Rakuten Cloud offers a better cloud-native solution for telco IT

Telco service providers, like many modern organizations, are increasingly embracing cloud-native computing and microservices. This shift is crucial for supporting advanced capabilities, including edge computing, AI, enhanced infrastructure flexibility, service scalability, and automated application lifecycles.

What sets telcos apart, however, is their dual reliance on these technologies for both their core production networks and their internal IT operations. Recently, CSPs have been focused on disaggregating and optimizing their cloud for network workloads; RAN, Core, Edge, etc.

But while focusing on the economics of network cloud, the cost of running "boring" IT workloads, CRM, analytics, and internal enterprise applications, etc., spiraled out of control. Compounded by the skyrocketing licensing costs of legacy virtualization vendors (the "Broadcom Effect") and the unpredictable egress fees of public hyperscalers, the economics of Telco IT have broken.

Telco IT moving to cloud-native

These factors are driving telco IT organizations to transition from virtual machine (VM) computing to cloud-native containerization. Other benefits, including better energy efficiency and reduced operational complexity, make the transition even more advantageous.

Telecom IT staff have several solutions to choose from when it comes time to deploy cloud-native computing, ranging from open-source software to various third-party software vendors.

Unlock telco IT potential with Rakuten Cloud

For telco service providers seeking robust, advanced solutions for their IT infrastructure, Rakuten Cloud offers a compelling option. It delivers significant value through its cutting-edge orchestration and storage technologies, offered as a comprehensive suite of three distinct platforms:

Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform is a Kubernetes-based cloud-native operating system that is optimized for network- and storage-centric workloads. The low-footprint software is perfect for edge deployments. The software is secure and supports both containerized applications and VM applications.

Rakuten Cloud-Native Orchestrator delivers one-click, zero-touch application onboarding, system provisioning and seamless scaling from a single site to thousands of locations. The orchestrator provides centralized visibility, enabling operators to monitor both physical and virtual assets. This reduces troubleshooting time and improves operational efficiency. The software orchestrates across bare-metal hardware, Kubernetes clusters, virtualized infrastructure, and third-party appliances. The orchestrator provides day 1 & 2 life cycle management capabilities.

Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage offers stateful, software-defined block, file, and object storage that is application-aware and can accommodate a variety of data types. The storage works with stateful applications in dynamic environments to open up cloud-native computing to stateful applications.  For data security, Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage provides encryption at rest and in motion. The application-aware Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage is software-defined, accelerating time-to-value and minimizing errors through holistic management of data, critical metadata, application configurations, and Kubernetes deployments.

Benefits beyond product features

The comprehensive and feature-packed Rakuten Cloud software suite is a complete solution for telco IT applications that offers cost and value advantages:

• ‍Cost reduction benefits: The recent consolidation in the virtualization market has left many CIOs facing renewal quotes that are 2- to 3-times higher than in previous years. Rakuten Cloud provides a sanctuary for these workloads. It supports both Kubernetes (containers) and legacy VMs natively. By consolidating IT and network workloads onto Rakuten Cloud, CSPs can achieve a density that radically alters the total cost of ownership (TCO).‍
• Operational and capital expense savings: Rakuten Cloud is designed with automation at its core. The same automation engine that powers the world’s first fully virtualized mobile network can be harnessed by telco IT teams. IT operations teams are drowning in "day 2" maintenance: patching Linux kernels, upgrading databases, and managing security configurations. Rakuten Cloud treats telco IT infrastructure as code. It automates the lifecycle management of the entire cluster.
• Performance: Designed for the most demanding workloads; Telecom IT workloads are heavy. They are database-intensive and I/O hungry. Generic cloud platforms are designed for general-purpose workloads. "Noisy neighbor" applications can degrade performance. Rakuten Cloud is built on a "telco-grade" architecture designed to deliver performance and reliability for business-critical applications. It is a high-performance compute environment by default, not as an afterthought.‍
• Power efficiency: Power consumption savings of 10%–35% on Intel architecture commercial-off-the-shelf hardware further contribute to overall cost efficiency. ‍
• Faster deployment: Implementation timelines are up to 80% faster than with VMs, enabling faster time to value and a rapid return on investment.

Conclusion

Moving to cloud-native computing is imperative for telco IT teams that need to bring data processing closer to their users while managing the complexity and cost of this infrastructure. Rakuten Cloud is here to simplify IT operations, eliminate legacy licensing traps, and provide true sovereignty over IT infrastructure.

Telco IT teams have a choice in cloud platforms, and Rakuten Cloud offers a compelling solution. From an optimized Kubernetes platform that can streamline legacy VMs and bare-metal applications to zero-touch orchestration and stateful, app-aware storage, the Rakuten Cloud solution should be at the top of the short list for consideration.

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