourcing of some sort makes sense.
An additional operator concern is 5G. There was a hope, for a time at least, that 5G initiatives could be confined to the NSA (non-standalone) RAN-only upgrades, but operators now believe that for competitive reasons and to harness hoped-for 5G specific benefits, they’ll need to implement 5G Core. That means having somewhere to host it, and to preserve latency goals for 5G applications, that somewhere has to be the edge. Imagine fearful operator planners confronting the need to deploy tens of thousands of edge data centers. Not a happy picture.
The union of these interests lies in the final benefit of outsourcing; incremental commitment. Operators don’t know how much 5G Core deployment they might push because they don’t know the rate of 5G adoption or the pace at which new 5G-specific (or facilitating) applications might evolve. If things are slow, they could end up with their own edge data centers sitting idle till they’re obsolete. If the opportunities develop quickly, they could end up being delayed in addressing them by a lack of edge computing capacity.
Google could really be on to something here, IMHO. There’s no question that if you had to pick a single player who has a thorough understanding of the cloud and cloud-native development, who understands how to apply hosted function technology to IP networks, who understands next-gen services, Google would be at or near the top of the list. That doesn’t mean they have an automatic win, though. What does Google need to buff up their chances of total victory?
Thing one is to recognize that network operators are the world’s most experienced tire-kickers. Over 80% of all operator RFPs don’t end up delivering any significant production deployments. The process of assessing technology and the process of deploying it are so separated in most operators that the two organizations may not even like each other. The “assessors” tend to be in the driver’s seat in early proof-of-concept deals. Google needs to make sure they get broadly engaged, early on.
The second thing is that the operators’ goals for 5G are actually beyond the scope of their influence on the market. Operators cannot make IoT or augmented reality or contextualized services happen. There has to be a broad-market commitment to the concept. Operator notions of how to build these communities center on announcing developer programs that really don’t offer much benefit to the developers at all. Google needs to be able to frame things like IoT in terms of new carrier cloud services, since operators can’t.
The third thing is that operators don’t really know what they want from carrier cloud, and don’t know how to find out. Current interest focuses on 5G mobile-edge because 5G deployment is a given for operators in this market environment. But what justifies further carrier cloud deployment once you’ve hosted 5G Core features? When would operators decide to pull the hosting in-house? What you hear from operators is platitudes like “transformation”, which is clearly too vague to serve as the basis for a plan. Google needs to understand where operators could and should take carrier cloud, and ensure that there’s always a new application on the horizon to renew interest in outsourcing.
The final thing is that operators don’t really want to sell enterprises cloud computing, they just want to let them buy. Many of these cloud deals involve the cloud provider becoming a partner in selling cloud computing to enterprises. The cloud providers usually see this as a way to create a channel partner, but that would only be true if the operators were really trying to sell. They’re happy to take orders, but where would operator sales people get the training and contacts to actually sell cloud computing services? If Google expects something to happen here, they have to be prepared to prime the pump.
Then, of course, there’s competition. Google is far from the only game in town, not as a cloud provider and not as a carrier cloud architecture contender. There’s clearly an opportunity out there, and the same issues that Google would have to face could be faced by a competitor, perhaps quicker and more effectively.
Amazon, never the favored partner, has been working hard to establish itself in the space, and Amazon has a lot of edge experience and content delivery capabilities on their own. They held a Telecom Symposium that got not only network operator participation but also the participation of vendors, including integrators, OSS/BSS players, and some network vendors. While this doesn’t guarantee Amazon can bring an ecosystem of its own to play, it at least indicates it might have the credentials to attract one.
Microsoft wants to be the carrier cloud outsource player of choice, and wants it badly. They have their own program aimed at victory, and they made an incredibly smart play acquiring Metaswitch, a software company with specific expertise in mobile infrastructure virtualization, including 5G. IBM also wants the prize, and they’re working to frame their own cloud plus Red Hat tools into a carrier cloud framework that could not only be run on IBM’s cloud but also hosted on operator data centers.
VMware has designs on carrier cloud too. Dell, the senior partner in VMware, had at one time committed to a group of operators that they would take a big position in function virtualization—including having Michael Dell make the announcement. It didn’t happen, but VMware seems now to be carrying the torch. VMware has a good relationship with all the public cloud providers, including Google, and they could convert Tanzu into a cloud-portable strategy that would also allow operators to pull some hosting back into their own data centers.