Ido Susan, CEO and Co-founder, DriveNets.
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“Disruption” is a commonly used word to describe anything that deviates from the “normal” way of doing business, but it definitely seems fitting to describe what we’ve seen the last few years. Nearly every industry has been impacted in one way or another by the changes brought on by the pandemic, along with other related happenings, including a supply chain in complete disarray. In the technology world, disruption and innovation have always been constants, challenging companies and their customers to pivot and adapt to keep pace. This holds particularly true for those in the telecommunications space, where disruption continues to define our industry in 2022.
Network Cloud
Transforming networks to deploy new technologies and stay ahead of demand is nothing new. From evolving from copper wires to fiber and wireless technology, service providers have continually embraced new ways to transmit information. However, if we look at how service providers have built their networks for the past 20-plus years, it hasn’t changed much: Providers continue to deploy the same routers from the same vendors. This has led to reduced service innovation and increased revenue growth challenges, which became even more apparent once cloud hyperscalers started to build software-based infrastructures, scaling their service offerings and increasing revenues in the process.
In the past few years, as the need for more flexible, agile and cost-effective networks became clear, service providers eventually started to move the network needle forward by getting on board with cloud-native, disaggregated networking. As we’re seeing a full quarter into 2022, this trend will become even more widespread.
The benefits of a cloud-native approach to networks are well understood, including:
• Cost savings.
• Sustainability.
• Increased scalability and flexibility.
• Software-paced innovation for new services.
Along with enabling service providers to evolve and grow their networks in the most time- and cost-effective way, cloud-native networks can also result in new revenue streams and a competitive advantage over providers who remain tied to rigid, complex and costly physical network infrastructure.
Supply Chain Challenges And Impact
The global supply chain challenges and component shortages are also impacting nearly every industry in the world. Unfortunately, it’s expected both will continue well into 2022, and perhaps beyond that. For telcos relying on physical infrastructure, this will require forecasting demand and ordering equipment much further ahead of time, storing components in warehouses until they’re ready to be deployed and changing pricing based on supply and demand, which will impact not only their own costs but also, potentially, customer satisfaction.
This challenge will also continue to push service providers toward a cloud-native approach this year and beyond. Cloud-native technologies reduce the need for physical hardware and infrastructure, as well as the risks of relying on a supply chain plagued by ongoing issues.
Blending Of Consumer And Enterprise Networks
One of the most transformative and wide-reaching effects we’ve seen from the pandemic is how it fundamentally changed the ways many people worked, learned and entertained themselves. Working and learning from home became commonplace—in many places, almost overnight—which challenged service providers to scale-up rapidly to meet demand and blurred the lines between consumer and enterprise networks. As workers slowly begin to return to work—whether they’re actually in the office or working in a hybrid environment—I think network usage and demand will continue to rise, or at least continue to fluctuate between work and home locations, meaning telco providers will need to continuously innovate and evolve to stay ahead of demand, while also managing costs.
Yet again, this disruption lends itself toward telcos embracing a cloud-native, disaggregated network approach, which will allow them to scale and stay ahead of consumer demand as working and learning from home become—if not permanent fixtures, then at least part of more commonplace hybrid working environments—even once (if!) the pandemic is over.
Everything-As-A-Service
Consumer networks aren’t the only ones that have had to adapt. The way enterprises consume services is also evolving. Customers are increasingly looking to adapt self-service capabilities to improve their own abilities to quickly adjust to today’s changing circumstances. But to make this a reality, telcos will need to change their entire business model, from billing to orchestration and so on.
While some telco providers remain hesitant to make such substantial changes to their networks and business models, in a time where disruption reigns, we’ll see more and more adoption going forward. Customers have already shown they will buy more services if they can self-subscribe without needing to work through an intermediary. Self-service is a new way for providers to become more competitive and grow business. The truly innovative providers, large or small, will lead this charge as everything about the way we build networks continues to change.
2020 was a year like no other. 2021 followed suit. 2022 is continuing the disruption trend, and we can expect the trend toward disruption and innovation to remain. Every industry is impacted by disruption, and when it comes to technology, disruption and cloud go hand in hand. As the way we work continues to change, networks will change, too. A cloud approach to networking will go mainstream in 2022 and beyond.
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