For years, the telecom industry has talked about adopting cloud-native technology, but for many mobile network operators (MNOs), the transformation remains an early work in progress. They are realizing that the journey is not just about adopting containers or Kubernetes; it’s about redefining how networks are built, operated, and evolved.
Rakuten Cloud recently participated in an interview at TelecomTV’s Telco Cloud Native Summit on the topic of "Successful Steps Towards Cloud-Native Telco Transformation."
The conversation defined the best practices for moving to a cloud-native network. Most of the real-world examples came from pioneering mobile network operators (MNOs) like Rakuten Mobile, which have shown that success depends on aligning technology with business goals, culture, and process maturity.
The first step toward transitioning to cloud-native technology is establishing a shared understanding of what the term actually means within an organization. Different departments often interpret it in vastly different ways. At its core, cloud-native integrates modern software development and delivery practices, including containerization, microservices, APIs, orchestration, and DevOps into the products and services that MNOs deliver.
The transformation should be approached progressively, with each new capability driven by a clear business objective. Rakuten Mobile's experience in deploying cloud-native, disaggregated networks in Japan exemplifies this, as the need to manage multiple containerized clusters across distributed sites led to the development of a multi-cluster orchestrator for zero-touch provisioning of hardware and software lifecycles.
Equally important, every operator must tailor its approach to local requirements and regulations. While “cloud-native” is a global concept, each market has distinct operational realities that shape how the model is implemented.
A successful transition to cloud-native networks necessitates strong organizational alignment and executive support. Executive sponsorship is critical for navigating the inevitable obstacles and potentially costly challenges that will arise along the way. Rakuten Mobile’s rollout benefited from a company leadership culture rooted in disruption and technological innovation. This was instrumental in enabling early adoption of Open RAN and cloud-native architectures. These technologies gave the company both time-to-market and lower CapEx advantages.
This crucial support must extend throughout the organization, ensuring that every team, from engineering to operations, understands their contribution to the cloud-native transformation. Embracing agile principles and fostering an openness to experimentation are essential. Failure should be seen as part of the learning process, while successes should be productized and scaled quickly.
Furthermore, cultural values like speed, iterative improvement, and measurement are also vital. Observability plays a key role here, allowing teams to assess results from the field, react quickly, and continuously refine systems based on real-world performance.
One of the most common challenges for operators is achieving agility without sacrificing security. In a true cloud-native model, security isn’t an afterthought, but rather it’s embedded in the entire development and deployment process.
Security tools should be integrated directly into CI/CD pipelines. This includes static and dynamic code analysis, component scanning, and automated testing across environments. Post-deployment observability becomes equally important for identifying incidents and triggering automated responses.
Automated and policy-driven rollbacks to previous states add another layer of protection and consistency. This approach allows security teams to codify best practices while enabling faster, safer releases.
The success of a cloud-native transformation is ultimately measured by predefined business outcomes. For many operators, key metrics include time to innovate, deployment speed, and cost efficiency.
Rakuten Mobile exemplifies this, running more than 6,000 software pipelines per week, an indicator of the speed and agility that cloud-native architectures enable. Further metrics of success include reduced hardware footprints, faster automation, lower service customization needs, and even energy savings from intelligent orchestration and lifecycle management.
These efficiency gains translate directly into lower operational and capital expenses while improving the ability to innovate at scale.
Open source technologies are foundational to cloud-native transformation. Kubernetes has emerged as the de facto standard for orchestration, with nearly 80% of organizations now using it in production. Leveraging mature, well-documented open-source projects accelerates innovation while reducing vendor lock-in.
However, community tools can be complex. Vendors like Rakuten Cloud address this by simplifying deployment while ensuring customers remain aligned with open-source best practices. Operators don’t need deep Kubernetes expertise to succeed. They need robust, prepackaged solutions built on proven open-source foundations.
The key is to start simple: establish orchestration and container management before moving into advanced automation and reconciliation. Each organization should climb the cloud-native “ladder” step by step, ensuring stability and scalability at each stage.
Even mature organizations find that the cloud-native journey is ongoing. The gap between hype and reality becomes clear once legacy functions enter the picture. Many older network functions lack fundamental cloud-native capabilities like elasticity or automated recovery.
Operators must strategically plan for coexistence between containerized and virtualized functions during transition periods. Robust orchestration and Operations Support Systems (OSS) layers help mask underlying complexity, enabling new and old systems to operate together seamlessly.
While greenfield deployments can achieve rapid transitions, established operators face the critical challenge of migration. Moving existing workloads, such as 4G or IT applications, into containerized environments requires careful prioritization, the right toolsets, and close vendor collaboration. Smooth migration ensures service continuity while unlocking the long-term benefits of cloud-native flexibility.
Ultimately, cloud-native transformation is not a destination, but rather it’s an evolving process of modernization and learning. Success requires clarity of purpose, organizational commitment, embedded security, and smart use of open-source innovation.
MNOs that approach it methodically and align technology choices with business goals will be best positioned to realize the full potential of cloud-native networks: faster innovation, lower costs, and greater resilience in an increasingly software-defined telecom world.
Watch the full discussion on TelecomTV.
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