Cloud solutions are transforming the connectivity paradigm in innovative ways. Early adopters of cloud solutions have found that the migration from legacy infrastructure to the cloud is less of a hassle than anticipated. No wonder a survey conducted with 500 enterprise IT leaders has revealed that about 74% of them were looking to invest heavily in cloud solutions within the next two to three years.
Cloud computing services are offered as a public cloud (shared cloud services hosted by a cloud service provider over the public Internet), a private cloud (cloud services hosted by the company itself) or a combination of the two, known as a hybrid cloud (partly on-premise and partly remotely hosted).
Although the three models of cloud solutions have their pros and cons, here we will consider the public cloud functionality and its implications.
The Public Cloud Advantage
In the age of 5G, storage and computational power are crucial for achieving the expected outcomes. In such a scenario, the public cloud offers the advantage of easy scalability. Conversely, setting up a private cloud could seem more cost-efficient than a public cloud; however, when it comes to scaling easily, a public cloud provides the on-demand infrastructure capacity that a private cloud may lack without the additional burden of purchasing extra equipment to provide the same capacity.
The public cloud can make a big difference in CTO as companies can save a lot as a result of not having to purchase IT equipment as well as maintain it. Employees can access and pay for cloud-based resources only when they need them. Using public cloud-based desktops and applications is by far more cost-efficient than acquiring physical IT equipment or software packages that may or may not be used.
Another advantage of the public cloud is that data stored on it is backed up and accessible from anywhere. Enterprise can opt for various storage plans as per the significance and importance of the data. Companies can better manage and host an application with periods of peak usage in the public cloud by utilizing the extra computing power only when most needed.
Especially for small or new businesses, migrating applications to the public cloud is much easier than for organizations with a large IT infrastructure and applications. Enterprise businesses are moving toward the public cloud as one element of a multi-faceted IT plan whereby they can access the benefits of the public cloud along with on-premises architecture and private cloud options.
Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is also forecast to experience the highest end-user spending growth in 2022 at 30.6%, followed by desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) at 26.6% and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) at 26.1%.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) remains the largest public cloud services market segment and is forecast to reach $208 billion by 2023. Enterprises are seen to be taking multiple routes to market with SaaS and continue to break up larger, monolithic applications into composite parts for more efficient DevOps processes.
Some Innovations in Public Cloud
Nokia’s AVA AI use case library is delivered as a service on Microsoft Azure’s public cloud, combining telco-grade security and instant web-scale architecture scalability. By integrating Nokia’s security framework with Microsoft Azure’s digital architecture, communication service providers (CSPs) can accelerate digital transformation, increase efficiency, reduce energy consumption and improve customer experience by injecting artificial intelligence (AI) into their networks nine times faster compared to using a private cloud.
In March, the UAE Cybersecurity Council (CSC) signed an MoU with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to collaborate on faster adoption of AWS cloud services in the UAE’s public sector and regulated industries, including healthcare and financial services. By leveraging AWS’s global cloud infrastructure, government entities and other strategic industries will accelerate innovation and digital transformation in line with the UAE’s economic and national agendas.
Similarly, Huawei ‘s cloud native 2.0 architecture offers the ‘Everything as a service’ model that incorporates infrastructure as a service, technology as a service and expertise as a service that can accelerate digital transformation, while also minimizing the carbon footprint from their IT infrastructure. As one of the earliest adopters of container technology, Huawei has accumulated rich practical experience and provides fully vetted, full-stack container services for enterprise users to migrate applications to the cloud to speed up the development of new apps and business processes, and enable organizations to innovate faster.
By its virtue of provisioning an extension of a company’s IT infrastructure in a virtualized environment, the public cloud gives companies the freedom to host their infrastructure and services on virtual servers that are offsite and owned by a third party. Different public cloud service providers offer their own unique services and pricing models. Enterprises that are considering a migration to the public cloud must weigh their options in selecting a provider that can analyze the company’s requirements and offer equitable SLAs. Cloud technology is vast and is evolving at a break-neck pace; however, the benefits of public cloud integration in company operations cannot be overlooked at a time when efficient data management is vital for almost all economic operations.
“Cloud is the platform for innovation that enables technologies such as AI to automate operations at scale, and every stakeholder in the telco industry can focus on that know-how,” says Mounir Ladki, president and CTO, Mycom OSI. Companies such as Mycom OSI are providing domain expertise and automation solutions to enterprises by partnering hyperscalers like AWS who can provide the telco capability and training model platform like the Amazon SageMaker to develop the value creation chain.
Gartner's data reveals a 20.4% growth in public cloud spending during 2022, totaling $494.7 billion, up from $410.9 billion in 2021. By next year, public cloud end-user spending is expected to reach nearly $600 billion. In the Middle East, almost all the big industries are collaborating with public cloud providers to up their games. Telcos should find the sweet spot to leverage this opportunity to become the true enablers of digital transformation.
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