The Telco Edge Cloud, CET 2020 

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Abe Nejad: Making edge compute solutions available is no easy task but well on its way by telcos and cloud providers, both edge computing and 5G will be key enablers for emerging applications like AR VR, virtual robots and smart industries with better quality of service intelligence, data privacy and security. On this executive broadcast with leaders in the telco edge cloud are Wen Temitim, he's vice president of technology and edge architectures at Juniper. We also have Caroline Chan, she's vice president and GM of the network business incubator division, that at Intel. Also, we have Sunay Tripathi, he's CTO, executive vice president, product engineering at MobileedgeX; and finally we have Kevin Shatzkamer, he's digital transformation officer for telecom, that at Google. And folks, welcome to the program.

Kevin Shatzkamer: Thank you.

Caroline Chan: Thank you for having us.

Sunay Tripathi: Thanks.

Wen Temitim: Thank you.

Abe Nejad: Thanks for being with us. Wen, if you don't mind, I'm going to start off with you and Caroline. I want to ask you what made edge compute a real strategic approach for telcos and the larger ecosystem as it enables the delivery of a new wave of applications, and also services?

Wen Temitim: Sure, so you know, in the past what we saw with carriers, they would build internal kind of NFV deployments for their own for their own needs, but what they're finding is that for next generation edge computing, and with 5G they need a way to build and bring an ecosystem to the edge to really take advantage of the low latency and high bandwidth footprint that they have. And the only way to do that is through strategic partnerships. So, this allows them to kind of focus on what they do best, and then partner with others who can help them drive value to their edge footprint.

Abe Nejad: And Caroline?

Caroline Chan: Yeah, if I, if I just add on to what Wen said, you know, in addition to that, we were just looking at from Intel's perspective, we're looking at how the capacity is shifting. And like in 2017, we saw the capacity went up about 27%. And based on the trend that we're seeing next year will be increased up to 33%. So, you definitely see this capacity is being shifted to the edge rather than in a broad, let's say cross country. So, when you see that kind of squeeze, what that tells you is that you driving because the latency is much lower, your bandwidth is higher, your security needs definitely needs to increase, and the ever pressing connectivity, just like Wen said, you are now facing a different type of partnership. The ecosystem is different than when we were looking at a cloud or telco. You want to bring a new breed of players, new breed partnerships, application developers all to this. And this is not something that the telcos [inaudible 03:02] you know, I like Kevin will make fun of me cuz I've been in this industry for a long time. And that's not how we think, we used to just hang around the same crowd in the cocktail parties. But, now you have to expand your horizon, the brand, you bring new relationships and and win-win situation, how does the money going to exchange, what is the value chain? How do you know, all of that needs becomes a new horizon for everybody.

Kevin Shatzkamer: Yeah, I actually agree with that. I think what we've seen is that there's been this visit business imperative that drove a technology architecture that's driving a new business imperative. And if I expand on that we can think about decentralization is something we've always done, right? Anytime we've had law of large numbers, right, we've distributed DNS systems, we've distributed content delivery networks, that's always been the way that we've acted. But, we couldn't distribute more than the mobile architecture would allow. Right? So, then we saw technology decisions start to get made, we saw controlling user plane separation, we saw virtualization of the RAN bringing compute closer and closer to the edge within 75 microseconds of the radio infrastructure, right. And as we started to see this new technology get deployed, that looks strikingly like a cloud, right? It's compute driven, it's software defined networking, etc. It started to drive this new business conversation that says, now that I have compute at really approximate to users at very low latency, what new services can I start to deliver on that and start to drive this new business imperative of saying, let's start building the ecosystems, who can innovate? Because I don't think that the closed walled garden approaches that we've traditionally seen in telco in 2G, 2G, that little bit in 4G with IMS, are really in the past [inaudible 04:49] coding things API driven in the native ecosystems.

Abe Nejad: So, Sunay, as part of this strategy, how are operators now focusing on fortifying and expanding their distributed cloud infrastructure really as part of this 5G led transformation?

Sunay Tripathi: So, that that's an excellent question, Abe. So, part of this you're saying fortifying, reality is that they're still trying to build it basically. Right. I mean, the two things to note, I mean, the, the new generation of applications, especially kind of, you know, more video centric, require resources close by infrastructure resources close by, for latency reasons, for privacy reasons, data sovereignty reasons. So, what they're trying to do is take that infrastructure that's in every central office, every regional office, and the goal is to make it act like a distributed cloud, right, a layer on top, a platform layer on top that make it look and feel like, you know, one big giant infrastructure pool. And a lot of this, like we touched in the previous question starts being, you know, software defined, how do you orchestrate? How do you deploy applications or demand? How do you make it policy driven? So that's, I think what most of them are trying to do. They're learning software, a lot of them are my current company. MobiledgeX, for instance, is being created by a bunch of these telcos in Silicon Valley, primarily to help them drive that software defined. And then you know, with a partnership, you see some of them here, basically, right? Intel, Juniper, Google and things like that, where we leverage what the partners are doing to kind of build this thing up. So, that's kind of you know, it's really more of building rather than fortifying right now.

Abe Nejad: Wen?

Wen Temitim: Yeah, we're seeing a similar thing, it's, it's how do I build my edge cloud? Deal with, you know, different constraints and different parts of their footprint, and, and really bring intelligence to the edge, because it's, it's such a vast problem that you can't take a one size fits all approach, you know, just because of the sheer capital constraints. So, you know, we're helping our customers partner on, you know, optimize RAN infrastructure using technologies like Intel's flex RAN reference designs, you know, bringing our transport into solutions, helping build out, you know, their 5G cores, all with a very purpose driven approach to be able to build the footprint the correct way.

Abe Nejad: So, Caroline, operators can build on their own as they've demonstrated in the past, but in in this virtual climate, telcos don't have really the people, process or technology in place for edge cloud at scale. So, what would be the alternatives then?

Caroline Chan: The partnering, I mean, we see that announcement, right partner with the Googles or the Microsofts, it really started to expanding their horizon from just the telco space into the cloud space. And we’re seeing some of the [inaudible 08:01] really started coming into place as well. But, we're, we need when you need computing storage and that's, that's where a lot of the build out happening, not necessarily just through telco by themselves, but through partnerships. And actually, I was just going to add onto what Wen just mentioned, we actually see like, for example, T-Mobile, Intel, helped co found at 5G Open Innovation Lab up in Seattle. [inaudible 08:27] leveraging a lot of the developers, the resources, the they already have in the cloud space and enterprise space, but bring them onto 5G. Partnership becomes so important in this new edge cloud edge compute, and telco edge world.

Kevin Shatzkamer: So, [inaudible 08:45] this collaborative approach and the conversation that everyone's been having here, because I agree, it's not ringing a bell, we don't want to reinvent the wheel. But, I also think that as much as we talk about telecom not having the people, processes, skills and resources to do this, I don't think there's any one entity within this ecosystem that has monopoly over the people, process, skills and resources to going to do this. I think it really requires a collaborative approach to both enable enterprises that sign up for services from a single telecom for something like SD-WAN or 5G Enterprise Services, but also recognizing that there's a broader ecosystem that needs to be brought along from an ISP and development perspective. And that spans multiple different telecoms, and we need to give the developer ecosystem a simple, easy and consistent way to be able to build applications and services that span multiple different access networks. So, I think when we start to put all that together, what it really calls out is that what you see within the industry right now the some of these unilateral partnerships are really just the beginning of recognizing that we need to prove out business cases we need to prove out technology models we need to prove out who the buyer sellers and consumers are inside of this edge computing world. And then from there, we'll be able to scale it into many to many model.

Abe Nejad: Does anybody want to expand, Caroline, Sunay, or Wen, on what the end game is for managed public cloud service providers and their operator customers as well?

Caroline Chan: Because it's somewhat early, we've been trying to do is work backwards. If you find a problem recently, we just worked on a greenhouse in Westborough, Missouri. There is a need to come in from the owner of the greenhouse was the largest greenhouse in Midwest, also happened to be a [inaudible 10:35] carrier owner. So, we worked backwards with partnerships across the board, right? They want to solve an [inaudible 10:43] issue. So, by we so we bring in the public cloud the [inaudible 10:50] club and Dell, Intel all got involved, and became a private CBRS network. And we bring all the video images, the AI, the soil condition and fertilizer to you. And then you why should work backwards? How do I scale that used to go scale that? We scale that through something called rural cloud initiative, there is federal money coming in. So, you so before used to be like, Kevin, you mentioned a one on one relationship, right? AT&T or Horizon with me as a consumer. But, now because we start with a business problem, and you started coming back, the players become much larger, right? Somebody like Google will come in and definitely play a significant role. So, I found it really interesting. But, we still had the early stage, and how do we scale that into a consortium effort? Kevin, what you mentioned before, that is the name of the game. That's why for all of us, each of our employer needs to play a very crucial role into this.

Abe Nejad: Wen, anything to add as far as building out the edge footprint for operators and really justifying the spend?

Wen Temitim: Yeah, I mean, we believe you have to take a pragmatic approach. And so, you know, we worked with customers on building edge cloud solutions, and taking the kind of legacy day one use cases like CDN or other over the top use cases, and allowing them to be delivered through a revenue sharing model that helps justify the capex. But, what that does is it allows them to really focus on these next generation use cases. So, that they can, so that they can start to figure out new ways to drive value into their footprint. And, and partner with the hyperscalers. So, to bring an ecosystem to run on top of their footprint, because it's going to be really tough to for a service provider to approach a developer and tell them to work with just, you know, their API's, you've got to work with ecosystem players that are abstracting the edge and allow you to kind of pick up momentum faster.

Sunay Tripathi: And, Wen, you might want to add to that, I think the part that you didn't cover because [inaudible 12:59] building points of that and then you're trying to kind of, you know, pay for it what you did, you took some of the CDN technologies kind of you know, from yester years, and kind of migrated them to the new infrastructure that helps you kind of, you know, monetize it right now. So, so things like that are pretty useful.

Wen Temitim: Yeah, great points, Sunay. That's a great point, you know, taking legacy concepts and implementing them in in, you know, cloud native ways so that can actually run kind of seamlessly at the edge and auto scale and do all of those things are part of the value prop that we bring but really as a day one use case.

Kevin Shatzkamer: Yeah, I think there's, there's a proven way to be able to address new market opportunities that are largely undefined, right? You start with an empathetic view of the customer problem space, as Caroline mentioned, right, then you surround yourselves with like-minded ecosystem partners who bring complementary capabilities to go solve a problem. And you solve that problem. And you enable a new experience, and you define a monetization model around that. And then you do it again, and then you do it again, and what you find over time is that a lot of the capabilities become common across multiple of these use cases. And you start to horizontalize those capabilities and turn them into a core platform. And you start to expose that core platform as a set of API's, right? And then you start to get as you continue to evolve in that way and increase the capabilities, what you find is that you generate a reinforcement loop in terms of the number of use cases that can be enabled on top of the platform.

Abe Nejad: So, Kevin, I'm going to stick with you and I'm gonna go around the room and then finish with Wen. How do you see the synergy and really the evolution of cloud providers and telcos in let's say, the next couple years even?

Kevin Shatzkamer: Yeah, look, I think we're all working with the same set of enterprise customers in the same set of small and medium businesses and across the same set of vertical industries. So, I think that the collaborative approach that we see really taking root right now versus several years where it was a little [inaudible 15:00] couple years ago, where it was a little more combative is the right approach, right? I think the cloud providers bring a set of capabilities and developer ecosystem that is very strong and telcos are not exceptionally strong with that piece of the equation. Telcos bring a robust, highly scalable, fast access network that we want to see continued investment in, as cloud providers. They bring in facilities that are well suited to be able to deliver capabilities. They bring systems integration capabilities, they bring enterprise relationships. And when we start to combine all these different pieces together, I think, what you land at is a model where, where telcos and cloud providers are working together now and kind of feeling each other out. But, I think over time, you're gonna find that to be not as common but a requirement for being able to do business in this world.

Caroline Chan: Actually, I totally agree with Kevin, I think there will be a very symbiotic relationship and really relying on each other. In fact, recently, [inaudible 15:59] commissioned a survey of Fortune 500 companies CIOs see going forward to 5G into verticals, who they wanted to run their network. And the funny thing is, both the hyperscalers and telcos came up more or less the same. So, what because that really goes back to the CIOs who are typically very close to the hyperscalers, that's who they're having relationship with. So, I think the cloud and the telco would definitely go hand in hand and really started to drive a brand new ecosystem called edge compute.

Abe Nejad: And Sunay?

Sunay Tripathi: Yeah, so I think this is very clear, right? I mean, that initially, and you know, Kevin used the word combative. It wasn't really combative. It was really just a fear kind of, you know, at least from a telco world, where cloud is kind of, you know, whether they don't partner or they typically are too big. And, you know, initially, we've been at it for three years trying to build telcos edge cloud for the telecom industry. And there was definitely a segment of, you know, my clientele that wanted me to build something which mirrors cloud but is not owned by cloud. And, you know, I had to keep repeatedly having the conversation. The look is, you know, that's 10, 15 years of development, massive amount of money that has gone in, you're not gonna be able to replicate that, and there's no reason to, right. So, [inaudible 17:35] prevail at some point, it's like, you know, okay, how do we, how do we work with them? How do we collaborate? Now telcos have specific needs, keep in mind these guys are very heavily regulated, GDPR, and all those kind of things. So, they have the privacy needs, they have the uptime requirements that are really out of the world. They really have requirements around, you know, things just working, a lot of time the telco infrastructure is of national interest, national security. So, you get a have it protected, and so on and so forth. And by the way, I haven't worked in telco world till MobiledgeX. Right? So, this is things even I learned from outside that, hey, their life is different, we get to understand what their needs are. And then, you know, the thing that I bring to the table personally, is that, hey, I'm coming from the other side of the world, I'm coming from cloud side of the world. And now getting my working on the telcos side of the world. So, bridging that gap is going pretty well. Right, once you listen to the other side, and you explain and understand. And, you know, the collaboration is going pretty well, I think it will, there was some misgivings. But, I think it'll, it'll take off.

Wen Temitim: You know, I agree completely with the rest of my colleagues. And so now, Juniper actually comes from the opposite direction of having historically, you know, supported these customers in this space. And we understand those challenges. But, we also knew that you had to evolve, right? It wasn't a pure transport play anymore, it has to be a combination of hardware and software working together with transport to be able to enable these use cases. And, you know, as an example, we're working with all of the companies on this call in various ways to help solve for some of these things. So, helping our customers build, you know, a standards based edge cloud solution where they could have Google Anthos run on top, they can expose API's for someone like a MobileedgeX to, you know, to federate their edge, or, you know, the work we're doing with Intel on Flex RAN and how do we provide those high performance data plane capabilities that you know only the telcos really have to solve for. So, it's only through partnerships and collaboration that this will, this will be achievable, and, and we think it's only going to get better from here.

Abe Nejad: Well, the name of this one day event today is the telco edge cloud. And the name of the session is also the telco edge cloud. So, we had to find three or four folks that sort of fit the bill, if you will, on the telco edge and cloud side. And we certainly did that, if you're looking at the screen. These are the people that are in the telco edge cloud space. So, I appreciate everyone's time. I know everyone's extremely busy at this time, working on their respective areas. So, I want to thank Kevin Shatzkamer first for bringing us his perspective in the cloud space and Google's point of view, we appreciate your time. And we do realize you've been on two of our sessions today. So, we doubly appreciate your time. So, thank you, Kevin.

Kevin Shatzkamer: Thank you.

Abe Nejad: And Caroline, as always, we love to have you on our discussions. It's always fun, whether it's virtual or in person, hopefully soon it'll be in person from what we hear on the news that might actually happen in the next four, six months or so. So, hopefully, we see you somewhere probably overseas most likely.

Caroline Chan: Thank you, Abe.

Abe Nejad: All right. And Sunay, of course, again, I talked about the sort of the power players if you will, on the edge space, so certainly had to call Sunay Tripathi and invite him on this discussion. And he didn't disappoint. So, we appreciate that.

And finally to Wen Temitim, Juniper was very kind to support this executive discussion today, so we thank them for that. And we thank Wen for his time as well.

Wen Temitim: Thanks, Abe.

Abe Nejad: Thank you, Wen.

And to all of our viewers out there, thank you again, to our speakers on this executive broadcast called the Telco Edge Cloud. For this broadcast on demand and all of our executive sessions, please log on to thenetworkmediagroup.com. So long.

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